Under the flexible use of observation we just went over, yes, even a single neuron.
However, you still need a brain if you want any kind of recognition or emblematic use of that “observation”.
Else you just end up with a nematode as previously mentioned, which we could now say “observes” stimuli, but we can’t say that it recognizes that it does, nor uses emblematic internal communication since it lacks a brain.
No more than oil knows to save itself from water.
youtube.com/watch?v=HRQmhIVjh5M
The more oil cells in motion, the more oil cell energy takes place.
If oil cells were our communication cell biologically, then the more energy of oil cells, the more immediate the flow of information in the system is.
The more immediate the flow of information is, the more alarming (and alarming is true for positive’s as well, like “butterflies in your stomach”; that’s an alarming rate of motion internally).
If that alarming rate comes with the information of oil cell threat, a strong acid say, then the reaction would cause us to inherently recoil as naturally as the oil cell itself; actually because of the oil cell’s recoil.
… that perhaps I am a mass of inexplicable qualia.
Finishedman, you recall the thought model of the box of 500 balls I posted earlier?
Imagine I furthered that one step and stated that not only does each ball connect to 25 different ball types, but that the connections arise after manufacture by an array of adhesive textures that bond as a thread when pulled apart after a ball of one type contacts another ball that is receptive of the first ball’s particular adhesive.
In such a system, we can define all of the constituents of what it is made of, but ultimately, due to the recursive self-assembly of those connections which will in turn determine the motion of the box as a whole uniquely from a thousand other boxes made originally the same as the first…we cannot define the experience of the box’s animation (where experience refers to the specific course of motion in all internal and external considerations of one box in full extent of it’s moving existence until it is ceased).
This is an example of “inexplicable qualia” being provided by a physical description.
Propensity and creativity both come to mind here. As a composite of physical factors that lead to an experience, perhaps one’s predilections determines the adhesive connections. This would be a departure from the purely physical activity of neurons alone in that the genetic make up of the individual somehow pushes the course of connections and to do so in creative ways.
At the cessation of the movement there is a looking back to see if there is some knowledge in memory to tell what it was. That is, at the time of cessation, there is a recognition that what did happen and what is happening now can be compared because there is a difference along a temporal line: what’s happening now is not what just happened. If the experience happened only once (the first time) there is little chance that knowledge will be there to label the event (unless of course knowledge of it was given prior to). Anyway, for the sake of your own knowledge and experience, the more the experience is manifested (by physical neural connections) the more the knowledge is strengthened and, hence, the more the maintenance of an experiencing structure. It’s cyclic. No? … am I digressing again …
Take that nematode. Do we have a thorough understanding of how its neural activity results in a ponce?
This is the million dollar question. I still have trouble imagining how a nematode - understood as a mechanical device, fully explicable in terms of scientifically observable physical processes - need come along with anything like a ponce. How do the physical mechanics of the nematode end up creating something only privately observable (even if it’s not technically observed) - indeed, how does it end up create a ‘private realm’, that is something that, despite the publically (scientifically) observable makeup from which it emerges, becomes the first aspect of the system that one can’t observe publically/scientifically, and is only accessable to the system itself.
This is what I find truly fascinating about consciousness and mind. It’s not how it evolved from less complex elements (like memory, sense data, emblems), but how its even possible given its existing only in a ‘private realm’, a realm only the subject himself is prevy to. How does this come out of the public realm, the realm of scientifically observable mechanical processes? I feel that if we could explain how the most elementary ponces come about in this manner, explaining the rest (consciousness, human mind, self-awareness) will come rather simple, for the latter are just complexes of simple and elementary ponce as far as I’m concerned.
Do you think this question ties into your comment on first personhood? I think it does.
You got it.
Yes.
Here’s the real question.
How does a cell of any kind end up with a skin at all?
How does a bubble have a skin?
How did I ever separate me from everything else?
There is a great summary of this exact condition
throughthewormhole.net/season-1/ … -get-here/
Starting at 20 minute mark to the 25 minute mark before the subject switches into DNA.
This skin structure is ultimately what causes the private realm at all.
And why it exists at all appears to be a rather interesting mixture of circumstance, product, and timing.
Did this help?
Stumps … (I guess or gib)
Sense data. Yes. Very important it seems. …. sensations all by themselves …. but can I call them my feelings yet? Unless I am a discrete entity surrounded by other things – unless I am one thing and life another – I cannot perceive generally in a private sense and cannot know that I exist apart from sensations as a perceive-or. How does mind form itself? On its own from/out of nowhere? Does the brain come equipped with the apparatus to translate or interpret signals from sensors? After all the ability to translate/interpret is needed to achieve association toward emblematic perception. We could say the capacity is there in a normal neural system … does it follow that the ability is as well. Perhaps mind is not an innately inherent aspect of brain because there is no instrument in the neural machinery that creates a separating effect. So, what is it that creates in me the ability to say I exist distinctly?
Not really. I wouldn’t call what’s on the interior of a cell’s membrane ‘private’. Any scientist with the right tools can open it up and see what’s going on. Any number of scientists can peer into the c-fibres of the subject described earlier and see what’s going on - right down to the individual molecules - but only the subject himself can privately observe his pain. The scientists can infer that he’s in pain, but the pain itself can only be felt within the private realm of the subject.
Do you believe that there was a ‘me’ before the cell membrane introduced this separation? Obviously, it wouldn’t be a ‘me’ as we now experience it - as a individuated subject with his own private mental world - but perhaps a ‘me’ that was, for lack of a better word, ‘smeared out’ throughout the environment, not attached per se to any one object or local systems of objects?
No. Feelings are a specific neurochemical exchange of the (now fading terminology) limbic system; specifically, the amygdala.
As to put it, they are a very specific range of chemical reactions.
It would be something akin to asking if any energy exchange can be called an explosion.
In the opposite direction in which you ask this.
The mind does not “form”. It deforms.
Think of it like lava.
Originally, the entire mass of lava flow is in motion and chaotically active.
Some parts of the lava flow are more dense than others naturally by consequence of the layout and others are less.
By rather simple rules of least resistance and energy conservation, eventually the lava flow will begin to funnel into specific pathways as the surrounding lava flow becomes more dense and hard by comparison.
The end result?
Neurons are specific to their nodes and task.
It is akin to asking, does the nose come equipped with the apparatus to translate or interpret smell?
Does the skin come with the apparatus to translate touch?
In respect to Neurons, we have over 100 billion neurons and over 100 trillion neurological connections.
That simple nematode had just over 300 total.
Neurons are a type of cell, just as white blood cells, red blood cells, or skin cells are a type.
They exist in our body as a means of determining the conductive flow of impulse and response of the nervous system.
The brain of a neurological biology appears to have come later in evolution.
Observe the difference in the following:
The volume in the troth for water.
The volume in the troth of water.
A neural network is the basic requirement to eventually support a brain, and a brain is the basic requirement to eventually support a complicated conscious and self-aware brain, but the neural network concept in life itself does not inherently have the ability itself in much the same way that just by having the volume to potentially hold water, the troth does not inherently hold water.
While the first have of this sentence is accurate, the second half is not.
The “mind” is caused out of “neural machinery”.
If it was not, it would not exist at all.
That entire section whereby I went through outlining the requiring components in a brain’s function, and why such functions exist, in order of reliance.
That whole section on memory, sequential memory, self-awareness, empathy, consciousness, and how this is a recursive process that builds out from Memory and Consciousness and reaching a zenith at self-awareness.
It is like the volcano.
Memory is the mouth of the volcano from which lava flows from.
Consciousness is the first solidifying lava flow that becomes dense and starts to force “choice” of the lava flow.
Sequential memory is the lava’s adherence to least resistance and energy conservation.
Empathy is the volcano’s bursts which spit out expanses beyond where the flow may currently be, making extension of the lava flow possible.
Finally, self-awareness is the lava flow in final form after everything is settled and a simple stream is left behind.
What creates it is a long account of successive obstacle solutions taking place in biology to with the human species has a unique evolutionary response.
Closely observe an infant over time and you can see how we piece together rather easily.
However, if you want to know the basic reason we are formed this way in specific evolutionary motive: we don’t know that.
We don’t know what provoked the human evolution, nor do we know what provoked reptilian evolution.
We don’t know what provoked most any biological evolution.
The only thing we know the provocation of at this point is two bacterial constituent’s symbiotic merger.
We know how this can be explained to make sense as to why two (and later far more) unrelated bacteria would link into one unit.
Akin to the answer to Gib in how we got our skin, at some point (later than the discussion on the skin above with Gib), we know that bacteria stopped being soup and began to form a sticky outer layer as a chemical result of “learning” how to process hydrogen out of water and excrete the oxygen.
This caused random things around the bacteria to stick to it.
Eventually a few things bumped together that drew an attraction chemically together and the arrival of the first endeavor towards a multi-cellular construct began.
Humorously, I say it this way: we are one of the result’s of gum picking up dirt on the bottom of Earth’s stinky shoe that it then took off, and left sitting in the washing machine molding in a steaming cauldron of acids.
See, we don’t even know what provoked our current sub-species of human, homo sapiens sapiens, estimated from current evidence to occur no later than around 200 thousand years ago.
Absolutely. That is the amazing matrix of the neurological network of chemical exchange which generates the relative subjective experience, especially when that same brain can reflect upon this sensation with emblematic identity unto their self identity.
Our treatment of mirror neurons are pretty much the cardinal key component of what truly causes us to be unique.
Because we have mirror neurons of our mirror neurons.
There is an outstanding challenge at this time to neurology.
no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions such as imitation.
We haven’t found a way to explain how replicated neurological reactions happen beyond the range of a stimuli’s kinetic and force range.
It is as if we are looking at an invisible Tesla electric power grid.
But we make an assumption here.
Perhaps we’re wrong, and there really is some kind of Tesla power grid in the air itself which allows for stimuli refraction into secondary human beings.
However, there doesn’t seem to be a standard physical proximity to the reactions.
There seem to be fluctuating results.
Humans can perform the most hideous of cruelties unto their own kind and think of it no differently than taking care of cattle.
Humans can also hold this previous as the most nauseating behavior imaginable.
Out of the two ideas, it would seem that the more malleable and relative is the internal neurological system within each human being.
So that’s what we’re looking at.
The race is on to figure out how to make an observable representation of a physical object creating reactive change in the absence of kinetic exchange.
If that can be shown in physical form, then an idea can be understood for how mirror neurons may be accomplishing this empathetic behavior.
If we know how the idea works, then we can look for the expression of it within the mirror neurons; we’ll know what we’re looking for in the incredibly reactive mess.
One idea that I’m toying with is making that emergent box of 500 balls (except that it would be a box of 45 balls, 9 types of balls, 5 balls per type, each type of ball can connect to 3 types of balls - 15 possible connections per type, 135 possible connections per box).
The emergent box would allow for creating the physical engine of a dynamically motivated, yet cohesive, system.
If this can be designed, then it can be used to attempt to physically test methods of how two emergent boxes could cause internal reactions in their dynamic networks without kinetic exchange.
Essentially, how do you get an emergent box to allow for ranged motion detectors which cause beneficial and inherent replication, permitted, within the emergent box.
Sight becomes the easiest to attempt to replicate the functional addition into the emergent box and have it feedback as reactive information within the emergent box.
It’s a shitload of work, all of this.
But…there’s a friend of mine that I’m hoping may be able to help in the building of a computer model of at least the basic emergent box, and he’s a wiz at advanced mathematics to boot.
So one of these days I’ll get around to tossing the idea at him, but first things first, I owe him a copy of my Shadowrun RPG rewrite. lol
There is, yes.
Acceptance.
The recognition of its constituents is evident in its not refraining from being in the proximity of its constituents.
Basically, the atomic, electrical, and chemical bonds are what innately determine the basic level of adherence that determines one group from another.
It reacts to attraction and resistance, or, it recognizes - either way technically refers to the same concept; the latter is simply reflective consciously.
Memory is stored in the brain in a neural-chemical form. The whole human body functions as a stimulus-response system. What there is is only a response to a stimulus. If the response is not translated, then the situation is analogous to transferring information from one disk to another. There is no link up. Each is an independent frame. Translating sensory perceptions into images is an input. When I do not look at you how can I create an image of yours? The creation of images born out of imagination is mostly thought-induced. The brain translates the sensory perceptions into the framework of memory. Memory is not a constant factor.
When light falls on the retina creating an image, the sensory impulses are carried through the optic nerve to the brain that re-creates the image by memory. Suppose the brain does not translate the frame of the object falling on the retina, there is no way to perceive the object. The movie camera captures the movement of a hand in frames. To see this movement we need a projector.
Sound is also recorded similarly. The sound is 19 frames below the corresponding picture frame. Thus there is a gap of 19 frames between the picture and the sound. Thought is exactly like that. It is slow. By the time it comes and captures the object within its framework, your eyes have moved away somewhere else, and the object is completely wiped out, i.e., erased from the brain.
Television is a good example. There is no picture on the screen at all. What we really see is a collection of dots in frames. There is an illusion that somebody is looking at it. It is the neurons that put the dots and create a picture.
We are basically robots.
Awareness is an integral part of the activities of all life systems. Perhaps we are being misled by believing that it can be manipulated (like thought can be) and be made to understand its own workings.
Here’s how I read this: the fact that a ‘private realm’ comes out of the publically observable mechanics of the system is amazing. Mirror neurons have something to do with this.
Here’s how I read this:
Yes, Gib, there was a ‘me’ before the split - but like you said, not individuated as we now experience ourselves.
The three forces that make for ‘objects’ in our world are the atomic, electrical, and chemical. These in some way might end up feeling individuated.
Attraction and resistance are the main modes of ‘affect’ - or that is to say, the modes of ‘communication’ or ‘transfer of information’ - essentially, any exchange of energy between systems counts as ‘recognition’. The one system ‘knows’ about the other - or at least, ‘feels’ something which can be considered a ‘recognition’ of the other. This ‘feeling’ counts as our ponce (or perhaps in this more generalized context, we should talk about a ‘pope’: privately observable physical event).
Is this correct?
More or less…yes.
We don’t really understand how that works.
We can just see that it works.
Seems about right, yes.
Also…Finishedman, good points that I wasn’t really trying to get into yet, but valid…
To both of you…I have found a game on the Android called Living Physics.
It’s a simple atomic/molecule model physics game, but they provide you with 6 color options and 10 number values.
You can then tell it to react a given color+number ball to another color+number ball (including itself) and change to another number and linked combination, though color must remain the same.
I spent some time last night playing with this, and ignoring the game objectives and using it as a petri dish.
I accomplished an 20 ball emergent structure last night that never stops dividing, bonding, moving, and communicating with what it touches and within itself.
I’m trying another idea today of two separate groups, each with a nucleus ball not connected to the “skin” balls which are connected to each other.
So there are essentially two different cells that have their own unique markup.
The idea I’m working on it moving a ball that is untethered, and unrelated to either “cells” and use it as “information”.
Whereby, it touches Cell A, which causes a network reaction that switches the “skin” balls of Cell A, which causes the nucleus of Cell A to switch to a different value than it starts with.
Then this nucleic switch causes a switch in the “skin” balls of Cell A.
Then the next time the (now new) “skin” comes in contact with the free-floating “information” ball, the skin will cause the information ball to switch to a different value.
This new value will then cause Cell B’s skin to switch to a different value than it starts with once the new “information” ball touches the skin of Cell B.
Once that happens, the skin values in proximity to nucleus B will cause nucleus B to switch value.
The nucleic value change, will then case the skin values of Cell B to switch and the next time the skin of Cell B touches the “information” ball, it will change the value of the “information” ball.
Then the “information” ball will travel around until touching Cell A and in so doing, cause a similar chain reaction that will return Cell A back to it’s original state, which will also flip the “information” ball back to it’s original state, which will then eventually cause Cell B (through like interaction as described previously) back to it’s original state.
And then it will continue endlessly.
If I can do this, then I will have created a model of information transfer.
If I can do that, and in the first one from last night I was able to create an emergent and open-ended design for grouping together and dividing, then I can start working on attempting to put the two concepts together in one really elaborate expression.
Keeping in mind…in this “game”, you can only describe the interaction of two types of balls per “formula” (or what they call a “reactions”), but have seemingly no limit on how many “reactions” you apply.
In case you get this Living Physics game to follow along or dabble in what I’m referring to, here’s the code I’ve accomplished so far for an emergent behavior.
This is on level 8 of the game, which starts off with a good test ground of 10 green 0 balls and 10 red 0 balls.
[tab]
[/tab]
The following is the same exact thing, but you remove one single line:
“1-3 → 7-3”
[tab]
[/tab]
If you do decide to try this, I would suggest trying the full version first, and in either set’s case…don’t touch anything after you start the “level”.
Just let it go on its own…it’s designed to continually emerge without interaction and never stop moving and altering itself.
Hmm… It seems at this point we’ve generalized information - and thus “private worlds” - to pretty much any interaction between physical systems where the ‘information’ is actualized in the form of some energy exchange. I’m not sure what mirror neurons specifically have to do with this. Nematodes don’t have mirror neurons, do they?
This is good. It’s starting to sound a lot like my own views.
So let me ask this, just so I understand:
If I were to kick a rock while strolling down the street, would the rock ‘feel’ something? Would it be more apt to say that the rock-foot system felt something, or perhaps the rock along with its immediate surroundings (limited in extent)? Of course, not consciously (in the way we’ve been using the word ‘conscious’), but would there be something that only the rock (or rock-foot system, or rock-environment system) could ‘privately observe’ (again, such ‘observation’ not requiring conscious recognition per se) and everyone else examining it from every possible angle (i.e. using any conceivable scientific means) could never observe?
That’s really all information boils down to.
I mean, we use this understanding to make digital technology capable of giving us these forums. 1,0.
And those 1,0’s are only capable of existing as such because of an elaborate electromagnetic medium of correlated transfer, and that medium is only possible because of the radio frequency bands providing the medium to create the electromagnetic stage, and that is only possible by using electrical currents to facilitate the sending and receiving of the radio frequencies, and that is only possible by conversion of kinetic exchange (of some kind, take your pick) to electrical charge.
Information to information to information to information…which kind are you looking for? That’s just the question.
Ultimately, its the same shit just shifting around its exchanged relationship, and what keeps a continuity of information from one point to another through multiple “bodies” is the same exchange ratio relative to the medium, in which it takes place, taking place.
Meaning…if I have Everybody Love Raymond (ELR) broadcasted, it is sent from the broadcast station as binary packets that then ride over the radio frequency network in some fashion and arrive at the provider. The provider then unpacks (converts the radio frequency into binary equal) this binary packet and repacks it up to a different radio frequency which shoots it off to the customer in some fashion of radio frequency once again. The customer’s home device converts the radio frequency once again and converts it to binary. This then is converted to electrical pulses on a circuit board and processors (now days anyway) and sends off to the appropriate analog components in radio frequency format per channel (left audio, right audio, video [which also may be separated into red, green, blue] - also providing we’re not talking about HDMI, which I’m choosing not to for dynamic example) for the television to recombine and assemble in binary format (now days, mostly) which then triggers electrical responses (ultimately) in speaker networks and LCD or LED (mostly, though some use plasma) arrays that correlate the binary into visual and audible representation of ELR.
ELR is present all the way through this, but is holistically itself none of this at all.
ELR cannot be described by speaking on these terms.
I cannot tell you about a terrible joke in ELR by describing you these elements, though easily, it is understood that ELR is nothing but these constituents.
Mirror neurons are a vital biological tool.
They allow for consciousness of observation.
Meaning, they allow a monkey, for instance, to watch another monkey get burned and then to be aware that the fire over there is dangerously hot, not just hot.
They do that by allowing replication through assumption; that the monkey over there is like the monkey observing, and therefore feels in the same basic ways that the monkey observing does.
Thereby, the mirror neurons can replicate the closest relative triggers as if the experience was similarly applied, in imaginative form, unto the monkey observing.
Ergo, run away.
The nematode hasn’t any of these. If you kill a nematode right next to it, the nematode isn’t going to do anything about it.
The nematode doesn’t have an understanding of empathy in any regard.
The vitality of the mirror neurons in humans is our capacity to turn mirror neurons on mirror neurons, more or less.
Our ability to extract our own identity and display it to ourself as if it were another person, and then do things to it in our imagination, and then watch and replicate what is observed, of this self of us on display, in our own self again.
Essentially, we can empathize with our own self removed.
And that baffles us, plays tricks on us.
It creates an endless array of “who’s who” in our mind.
I was stating that what makes us unique in the discussion of information is how we use mirror neurons.
Of course.
You can do whatever you want to measure, gauge, observe, etc… but unless you are kicking that rock, then you can’t do anything but empathize with the scene.
And mirror neurons only work as long as the body they are in is capable of relating to the other observed thing.
The more senses in common the observed thing has with the observing biology that has mirror neurons, the more they will be able to empathize.
However, the more sense not in common, the less.
Ergo, you don’t sympathize with the rock or earth.
You sympathize with the man kicking the rock and how it feels to kick a hard object.
In humans, this ripples into vast arrays widely spread topically to culture, livelihood, personal experiences, biological markup, and geological, meteorological, and hydrological surroundings similarities.
I have absolutely no way to actually empathize with a South West African on many respects, being someone that has lived dominantly in the North West of America, specifically in the North Pacific.
I can observe it.
I can sympathize to many extents, because I am human and so are they.
But I cannot fathom their culture, livelihood, personal experiences, geological, meteorological, and hydrological surroundings.
I can kind of understand some of their culture, but without living their way; I cannot encompass it accurately.
I cannot even if I live their way…nor they mine.
There will always be a level of biological markup that separates us.
Just as there is a level of biological markup that separates every human from every other human, but at the same time determines the proximity of increased empathy with some unique humans; commonly their own family.
That rock is akin.
We simply have no means of comparing the experience of a rock to our experience, and thereby have a far greater time imagining it as “feeling” in any regard of the term.
Because, as far as we are concerned as humans…it doesn’t.