It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. These are often as highly structured and selective as myths. Images and symbolic constructs of the past are imprinted, almost in a manner of genetic information, on our sensibility. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past.
George Steiner
Of all the questions and debates in science, none is more important and less understood than how we create consciousness of our unique self and a sense of free will. The tool – the ability or the thing that we attribute this ability to is our “mind”.
Is the mind tied up in the brain? Or is it roaming elsewhere in the universe, and only incidently using the brain as a touchstone to physicality?
I have just finished a year long reading and study of mind. While it is too big of a thing to be covered well, I thought it might be interesting to see what some of you here at rhp think about the notion of mind.
So to get a debate/discussion going, consider the following positions and chime in on your best estimate of what actually comprises reality. We start backwards, by addressing the most difficult question confronting science. What is “Consciousness”? And the biggest conundrum of all... How can it think about itself?
A) The Platonic view – the soul or mind, is immaterial and immortal.
B) The Duality of Descartes – the body is material and the mind derives from spirit or soul.
C) Objective biology – of varying degree, Crick, McGinn, Dennet - Brain is Mind. And probably too complicated to figure out.
D) Unitary integration – Searle and Nagel – To separate mind and matter is meaningless.
A) is perhaps the best known of these views because it is the oldest. It also had a formidable protagonist in the form of Thomas Aquinas.
B) is not lacking of support either. Popper, John Eccles and Gilbert Ryle who invented “the ghost in the machine”.
As a teaser... Benjamin Libet at the university of california, san fran did an experiment in 1983, adding to the work of Hans Kornhuber. In experiments in which he asked people to make several simple actions, the brain always fired 200 milliseconds BEFORE THE PERSON registered the urge to move his or her finger. If the choice is determined in the brain before we decide to act, what and where is free will?
As Gregory and Ramachandran responded – “our conscious mind may not have free will, but it does have free won’t”
Who invented the new science of the mind? It is really not a meaningfull question, but the greatest (in my opinion) Spanish scientist of all times has a legitimate claim on being the father of the science of the brain.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal is the father of the neuron doctrine. If any of you have ever taken a brain... in any biology class and inspected it.. consider that as an aspiring artist, Cajal did that very thing. But unlike you and I, he didn't quit until he had identified the nature of EVERY major cell in the brain. He single handedly invented the neuron: Cell body, axon, dendrites and terminals. Before there were instraments to acutally measure and see... he postulated that the "terminal" on the axion never quite touched the receptive dendrites of contacted neurons, (the synaptic cleft) but that there was a mechanism that was "directional and steadfast". The discovery of this principle, ie, Connection Specificity -- is more than any other scientist would accomplish for another forty years.
He is the father of the concept of dynamic polarization. This states that information flows only in a single direction in a neural circuit.
He discovered the entire network. Sensor neurons, Motor neurons and Interneurons.
All in the 1800's. He received the nobel in 1906.
So all that mind might turn out to be, can be best described as having it's start in the abundant mind (circular logic intended) of a want-a-be Spanish painter turned anatomist.
Originally posted by StarValleyWyLook for the seminal work from McCulloch and Pitts (1943). (I'm proud I have one of the first editions of the book),
Who invented the new science of the mind? It is really not a meaningfull question, but the greatest (in my opinion) Spanish scientist of all times has a legitimate claim on being the father of the science of the brain.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal is the father of the neuron doctrine. If any of you have ever taken a brain... in any biology class and inspec ...[text shortened]... abundant mind (circular logic intended) of a want-a-be Spanish painter turned anatomist.
Also to be consider are the first works by Minsky. But these were flawed, and he later rectified his points of view.
The society of Mind, by Minsky, is a great book. You can get it on CD I think (nice food for the mind); and it is a real pleasure to read it.
From E. Kent, "The brain of men and machines" is another source for serious information and theories about the mind.
I have at the tip of my tongue many other titles I have read in the past.
While answering your post. I could cite a lot of quotes from these and other books (as being my own ideas). But I think that keeping myself in a frame of honest opinion, I'll say you that I'm recomending you these readings, and I'm not going to quote parts of them as if it was my own thinking. But I agree with these too much.
Regards
- Julia
Originally posted by StarValleyWyBTW Mike, I will try to answer your post point by point. It is fascinating.
It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. These are often as highly structured and selective as myths. Images and symbolic constructs of the past are imprinted, almost in a manner of genetic information, on our sensibility. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and activ amachandran responded – “our conscious mind may not have free will, but it does have free won’t”
Sorry if my first answer falls short of this.
BTW, this thread should be in the General Forum. or in the Posers one.
I think it can't arise "hot" opinions here.
And IMHO it is a fundamental and interesting topic of discussion.
Cheers!
Thanks to bring it up.
- J
"Adaptive Signal Processing (Paperback)
by Bernard Widrow, Samuel Stearns "
"Parallel Distributed Processing, Vol. 1: Foundations (Paperback)
by David E. Rumelhart, James L. McClelland, the PDPResearchGroup "
this annotated neural network bibliography is 1014 pages long:
"Neuralsource: The Bibliographic Guide to Artificial Neural Networks (Management Information Systems) (Hardcover)
by Philip D. Wasserman, Roberta M. Oetzel "
haven't read the following, but they look interesting ... (quotes are from amazon) ...
this book gets five stars from all reviewers on amazon.com:
"From Neuron to Brain: A Cellular and Molecular Approach to the Function of the Nervous System, Fourth Edition (Hardcover)
by A. Robert Martin, Bruce G. Wallace, Paul A. Fuchs, John G. Nicholls (Editor)"
and one of the reviews points to a complementary book:
"This is an outstanding book - comprehensive, clearly written and beautifully produced, with many useful illustrations.
It takes a bottom up approach, starting with the structure of ion channels and their proteins, and moves on to higher levels of structure and function. Because of the current state of knowledge it is necessarily much more detailed regarding the peripheral nervous system and sensory systems than it is regarding most areas of the central nervous system.
You may be interested in "Phantoms in the Brain" by Ramachandran, a popular but very meaty book that takes the complementary top down approach - starting with the mind as we experience it and looking at medical cases to see how it is constructed by the brain.
".
"Zen-Brain Reflections (Hardcover)
by James H. Austin
This sequel to the widely read Zen and the Brain continues James Austin’s explorations into the key interrelationships between Zen Buddhism and brain research. In Zen-Brain Reflections, Austin, a clinical neurologist, researcher, and Zen practitioner, examines the evolving psychological processes and brain changes associated with the path of long-range meditative training. Austin draws not only on the latest neuroscience research and new neuroimaging studies but also on Zen literature and his personal experience with alternate states of consciousness.
Zen-Brain Reflections takes up where the earlier book left off. ..."
this one is somewhat off-topic but looks interesting; it was published in 2005 and does not have any reviews:
"Artificial Neural Networks in Real-life Applications (Hardcover)
by Juan Ramon Rabunal (Editor), Julian Dorrado (Editor) "
*brain rendering noise*
*nicotine boosting the synapsis*
Ready
🙂
One of my favorite quotes by Popper on LANGUAGE AND THE BODY-MIND PROBLEM (1995).-
"For I completely reject the claim of certain language analysts that the source of philosophical difficulties is to be found in the misuse of language. No doubt some people talk nonsense, but I claim (a) that there does not exist a logical or language-analytical method of detecting philosophical nonsense (which, by the way, does not stop short of the ranks of logicians, language analysts and semanticists); (b) that the belief that such a method exists -- the belief more especially that philosophical nonsense can be unmasked as due to what Russell might have called 'type-mistakes' and what nowadays are sometimes called 'category-mistakes' -- is the aftermath of a philosophy of language which has since turned out to be baseless."
Priceless.