Re: The Hard Problem for Behaviorists

From: Curt Welch (curt_at_kcwc.com)
Date: 10/21/04 

Date: 21 Oct 2004 18:14:42 GMT

Albert <alwagner@tcac.net> wrote:
> Curt Welch wrote:
> <snip>
> > We have sensors that tell us when
> > neurons are firing, just like we have sensors that tell us when light
> > is coming into our eyes.
>
> This is pure BS and wild speculation. Neuroscience knows of no
> such sensors.

It is well known. It's not some "new" discovery. It's just a different
way of describing the well known functions of neurons that you have never
thought about.

Think about what happens when any of our sensors are activated? When light
falls on the eye, or pressure or heat is sensed on the skin? Neurons fire.
They fire in response to sensing the external signal. This is what a
"sensor" is. It converts one type of activity into electrical activity in
our nerves.

Now, think about what happens to the neurons in the brain. When do they
fire? They fire when they sense to correct patterns of electrical activity
in other neurons. Most the neurons in the brain are acting as a sensor of
electrical activity in other neurons.

This is not "pure BS and wild speculation". It's just a different way of
looking at something that is well known in neuroscience.

> > We sense things, and we react to them. And
> > that's all the signal processing going on in there.
>
> Very wrong.
>
> We also imagine things and react to them. We also remember
> things, including things we previously imagined, and react to
> them. We also receive things from the outside world through
> sense organs, but then such things are examined and analyzed at a
> subconscious level by blending with imagined and remembered
> things. Therefore, what you 'see' or 'hear' is not just a
> mechanical process like a camera, but more like what an
> impressionist artist 'sees'. Ditto for the other senses.

So, you are saying we are able to "sense" things in the data which is not
just the raw data coming from the eye for example?

But I thought you said we didn't have any sensors like that? If we are
able to sense these abstractions, how does it happen without sensors? What
would be the advantage to talking as if it were happening without sensors?

It happens beacuse the neurons in the brain are acting as pattern sensors.
They sense patterns of activity in other neurons. And we are aware at the
conscious level of what they sense as much as we are aware of what the
sensors in our eye are picking up about light.

> The process that you think is so simple is, in fact, massively
> and simultaneously recursive and parallel. ....

You understand the complexity of implementing our behavior, but you have
not learned to see how simple it can be when you look at it correctly.
Learning to see neurons as electical activity sensors is one step you have
not yet taken. Try it, you might find it a useful way to look at the
functioning of the brain.

When you look at brain function and human behavior correctly, all that crap
about "memory", and "imagining things", and "parallel processes" and
storing and retreiving data, can be reduced to one operation - sensing
patterns of electical activity. 

-- 
Curt Welch                                            http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@kcwc.com                                        http://NewsReader.Com/

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