So after years of being told to make their minds up about how to model the brain they've concluded that they don't need to - it's a shade of grey. Could have told them that just by looking at it
Seems like they're drawing a fair few conclusions from a small, or focussed, model. But I concur. ther'es far too much analogising the human mind to computers. Reductionism gone mad. Whether consciousness is an emergent or immanent or even transcendent phenomenon is beside the point here. We discussed that earlier, animatedly, elsewhere. But we easliy forget that information processing on a CPU is singular and linear, whereas info processing in the cortex runs in parallel, with whole groups of neurons cascading down the same signals to other brain regions, with all the concommitant feedback and forward. That's one reason why we're slower than computers.
Looks anything but a spiv, Max. Impressive publication list. I liked the bit about the mind going all multi dimensional. Not quite sure exactly what he was on, there, but I'll have some of that. My tenuous grasp of it with my own credo thrown in, was that the human minds, the little splashes which we are of the huge ocean of consciousness that is the Universe, and we misguidedly be so proud of, can forage off in more dimensions than the traditional 4 (XYZ and time) that we have been inculcated to accept (and prior to Einstein time was only *thought of* as a dimension by physicists, nobody else.)
From the article:
"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols -- like a digital computer,"
I never believed in that anyway.
Actually, there are computers that run large numbers of processes in true parallel. It's called massively parallel computing. But I don't think that models the mind either.
I recall seeing, a few years ago, a blurb about some research demonstrating that even the glial cells are involved in transmitting information - not like synapses, but in waves flowing through the "jelly". I don't remember any detals. Do you know about it, Danny?
This article says nothing, and contributes nothing. Imagine a computer program that predicts where the planets will be in the future. It has in its memory the mass, position and velocity of all the objects in our solar system (amongst other things) and using calculations of the gravitational forces that the objects have on each other (amongst more other things), it calculates where each object will be in the next second. Using these new positions and velocities, it calculates the next second and so on. It does these calculations over and over, millions of times a second, and so "tracks" the future paths of the objects. Let's say the program has run for 10 years. Now they are discovering that their calculations are not very accurate, so they announce proudly that they have discovered that the planets do not in fact move in discrete leaps every second as we have thought before, but that they move continuously.
Was there seriously a theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages? Ha-ha ha! Scientists have lost their road map. They don't know what they know or don't know, they don't know what they need to know, they don't know how to get to know what they need to know and they don't know *why* they are doing all this knowing stuff. The whole thing is an exercise in futility.
And that last sentence: "Whereas the older models of language processing theorized that neural systems process words in a series of discrete stages, the alternative model suggests that sensory input is processed continuously so that even partial linguistic input can start the dynamic competition between simultaneously active representations."
I can't believe people are being paid money to come up with such hogwash.
Straw man. Serious cognitive research hasn't had that model of the mind for many years, perhaps never.
Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" gives several examples of similar experiments conducted 10 or so years ago. One of the conclusions he drew was that you aren't conscious of things when they happen, but construct "reality" later as you interpret events fed to you by the senses.
You didn't offend me Shrog and I agree the article says nothing that is that new and it is writen by a journalist so it's somewhat un-subtle but there are still people out there who believe that the brain works like a digital computer despite the evidence to the contrary.
Music The Mind and Computers
Music The Mind and Computers
After a recent thread on the similarity or otherwise between digital computers and the CNS, I thought you might find this article interesting.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June05/new.mind.model.ssl.html
# Posted on January 7th 2006 by Pied Piper
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
So after years of being told to make their minds up about how to model the brain they've concluded that they don't need to - it's a shade of grey. Could have told them that just by looking at it
# Posted on January 7th 2006 by NeilC
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Seems like they're drawing a fair few conclusions from a small, or focussed, model. But I concur. ther'es far too much analogising the human mind to computers. Reductionism gone mad. Whether consciousness is an emergent or immanent or even transcendent phenomenon is beside the point here. We discussed that earlier, animatedly, elsewhere. But we easliy forget that information processing on a CPU is singular and linear, whereas info processing in the cortex runs in parallel, with whole groups of neurons cascading down the same signals to other brain regions, with all the concommitant feedback and forward. That's one reason why we're slower than computers.
# Posted on January 8th 2006 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Michael SPIVey, eh? Hmmm...
# Posted on January 8th 2006 by maxF
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Looks anything but a spiv, Max. Impressive publication list. I liked the bit about the mind going all multi dimensional. Not quite sure exactly what he was on, there, but I'll have some of that. My tenuous grasp of it with my own credo thrown in, was that the human minds, the little splashes which we are of the huge ocean of consciousness that is the Universe, and we misguidedly be so proud of, can forage off in more dimensions than the traditional 4 (XYZ and time) that we have been inculcated to accept (and prior to Einstein time was only *thought of* as a dimension by physicists, nobody else.)
But I'm probly rong
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
From the article:
"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols -- like a digital computer,"
I never believed in that anyway.
Actually, there are computers that run large numbers of processes in true parallel. It's called massively parallel computing. But I don't think that models the mind either.
I recall seeing, a few years ago, a blurb about some research demonstrating that even the glial cells are involved in transmitting information - not like synapses, but in waves flowing through the "jelly". I don't remember any detals. Do you know about it, Danny?
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
OK, I'll bite...
This article says nothing, and contributes nothing. Imagine a computer program that predicts where the planets will be in the future. It has in its memory the mass, position and velocity of all the objects in our solar system (amongst other things) and using calculations of the gravitational forces that the objects have on each other (amongst more other things), it calculates where each object will be in the next second. Using these new positions and velocities, it calculates the next second and so on. It does these calculations over and over, millions of times a second, and so "tracks" the future paths of the objects. Let's say the program has run for 10 years. Now they are discovering that their calculations are not very accurate, so they announce proudly that they have discovered that the planets do not in fact move in discrete leaps every second as we have thought before, but that they move continuously.
Was there seriously a theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages? Ha-ha ha! Scientists have lost their road map. They don't know what they know or don't know, they don't know what they need to know, they don't know how to get to know what they need to know and they don't know *why* they are doing all this knowing stuff. The whole thing is an exercise in futility.
And that last sentence: "Whereas the older models of language processing theorized that neural systems process words in a series of discrete stages, the alternative model suggests that sensory input is processed continuously so that even partial linguistic input can start the dynamic competition between simultaneously active representations."
I can't believe people are being paid money to come up with such hogwash.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Shrog
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Straw man. Serious cognitive research hasn't had that model of the mind for many years, perhaps never.
Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" gives several examples of similar experiments conducted 10 or so years ago. One of the conclusions he drew was that you aren't conscious of things when they happen, but construct "reality" later as you interpret events fed to you by the senses.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by LastToFinish
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
And your point Shrog?
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Pied Piper
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Sorry Pied, I didn't mean to offend you.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Shrog
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
..and I agree whole heartedly with Paul.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Shrog
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Paul’s right; it does seem like a bit of a straw man tactic.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
You didn't offend me Shrog and I agree the article says nothing that is that new and it is writen by a journalist so it's somewhat un-subtle but there are still people out there who believe that the brain works like a digital computer despite the evidence to the contrary.
PP
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by Pied Piper
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
... as PaulOS crashes again and all I can see is blue....
As often as not, my digits won't compute when I try to tell them to play...
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by LastToFinish
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
While wondering about how the brain works, you have to wonder which brain you’re thinking about. Check out this article on the enteric nervous system.
http://www.hosppract.com/issues/1999/07/gershon.htm
Seems there’s some truth to having a “gut feeling”.
# Posted on January 9th 2006 by fidkid
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
Thanks for that fidkid, a fascinating article.
PP
# Posted on January 11th 2006 by Pied Piper
Re: Music The Mind and Computers
I often wondered where the expression "talking out of your arse" came from
# Posted on January 11th 2006 by llig leahcim