Re: type writers and tooth aches II

"JPL Verhey" <matterDELminds@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "Curt Welch" <curt@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:20050720160157.295$5R@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> > Brain activity is behavior. That's what behaviorists study.
>
> As I understand it behaviorists study observable and quantifiable
> aspects of animal behavior. The study of brain activity I think is done
> by neuro-scientists that do brain research.

Yeah, I'm no expert on the correct naming of the different scientific
fields. It's not important to the discussion. The point is that if you can
create a reproducible experiment that produces objective data, and base
your conclusions on what the data says, and nothing else, then it's science
and it's within the possibility of being studied by behaviorists.

The firing of neurons is very much observable and quantifiable animal
behavior even if it does tend to be studied more by people calling
themselves something like a neuro-scientists instead of a behaviorist.

>From comments I seen from the real behaviorists in this group, I get the
impression that the function of internal components of animals do get
studied by people who call themselves behaviorists - but I could easily be
wrong about that.

> > The problem with English is that it has two langauges - one for the
> > physical world, and another for the mental world. The connection
> > between
> > these two lagnauges, as I've said many times, is still unknown.
>
> You mentioned earlier (if I recall correctly) that you see the "gap"
> between the mental and the physical as caused entirely by language. The
> mere fact that we use those two languages - one for the mental and one
> for the physical - creates in your view the gap.
>
> I think however that those "two languages" are a consequence, or
> "symptom" if you wish, of something much more basic which I called "the
> sense-of-gap". That sense-of-gap is very easy to check what it is, and
> how profound it is.

What you are getting into is exactly what I've been talking about for a few
years here.

Yes, the reason so many people believe there is a gap is because they were
taught to believe it by the language. But the reason we have the language,
is because there is a real "sense of gap" as you call it. It's because we
can not hear/see/smell/taste our brain functioning. That means the brain
is not able to detect a direct correlations between the external sensory
signals, and the internal sensory signals. Temporal correlation between
signals is how the brain creates associations. If there is no correlation,
there is no association. So we are left with the sense that the external
sensory signals (which do all nicely correlate with one another) group into
one domain, and the internal sensory signals which do not correlate (our
mental thoughts) get lumped into a separate domain. This makes it "feel"
to us, that it must be two separate domains. That's why everyone continues
to think there is a gap.

> First: consider your experiencing.. the colors and shapes you see, the
> sounds you hear, the sense of touch while you type, your thoughts having
> a jam session in your head, your mood that no matter where you go is
> with you like the changing weather..etc etc. That is you, the world you
> know and reality.
>
> Second: consider, or even observe after making a hole in your skull and
> using some mirros to have a nice view, your own brain. All you see is
> some grey pudding the size of a coconut.

Exactly what I've been saying. Even if you open your head and look at the
brain, you still can not see the physical actions which are your thoughts.
This creates the illusion that thoughts are not part of the physical world.

Looking at the brain is just not enough. Our eyes are not able to sense
the activity of neurons firing. If you were instead to connect a probe to
a scope of some type, then the scope would bridge the gap from neuron
activity to light to allow us to actually see the direct correlation
between the two. We could think about different things, and notice the
correlation between our thoughts, and the behavior of the neurons.

Likewise, if we built some hardware to connect in the other direction, such
as a button which caused the probe to force the neurons to fire by
electrical stimulation, then we could press the button, and sense the
immediate effect it has on our thoughts. This technique is used in brain
surgery to map out sections of the brain - so there are people alive who
have experienced this connection - though they didn't get to do the real
fun stuff, which would be to pick the spots and probe them yourself.

Closing the loop like this in both directions, and allowing someone to
actually play with their own brain in real time would make it very obvious
to them that their thoughts, and the activity of the neurons, were one and
the same. They would see for themself that this was not two domains, but
only one. The physical action of our brain, and the stuff we sense
happening in our head, are one and the same.

What we really need is some type of high tech brain scanner that allowed
you to sit in front of a computer and monitor the activity of any neuron in
your own brain in real time. And inversely, to click on the screen and
force neurons to fire. Anyone spending a day playing with a machine like
this I'm sure would be left with no doubt that their thoughts were nothing
more than the activity of the neurons in their head.

If you instead just look at the brain with your eyes, you will still see
nothing, and the disconnect will still seem real to you. (your "sense of
gap").

> This sense of gap, ie the paradox between experience and coconut (the
> ol' mind-body conundrum of course) created from premordial humanoid
> times and on the conception of for instance the idea of migrating souls
> living in bodies, or that objects can be inhabited by ghosts, and later
> caused philosophers *up to this date* the biggest head ache of all
> times! And, it also created your "two languages". But that is really
> only normal, and even necessary.
>
> What behaviorists (and you it appears) have done, is simply say that one
> of these languages doesn't count, declare it illegitimate and that there
> is no science possible there hoping that that excorsised the demon.

Not at all.

There are two sensory domains. Our thoughts are real and we can sense
them. I know this. Radical behaviorists like Skinner knew it and
addressed it in his work.

What's dangerous is the fact that the mental language we created is not
grounded to objective verifiable data. Subjective data by it's nature is
currently unverifiable. What happens is that lies can be defined into the
system, with no way to remove them. One such "lie" is the idea that
thoughts are not physical. Most religious beliefs creep into our belief
system the same way.

But, if we had this magic real-time full brain activity scanner, then all
mental activity would become objective. And then we could do real science
on it. This of course is already being done to a limited extend with PET
scanners and bio-feedback type scanners and with probes in the brains - but
most that work of course is done on animals because of the obvious dangers
to stimulate the brains of living healthy humans.

> What
> no one (that I know of) has really asked, is if there maybe is some
> simple *reason* for this sense of gap.

My god, I've asked it, answerd it, and written about it in 1000 messages in
this group. Where have you been? The reason for the gap is the fact that
the brain doesn't sense any correlation in the data between the two sensory
domains.

Actually, it's more complex than this, but because no one seems to follow
me this far, I haven't tried as hard to start talking about the more
interesting stuff.

> On that we agreed - the solve the
> gap is to understand what creates it. Your theory that it is just
> language and culture that conditioned us the think/perceive that way..
> is really absurd IMHO

Then you should try reading what I've written. You repeat the ideas I've
writen about many times here as the answer which only you seem to
understand and then call my ideas absurd.

> especially because it is so easy to just
> check-the-gap and how real it is: your world of experience versus your
> own observable coconut in which that experiential world occurs. They
> just don't seem to mix...
>
> So I started to think what creates this paradoxical situation? What
> creates that rock-solid age-old sense-of-gap? Would it be not very weird
> if there were *not* that sense of gap? Of course! Whether our brains, or
> any stuff in general are termed "physical", "non-physical" is totally
> irrelevant. Even if our brains, body and environment were all made of
> plastic, or of any "material-X".. that sense-of-gap would still be there
> as long as the activity of stuff that our brains are made of has this
> experiential quality. And we would still be confronted with exactly the
> same paradox.

The paradox only happens if there is no causal connection between the
sensory signals. If you built a robot which had blinking lights to show
all his brain activity so that he could see with his own eyes that every
thought he had was correlated to a blinking light, the robot would never
have formed the "paradox" that humans formed.

> So if not just language, what creates the paradox? ( I know the answer
> already ;))

Yeah, I know the answer too. I've been writing about it for a year or two
now in this group.

We created the paradox because the brain couldn't find a correlation in the
sensory data.

Maybe people are missing the importance of correlation in sensory data?

The way the brain learns to identify something as a "object" is by
identifying the temporal correlation in sensory data the object creates.
"Things" are created in the brain by the correlations they create. We see a
"cat" as a "thing" because of the fact it generates a common set of
correlated data points which the brain can match on. Data that is not
correlated is seen as separate "things".

There are many "things" in the physical world that create correlations
across the separate sensory domains. When we drop something, we see it hit
the floor, at the same time we hear the sound of it hitting the floor.
When we reach out and grab something, we see the result of our touch, at
the same time, we feel it. There are tons of "objects" in the physical
domain which cause these cross-sensory "objects" to be identified by the
brain.

But, there are NO objects for normal humans that form a cross-sensory
correlation between one of the "physical" senses, and our internal
thoughts. But, these objects do exist. They are called neurons. It just
took man a few hundred thousand years to identify them. Normal people
however have never gotten to see their own neurons in action at the same
time they "feel" their own thoughts. So they don't get to experience the
connection for themselves. We only get to read about the connection in
science books.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
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