Re: Jeff Hawkins Q&A

Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 20 Oct 2005 09:04:26 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
>
> >Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On 18 Oct 2005 22:40:26 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
> >>
> >> >i.e., Consciousness is the ablity to sense ourselves.
> >>
> >> How is this a definition of consciousness? It sounds like a definition
> >> of self-sensing to me.
> >
> >Because I happen to believe it's one and the same.
>
> Your beliefs have nothing to do with science. You should have prefaced
> your definition with "I believe that..." and I would have ignored it.

Consciousness has nothing to do with science. Because we are talking about
consciousness, you should have know we were not talking about science.

> >> Even a thermostat can be said to be
> >> self-sensing.
> >
> >Exactly. That's how speical I believe consciousness is - i.e., not
> >special at all.
> >
> >Human consciosness is created by the full complexity of the signal
> >processing that happens in the brain. So to duplicate that type of
> >consciousness, you have to duplicate the full signal processing powers
> >of a human brain. But I believe there is no real point in the entire
> >spectrum of machines where you can define the beginning and/or end of
> >consciousness.
>
> Again, what you believe is irrelevant. The above is an exercise in
> superstition, AFAIC.
>
> >> The cerebellum receives zillions of sensory inputs. If
> >> self-sensing is consciousness, how come the billions of cells in the
> >> cerebellum are completely outside the conscious space?
> >
> >It's not. You just like to say it is.
> >
> >If I cut your cerebellum out of you brain, would you not be consciouslly
> >aware of a change in your behavior? You would be. So if it's
> >completely oustide of the conscious space, how is it possible for you to
> >be consciouslly aware of it?
> >
> >The only reason you can say it is "outside of your conscious space" is
> >because you have made a very arbitary decision to limit your defintion
> >of "conscious space" to be the part of reality that does not include the
> >cerebellum or the signals it processes.
>
> This is complete nonsense, Curt. The cerebellum is not in the
> conscious space because experiments with implanted electrodes have
> shown that patients have no idea when their cerebellar cells are being
> stimulated. This is not so for other areas of the brain such as the
> sensory cortices. Even blind people report seeing various colors when
> the color areas of the visual cortex are electrically stimulated. Same
> with deaf people and the auditory cortex.

The nonsense here is the WORD "consciousness".

This debate is not science because it's not about objective data. It's a
debate about our prefered definition of a silly non-sicentific word.

The only thing that cerebellar stimulation tests shows is that those cells
are not part of the signal path that creates our private thoughts. It
tells us NOTHING about the nature of the defintion of the word
"consciousness".

I'm not conscious of what is happening in my back yard right now. Is that
a big surprise to anyone? There is no signal path connectiong the objects
in my back yard to my brain so I'm not conscious of what is happening there
at the moment. If you stimulate my cerebellum and I'm not aware of it, it
means nothing more than what the backyard experiement did. It means there
are no signal paths connectiong that part of my brain to the part which is
processing my conscious thoughts.

> >> The neurons in
> >> the visual cortex that correlate to diffrerent colors are exactly
> >> identical and process identical pulses. The only difference is that
> >> they are located in a slightly different cortical area. How does one
> >> account for the different color sensations? Is location alone
> >> sufficient for color awareness? If so, why?
> >
> >The Red signal wire on a computer monitor is the same type of wire as
> >the blue signal wire. How is it possible that these identical wires
> >carry different color signals?
>
> They don't. You should read what I wrote very carefully and see if
> your analogy makes any sense.

Do you honestly believe that the location of the nuron is what determines
the function of neurons and not the way they end up being configured/wired?
They process different colors because they are configured to processes
different colors exactly like the transitors that are part of the computer
monitor signal were configured to processes different colors.

> >The signals were generated by identical
> >transistors. How is it possible for identical transistors to generate
> >signals of different colors?
>
> They don't. There is no color information in the signals. That's the
> point. Whereas the monitor has special diodes or phosphor dots, or
> whatnot, that emit light in certain frequencies (red, green and blue),
> the brain has nothing comparable in the visual cortex. Yet, we see
> color.

The eye and brain has the EXACT same thing that a color video camara has.
It has frequency senstive light receptors. A color video camera "sees"
color just like we do for the exact same reason. It's got a frequency
senstive recepter that maps electromagnetic radiation to an internal signal
format for color. It's the receptor that creates the color, not the signal
that transports it.

The fact that you can stimulate a neuron and the brain will "see" the same
thing it sees, when you shine blue light on the eye, should be no surprise,
since a blue light shining on the eye will cause that neuron to be
activated.

What confuses people about this is that they falsely belive that the
"blueness" they see, is a property of light. It's not. "Blueness" is the
activity of a speical set of neurons in your head. That's what you are in
fact "seeing" when you see "blue". Your brain is sensing the activity of
your "blue signal" neurons. Every time you think you are looking at
something blue in the world, what you are really "looking at" is the
activity of your blue signal neurons.

Once you really graps this idea, then the fact that stimulating our "blue
signal neurons" creates a sensation of "seeing blue" should be no surprise.

Most the confusion over these consciusness issues is a simple
mis-understanding of our true mental reality. Everything we think we sense
in the external world is really nothing but neurons firing in our head.
The neruons in our brain are each acting as sensors, which for the most
part, sense the activity of other neurons. When I see a pen on my desk,
it's because a neuron in my head, is sensing the activity of some "pen"
neurons in my head, which had just "seen" some "light" neurons becoming
active in my head, etc. All this hardware was built to create a mirror
image of the structures, seen in our sensory data. But what we actually
"see" is not the pen in the real world, or the visual data, it's the
activity of all these internal sensors in our head sensing each other.

People do have collections of cells that work like grandmother cells. When
they work, we can look at grandmother and see grandmother. If you break
those cells with the help of a stroke, you can look at grandmother and see
only a stranger. This is because we have just killed our internal
representation of "grandmother" and we can no longer see her because the
only way we ever could see her was to see the activity of those cells.

So, we may think that the grandmother we are looking at is this old lady in
the environment, but in fact, it's just a collection of neurons in our
head.

Grandmother IS the neurons. If you activate them correctly, you will "see"
granmother just as real as if she was standing in front of you.

Blueness likewise IS the neurons, not the light. If you activate them
correctly, you will see blue, because that's what "seeing blue" really is.
It's your neurons sensing the activity of you "blue signal" neurons.

> >There's really no mystery here.
>
> You know, there is nothing like having religion to completely mess up
> somebody's ability to reason sensibly. Your blind religious belief in
> in the sanctity of evolution will not allow you to see things that
> others can clearly see. Part of your brain has become atrophied as a
> result and may be beyond repair. I am wasting my time and your time
> having a discussion about consciousness with you.

I can see your blindness as easy as you can see mine. I used to be blind
like you so I think I know where you are coming from.

> But don't feel bad, you are in great company, Jeff Hawkins (an
> otherwise intelligent man) is equally stupid when it comes to this
> subject. As always, I tell it like I see it.
>
> Louis Savain
>
> Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It:
> http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm

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

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