Reality, perception and simulation

Resolving the nature of reality through a holistic approach

Due to overspecialisation of scientists, little ground-breaking work has been done in orde to enhance our fundamental understanding of nature/reality and how we, as conscious entities, are a part of this. At least, that is my opinion.

It was in the mid-twenties of previous century that people like von Bertalanffy already shared this vision. His General system theory was meant to resolve this issue and envisioned a unification of all the science branches based on the concept of a "system". (official site: http://www.isss.org/)
His concepts have been refined and are now widely applied in lots of engeneering branches, yet, it hasn't made that big change it was supposed to cause (this could be material for another topic).

Around the same time, the view of cybernetics was developed by Wiener et al. (see http://www.cybsoc.org/ for example). The study of cybernetics can be seen as a part of general system theory, because it concerns systems with feedback - and although many systems work like that, not all of them do.

In the '80's, several researchers developed the concept of Complex adaptive systems (http://www.casresearch.com/). Shortly said, this is more about simulating complex systems and their behaviour with computers and is philosophically speaking less developed.

It is not my intention to go in detail explaining these 3 holistic paradigma's, but to look for other interested people in this field. It is my conviction that only when there is enough discussion and feedback amongst scientists/students/etc. that we will have a chance of solving the great riddles of the universe and life. It could mean a Global brain (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAINREF.html ) but it doesn't necesarrily have to be so far reaching. A centralised data-based, interactive website, using universities as backbone, could already change the world. That is because new ideas are EMERGENT properties caused by interaction between different elements that make up a system/super-system/etc. The more interaction we get, the more chance we have for this to occure on a great scale.

It is my opinion that if we wish to model reality 'out there', we need to have understanding of our own Self as accurate as possible. Otherwise, all else is meaningless. I'll give you an example: My branch is archaeology. Most research in this field can be summarised as being focussed on material remains. Advanced methods (and expensive they are!) are used to gain ANY information from these remains - from where they came (for example a certain clay from a certain region), how old they probably are, from which group of people (based on form analysis) etc. It is their assumption that by doing so, they will figure out something about the lives of people now gone. Firstly, most of the focuss is on the material remains and no not on the human beings that made them. Second, I believe this assumption is a great mistake because even IF the material remains would be complete and even IF they would accurately know all the "where's", "what's" and "when's" about them, they still wouldn't understand these human beings. Why not? Because today, as it is, we still don't understand them either. First we must get to the core of this and then we may fill in all the rest, like using an equation to solve a riddle. I think an archaeologist should not restrict himself to "arcaheology" - this human made artificial border is partly meaningless. An archaeologist should have good knowledge of psychology, neurology, etc. in orde to take part in the debate about human nature. Multidisciplinary research shouldn't be a bunch of specialists working together without knowing of each other what it is that they actually do. Multidisciplinary research should start from multidisciplinary education and discussion.

At the following link you will be able to read a paper written by Billy T, which I have scanned and put in .pdf format so everyone can access it

Reality, Perception and simulation: A plausible theory
http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/Reality, perception and simulation.pdf

(full reference: W. R. Powell (1994) Reality, Perception and simulation: A plausible theory, Technical Digest 15, 154-163)

I have also added is other piece of work: Genuine Free Will

http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/Genuine Free will.pdf

You may want to save these files as they may disappear within weeks.

If anyone knows any articles on such subjects, you are most welcome to post the references so I can look them up. It is these kinds of models that may guide us towards a better understanding of human behavior.

 

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another helpful link:

http://optometry.berkeley.edu/class/opt10/Opt10-04_Brain_DeValois.pdf

 

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Thanks for scanning the APL/JHU paper. I have copy in my local computers storage, if it is dropped form your site and someone wants to see it later.
I vaguely remember posting your other reference to my papers, but the forum Biology & Genetics thread "about determinism" has the essence of both my free will argument and my suggested explanation of the Out of Africa event in it. See my post of 6 Oct 05 there for this part of the longer APL/JHU paper.

Probably the most important part of the APL/JHU paper is the justification for my statement:
"I propose that when a set of boundary detectors can form a closed contour and synchronize their firing patterns by mutual reinforcement, then the area inside that contour will be taken as part of the surface of some unique object."

Few think about how much of a problem it is to separate the continuous visual field into separate objects, which we can then (later) try to identify, despite their being under-determined as DeValois discusses in your other post. (This presumably man and wife team's book Spacial Vision is very good and my reference 2.) I offer one neural mechanism that can achieve this and give experimental results that support it in the APL/JHU paper on page 158.

 

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Just yesterday, while visiting a friend in the 12 floor of a hospital, I discovered a strong visual illusion that I have never seen discussed (and I know of many).

Out of the 12th floor window, the view down a straight street, radial leaving the hospital, that is actually sloping down hill from the hospital elevation, seems to be very sharply rising in elevation as one looks at the more distant parts of it. (My wife first comment that she did not realize it was so steep, and I knew it was actually actually slightly down hill from the hospital.)

The reason for this is rather straight forward, I am almost sure. It is related to the undetermined nature of the visual image that De Valois discusses, but ignoring that, it is due to the fact that we are not normally on the 12th floor and automatically assume in our visual processing that if we see more street (instead of sky) when we raise the angle of our gaze, then it is a rising street that we are looking at (from ground level)

We can do noting to overcome this automatic process. I understood immediately what was happening, and why, but the perception that the streen was rising up a hill was impossible for me to distory with mear conscious knowledge.

 

Billy T, what is the conventional explanation for the fact that our visual experience is uniformly rich in details over a wide area when we know that only a small part of the eye - the fovea - has a high resolution?

 

Can we achieve understanding of our own Self through indirect observations ?

In Billy T's theory, the Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter. (correct me if I say anything wrong)

This virtual world is an accurate reflection of the outside world, as it helped us survive. The brain is basically a tool which analyses input signals. It is not perfect though! It is just good enough for you to do basic things with your body - and there comes my question/point - it was not meant for analysing its own or other's structure

an analogy: you have a ruler measuring 30 cm. This is your tool with which you will be analysing all other existing rulers. You establish that they all measure 30 cm. However you still don't understand anything about rulers.

Aren't we caught up in a circular process? Imagine an alien with a different nature of mind. Instead of thoughts he has "Tb's". He can perfectly analyse our thoughts with his Tb's, yet, he cannot communicate the meaning of it to us.

I think we can rephrase the same statement within systems theory: a system with lesser complexity cannot understand/examine a more complex one (or the other way around: only something more complex than the brain can understand the brain)

 

It is a pitty that nobody here has interest in this.

Could you give me your n°1 one reference as to what I should certainly read?

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billy t, we had in the past some discussions on the nature of this "Self" and how I had problems with this "informational" Self and its perception (how does this Self "see"? etc.)
These last weeks I was focussing a lot on my visionary experience and I really had the feeling somehow that this Self is the vision. The funny word play it started with was: I is the Eye. I don't think the explanation of consciousness is far away, once the entire visionary experience is understood. The line between them seems to be very thin to me. That's why for example your theory of vision needs to be worked out in more detail: the nature of that virtual world entangling this Self is still much unsaid about. I was working on a few representations using a bit of cybernetics concepts of input, output and feedback. It's a start of something ...

 

c'est moi: You state above: "The Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter....This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter."

There is a century long debate as to what differentiates the mind from the brain: all consider the brain as physical and the mind as a manifestion of the physical brain. In medical science today, we all consider the brain as a physical organ of our body. This is indisputable. So you are contadictory yourself above.

Then you seem to want to imply that "entire visionary experience" can constitute consciousness, at the expense of all of our other senses. Think about the extraordinary indepth insightful consciousness of the blind.

Billy T's .pdf file is excessively large but I did finally manage to download it - a half hour later! I hope that it did not include a virus? As it is called: http://users.pandora.be/guerilla...simulation, as in "Pandora's Box," "guerilla warfare," "simulation" or "speculation?

Hey, I'm not going to bother wasting my tiime reading this nutcase's paper. He starts off by stating, "I ignore here all the processes that focus the eye....Doesn't the world appear to lurch as objects jumping to new locations..."

I see no reason to read more.

 

For you information, pandora is just the name of the server my cable company uses, there's nothing wrong with my webspace, nor nickname.

There is no contradiction. Where have I said that the brain is not an organ of the body?

It is not at the expense of other senses. It seems to me that the other senses all add something to our visual experience, whether blind or not. A person who's blind has still a visual experience in his inner world. Blind people dream as well. When you feel something with your eyes closed, you will immediately imagine how that thing looks like. Many people believe that our visionary experience is the strongest sense of all and there are plenty of reasons to believe this.

 

This is a repeat from "Humans have a sixth sense and I can prove it." You might want to review the entire forum:

"If you take into account all the different chemo- and sensory receptors in our body, we have a lot more than five senses. But quite obviously to our brain we also have the following:

1. The inner ear detects gravity - important for balance.
2. The bladder senses when to urinate (not a sense of touch or feeling - as in "peeing in your pants")
3. Hunger and thirst

There is also the so-called sixth sense of "instinct" or ultrasensory spiritual perception."

I have dreams that are entirely non-visual. Different parts of the brain add to the sensory receptors that make up our consciousness and awareness. We know this from animal experiments - parts of which were cut then monitored. Dreams are not always images: they can be patterns, scenarios, and thoughts. Visual is definitely a large proportion, but a small ingredient to overall consciousness. All is combined, or maybe just only one sense.

 

Can there be any thoughts without a visual experience? You always think of *something*. It is a process of which you yourself are a part of. It is so much our nature that you forget that it is always there.
Patterns and scenarios are connected to vision as well. Without a form, there are no patterns.

I do know what you mean with dreams without images. You wake up and you remember just what you were dreaming, yet, you don't really seem te remember any images. Just thoughts, situations or scenarios as you say. There is more darkness in the memory of such a dream. I don't think this is an argument against this perception "model" (it should have a name, would make it easier to communicate). The very fact that such dreams (as per my experience) are remembered as dark proofs that is also a visionary experience. You were still 'seeing' things in these dreams, but more abstract. It is however an interesting thing to think about. Any good links/publications on this you're aware of?

 

Wihout vision, you wouldn't know what "up" or "down" means. Anything you think of forms images in your mind. Yet many processes in our bodies are not situated in our conscious mind, because we would be overloaded with information. They are not part of the constant conscious experience. The body regulates most of its processes without us having to do a thing. If we did know about them, then there wouldn't be any medical research required. So can we state that this unconscious processes are part of our Self? Another good topic!

A full bladder hurts. It is clearly just a sense of pain. Nothing special there IMO.

Hunger and thirst: Certainly part of a visionary experience --> you can see a bottle of water already at the end of a long hike; you can see a full plate of food when starving to dead ... Show someone some food he likes, and the saliva will be produced instantly in his mouth. Sense enforces this visual experience because we know how the cool water will taste and stop our thirst. Again, I think that your conscious Self revolves around a visionary experience, complemented by other senses.
The moment you feel thirsty, and no image has yet been formed about it, is a subconscious process - Your body calling for attention.
As I said, this is an interesting issue in this discussion.

 

I do not know there is one. This question is seldom discussed. I have read considerably and never seen this clearly set forth as a paradox for those who believe that visual experience "emerges" as the end result of many stages of neural processing. I would really appreciate a reference to some explanation within the standard view of "emergent" visual experience.

 

c'est moi is correct and Valich is wrong.
There is no contradiction in recognizing a difference between the physical representation of information and the information. If these were the same, then you could just eat the cook book, in which the information about how to bake a cake is recorded (represented by little blobs of ink).

THE INFORMATION IS NOT THE SAME AS THE MANIFESTATION OF IT. THE MIND IS NOT THE SAME AS THE BRAIN THAT MANIFESTS IT.

Representation in the brain, by some combination of synaptic connections and active regenerative neural firings, is like those little blobs of ink in the cook book, but the information is something else that can have many different representations.

For example: These thoughts are represented by, in sequence: my key strokes, a set of active binary devices, some tones in a telephone, some electrical pulse in a telephone line, probably more in many others, then light pulses in an optical cable, and then this sequence is reversed near your location, producing little glowing luminous points on a 2D screen, chemistry in a retinal cell aray, retinal cells electrical pulses, many more neural circuit pulses and in most people, some final comprehension, but in you case, perhaps not as you believe it is a contradiction to think these "manifestation of information" differ from the information.

(1)File is probably large and not too clear as I believe it was scanned in as a photo. I have now access to an optical character reader and will try to post with it.
(2)I ignored the physics of refractions at the air / eye interface (much more important that by the lens in the eye) in forming the retinal image as this physic is well understood and including it would make the paper longer. If you do not know how interface refraction works, I will explain it to you. (3)You are mis quoting. What was said is the despite the saccadic movement of the eyes the world does not lurch. This is just one of several points that seem strange superficially - also mentioned was that we do not see the shadows the blood vessels cast upon the retina as light passes them on the way to the photosensitive cells (Unlike octopus eyes and those of some other marine creatures, human eyes are badly designed by our "Intelligent"?? Designer with the photo cells behind a lot of other structures.)



I see no reason to read more.[/QUOTE]

 

to Valich:

I have pointed out to you in other threads, but you still seem to equate "conscious" with "sensate." Machines can be better sensors, but non-conscious ones. With possible exception of the general ability to taste and smell (and even here, in limited areas) machines can be better than human sensors. Sense lower levels of stimulation, discriminated between two more accurately, just about any test you want for "better." (Humans still are better at evaluating coffee and wine for other human than machines, but if you want to really know what is there, my money is on the gas chromatography, spectrograph, and /or electrophoresis machine.)

Just because "conscious" is essentially impossible to define or test for, does not mean you should confuse it with "sensate."

 

source http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/pelz/

The essence:

In the human retina, the high-resolution fovea encompasses less than 0.1% of the visual field visible at any instant, and the effective resolution falls by an order of magnitude within a few degrees from the fovea.

The 'foveal compromise' was made feasible by the evolution of a complementary mechanism to move the eyes.

This is the explanation offered by this researcher, and I suspect that this is a common view (I'll look further though).

However, it fails to explain my visionary perception completely. My entire image is experienced as being of the SAME resolution. I don't need to constantly move my eyes to have this experience. It is only when I truly want to focus on something, like reading a line of text, that I'll need my eyes to turn and focus on that particular thing.

Billy T's model explains this. I think the mechanism we use to enable this can be called the guessing mechanism. You guess the things that you can't see directly. And you guess them pretty good. Good enough to survive many millenia as a species. Our power of guessing has brought us far.

However, how does this mechanism operate.?
Does you brain make millions of calculations of which your conscious mind is not aware? Like when you juggle with a ball (if you can

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), you don't have to think about your motions, nor you balance. You can throw the ball up in the air and let it land on your foot without it to bounce back upwards. How in the hell how we able to do this?

How could such a mechanism evolve?

 

Nor could you move them to 1000 different fixation points each second to build up an "emerging" high resolution visual experience. Your world, is not static even for a second. Vision just does not work the way most "experts" believe it does - as the "emerging" end product of many neural computations.

This resolution argument is one of my stronger ones, but do not forget that even it that were overcome, there would still be at least a 1/3 to 1/2 second of processing delay thru the many neural processing stages. Try to juggle or hit a fast baseball pitch with that much delay in your visual experience of it!

 

Originally Posted by c'est moi
.. "The Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter....This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter."

Now how is this right and I'm wrong. First he's saying the "Self resides in a virtual created world of his own." If it's virtual, then it's not real, and how is it created? A "world of his own"? Then it's not part of this world, or our world. Maybe it's an extraterrestrial or fifth dimension world?

"which is constructed through incoming signals," in other words: sensations.

If you cut the brain stem, you cut off access to sensations coming in from the spinal chord. If you cut the brain stem, you immediately lose consciousness.

 

Sometimes I think you don't want to understand

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Really

 

I can't say "sometimes": I say I know that you're not reading what I post. Without sensation there is no consciousness. This is a fact. Cut the brain stem, sometimes even when you divide the hemispheres, and also one other brain component (thalmic region?) and you lose consciousness.