Give it up, wes. You're one of those moon worshiping, tree hugging, new age, hippy types. You've told me so yourself.
I imagine that the simplest form of experience (and therefore thought, although I admit that's a weak connection) is probably expressed in the senses of the organism that has it. So, a very fundamental or primitive thought would be the one in your head about your present condition - arm over here, leg over there, itchy ear, computer hum, words on screen, all together. Now, those who study animal behaviour from a behaviouristic point of view believe that this is all that your brain contains - your internal state reflects your external state exactly. (Not surprisingly I don't believe this.) However, we can observe animals having a change of priority when they encounter a novel thing - when birds are given puzzles, for instance, they will screw around with them for hours and try several different ways of getting the snack that is usually hidden inside. Whenever they change their method of attacking the problem, they indicate that internal state can't only mirror external experience. There's something going on in there - but of course, we already knew that. All right, so when we think about human thought we usually postulate a second layer above the "I'm tired I'm cold I'm hungry I want girls/boys" experience layer. (Forgive my terms here! I'm not yet sure whether I even believe this description of the nature of thought, and even if I did it can't be verified by any means I know.) The second layer is usually thought of as being a sort of imperative layer which says "sleep get warm eat chase girls/boys". This simple form of abstraction is required for any action that isn't going to be totally autonomic. Generally the third layer is the one we think of as being conscious thought, the layer where we can observe our imperatives. We say, "I didn't do that right last time, next time I shall change my imperatives thus." This isn't to say that the theoretical unconscious (2nd layer only) creature can't change its behaviour in response to the environment, only that it does so without reflection, that is, drawing upon previous experiences in whole cloth and not abstracting lessons from them. The abstraction - the ability to divide our "sensory pictures" into components, and to think about them as being part of an objective world - is usually the basis of what people describe as conscious thought, although the ability to observe oneself is often the way that they describe this. Abstraction and self-observation appear a priori to be interdependent, although this doesn't mean that they are. Now! Helen Keller and the rats. If Helen had any sensory input at all, which she did, she would still have the fundamental ongoing picture of herself. (Note: It seems reasonable that all beings with a brain and senses have a SENSE OF SELF, in that their brain contains a picture of their current condition. The important question is whether they have a sense of the world as existing independently of their immediate senses.) She still would have the sense of arm over here, leg over there, feelings on the skin, vibrations. So too do the rats, we can be pretty sure. The second condition, the imperatives, are also obviously present in Helen and the rats, since they engage in behaviour that is non-autonomic. (There may be a better word for non-autonomic. Heh.) Any situation where the rat re-attempts an action using a different method seems sufficient to demonstrate this. The third condition is where the problem comes from. How can this even be verified? The ability to learn a language is good evidence, but at the same time we can't correlate language and abstraction directly as capabilities - at least, I can't, for I can imagine that we might have developed abstractive capabilities before language. Helen learned sign language so she's in the door, but what about rats? You can teach a rat a trick, like rolling over, but this could just be mnemonically programming an imperative. The best evidence I can think of for abstraction in an animal so far is whether or not they can learn a new action from another animal. Octopi, for instance, can learn to open jars by watching other octopi. (I often wonder how smart those arm-faced little suckers really are.) BUT I am unable to categorically ascribe abstractive abilities to a rat (although it's entirely possible that they have them) because I haven't observed them enough to know whether they can learn new ways of doing things from each other. I only know that they appear to be able to accept that a towering human being is in fact a single creature, which is pretty strange.
Wes: The brain signal reading thingys are based on several assumptions about human physiology, not the least of which is that the "brain activity" graphs that show which parts of the brain are which are correct. I would want to wait a few years before claiming that we will have machines that can read our "internal dialogue", particularly since I have no reason to believe that one person's brain patterns will have any relation to another's.
No it's pretty safe to say we will (given that we exist of course), however I have no idea when. You're right that one person's brain pattern doesn't necessarily have anything to do with anyone else's, but so what? You could train it. I figure you take a group of people you trust, have them say a selection of words and record their brain wave stuff. Then you have them think the same selection of words and record their brain waves and stuff. Enough of that action and you can figure it straight out don't you think? I realize it a massive over-simplification, but the principle seems undeniable to me.
And what if they are all different? There is never any brain-brain communication between people; every single person could have a different mental language from every other one.
Not if you speak to yourself in your head. Certainly you're right about "thinking" but I'm talking about internal dialog. If you use your voice inside your head the same as you would except that you don't employ your vocal chords.... then the source signal is the same, and could be as readable as a radio station really, just with a super weak signal in comparison. For instance when I read this, I speak it in my head. As I type it, I speak it in my head. I'm pretty sure I'm using the same language centers that I would be using if I were to actually speak it. See what I mean?
Let's say that our brains are computers. Each brain produces a string of characters from the mouth, "A B C D". The interface which has grown between the brain and the mouth is one that has grown by interaction between the two parts, that is, the brain adapted itself to the mouth by reacting to feedback. So, in one person the brain developed, say, a Binary interface, in another one the brain developed a Binary Coded Decimal interface. In one brain the order of bits is right to left, in another the order of bits is left to right. Each brain has an internally consistent mental code, but if you move a section of code from one brain to another, it is interpreted entirely differently. The only way we have to judge the mental code is from the brain's interaction with the body, and that judgement is not specific, that is, there is not a one-to-one mapping of exterior behaviours onto mental interactions. If you wish to dispute this on the basis that there is an intended or most efficient design that the brain will adopt, then you may. But first bear this in mind - there are (a lot of) people who are unable to wink one eye, they can only wink both eyes at the same time.
I see your point but I'm not sure you're right. Here is an attempt to explain my reservation: Say Person A says "shit" and Person B says "shit". There is a recognizable pattern that is common to vibrations they modulated into the air that can be recognized as the same word by most people. They say "shit" and I hear "shit", which confirms that there is some common pattern. Now, you're right, a myriad of processes could lead to the word "shit" coming to mind. I'm down with that. My point is that if you think the word, you use the same processes that you use to say the word. As such, the same commonality that you used to encode the word through your vocal chords onto the air, should exist in internal dialog. If I'm reading to myself, I use the exact same precursors to speech that I use when I speak. I infer from this that the same commonality exists in mind that exists in speech, when a person employs their internal dialog. As such, it's simply a code to figure out... what brain waves correspond to what words, look for the commonality across individuals and go on from there. You'd have to "teach" the code to the algorithm, but nevertheless... seems pretty doable given the resources.
If I get a TI-99 and a Commodore 128, and get them both running Eliza so that they talk to each other, does that mean that they both have the same processor? No... similarities in the media of communication don't imply anything about the second-order coding behind the communicators, only the first-order or most immediate layer.
I agree. However, they are still both speaking Eliza. If they're speaking over the modem or through the dataport it's still Eliza. Certainly, but you're using that same layer in your head that you use to generate your voice. That's the whole thing. English is english. If you're using it inside your head.. I know what it looks like, I know what your brain does when you put it to your vocal chords.. now I just need to look for what it looks like when you don't put it to your vocal chords. Still no? Hehe.. well, I'll give you that it's quite possible I'm wholly full of shit. I don't think I am, but what the hell do I know?
Wes, you're jumping the gun on thought representation. When you think or say "Apple", we don't have much idea of how that is represented within your head. The representation means apple to you, the inhabitor of your brain, but can that be interpreted by a machine? Your brain has never had any direct communication with any other brain, so - having no frame of reference - would have to develop its own mental code in response to experiences that it had. Okay, let me draw an analogy here. Let's say you're trapped in Silent Hill, in a blood-covered basement full of dangling dog corpses, handcuffed to an old rusty washing machine. The coming of Sammael has made you immortal so that you can suffer for all time, which is now an unbearable eternity cut off from the outside world. You do not know how long you have been here or how you arrived. The only thing that you know is that when you tap your handcuffs against a rusty pipe, you hear answering taps from elsewhere. Now, drawing upon your tattered memory, you recall the wonder of Morse Code, which lets you communicate with (say) a series of taps on a metal bar. After a few attempts, you discover that whoever is tapping on the other side knows it as well! Now you have a solid line of communication in an uncertain world of horror and despair. Now, knowing what we know about Silent Hill, we know that the signaller on the other end of the pipe could be 1) A crazy satanist 2) another trapped person, possibly you, handcuffed to a different washing machine 3) A giant pile of meat that kills all moving things, that is hoping you are stupid enough to inform it as to where you are so that it can come and engulf you in its crushing, meaty depths until your heart slows and stops. Now, all three of these things could know Morse code. But the meat-pile wouldn't have the same kind of brain as yourself, being a sort of demon/alien thing, despite its ability to communicate. Let us say, for instance, that it communicates by using the brain of one of its other victims as a slave brain of sorts, this being how it learned Morse code. Meaty Pile: Tapping sound! Sense thing-to-crush! How crush, slave brain? Slave Brain: Tapping sound is Morse Code! Oh Agony of Existence! MP: How say "Where are you?" in tapping language slave brain? SB: Go Tappity tappity tappity! My Life is Horror! MP: He say Tappity tappity tappity, slave brain. What mean? SB: It means they are in the dog room. Please let me die! Now, the meaty pile will find and crush you. Does this ability to communicate necessarily imply that the pile's brain states are comparable to yours? Probably not, because it is a different kind of thing physiologically and does not have any reason to have similar brain operation. The trouble is that we don't have any reason to have similar brain operation to each other either, unless there is a specific physiological attractor that makes everyone's mental states develop in a similar way. Language isn't a sufficient attractor because we could develop a language module in the same way that the meaty pile does... uh, I mean that functions in the same way as the meaty pile's slave brain does.
Oh I know, but you're simply looking at it very differently than I am. I understand your point as I said and mind you, I can't prove what I'm saying but to me it's somewhat more simple that you're eluding to for the following reason: This is about encoding, or modulation depending on how you want to look at it. My point is that when you speak, you modulate your words onto the air via your vocal chords. Think about modulating a signal onto a carrier. All sort of things can happen to it before it actually gets to the antennae. Regardless, right before it gets to the antennae, it has to be in the form that will properly impart the desired signal onto the elecromagnetism emanating from the antennae. It is my contention, that the brain is doing the same thing. Your words that you use when in an internal dialog have the same requirement or condition that it takes to ship them to your vocal chords. Try it. Are you reading this in your head now? Word for word? See the difference between thinking it and reading it aloud. The words are formulated in the same manner in mine. I can just make the connection to the voice box on the fly during the read. To me, this directly implies that the signal going to the antennae to be transmitted is the same as the signal I transmit. Since the signal I'm transmitting is english, then whatever modulated it there is in a similar "shape" or whatever as the actual thing I actually say, rather than just think. Maybe you saw what I meant before and are merely making the point that there could be any number of processes in between? I agree, but fundamentally you end up in the same boat IMO, that whatever gets modulated onto the antennae had to be prepared in the manner that transmitted what I wanted to transmit or it would be just noise. You following? I mean, whatever leads directly to your voice happening mustcontain the information that leads to your voice right? That is a direct result of your internal (now externalized) dialog. I'm sure that you can tap into that and decode it. Could be though that if it doesn't actually go to the vocal chords, some preprocessors or amplifiers or whatever never get done and I can see that being a big problem... but regardless, I'm almost sure it's doable. Again though, I could be full of shit.
Ok- I'll get to what each of you had to say in a minute (quote by quote) but I'm thinking maybe I've been too abstract in getting my point across. Allright- let's make a deal here: Jinx the abstruse, trash the philosophical and get to the goddamned point if we're going to to get anywhere. Yes? I find it incredible that the brain is biologically split into lopsided halves and strangley you can predict a personality depending on what side is damaged. Stroke on the right side yields what scientitsts call the 'belle indifference' while damage to the right makes a chaotic shebeast out of the meekest personalites before the accident. Now- neurologists speak of a 'temporal lobe epilepsy personality" which tends to be argumentative, egocentric, and pedantic. What's striking is their (temp lobe epileptics) incumbent obsession with the abstract- god, love, etc. Here's where I come in- these lobes also house the language centers, particularly Broca's area and Wernicke's (sp?). And no, I'm not going into that played out debate of humans being hardwired for God so keep your panties on. I'm just amazed to find this incredible 'hold' I have on my 'self' may be false- my sense of personality, individiality, ~gendankeness~ if you will is a conglomeration of memories chopped up into categories and unified into a whole that is me, projecting seamlessly through both time and space- thoughts, mood, passions- but if you come in and cut a slice of my hippocampus the size of a walnut out I'm literally frozen in time. My "self" stops at the last breath of memory that was stored by it. Then what am I? The 'color' of my passionate 'self' is no more if you cut out my limbic system or amygdala. The 'will' of my executive 'self' is no more if you cut out a sliver of brain girdling my thalamus. The "image' of my 'self' is no more if you fuck with my paraeital lobes. Then what am I? The animal kingdom is teeming with animals that feel them"selves" walking the planet, eating, playing, reproducing. What makes me the exception? Is it that I'm walking around with this notion of there being two me's, a spirtual hierarchy who's closest proximity I find in mental dialogue or rapture? There's an answer in the language areas being in the same place the 'religion' centers are, my dears. There's a reason why these temp lobe epileptics and schizophrenics develop what's known as hypergraphia- writing overkill- and talk waaaaay too much. Why are we spiritual? Know what I see? Those two facts- fact one)that a hyperactive temporal lobe can lead to a feeling of 'one with the cosmos' and fact two) that this same place houses the language centers....I see these two facts rubbing on each other the way two sticks of pine wood are rubbed together....rub rub rub....rub rub rub......and what happens? Wood and friction with time as any boy scout will tell you yields fire and warmth. And these two cerabral phenomena rubbing for millions of years, like firewood and friction....vavoom- spiriatuality. Bigblue: Lets. That fabulous cockroch and his circe, Hellen Keller before language, and those cute little lab rats- they all have some form of short term memory, some notion of 'self' in the medium. Of course. Hand over foot, head over heels... But which of these could bypass their "self" and play chess? Meaning: when you play chess, or checkers, or some other game with gamepieces- you become the Queen or the King or the gamepiece. You vicariously play being the queen, think like her, move like her. If I punched her out though you wouldn't wince. You can move yourself out from your shoes in to hers and manipulate strategies still knowing she's not you. And you can go in to your head as her and plan out your next move in her world. The incredibly flexible, schematic infrastructure of how language shapes one's mind (courtesy of Wessy) makes this possible. No other mammal on earth can vicariously transform itself in such a way, and I'm not talking the simple vicariousness of working with a tool as you did Bigblue. That's the incredible difference, says I. Wes: Oh yes you are a chubby new-aging little Oprah. Kidding. Imagine programming a machine to translate the fluidity of the Atlantic Sea. You fail to realize the brain works holographically- we can generate picture maps of activity on the brain but we can never pinpoint with accuracy what is being seen, heard, said or done when that area is activated. You could pinpoint why the visual and emotional centers have flared up on the image module or MRI if you're holding up a porn pic of a girl getting fucked by a football team and horse to your subject but without knowing what's being seen you'll never know what's being experienced by him. So- much the same as its out the question you could ever digitalize the possiblities or 'motives' in an ocean-100 waves don't always mean a storm- you can never capture what is being said or thought in a brain with machinery. Biglbue: Its not only a simple self self, but an embodied self, a private self you feel no one can ever see or touch or one you could never communicate to others even if you tried. A passionate self. An executive self. A mnemoic self. All these "selves" you feel embedded in a social context and sewn together by the golden thread of your autobiagraphy- that, to me, is self counsiouness. Third sentece. Some 20 odd words into it....in bold. ARE YOU OUTTA YOUR MIND???? Insanities. No language, no fairies, ghoblins, and ghouls. No abstracts.
a couple evidences. 1)cockroaches. while meentioning this ability of such bugs, it would be a more direct and emotional argumkent if you discussed the exact same phenomenon in human terms. If you touch a hot item, the signal travels up your am, and hits your spine. Your spine sends a signal back to your arm to pull away from the hot object. Your hand will be moving at the same time that your brain realises that the thing you touched is hot. Same principal as the cockroach thing, and a good analogy re: the differences in reaction and action in both humans and animals 2)pattern recognition. while this was discussed in much detail, I feel that a small part wa missed: when looking at a blank wall, you may recognise patterns in it's nooks and crannies. However, the pattern doesn't nessisarily exsist in the wall itself, but in your minds representation of the visual image that it is recieving from your optical cortex. 3)patterns. IMO, the human brain, and animal brains, are not about language, or about creation, or about socialisation, or anything but one item: learning. They are amazing machines in their ability to use what they take in as sensory input to actually alter how they take in that very same information. That recursive nature of brain growth is what makes it a truely fascinating organ, IMO. However, that idea also uses as a base assumption that langauge (in terms of written or audio - representaive languages) is not a requirment of thought. In fact, in order to understand and learn language, abstraction and thought outside of the language itself must be possible. We are not born with English in our minds, therefore our minds must be able to think w/o English. We would be unable to concieve of the abstract connections between the sounds which make English words and with the objects/ideas that those words represent if we couldn't abstract w/o language. This does not address the funtionality of a built in brain langauge (akin to a computer's built-in assembly language Vs a high-level encoding language); some sort of basic chemical pattern recognition system which allows for base learning - this must exsist as an underlying structure of the brain in order for the brain nuerons to communicate with each other, let alone the entire brain with another being. 5)animals and intelligence. I have mentioned this here before, but when my dog was a puppy, she got into the habit of running to the door and barking when someone rang the doorbell. This, I think most people would assume, is an instinctual *and* trained behavior. Defense of the "home" territory is innate, and the Pavlov-style trained reaction of "bell=new human" mixed together. No conscious thought is required to that action to be imprinted on the dog. However, after a few times of people coming to the door during a family meal, my dog, without the prompting of the door bell, began barking, and ran to the front door. My step dad dutifully followed her, to see who was at the door. Once he had touched the door knob to open it, my dog turned tail and ran back into the kitchen, jumped on the table, and ate half of his dinner before we could get to her. To me, this expirience was huge - it appears to show not only evidence of forethought, but also evidence of planning, and of understanding expected behavior of another individual. She, as far as I can tell, realized that my Step Dad was gaurding his dinner from her; she also realised the easiest way, through expirience and learning, to create a situation where he would leave his food undefended. She then created that situation, and took advantage. Not only that, she had to have been imagining unoccured/future events, been able to also act (as in be an actor), and lie FAIAP, in order to pull my step dad from his dinner. My dog, on that day, proved alot to me about animal inteligence. and now a seperate thought re: instinct and consciousness. What is instinct? It is some sort of built-in reaction to a situation based on genetics/anatomy/etc. Where the mind does not have to be fully involved in the action - it just occurs when the right stimulus is present. well, what is thought? it simply occurs when the right stimulus is present. That stimulus happens to be continuous and self-refferring such that it occurs constantly, but it is driven by stimulus. It is my assumption that thought is instinctual in of itself, so that while logic and awareness are thoughts (in your abstract language of choice), they are also base instinct on a secondary level. The two can never be fully seperated as we tend to do in these debates. A connected thought to the above. How would instinct/learning work in an individual w/ conscious thought? Let say the cockroach and the maze mentioned above - lets just assume that he is not aware of himself at all, but he somehoe learns about the maze and "remembers" it over a long period of time. The cockroach goes through the maze as a larvea. the expirience is learned in some sense that the physical/electrical form of the cockroach is somehow changed by the effort it makes traversing thee maze. (this is evident by the fact that the cockroach appears to remember the maze later in life). This does not mean or imply that the cockroach consciously remembers the maze itself. It does not sit for a moment and think "well, I dare say, I believe that I have been here before!!", at least not in all likelyhood. It most likely has a more basal memory of this maze and how it works, more of a muscle memory-type awareness which does not require the brain to be involved. The chemical and bio-electrical pathways in the cockroached basic bodily makeup where changed on the first run-through, such that on the second run through, it does better simply because it adapted to the evironment of "maze" at some point before in it's life. Considering that more basal change to the basic structure and design of the physical being of the cockroach, now consider what occurs in the brain when we learn something new. The physical connections, chemical productions, and electrical pathways are altered in such a way to encode the new knowlwdge we have attained. What is the difference between that and how the cockroach has learned? IMO, instead of trying to raise animal awareness to our own level, I think we need to try reducing the pride we have in our own abilities, and think of them as much more basic than we tend to. IMO, our brains are no different than trainging muscle memory or muscle tone. The brain is just significatly more specialised towards the purpose of self-reffering for information. In other words, while we require repition to train our fingers as to the location of individual keys on the keyboard, the brain is able to visualise such that one section of the brain can be performing it's repitition on information stored elsewhere in the same brain - no external physical action need be taken. Our brains are simply a minor step up from what we see around us in "instinct"-driven animals - it is all instinct, ours has gotten to the point where we see a non-exsistant division between physical instinct and mental instinct. This all refers back to language in that as I have come to see awareness as less and less of a black and white truth (I *am* aware, and ant is *not* aware), I suddenly see the own levels of language in my mind in realtion to other beings. I can see how ideas are translated in pictures and emotions and reproductions of physical feelings within my brain, and only then are they turned into words which sound like the language I am speaking at the time. Not too far off of how an animal without language might think; minus the last step (or maybe not minus that step. maybe dogs *do* think in a bark/growl vocabulary. Their dictionaries would be shorter than ours, but not less real in such a case) Verbal/writtne language is not required for thought, it is simply an encoding to transmit the basic instictual thought patterns/language to others. It was created over time and through speciation to a very complex point, but it is not an inherenly different system from sounds made my any other animal. It is an externalization of a feeling such that it can be understood by others in a populations. As was mentioned, the "eEk,eEK" of a guinea pig is certainly understandable by nearly any animal/person, even though "eEK" is not in our oxford dictionaries. eEK is a word, in the limited language of guinea pigs; as much a word as any English word. The only difference I see lies in our ability to agree to re-define our basic communication. while we are born with a certain instinctual langauge (gurgling, crying, making "moop" sounds, etc), what has allowed us to create extensive language patterns is the ability to create new ones, and abstract them such that we can teach others our new word. Everything about symbols and asigning values on the POV/scope of the sender receiver that was posted above, I agree with. PS 6)also, on the topic of octupi, my Ictheology professor did his doctoral thesis work on sound-producing fish @ the U of Deleware. One day, he came in for work, and one of his fish was missing. The tank was coved with wire mesh, and lached down, so the fish couldn't have gotten out itself. He knew he hadn't just forgotten the fish somewhere. He figured one of his coworkers was playing a prank. The next day he comes in, a second fish is missing. "Haha, guys, give me back my fish" The third day, another fish. That day, he secretly hid a video camera up in the lab, set to start recording apon any movement. The next day, another fish missing. The video tape showed one of the octupi from the other side of the lab reaching out of it's tank, unlatching the cover, climbing out, walking itself across the room on the floor, climbing up the bench to the fish tank, unlatching it's cover, climbing in, eating, climbing out, *re-latching* the fish tank cover, crawling back across the room, and *relatching* its own tank. ??? uncanny. PPS: it seems item #4 was eaten by a wormhole. No worries, it was the least important of the items Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A minor aside: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_854951.html?menu= Always knew them pachyderms were up to something.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994572 a new study about primates and more complex sentance stuctures. interesting read, if nothing more. edit: more specifically, it's about more complex pattern recognition, but it translates to language and sentance structure pretty well, IMO.
Dr. Canaughton, graduated around '97 from Grad school, I'd estimate. The Grad stuff was done at the Lewes, DE facility. You go to U Del?
