Re: Cool visual illusion


Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:


> But sitting from without is all we have.


Is all behaviorism has, which is the point.


Looking at brain function and
> physiology merely shifts the locus of the behaviour being studied. Or
> would you insist that what the brain does is not behaviour? Besides,
> without that behaviour that is supposedly so uninformative, measurements
> within the brain are somehat uninformative, too, to put it mildly.
>


Try to understand the list of 8 items, mentioned previously. Try to
understand that the items on the list above lead to the items below.
Try to understand that stopping at items #1 and #2 does not solve the
problem. Try to understand that to design and build a system, you have
to go through the entire process. Try to understand systems-level
problem solving.

Wallah! .... this is exactly what you've started below. Now you do
understand why there are 8 items in the list. The problems must
necessarily be approached on many levels. Botta-bing. We'll make a
systems-level analyst out of you yet. Behaviorism alone doesn't take
you very far down the list.


> For example, to find out which of the areas mentioned are/not involved
> in the illusion, you could anesthetise a few clusters of neurons at a
> time. You might then find that the illusion-generating data takes some
> pathways and not others - but only if you have the subhect's response to
> the illusion available while you're doing those measurements. Etc.
>
> I think the guess of "several trillion" cells involved in the illusion
> is unlikely, or else a red herring. Sure, trillions of cell are
> involved, but finally most these cells' responses are filtered out.
> There is increasing evidence that many of the "true illusions" that the
> VC generates occur in very small clusters of cells, so I would expect
> the same of the "false illusions." Consider face recognition, for
> example: recent work suggests that we train appproximately one neuron
> per face. The effects of strokes also indicate very strongly that many
> of the higher functions of the brain (the ones naively identified as
> functions of the mind by many/most people) depend on clusters of a very
> few cells.
>
> IMO a visual illusion may arise because two or more such clusters are
> competing with each other, ie, responding to the same inputs
> differently, and with equal strength. Metaphorically, they report
> different interpretations of the data simultaneously and with equal
> probability. Normally, one of the competing clusters responds will
> report a higher probability than the other(s). But we should not take
> metaphors too seriously: they are at best indicators of "fruitful areas
> of inquiry." In this case, one would look for two or more
> neuron-clusters repsonding equally strongly when an illusion is
> presented to the subject. The quoted account of the path of nerve
> impulses from retina to VC do not indicate whether such comparative
> studies have been done, and I don't know whether currnet technology
> makes such studies possible.
>
> What visual illusions IMO do confirm is that learning to see X requires
> that the neurons in the VC a) must form networks; and b) that these
> networks must be trained to respond to inputs from other areas of the
> brain (which in turn mediate the sensory inputs which can be manipulated
> via environmental cues.) Since mamals generally are born with
> underdeveloped VCs, the infant mammal must learn to see. This learning
> shapes the brain. Some experiments in the 60s IIRC showed that a kitten
> could learn to see only vertical lines, and if it wasn't exposed to
> horizontal lines soon enough, it never did learn to see horizontals well
> if at all.
>
> What this amounts to is that shaping behaviour is equivalent to shaping
> physiology, a principle that is too general to be of much use. Tracing
> the pathways of nerve impulses from retina to VC should in principle
> indicate how the illusion is generated, but, as your outline indicates,
> it ain't easy. The fact that people (me) can learn to control some
> illusions suggests that those pathways will be more or less subtly
> changed by the mere act of seeing the illusion, for one thing.
>
> I really can see no way to leave behaviour out of it.


You did good, and then you lost it at the end.

How many times does it have to be said? There are 8 items on the list,
and solving the problem involves approaches at many levels.

.

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