The Nature of Thought

Imahamster ...

You understood where I was coming from.
However this hamster’s mother said this hamster seemed to understand speech but said virtually nothing until age four ... At which time this hamster began speaking in complete sentences with complicated grammar.

(Looking back it seems strange that understanding and speaking weren’t more closely associated. Interactive feedback usually speeds learning.)
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I find it rather interesting too in that supposedly I had begun to read before speaking more than minimally (usually single words and only when necessary, hence the nickname "Sonny, the Sphinx') before becoming a blabber-mouth at about four and a half. Well, maybe not a blabber-mouth.

Still haven't figured out why the pattern but have run across it a few times over the years. Quite a relief the first time in an "I'm not that different" sense.

Sorry for the brevity; an old habit, I guess. ;)
 
SeekerOfTruth,

“multiple meanings for words in our language is both a 'compression' technique as well as a link to specific domains of context”

“denotes other meanings that still apply even though they reside outside the context of physics”

Imahamster strongly agrees. (Leads this hamster to wonder what selection pressures mold language evolution today.)

Re: Borg hamsters
This hamster envisions a cooperative community of self-aware and self-directed entities with their own emotions, hopes, and desires. Diversity would be prized for the unique viewpoints and special flavors added to the community. Cyber hamsters would have their niche as would cyber birds and fish and worms and microbes.

“it would only take a transform to link the two abstract domains together.”

The answer is “42”. Understanding the question and why “42” is the answer is where the “meat” lies. This hamster wonders how much information that “transform” must contain. Some transformations are simple others are very complicated. (E.g., genotype into phenotype?) (On the other paw, the transform need not be perfect, only better than present means of communication. So maybe...)

“Helen Keller is a good example of why. She had neither sight nor hearing, but was still capable of developing a language as well as abstract thought processes solely through the use of her other senses, primarily touch. The 'patterns of touch' she developed were the basis for her abstract thought associations that she ultimately made.”

Imahamster finds this interesting. The reason this hamster stressed images is that much of the brain’s matter seems devoted to processing images. The Keller example might mean those portions play a minor role in abstract thought. (Or Keller somehow recruited visual processing centers even though she had no vision.) (Indicates how little this hamster understands.)

In any case Imahamster agrees that 'patterns of sensory inputs' encompasses all the senses and better describes the process.

“I also find it very interesting that you seemed to learn language without feedback and were able to develop complex communications in the form of language without that active feedback. I would think that some form of feedback had to exist. Maybe it was not a direct form of feedback. Did you have any sibling hamsters that were close to your age from whom you could gain that feedback?”

This hamster finds the entire story highly suspect. This hamster’s mother was intelligent and attentive and had prior children so would presumably be a reliable observer. At the same time this hamster could have been interacting with neighbor kids and older siblings. There may have been reasons why Imahamster’s speech was limited with his mother. (Perhaps this hamster said little so as to keep a low profile and thereby follow more hamster pup desires. Hehe.) Silly speculation at this stage in life.

(Chagur, Imahamster just read your post. Hmmm…maybe mom was right. However Imahamster was not an early reader.)

“Would have been nice if the scientists who developed the atomic bomb had that kind of thought process.”

This hamster suspects they did. Perhaps more so than is common today. The international physics community was small and tightly knit. Important team members were Germans, Italians, etc. Their generation was not inured to the death and pain of others by violent movies and games. There was fear the Nazi’s would develop the bomb first. (Aiii, Imahamster has killed the thread. Hehe.)
 
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I tend to think instead of compression, but more Holographically in the way a memory is contained. The more recent the memory or memorised, the stronger the photoelectric effect, the older the memory or more used the region of memory, the less of a photoelectric effect. (When I mention photoelectric I mean how our atoms has a knock on effect across our quantum entangled brain, and how memory is actually held in an electromagnetic entangled postion.)

I've proven to some that if the head takes a sharp impact the very force can generate a Electromagnetic spike across the brain cells that can be strong enough to wipe out any trace of memory. (Namely Amnesia)

It's possible that information for years can be lost in one major head injury, and cause the person to regress to that of an infantile state of mind.

An assuption also gathered produced a theory:

Melalin that is produced in the Pineal Gland, is also used in structuring the Neural pathways. This gave rise to two conclusions:

1: People that stay up late at night produce less Melalin and therefore can suffer memory errors, which could possibly over time become worse.

2: Older people will find that eventually the Pineal gland can Crystalize, when it does this, it reduces or stops the amount of Melalin produced, this means that older people naturally start to lose their memory.

I would have explained more at the beginning of this thread, but I find it increasingly hard to format the information thatI can place forwards on this subject.
 
Zion posted a truly superb article (by Hans Moravec?) on the “Robots: are We Close Yet?” thread under Intelligence & Machines. Much of what the article says about robots applies to the nature of thought. Zion, thanks for the delicious seed.
 
Yogamojo

You are right Melalin goes to certain areas and is transformed into Melatonin and is mentioned throughout many documents as pigmentation for skin colour, and being a natural UV protection (although nothing to gloat about as it's not enough), and also the reason why the pupil of the eye is dark.

My point was simple, If you sit in a lit room on a dark night your window can act as a mirror, for one instance, another instance is that a pigmentation asorbs light. Between those two points I concluded that melalin could be of use within a neural pathway because during sleep it would normally be increased (Only night-time) and it would dampen or reflect photoelectric signals.

Of course my interpretation of Atomics has changed since my first look at the classical and modern theories, thanks to something that Kmguru mentioned about holograms, since that point I've understood that our atomics is basically Standalone holograms.

I will post a URL to a more indepth discussion on the subject at a later date.
 
Originally posted by Imahamster
....

“Helen Keller is a good example of why. She had neither sight nor hearing, but was still capable of developing a language as well as abstract thought processes solely through the use of her other senses, primarily touch. The 'patterns of touch' she developed were the basis for her abstract thought associations that she ultimately made.”

Imahamster finds this interesting. The reason this hamster stressed images is that much of the brain’s matter seems devoted to processing images. The Keller example might mean those portions play a minor role in abstract thought. (Or Keller somehow recruited visual processing centers even though she had no vision.) (Indicates how little this hamster understands.)

....
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Imahamster,

I believe you have hit on something here. I have read of cases where an individual has suffered damage to a given portion of the brain, thereby losing some specific capability, which was later regained. In one case it was something to do with speach and after extensive therapy, the individual was able to reacquire the capability. The theory was the individual's brain had rewired undamaged portions of the brain to support that function. Perhaps Helen Keller was able to rewire her unused visual brain functions to support her needs.

What really interested me the most about Helen Keller was that she was able to perform complex abstract thought processes in the abscence of either visual or auditory information. This tells me that abstract thoughts are not dependent upon any given sensory inputs or centers of the brain that use them. So where do thoughts originate?
 
That which cannot be described cannot be created...

As it stands, it appears that thought need not be supplemented by all of the senses or even most of them; i.e. the Helen Keller example and numerous other recorded instances of people who, since infancy, either lacked or were deprived of a certain sense and flourished in a field where their uniquity was considered a handicap. And perhaps the lack of stimulus through these missing channels is what makes some of these examples superlative. Beethoven’s works mounted into greater magnitude after his hearing was long gone, so we know with certainty that he was not relying on his ability to hear to generate the tones and rhythms that made up his music. (Of course he, unlike Keller, was born able to hear) ¿Would Beethoven have developed into one history's greatest composers had he been born deaf, or even blind and deaf? ¿In contrast, would Stevie Wonder (just an example) have realized the extent of his potential as an entertainer if he had not been blind since birth? And what does any of this have to do with the supposed generation of an abstract thought?

One thing that is rather interesting is the fact that infants in the later embryonic stages during sleep experience REM: they dream. ¿What are they dreaming? ¿What do they know that they might generate enough material to substantiate any dream? ¿Is it aural holographic random patterning derived from what they hear through their surrounding womb? ¿Or do they also dream visually, because they certainly do have the hardware to do it...and if so, is this hallucination or abstract thought? ¿Is hallucination and "abstract thought" the same thing? The embryonic hypothalamus is already ticking.

Terrence McKenna describes a type of hallucination called "auto-replacement" in some of his later rants from his book "The Archaic Revival". A few natural substances on the planet can induce this state. (The above-mentioned book can give more info without me getting into the chemical names of these substances: okay, one of them is Dimethyltryptamine, DMT, not much is known about it, however it does occur as a part of our natural neurochemisty in small amounts). The effect of this phenomenon to the observer/adventurer is that while experiencing this, random and previously uncharted areas of patternization occur which override the transmission/translation of signals from the optic nerve, nothing that one would be able to defer to experience. McKenna believes that this type of hallucination is responsible for the formation of spoken language. And after all, that which cannot be described cannot be created...


All comments are welcome, so please post away pilgrims!
 
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I actually know someone who's tried DMT, said he left the real world for a while. Not like LSD and other hallucinogens where the hallucinations had any basis on reality.

Personally I would differentiate hallucination from abstract thought. Hallucination is typically regarded as a distortion of the senses. Abstract thought is may change your interpretation of the world, but not the appearance supplied by your senses (though if you learn filters through some abstract process it might alter what you notice to the extent that you interpret things in a radically different way).

If people lose certain senses they probably excel because they focus more strongly (and maybe increase the amount of brain devoted to) certain types of thinking (presumably visual/auditory/olfactory/touch/taste thinking has different structure so you are better at understanding certain types of things). Also once Beethoven lost his hearing he had to think more and experiment less. That's probably why he was so mathematical in his playing (unless I'm confusing Bach and Beethoven again, I'm not such a huge classical music listener).
Loss of senses are a certain type of defect with much less overall distortion than idiot sevants etc., so presumably we can still relate to/communicate with them better so we don't miss the beauty of their mental creations ...
 
SeekerOfTruth, Shaman touched on brain plasticity earlier. Some right brain/left brain stuff. If the left brain is damaged or removed some language functions may be taken over by the right brain. (Right brain has some rudimentary language skills such as being able to name certain objects but most language skills are left brain.) Imahamster has not followed the extensive literature in this area. (Volunteers? Shaman?)

Imahamster is aware that extensive training of a finger results in the neural region associated with that finger expanding into areas previously devoted to other brain function. That seems to imply that at least some recruitment of unused or little used brain mass is possible. The architecture of the brain is hardwired so there are significant limits to any retraining.

(Yogamojo, Imahamster wrote this before seeing your own reply on this topic.)

Helen Keller had touch. The loss of sight and hearing may be less important than that a major sensory pathway still existed. The brain mechanism for recognizing, predicting, and altering patterns might be independent of any particular sense. (But could only function if a person is able to interact with their environment.)

As for recruiting some of the visual brain regions for abstract thought…PET scans of a person blind from birth might be interesting. (Surely this has been done?)

Yogamojo, interesting…

The brain is self-organizing. There are a relatively small set of biological instructions that result in an extremely complicated functioning brain. (Much like the simple rules for the computer game “Life” generating very complex patterns.) The developing brain has to “wire” itself. Neutrons interact with neighboring neurons. (Up to 25,000.) Some connect to neurons in different brain regions. If a neuron gets improper feedback from other neurons it dies. Ninety percent of the developing brain's neurons die. The remaining neurons form functional circuits. If the proper signaling stimulus is not provided at the right development stage the circuits don’t function. (The cat visual system has been extensively studied.)

What does this have to do with your post? This hamster doesn’t know. Seems to relate in interesting ways to embryonic dreaming.
 
Imahamster,

Excellent links. I particularly like the one on the similarities between chimps and ourselves.

So, have we reached the conclusion that our thoughts are the results of our neural connections?
 
Originally posted by SeekerOfTruth
Imahamster,
So, have we reached the conclusion that our thoughts are the results of our neural connections?
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Imahamster is slow to draw conclusions. The human brain is immensely complicated. As Scilospher has pointed out the biological substrate is far from understood. How that substrate gives rise to “thinking” is largely unknown. No computer simulation of a mind performs as well as a hamster, much less a human. At this stage of “brain modeling” many special phenomena such as idiot savants or people with “photographic” memories aren’t even considered.

The question of “consciousness” is open. No one knows what role it plays, if any. And why can humans only focus on seven items at one time? (Actually varies with the person from five to nine.) How is information from different sensory systems integrated? That is, how does the brain know that this bit of sound data is connected to that piece of image data? There are thousands of unanswered questions.

Some very bright people don’t believe neural connections explain human thought. A few believe nanostructures in our cells act as quantum computers. Only recently has human technology advanced to the level where such conjecture might be scientifically explored. (Single cells evolved over billions or years. Multi-cellular animals evolved over a mere half billion. Makes this hamster wonder just how amazing cells really are. Cells contain hundreds of molecular machines that are only now being discovered and understood.)

Authors of papers generally simplify the complexity and unknowns and exaggerate the conclusions, often ignoring alternative explanations. (Who would read a paper that dragged one through all the messy details only to conclude that one really doesn’t know?)

This hamster sees the picture getting clearer every day. Great fun to watch the discovery process unfold. Too soon for conclusions. Tune-in next week...
 
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Here's an "off" angle...

Well, I've heard some theories, and even had a few of my own, but this one takes the cake! Good ol' Terrence McKenna (rest his soul) and his brother risked the sovereign integrity of their own delicate cerebral fortresses to forge ahead into the uncharted areas of consciousness belonging to psychedelic study. Here's a snippet told from the angle of the humble mushroom, man and hamster alike can appreciate this objectively:

http://www.deoxy.org/mushword.htm

I don't expect any of you to have an earthshaking epiphany, just appreciation for its quaint novelty...:bugeye:
 
Yogamojo, this hamster may have to switch allegiance from the Divine Hamster to the Marvelous Mushroom. Especially enjoyed the vision of symbiosis as it seems compatible with an evolving community of diverse cyber life. Thanks for the seed…oops…spore.
 
Language after left hemisphere damage

Originally posted by Imahamster

SeekerOfTruth, Shaman touched on brain plasticity earlier. Some right brain/left brain stuff. If the left brain is damaged or removed some language functions may be taken over by the right brain. (Right brain has some rudimentary language skills such as being able to name certain objects but most language skills are left brain.) Imahamster has not followed the extensive literature in this area. (Volunteers? Shaman?)

Imahamster, yes. Some languague functions may be taken by the right hemisphere.

The mind-Brain Conundrum
http://www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/shufflebrain-book02.html

The Heart in the Brain
http://object.cup.org/Chapters/0521783070ws.pdf

Hemispherectomy Research
http://abacus.bates.edu/~bodohert/serious/papers/Hemisphcogneuro.html

http://www.drbencarson.com/hem-facts.html

Syntactic development in Children with hemispherectomy
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/curtiss/isys1.pdf

Outcomes for children with half a Brain
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press1997/JULY/970707.HTM

Quote:
" Language representation in the brain does not seems to be anatomically-bound to the left hemisphere only"
Exploring Neuronal Plasticity
http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/cogsci2001/pdf-files/0244.pdf


Imahamster is aware that extensive training of a finger results in the neural region associated with that finger expanding into areas previously devoted to other brain function. That seems to imply that at least some recruitment of unused or little used brain mass is possible.

And the opposite.....after losing a finger the sensory input is lost, the neural region associated with that finger decrease in size, the neural connections change, then the cortical map change.

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~husn/BRAIN/vol6/p21-25-PhantomLimbs.pdf

Imahamster......The architecture of the brain is hardwired so there are significant limits to any retraining.....

I'm not so sure about this...
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