Does the brain really "cause" consciousness?

[Magical Realist]

"We are perfectly justified in maintaining that only what is within ourselves can be immediately and directly perceived, and that only my own existence can be the object of a mere perception. Thus the existence of a real object outside me can never be given immediately and directly in perception, but can only be added in thought to the perception, which is a modification of the internal sense, and thus inferred as its external cause ... . In the true sense of the word, therefore, I can never perceive external things, but I can only infer their existence from my own internal perception, regarding the perception as an effect of something external that must be the proximate cause ... . It must not be supposed, therefore, that an idealist is someone who denies the existence of external objects of the senses; all he does is to deny that they are known by immediate and direct perception ... ."

–Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A367 f.

 

[Aqueous Id]

The seat of consciousness in not in the brain stem, but activity in that tiny part of the brain stem (in the core) called the "reticular formation" is essential for you to be conscious (or even awake / not in deep sleep).

You are correct, the reticular formation is the specific core region of the brain stem to which I was referring, which, together with the cerebral cortex, are specialized processes that endow human consciousness. However, you may be premature in excluding the reticulum from the seat of consciousness.

I define consciousness as the brain state in which the parietal lobes are running (or executing) the Real Time Simulation, RTS. If you want to read the "essay" (Last part of a paper I published in 1994) on the RTS & free will go here:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?2868-About-determinism&p=882356&viewfull=1#post882356

I looked at the your post, but I did not understand the connection with computer simulation. I don't understand how neurons execute a simulation any more than, say, muscle tissue.

Although not a very good analogy, the role of the "reticular formation" in consciousness is much like the role of the clock in a digital computer.

The reticular process appears in the blister at the head of the neural tube in cephalochords. Assuming this is true for primitive forms from the Cambrian, we would need to look a little deeper into its likely function. Amphioxus is a primitive fish, but behaves more like a polyp. (That is, it is quasi-sessile.) Yet it seems to be "aware" of its proximity to others of its kind, allowing it to succeed with sexual reproduction by random release of gametes. In metazoans, the cells cluster and communicate via chemical signalling, so random release works by proximity. The innovation, then, that would seem to get early animals from metazoan colonial cells to "colonies" of deuterostomes, must be an "awareness of proximity" to others of the same kind, something to work functionally the way chemical signaling works in metazoans.

I also note again that consciousness is not an all or nothing thing. The most startling demonstration of this occurs in the disease called “unilateral neglect” where a stroke has occurred in a parietal lobe. If stroke is large and damages most of the (for example) right lobe, then the patient lives in only the right half of the world. In my model, there is no simulation of the left part of the world – it simple is not perceivable or does not exist for that patient. Even if quite hungry only the food on the right side of the plate will be eaten etc. I ran some perception tests on a nice old lady with extreme (total neglect) of one side. Her stroke was many year earlier and she was no longer bothered by voices that came from speaker in the side of the world that did not exist.

This is the kind of evidence that designates the parietal lobe as the seat of spatial awareness, although it may be quite surprising that the spatial hemispheres map into hemispheres of the lobe in this manner.

 

[Aqueous Id]

The seat of consciousness in not in the brain stem, but activity in that tiny part of the brain stem (in the core) called the "reticular formation" is essential for you to be conscious (or even awake / not in deep sleep).

You are correct, the reticular formation is the specific core region of the brain stem to which I was referring, which, together with the cerebral cortex, are specialized processes that endow human consciousness. However, you may be premature in excluding the reticulum from the seat of consciousness.

I define consciousness as the brain state in which the parietal lobes are running (or executing) the Real Time Simulation, RTS. If you want to read the "essay" (Last part of a paper I published in 1994) on the RTS & free will go here:

I looked at the your post, but I did not understand the connection with computer simulation. I don't understand how neurons execute a simulation any more than, say, muscle tissue.

Although not a very good analogy, the role of the "reticular formation" in consciousness is much like the role of the clock in a digital computer.

The reticular process appears in the blister at the head of the neural tube in cephalochords. Assuming this is true for primitive forms from the Cambrian, we would need to look a little deeper into its likely function. Amphioxus is a primitive fish, but behaves more like a polyp. (That is, it is quasi-sessile.) Yet it seems to be "aware" of its proximity to others of its kind, allowing it to succeed with sexual reproduction by random release of gametes. In metazoans, the cells cluster and communicate via chemical signaling, so random release works by proximity. The innovation, then, that would seem to get early animals from metazoan colonial cells to "colonies" of deuterostomes, might be an "awareness of proximity" to others of the same kind, something to work functionally the way chemical signaling works in metazoans.

I also note again that consciousness is not an all or nothing thing. The most startling demonstration of this occurs in the disease called “unilateral neglect” where a stroke has occurred in a parietal lobe. If stroke is large and damages most of the (for example) right lobe, then the patient lives in only the right half of the world. In my model, there is no simulation of the left part of the world – it simple is not perceivable or does not exist for that patient. Even if quite hungry only the food on the right side of the plate will be eaten etc. I ran some perception tests on a nice old lady with extreme (total neglect) of one side. Her stroke was many year earlier and she was no longer bothered by voices that came from speaker in the side of the world that did not exist.

This is the kind of evidence that designates the parietal lobe as the seat of spatial awareness, although it may be quite surprising that the spatial hemispheres map into hemispheres of the lobe in this manner.

 

[Billy T]

You are correct, the reticular formation is the specific core region of the brain stem to which I was referring, which, together with the cerebral cortex, are specialized processes that endow human consciousness. However, you may be premature in excluding the reticulum from the seat of consciousness.

Compared to the number of neurons in the parietal lobes, where I postulate the RTS runs the RF is very small (>0.1%) and AFAIK it lacks many if not all of the input data required for consciousness. For example if the RF were the seat of consciousness then everyone would be stone deaf and blind, without sense of taste or smell.

I looked at the your post, but I did not understand the connection with computer simulation. I don't understand how neurons execute a simulation any more than, say, muscle tissue.

Thanks for reading. Did you understand that if our ancestors did develope the ability to have a real time understanding of the world they live in (instead of the world as it was at least 0.1 seconds earlier or even 0.4 seconds earlier for some senses) they would be much better at ducking a thrown rock, etc than those who had not yet developed the RTS (E.g. the Neanderthals, both stronger and bigger brained) so only perceived the world only after many stages of SEQUNCIAL neural processing - I.e. HUGE survival advantage that allowed this tiny group of Africans to explode out of Africa and dominate the world, killing off all sorts of other humanoids.

I am not comparing the RTS to modern digital computers as they are sequential, not parallel processors. The processing power of the brain is many, many orders of magnitude greater than the best computer man has made. - And not just a human brain:

I worked at APL/JHU but I did not have the very special clearance (higher than "top secrete") to enter part of building 6 where the best in US set of computers for processing sonar signals from USSR´s subs was located. I had a friend, also very interested in brain processes, who worked there. He made me aware of the processing that a bat does with less than 10 grams of brain. - I won´t go into details, as they are many, but just mention that while adjusting the current chips in duration, frequency and slew rate to be optimum for a specific target, perhapse 20 feet away still, the bat is processing the echoes that are returning from earlier quite different chirps and can identify the type of bug and select one of many bugs in a swarm to capture. This US best set of computers which occupied a floor of Building 6 (and probably cost > 500 million dollars in todays dollars, but US Navy wanted to be able to hull identify specific subs from their sound radiations.) took about 10 hours of processing to do what the tiny bat brain did in real time! (in less that 0.05 of a second!)

To suggest that a human brain (or only the parietal lobes of it), cannot simulate the entire perceived world in real time is with out foundation. They human brain is by far the most complex computational system known. It immediately gives you a 3D, high resolution, visual understanding of the real world stimulating your retina with only a 2D image of very low resolution except in the tiny fraction of retinal area called the fovea.

Even with weeks of processing no man-made computer can even only parse into separate objects a real world scene iff the computer has been told information about the shape and size of a dozen or less 3D geometric objects and iff the objects were tossed into a pile on a uniform color rug (no radomn designs). Then it MAY be able to parse them into separate objects. I am quite confident not for several hundred years, if ever, can a man made computer can match the processing power of a human brain, even in the limited field of recognizing objects in a complex and CONTINUOUS visual scene.

 

[Magical Realist]

Aqueous Id, good forensic analysis of my rather rashly thrown together and speculative OP. I'm intrigued as well as to what we even mean by causation when it comes to consciousness and its relation to the brain. Much of this thread has focused on debating the causal powers of consciousness itself, which I take as rather given in my own experience. There's also empiricle evidence for the influence of thought and belief on the body in the form of the placebo effect, cognitive therapy, neuroplasticity, and meditation, which has even been observed to alter brain waves. Going back to the original question though, how can we deny the causal influences of certain physical states of the brain in the form of mental illness, mood swings, addiction, intense emotions, etc. Isn't there at least an indirect determination of the brain on the state of our own consciousness? Bare causality may be too extreme I agree, but something more in line with your causal matrix thesis?

 

[Magical Realist]

Billy, I was wondering if the neurons from which consciousness is theorized to arise show any structural differences from neurons not involved in consciousness. I mean surely not every neuron in the brain is employed in the creation of the RTS--neurons involved in movement, involuntary functions, reflexes, hormone levels..I defer to your expertise in this area. What is it about the "consciousness neurons" that makes them different from other neurons?

 

[Billy T]

Billy, I was wondering if the neurons from which consciousness is theorized to arise show any structural differences from neurons not involved in consciousness. I mean surely not every neuron in the brain is employed in the creation of the RTS--neurons involved in movement, involuntary functions, reflexes, hormone levels..I defer to your expertise in this area. What is it about the "consciousness neurons" that makes them different from other neurons?

Nothing is different AFAIK. Mother Nature is quite conservative, when she develops a good solution; she applies it to many other problems too. Then it may evolve if it is not adequate or easy for trial and error to improve.

There are many different neurons, but AFAIK, all send self propagating dynamic voltage pulses down their axons via the influx of Na+ ions. Etc. It is more in their size, shape and max firing rate (mylinated axon can be faster for reasons well understood by most electrical engineers - less capacitance to charge) that they differ. Some Purkengi (not spelled correctly) neurons have axons so long they reach your big toe from the brain. Others have axons not much longer that the cell body. Etc. for the dendrites, but here the variation is in how many and how many synaptic gaps each makes and what are the chemicals used (neuro-transmitters).

I don´t think there is any thing significantly different in the parietal lobe neurons, but there is a very significant difference in where they are in the brain relative to other specialized (in function) neural tissue:
The parietal lobes are in direct contact (just behind) the sensory (tactile) cortex, which is just behind the Central Sucus (deepest fold in the brain going right left). The parietal lobes are directly in front of the later part of the visual system (after processing in the Occipital pole at back of head is done). On the right and left sides of the parietal lobes you have the parts of the brain most concerned with processing of sound information the ears provide. The parietal lobes sit just above parts of the brain known to be deeply involved in memory processes and above the "reptilian brain" (term not used much anymore, but I still like it). It is what is left of the brain if the cortex is removed and still very concerned with smell and taste, which are really one sense and the only ones not to send any information directly to the opposite side of the brain. (Less than half the signals from each ear cross to the other side as detection of the extremely small difference in sound arrival times is how we know were the source is) Half of each eye´s retinal signals cross to the other side and almost all of the tactile senses do.

Thus the parietal lobes are optimally located to keep the length of "white fibers" (axons) bring processed signals to the RTS as short (least delay of information) as is possible. (And of course the signals sent back to the primary sensory areas (and the LNG, which is much more than just the "relay station" it is often described as) have the least distance to travel.

Conventional POV about perception has no idea as to why, for example there are actually slightly more "retro-grade" white fibers (axons) going into the primary visual cortex (V1) from the Parietal lobes than from the eyes (via the LGN) but they are essential in my model of the RTS as it must be constantly be being checked against the incoming from the sensory nerve transducers, to keep the RTS correctly simulating the real world. These retrograde fibers are such an unexplained embarrassment to the conventional (accepted) POV that it is rare to see them even mentioned in the literature!

Also an unexplained embarrassment to the conventional (accepted) POV is the fact that all sensory inputs are almost immediately "deconstructed" into their separate "characteristics" which then are information sent to very different parts of the brain, yet there is zero evidence that these widely separated characteristic features ever come back together again - yet we have a UNIFIDED perception of the world. I.e. a "toy world" of only a red cube and yellow tennis ball, is perceived correctly, not a yellow cube and red ball. Yet the red and yellow are determined in V4 and the shapes in V1 & V2. Why the world is deconstructed into separate characteristic is to speed the and make more accurate the checking of the parietal simulated world with the inputs form sensory sources - just like the pilot of and air plane uses a "check list" of separate characteristics to confirm his plan is OK. The pilot does not test the entirety of the plane by for example firing up each motor and saying: “Sounds OK to me." He want oil pressure information, RPMs, many temperature points, etc. - i.e. “deconstructed engine characteristics,” to do a good job of checking.

There at least 20 different facts my RTS either easily explains or or are even required for the RTS to function, that are total mysteries to the conventional POV about perception, or worse - in direct conflict with it.

SUMMARY: Networks of neurons are information processing systems. That information can be the meaning of words or many other things, INCLUDING, a simulation of the real world, built so as to normally mirror the incoming sensory data, but slightly (small fraction of a second) projected ahead to off set the neural signal and processing delays and give the humanoids who first developed the RTS a great advantage over all others who were still stuck with a slightly out of date knowledge of where (for example) the rock or spear that could kill them was and thus not good at ducking it.

CONSCIOUSNESS ARRISES IN THE NETWORK, not the individual neurons, running the RTS.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Compared to the number of neurons in the parietal lobes, where I postulate the RTS runs it (the RF) is very small (>0.1%) and AFAIK lacks many if not all of the input data required for consciousness. For example if the RF were the seat of consciousness then everyone would be stone deaf and blind, without sense of taste or smell.

Not the reticular formation by itself, but operating in conjunction with the afferent perception of the cortex. Depending on how we define it, we can say there is a primordial seat of consciousness, accompanied by a modern seat in animals with a cortex. Various forms and degress of cortical perception have been rendered in animals since the Cambrian, endowing them with everything from monocular to stereo vision to sonar (as you noted), or spatial perception in general. Amphioxus has eyes. It apparently can feel. It finds the seabed, burrows, conceals itself from predators and feeds in relative safety. It does so without a cerebrum, just a notochord with a reticular formation.

Thanks for reading. Did you understand that if our ancestors did develope the ability to have a real time understanding of the world they live in (instead of the world as it was at least 0.1 seconds earlier or even 0.4 seconds earlier for some senses) they would be much better at ducking a thrown rock, etc than those who had not yet developed the RTS (E.g. the Neanderthals, both stronger and bigger brained) so only perceived the world only after many stages of SEQUNCIAL neural processing - I.e. HUGE survival advantage that allowed this tiny group of African to explode out of Africa and dominate the world, killing off all sorts of other humanoids.

Yet a bird will evade a thrown rock, a fly will evade a flyswatter, and a cockroach will sense the air beneath the boot that means to crush it, in time to scurry to safety. It's anyone's guess what caused other humanoid extinctions, or whether it had to do with the speed of understanding. It would seem that understanding at all, at any speed, would certainly make a difference.

I am not really comparing to modern digital computers as they are sequential, not parallel processors. The processing power of the brain is many, many orders of magnitude greater than the best computer man has made. - And not just a human brain:

I find no basis for comparing a brain to a computer. While there is a rationale for comparing a nervous system to a centralization of functions that permeate the body, it's not clear how this works. There doesn't seem to be any correspondence, other than the "OR" function equivalent of joining any number of synaptic junctions to raise the input voltage above the trigger threshold. But how this implements itself, what it means, how it works and why, are perennial mysteries. It still gives no insight into the notion of awareness.

while adjusting the current chips in frequency and slew rate to be optimum for a specific target, the bat is processing the echoes that are returning from earlier quite different chirps and can select one of many bugs in a swarm to capture. This US best set of computers which occupied a floor of Building 6 (and probably cost > 500 million dollars) took about 10 hours of processing to do what the tiny bat brain did in real time! (fraction of a second)

Nor can a bat compile text into machine code. It's another reason that I don't think it's very useful to compare the brain to a machine.

 

[Billy T]

... Nor can a bat compile text into machine code. It's another reason that I don't think it's very useful to compare the brain to a machine.

Again I made no such comparison except when replying to your assertions that I did. Then I showed differences (capacity of processing with parallel processing etc. being many orders of magnitude greater for the brain, which immediately solves complex perception problems that no man - made computer can in any amount of time.)

I said the parietal section of the brain makes a simulation of the real world, but so does a man made 3D topographical map simulate the real hills and valleys. Saying X makes a simulation does not say X is a computer, and certainly does not imply executions running under the control of "compiled code." For example, the Wright brothers built a wind tunnel to simulate the flight forces (and used the proper hydro-dynamic coefficients to correct to real scale sizes).

I took a “rocket ride” in some theme park years ago that cleverly simulated large acceleration by tilting my chair back about 45 degrees so I was thrust back into the chair (with no visual reference to know the chair was being tilted). Etc. There are many simulations that have no compiled codes. Cooks do many to avoid more expensive ingredients.
Again, my saying that a Real Time Simulation runs in parietal tissue makes no statement about computers, or machines of any type, but I do believe no man- made computer can do what the brain can, especially when task is related to perception.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Aqueous Id, good forensic analysis of my rather rashly thrown together and speculative OP. I'm intrigued as well as to what we even mean by causation when it comes to consciousness and its relation to the brain.

We could try to define it, but I suspect that's where all the discussion grows.

Much of this thread has focused on debating the causal powers of consciousness itself, which I take as rather given in my own experience.

You mean: you think consciousness causes things? The best example I can think of is the will to move, originating in the motor cortex and efferent aspect of the brain stem, and from there through the routing of the spinal cord, until the muscles are actually set in motion.

There's also empiricle evidence for the influence of thought and belief on the body in the form of the placebo effect, cognitive therapy, neuroplasticity, and meditation, which has even been observed to alter brain waves.

I agree that there are studies which show some of these things, but I think they can tend to lead to orphaned conclusions. It's hard to actually understand the nature of consciousness. I almost feel compelled to attribute it to illusion.

Going back to the original question though, how can we deny the causal influences of certain physical states of the brain in the form of mental illness, mood swings, addiction, intense emotions, etc.

One way to address this might be to look at lower animals, and try to decide how states of the brain reside in them.

Isn't there at least an indirect determination of the brain on the state of our own consciousness?

I would submit that consciousness resides exclusively in the brain and nowhere else.

Bare causality may be too extreme I agree, but something more in line with your causal matrix thesis?

Not sure what you mean. I would offer that the brain is a merely an organ required for certain species to exist, evolved through a complex set of stresses and adaptations, but principally only to make movements (including controlling internal body functions). Through successive iterations of adaptation, "movements" has come to mean many things, from mating and nesting to feeding to finding and defending turf, and protection from predators, and from there many more complex tools of survival have been endowed, from behavior to learning to emotion. The "matrix" that comes to mind is that of a mechanism that converts inputs to outputs, and the rest is probably all illusion. Sentience is necessary for this kind of survival, yet it is apparently nothing more than the assimilation of afferent stimuli. I do not need to act now but I will in the future, so whatever stimulus was presented in the past may lead to some subsequent success. The elaborate web of experiences I call "my life" seems to be nothing more than the illusion of stimuli, which I call memory, but which are seen as recirculating pulses within the brain. Perhaps this is the main reason that they are pulses. They will not survive unless they recirculate.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Again I made no such comparison except when replying to your assertions that I did.

I don't recall asserting that you made a comparison per se, however in your statement immediately below I think it might fairly amount to a contrast between the two.

Then I showed differences (capacity of processing with parallel processing etc. being many orders of magnitude greater for the brain, which immediately solves complex perception problems that no man - made computer can in any amount of time.)

Yes, I know you said that. I think I'm just saying the attribute of "processing" doesn't seem applicable to brain activity. I can't fathom orders of magnitude for the operations in a CPU in contrast to brain activity. They're too different. A brain doesn't do MFLOPS.

I said the parietal section of the brain makes a simulation of the real world, but so does a man made 3D topographical map simulate the real hills and valleys.

That's what I can't grasp. A paper map, or a plaster model, or however this map is made, is a tangible object. The process of collecting the data by which to create the map (a transit and rod, GPS recorder, LANDSAT, Aerial photograph, etc.) doesn't comport with brain activity in any way either.

Saying X makes a simulation does not say X is a computer,

But today the one generally does imply the other. Maybe another word would avoid the implication. In any case I can't relate non-computer simulation to brain activity either.

and certainly does not imply executions running under the control of "compiled code."

All I said was, a bat can't compile code, in reply to the statement that a computer can't do what a bat can do. In other words, they're completely different things.

For example, the Wright brothers built a wind tunnel to simulate the flight forces (and used the proper hydro-dynamic coefficients to correct to real scale sizes).

Of course a wind tunnel actually creates wind, and actually drags on and lifts the wing in an actual physical interaction, so that makes it hard to compare to whatever the brain is doing.

I took a “rocket ride” in some theme park years ago that cleverly simulated large acceleration by tilting my chair back about 45 degrees so I was thrust back into the chair (with no visual reference to know the chair was being tilted). Etc. There are many simulations that have no compiled codes.

Yes there are. (See my above remark concerning bats vs compilers.)

Cooks do many to avoid more expensive ingredients. Again, my saying that a Real Time Simulation runs in parietal tissue makes no statement about computers, or machines of any type, but I do believe no man- made computer can do what the brain can, especially when task is related to perception.

I think I had in mind the dictionary definition: imitation or enactment, as of something anticipated or in testing. I can't relate this to brain activity. I wasn't able to glean your meaning of simulation, or how it applies to the brain.

 

[Billy T]

To Aqueous ID I don´t respond line by line as I think you understand several words much more narrowly than I do.
First point: The brain is a computer. Computers were only analog before Von Neumann (I think) invented the idea that what a digital computer did could be very flexible if it had a section of memory controlling other parts and that section held the "instructions" which could be loaded in for many different computations.

You seem to think only Von Neumann machines are computers - that computers must have an instruction set compiled into the language of the machine.
I think a computer is anything that solves problems. Certainly the old analogue computers were computers (and are still the fastest with least energy consumption for one specialized problem. - Why they still tell a torpedo when to explode based on the sounds it is hearing. Torpedoes can only sink a big ship if they explode many meters below it - make a huge gas bubble the unsupported center section falls into, breaking the ship into separate pieces.)

Almost 100% of all cognitive scientists consider the brain to be a computer. Its computational power can be (and has been) compared to your type of "Von Neumann computer":

a Pentium computer {can be} running Windows, or a Macintosh. A computer like this can execute approximately 100 million instructions per second. Your particular machine might be twice that fast or half that fast, but that's the ballpark. The fastest computer in the world is much faster than that, and it is sitting right on top of your shoulders! The human brain is an amazing computing device and the fastest processor available right now. Let me give you an example:
Your desktop computer is just starting to get to the point where it can "understand" speech and take dictation, translating spoken words into written words. It can only understand one speaker, and that speaker has to train it for about 20 minutes, and the dictation software will still make a lot of mistakes. So 100 million instructions per second can barely handle dictation.

{This is a Billy T insert: How many decades with thousands of people working and many million dollars spent on "machine speech recognition" do you think has been invested to do a "shit poor" job of what almost any four year old can do perfectly and some do in several different languages! Further more the computer has zero understanding of what it is doing - It only matches learned sound patterns (of one speaker) to words in its look up table. It will at best do a grammatical check so Chomsky´s famous grammatically correct sentence will not disturb it. (I think that sentence was: "Green ideas sleep furiously.") That sentence is "not disturbing" to machines because machine speech recognition, unlike the brain´s, has zero understanding of what is going on. Machines don´t even attempt to solve this much harder problem, which four year old brains do very well.}

Your brain, on the other hand, can understand any number of speakers. It needs no training and will make zero mistakes. It may even be able to understand multiple languages! And the speech processing portion of your brain* is just one small part of the whole package -- your brain can also process complex visual images, control your entire body, understand conceptual problems and create new ideas. Your brain is made up of about one trillion cells with 100 trillion connections between those cells. We might take a rough estimate and say it is handling 10 quadrillion instructions per second, but it really is hard to say.

*Wernica´s area in the temporal lobes is only a tiny Fraction of the temporal lobe. OR:

A human brain's probable processing power is around 100 teraflops, roughly 100 trillion calculations per second, according to Hans Morvec, principal research scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
{This is a Billy T insert: The very best man made computers can now do this or a little more, if well programmed.}
But human brains are still better than supercomputers in some respects. ASCI Purple will have 50 terabytes (trillion bytes) of memory; Morvec estimates a brain to have a 100-terabyte capacity. Brains are portable; ASCI Purple will be the size of 197 refrigerator-size boxes covering 8,900 square feet (about the size of two basketball courts) and will weigh 197 tons. The average brain is 56 cubic inches and weighs 3.3 pounds

And I add: The brain is very easy to produce by unskilled labor and it self programs from experiences to solve more than a million quite different problems essentially immediately with near zero expenditure of energy. Many of these problems, for example parsing and identifying the objects in a natural scene, are far too difficult for any man-made computer to solve even if allowed to calculate for more than a year. Yet the brain solves these difficult problems at a rate exceeding 10,000 per hour.

The Veteran Administration would love to have a machine that could reliably stick a fork of food into a quadraplegic’s mouth when he opens it, instead of his eye. The brain solves so many problems with so little effort that they go unnoticed until teams of researchers spend years and millions of dollars just trying to do a poor imitation of what the brain does with ease. (Control legs for walking and a mirad of body functions, like adjust heart pulse rate, identify where new sound comes from and direct gaze there; Shape the fingers quite differently to pick up a tennis ball from the shape required to pick up a pencil*, etc. etc. - Thousands of complex problems are solved every hour without effort or even being aware that they are being solved! )

Other points / words which I think you have too narrow a definition of are: Simulation, process, computation /calculations.

For example: "Simulation" is any process that exhibits some behavior simular to the behavior of the thing being simulated. For example, some mechanicl toys with flapping wings can now simulate a bird flying, but not very well, as is the usual case when some man-made simulation of a natural process is made.

* Interestingly you don´t need any "visual cortex" to do this. Read about "blind sight" and then about the superior colliculus to learn more. In humans a small part of the retinal data goes to a part of the brain deep inside - the superior colliculus. It controls the shaping of the hand (and several other things, especially defensive postures) for blind people to be correct even before they make phyiscal contact with the object they are about to pick up. In monkey, a much greater fraction of the retinal data goes to this center. Some monkeys, even with all their visual cortex surgically removed, can "see" a rasin on the floor, reach for it, shaping hand properly for picking it up before contact, and then stick it in their mouth!

BTW, in non-humans the corresponding, non-cortical, neural tissue processing this information (data) from the retina is called the "optic tectum." Possibly because when these parts of brains were named, many believed humans were not just animals.

 

[Sarkus]

Until we understand quite how the brain operates, I'm not convinced any comparisons to current computer ability is of much use, other than to say that we can do many things so much better, yet struggle with simple things that a calculator can do almost instantly.

For example, take memory... Some suggest we have petabytes of memory in our brain, but this assumes perfect recall of everything we think we can remember. Others think 1 to 10 terabytes, and others think it is far smaller, possibly even as low as the 100 Mb range... only it is stored vastly more compactly and efficiently, with a compression that we can't yet mimic artificially, and our recall is procedural rather than linear.
It also depends on how you define the capacity... if you take a 4 Mb bitmap and convert it to a 200kb jpeg, is this 4mb of data or 200kb? You lose barely any useful information in the compression.

Also, just as an example of how little memory we might need to do things, there was a pc game written a few years ago that looked almost as good as the classic Quake that, if written in the normal way would have been 200-300mb in size. Yet this game took up just under 100kb, as it made extensive use of procedural generation.


To me the difference is not in the technology available to pcs compared to our biological brain, but in our current lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved in human intellect and corresponding brain-function. I think when we understand how the brain does it we will have a significant leap in the development of computers, and possibly a paradigm shift in the way they are programmed.

Anyhoo - just food for thought rather than any specific comment to your posts.

 

[Aqueous Id]

To Aqueous ID I don´t respond line by line as think mainly you understand several words much more narrowly than I do.

It depends on the content of the post. I noticed a few things you'd said which I thought were worthy of addressing in detail.

First point: The brain is a computer. Computers were only analog before Von Neumann (I think) invented the idea that what a digital computer did could be very flexible if it had a section of memory controlling other parts and that section held the "instructions" which could be loaded in for many different computations.

At some point it was a question of practicality. Analog computers are not very good with floating-point or processing text.

You seem to think only Von Neumann machines are computers - that computers must have an instruction set compiled into the language of the machine.

I am beginning to regret that I ever said that a bat can't compile. Let me put it this way, in the common parlance, a computer is generally understood to be the device I am using right now. It's been a very long time since it meant anything else.

I think a computer is anything that solves problems.

I suppose accountants can be called computers, and probably were, perhaps a century ago. I'll bear in mind that you don't always mean what you say.

Almost 100% of all cognitive scientists consider the brain to be a computer.

Long ago, when common people had no idea what computers were or how they were applied, the reverse was true. That is, common people understood that a computer was some sort of mechanical brain. I have no idea what modern psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists think about it but I would be surprised if what you say is true.

Its computational power can be (and has been) compared to your type of "Von Neumann computer"

Just as easily we can compare its functions to the feedback control network of an analog servo. But imagine trying to relate that to brain activity. It makes no sense. It's evident there is afferent feedback, but there is no clue where we might find any circuit element that compares to those in an analog servo. By the same token, none of the architectural components of a computer are found in a brain. Even comparisons with memory are nothing more than the unfortunate labeling of the data storage media. There is no discernible program of the brain other than the growth of dendrites and formation of synapses which at best might be compared to a hardwired program, but it's hardly the same thing.

:*Wernica´s area in the temporal lobes is only a tiny Fraction of the temporal lobe. Or: And I add: The brain is very easy to produce by unskilled labor and it self programs from experiences to solve more than a million quite different problems essentially immediately with near zero expenditure of energy.

Also completely unlike a computer. However, it seems to me you are talking about cognitive learning exclusively, instead of brain function in general.

Many of these problems, for example parsing and identifying the objects in a natural scene, are far too difficult for any man-made computer to solve even if allowed to calculate for more than a year.

Yes and no. If you mean image recognition, then I would offer that machines that do fingerprint ID, facial recognition, or simple shape and color detection are going to beat a human. A human will win every time in determining if Aunt Gussie looks mad in this photo. Obviously computers can't think. I just think the comparison is an outmoded way of reaching for some allegorical way to wrap our minds around--well, our minds.

Yet the brain solves these difficult problems at a rate exceeding 10,000 per hour.

Sounds like an arbitrary number to me, but OK.

The Veteran Administration would love to have a machine that could reliably stick a fork of food into a paraplegic’s mouth when he opens it, instead of his eye.

I wasn't aware of that either. If they wish for it hard enough, the dream will come true. (Maybe they should talk to Steven Hawking's roboticists.)

The brain solves so many problems with so little effort that they go unnoticed until teams of researchers spend years and millions of dollars just trying to do a poor imitation of what the brain does with ease.

I don't think human faculties go unnoticed, but a lot of people enjoy the advantages of better living through the fruits of research.

(Control legs for walking and a mirad of body functions, like adjust heart pulse rate, identify where new sound comes from and direct gaze there; Shape the fingers quite differently to pick up a tennis ball from the shape required to pick up a pencil, etc. etc. - Thousands of complex problems are solved every hour without effort or even being aware that they are being solved! )

Hopefully we're adding to public awareness here.

Other words which I think you have too narrow a definition of are: Simulation, process, computation /calculations.
For example: "Simulation" is any process that exhibits some behavior simular to the behavior of the thing being simulated. For example, some mechanicl toys with flapping wings can now simulate a bird flying, but not very well, as is the usual case when some man-made simulation of a natural process is made.

That was the actual line of inquiry I was pursuing before the semantics kicked in. I was unable to understand what you meant by the brain simulating anything. So far, all I know is that there are afferent and efferent pathways, in a network of microscopic delay lines which carry the following architectural rules . First, there is a signal, in the form of a pulse. Second, there is an input threshold voltage, and a pulse generator that triggers when threshold is crossed. Third, there is a summation at the input of any number of arriving pulses. Fourth, there is a grouping of functions in the brain to particular sites. Fifth, there is an evolutionary layering, re-sizing and/or re-purposing of brain regions, from the simple nerve net to notochord to ganglia or blister to something compartmentalized. And I guess sixth are all other features I haven't mentioned, or haven't learned about, or haven't been discovered.

Other than these facts, there is little to run with. There are pulses in and pulses out. There is never any static condition. No static storage as we think of the term. The pulses have to recirculate or they die. I suppose the secretion of neurotransmitter counts as a pulse initiator, but the chemical and endocrine connection to pulse generation is also mysterious.

I think that describing the brain activity as simulation is not much different than saying a mind is a mind. However, it does occur to me that circulating pulses may "simulate" (or emulate) the arrival of afferent sensory pulses. That much might account for certain kinds of memory, or some semblance of consciousness. But I think the term I might use is illusion rather than simulation. I'm under the illusion that Aunt Gussie is waving a frying pan when I stare at her crabby face in the photo, not: I'm simulating. Not because the effect is so different, but because the implementation seems to be so very different. One is well-understood, and the other is completely mysterious.

 

[Billy T]

I said: "Almost 100% of all cognitive scientists consider the brain to be a computer."

... I have no idea what modern psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists think about it but I would be surprised if what you say is true. ...

I am of course using my definition of a "computer" (anything that solves problems) not you narrow POV that only Von Neumann machines are computers. Thus for my statement to be false, you would need to find a few cognitive scientists who don´t think the brain solves problems. However very few believe the parallel processing (except for some conscious serial processing) brain is a Von Neumann computer, so I can understand your objection, if based on that very narrow definition of what is a computer.

There are several different opinions as to how the brain solves problem, but most not only think it does, but also believe that networks (not individual cells*) of mutually interacting neural cells do the calculations necessary. Many, but not all, believe the brain is a manipulator of symbols, - a very advanced Turing machine. I think this POV is nearly the universal opinion of cognitive scientists concerned with language processing problems.

* The idea that any one cell is important, even just for memory, is ridiculed by calling it the "grandmother cell."

 

[wellwisher]

Say you were walking along, and someone jumps out from behind the door and scares you. You will quickly react, instinctively, and then become conscious, you just yelped like a little girl. This lack of immediate control can embarrass some people. In this case, there were two conscious reactions. One is unconscious and instinctive; jump and yelp. The other is conscious and has an awareness of what just happened to itself; yelp. In this example, we become conscious of the unconscious. Unconscious does not mean not conscious, but normally exists below conscious awareness.

Many definitions of consciousness are way too superficial, since they don't even include instinctive reactions, never mind even deeper layers. If someone is not aware of the instinctive reaction, this will not be included in their theory of consciousness. The theory might still be useful for those who are similarly unconscious. But it will only be a first pass theory. This is why I contend you need to go inside the mind, to be able to differentiate the many layers of consciousness which are the foundation of the conscious mind. Most exist below the threshold. The Mayan 2012 scare that impacted many people came from one of the deeper layers and impacted calibration.

A fairly shallow layer, below the ego, is the personal unconscious. Say there was a personal repression stored in this shallow layer, which one is not conscious of. This can impact how ego consciousness views various situations. It can act like a filter and controls how consciousness sees. The conscious tool for observation would be out of calibration, biased a certain way. But if this is below the threshold of consciousness, it would not be seen by the person. They would think they see clearly.

Say we go to the next deeper layer, which Jung calls the shadow and Freud calls the ID. This layer is less personal and more collective and can creates its own filters under certain situations.

In the example, above, where someone scares you, this comes from the next layer down after the shadow layer; instinctive layer. Say the instinctive and shadow layers have merged, this can create unnatural impulse that feels instinctive. This can impact calibration. If the entire culture is not aware of this they will call it the new natural.

Arousal and awareness stem from the brain stem. The signal has to go through many brain layers until the conscious mind becomes aware. The entire shabang is the basis for consciousness. Sometimes lower layers trigger arousal and awareness so we see what we need to see. The hunter will sense the prey nearby even before there is conscious confirmation; induced arousal.

 

[hansda]

I would submit that consciousness resides exclusively in the brain and nowhere else.

Does consciousness reside in the brain of a dead-body also?

Brain does reside in a dead-body though.

 

[Billy T]

Does consciousness reside in the brain of a dead-body also? ...

No, not even during deep sleep but only when the RTS is running - i.e. the awake state or during dreams. "You," meaning your psychological self, not your body also only exist in these two states.

In wellwisher´s case: "someone jumps out from behind the door and scares you." a significant but totally unpredicted event (so not part of the RTS) occurs and the RTS is very briefly "paused" - not running, so "you" don´t exist for that tiny fraction of a second, while the RTS is being revised to model this unforeseen real world event. The re-start of the RTS makes a recognizable and measurable signal in the EEG, called the P300 spike (It is positive going and ~300ms after you were startled and strongest over the parietal lobes, where many other known facts suggest to me than the bulk of the RTS is being executed). In more casual terms, it is often called "the startle spike."

The "you' or the "self" part of the RTS, does draw upon information stored in memory and is aided by processing in the frontal lobes but the external world is simulated in real time (neural transmission and sequential processing delay compensated for) only in the parietal brain. I.e. "you" perceive only the world the parietal brain is constructing, not the real external world, but usually there is a strong agreement with it* - evolution selected for this, but hallucinations and other conflicts, especially “optical illusions,” with the external would do exist and seem real to "you" as that is all "you" can directly perceive - You infer from this directly available information in the simulation, that an external world does exist (except for sophists and the good Bishop Berkeley).

* Except the "you" and simulated world of dreams can be / often is / in strong conflict with what is physically possible in the external world. Evolution did not make any selections for agreement between the world of dreams, (also a creation of parietal brain) and external world as your body does not act in dreams. - You don´t actually fly from one tree to top of near-by buildings etc. In MHO, sincere "out of body experiences" are much like dream state events "you" really do experience, just like the phantom limb is very real to those having one. (They consciously know it is not real but for them it is just a real as the limb they do actually have.)

 

[Magical Realist]

Billy, if our consciousness of the world is an RTS, what do you infer the real world to be like? Is it exactly the same as the simulation? Or vastly different? And how would we know what the world is like apart from the RTS inside our heads?

 

[Billy T]

Billy, if our consciousness of the world is an RTS, what do you infer the real world to be like? Is it exactly the same as the simulation? Or vastly different? And how would we know what the world is like apart from the RTS inside our heads?

As a Ph.D. physicists, I´m no sophists but quite like the good Bishop Berkeley, except he had God creating the world he* percieved but I have a computational program running in parietal brain doing that creation of "me" and "my" perceptions.

I have many times stated that evolutionary selction has made the world I directly experience very much like a perfect model most of the time for the external world we have sensors for. (We don´t model the fact that at least 100 radio and microwaves are surrounding me and even passing thru my body)**. The most important words are the bold text: "most of the time." The fact that it is not "100 percent of the time" is strong proof that we do NOT directly percieve the exteral world but only a usually very good model of most of it. You can/ perhaps should/ consider hallucinations and other conflicts, especially “optical illusions,” and phantom limbs etc to be modeling errors but they are directly perceived, not inferred as all of the "real world" is. In some sense they have stronger claim to being "real" than what we infer based on these direct experiences. I cannot show the good Bishop´s logical error and neither could the many thousands who have tried in the last 300+ years.

*His "lesser than God spirit," not his body, which did not exist, perceived god´s creations: Pain, stones, rain etc. were all just god created illusions - not one material thing existed.

** This is one of many examples of what we know, and learned by instruments, about the true nature of the "real world" which is vastly more complex than we simulate. Another example is: We know a great deal about the stars. - They not just the bright points in the night sky we simulate and perceive.