The Nature of Thought

Shaman, Imahamster has begun to read through the articles. Enjoyed reading the “chapter 2” excerpt so much that this hamster will likely read the entire online book before checking out the other links. It will take time to chew these seeds.

From what this hamster has read so far this hamster understands and agrees with your questioning this hamster’s assertion of limited brain plasticity. Very interesting stuff. Thanks for the seeds.
 
With split brain stuff and the apparent exeistence then of multiple individuals with different ideas, i am forced to wonder who is the "I" thinks it's me, with those what is the other doing which isn't answering as "I" at the time. Are they aware of each other? Are there anywhere any firsthand accounts of what it feels like? I have seen none.

Marsupials don't have corpus callosums. That intrigues me. The most notable thing about those that i am aware of behaviourially is that they are generally not domesticable. Is that related? Is there something radically different about the 'dreaming' of those which caused the Australian continent and the people in it to remain so regressive?
 
“I have no mouth and I must scream.”

WhatsHerFace, this hamster has also wondered. A friend was under anesthesia. A doctor was performing a procedure and my friend was showing outward signs of extreme pain. The doctor claimed my friend “felt” nothing. (This hamster was VERY unhappy.) Afterwards my friend remembered no pain. This incident led to many discussions as to whether pain that was not remembered mattered. Whether pain felt while “unconscious” was truly pain. Also led to the nightmare thought of being trapped in one’s own brain.
 
I've only had one out of body experience, so generally speaking I'm trapped in my brain ...

Sometimes I also wonder about the temporal continuity of who I am even if I can think of myself as an integrated whole at some level. It's amazing how just a couple thoughts can change your perspective radically. The worst is when you do what you thought was the right thing and later think it was a big mistake. After you think it was a mistake is the current I still responsible?

On a certain level the person, pragmatically at least, must be held responsible. On another level though the ideas/thoughts/attributes that now drive you were not what was responsible for that act ...

Wondering about different facets of yourself, is certainly relevant if they can all take control under different circumstances and certainly is relevant at one level - but again it's the separation deception at another level they must get integrated at any specific point elsewhere in your mind. It's amazing how much of biology is driven by a certain amount of separation allowing for different types of tasks etc, that get integrated elsewhere.
 
So much to read and so little time.

The “Nature of Thought” thread seems to be getting weighted down by links. (Imahamster accepts blame.) These links are interesting and valuable. However people may be reluctant to post their thoughts when they haven’t read all the linked articles. As no one has the time to read everything, fewer people may feel comfortable adding their insight.

Imahamster has started a new thread “Articles on the Nature of Thought” where this hamster will post links related to the topics on this thread. (If an article is particularly relevant to the topic under discussion this hamster will continue to post the link on this thread.)
 
Re: “I have no mouth and I must scream.”

Originally posted by Imahamster
WhatsHerFace, this hamster has also wondered. A friend was under anesthesia. A doctor was performing a procedure and my friend was showing outward signs of extreme pain. The doctor claimed my friend “felt” nothing. (This hamster was VERY unhappy.) Afterwards my friend remembered no pain. This incident led to many discussions as to whether pain that was not remembered mattered. Whether pain felt while “unconscious” was truly pain. Also led to the nightmare thought of being trapped in one’s own brain.
Click to expand...

I don't know the generic name, but there is a drug used by A&E units in the UK called Hypnovol.
The effects of this drug allow medics to perform painful procedures without the patient remembering the pain.
The pain is still manifest at the time.
 
whatsherface

You mentioned of Multiple personalities, now I've been thinking about this one for sometime, I believe that the old Fraudian classic isn't what is would have seemed to have been.

The way I understand it, people don't suffer true split personalities for a mixture of reasons.

Firstly let me mention the issues of "Do you hear voices in your head?", in truth nobody should hear themselves think, we work on a process that doesn't have vocalisation, although what you might here when you silently read out to yourself is a portion of your temporal lobes.

The temporal lobe has two functions (other than supposedly storing longterm memory)
1: Voice recognition and the ability to hear
2: Voicebox controls (Namely your actual Voice you speak to people with is controlled from here)

Now the true people that are driven to insanety by voices, don't here voices that stop in for a chitchat, but they will hear past voices of traumatic experiences. For instance if a persons father terrorised them when they were younger (Beat them etc) then they might hear the voice of their father sometimes, or have that vocal memory jogged by something someone else does.

This is in regard to people that might act out from passed transgressions, like their father beat them so they beat their offspring and a horrific family trend occurs.

The next is a persons perception being altered or their own possible "Multipersonality". We live in a world governed by Television and films (unless your stuck out in the sticks somewhere, in fact if you were to look for cases of multiple personalities in undeveloped countries you would probably find that there are hardly any cases)

The way we as humans work is similar to our cousins the chimps, they tend to learn from "Copying". We might watch a film with a hero/heroine and be inspired by a great act of courage, or get caught up with a quirky quote.

These images and stories (even from books) become memories, and apart of your neural network. It's only when you start thinking of that film you just watch or the book you just read, that your Sub-consciousness begins to construct your Character futher. (Your character meaning , "You!")

This is easily done, and suddenly your quoting something that is so Cliche, but it gives you a sense of wellbeing when you say it, as your now preportionally apart of that hero/heroine, well at least it's myth or tale.

This is why some people are prone to acting out horrific acts and then later blame television or films for the ideas, feelings or inspirations.

Lastly there are Voices that stop in for Chitchats, these are usually Medical (Psychology) Students and their Physic counterpart professors that sometimes get the go ahead to invade a persons mind. Of course they tend to terrorise the person by placing spots in one of their eyes, or tormenting them from being able to remember a name but placing a internal command that says "It's on the tip of your tongue".

Every interact they do is to work out how your brain works and to get a better clue about how everybodies brain works. The small problem that occurs with this technique is the fact that when they do this they can actually cause damage to an individual. So they wouldn't be insured, or capable of paying out for liablity, so they tend to do these studies with a clandenstine effort. (They don't tell you, contact you or even ask permission.)

There is also the probability that anyone utilised within these studies can end up on welfare for the rest of their lives. (If of coursed they aren't forced into a state of depression to kill them off so they don't take up any more welfare, I mention this only as what some of the nasty ones might try in their personal schedules.)
 
pain without memories

Originally posted by esp


I don't know the generic name, but there is a drug used by A&E units in the UK called Hypnovol.
The effects of this drug allow medics to perform painful procedures without the patient remembering the pain.
The pain is still manifest at the time.
Click to expand...

Hi esp:

A person under an anaesthesic called ketamine is awake in a surgical procedure. He is suffering pain, but it seems that he doesn't care about it. After the surgery there are no memories of the pain or the procedure itself. This sustance is a dissociative drug.

quote:
"Ketamine shows analgesic effect, this could be NMDA receptor or opiate receptor mediated"

http://www.esraeurope.org/abstracts/abstracts98/errando1.htm
 
Random thoughts ; )

I was just thinking that (despite fluxuations) animals that learn seem to have longer life spans. Which makes sense if the learned skills are necessary for life as it would be a dangerous situation and additionally there is a certain efficiency to reducing the proportion of society that is in the learning process (not that it ever ends and memory lasts all life). I wonder if you can actually use life span of a certain species like house cats and get an estimate of their propensity to learn (I wonder how long hamsters live and if ones with a propensity to learn live longer ; ).

harmonic oscillations:
So if thought/learning is on a certain level a tuning process (repeated stimulations of certain "thinking pathways"), and people converse/teach/learn together there is essentially a harmonic co-tuning process. It's known that pendulum clocks in in the same room sychronize. Keeping in mind also the process of testing ideas against the real world it can be thought of almost as sonar ... bounce ideas off the world and eachother and a certain picture emerges. Caves and shadows come to mind. Going out of tune? Plato thought all democracies were doomed because freedom of speech and overly diverse ideas about how to live life lead to destabilization and crash. I sure hope he's wrong. Then again maybe we don't crash often enough ... considering aging and how life uses generations with trial and error to improve itself. Personally I think we have WAY to many laws. Laws should be accessible to all, relatively clear, and not in such excess that knowing them all is essentially impossible. It especially doesn't make any sense if you don't enforce half of them. That's even more confusing.
It's also interesting how this relates to the idea that science requires death and new generations to get out of ruts in terms of getting to stuck seeing one picture and not able to see the other. Like those pictures that can be two people kissing or a table and you can only see one.
 
Also led to the nightmare thought of being trapped in one’s own brain.
Click to expand...

Would that be any different than dreaming? When in a dream-state, I have almost no control over my perceptions. And, of course, I don't really mind. :p
 
Multiple personalities

Apparently people with split brains have shown that the brain can house at least two distinctly different personalities which can have radically different views about the same subjects. Could such conflict have aggravated the condition which necessitated the surgery in the first place, i wonder?

I think i suspect that we have just one consciousness and only imagine that we are separate individuals. That could reflect in each individual having multiple separate personalities and only imagine we are one, integrated from those, which could account for such concepts as possession, multiple personality disorder etc. Those could just be some flaw in the "i" consciousness. "Who is it that looks through my eyes?"

In dreams, apparently, all those other characters are 'me' too, i am simply projecting aspects of myself to observe externally, but am not consciously being them. Who is, then?


Behavior of Split Brain Patients
 
Sonar reflections from Scilospher random thoughts:

Imahamster has seen graphs of body size compared to life span. Most mammals fall close to a straight line, larger body goes with longer life. There are outliers such as bats. (Some bats live up to twenty years.) What would a similar graph that compares animal IQ to animal lifespan show? (Intelligence correlates highly with brain to body mass ratio.)

Interesting conjecture. A long life favors the development of higher intelligence. Could even be a dual feedback system.

Long life + intelligence => improved survival => longer life and more intelligence.

This idea leads to the more general concept of intelligence cofactors.

Cofactor + intelligence => improved survival => more cofactor and more intelligence.

What are other potential cofactors? Diet? Omnivores have a wider variety of food sources. More intelligence would aid food discovery and gathering.

Do animal examples support “long life” being an “intelligence” cofactor?

Some reptiles and birds are very long lived. Is there any correlation between intelligence and life span for these animals? (Never thought of a turtle as being smart. Parrots on the other hand…) What about mammals? Aren’t rats smarter than sheep? (Rats are smarter than hamsters. Sigh.)

Might be a good topic for a zoology research project.

Too much thought is likely to get this hamster smooshed. (Hamster ponders asteroid collision while blindly stepping into traffic.)

Harmonic oscillations… Any chance the minds on this thread will synchronize? (Can’t even get the voices in this hamster head to agree.) Hehe.

New generations may be required to bring fresh ideas. Yet old generations supply valuable old perspectives. Perhaps the problem is older generations retain too much control. Life extension could make this a much bigger problem.
 
Good point. Knut Schmidtnielsen (sp?), wrote a really cool book called "How animals work" (or something durned close) that gets into really interesting physiological relationships between animals and the physical principles that these relationships are in part based on. I wasn't thinking of the intelligence/life span from this kind of mechanistic standpoint.

Two things that jump out at me are - 1) typically bigger animals take longer to develop so making one is a bigger investment and it would tend to make sense to make use of it for longer; 2) bigger animals need a bigger brain just to map their whole body as thoroughly. That could possibly explain the rats, maybe the increase for mapping isn't there, but they have a brain bigger relative to their body size (I think those graphs are on log scales so a slight devation from a straight line might be pretty significant especially at the low end).

I was thinking of higher intelligence and more learning tending an animal more towards longer life. Generally speaking selection is thought to end after you have reproduced, but if older more wise animals keep surviving and mating longer life might indirectly be selected. I wonder though if bigger animals have/had more brain to spare for developing higher intelligence. Maybe they needed more to deal with the extra energetic requirements of growing and maintaining such big bodies. I can't think of anything to light my way along this line its such a complex system I can imagine to many alternatives ... fun to think about though.

Actually the mind is unlikely to synchronize too thoroughly a) my theories never come close to explaining everything I see so that keeps introducing change, b) that would be bad as it would hinder diversity of ideas which is useful for dealing with different types of problems, c) your experiences are so different then mine (especially being a hamster) that there is bound to be a certain amount of "inertia". Thank god for that too, people can act too much like sheep sometimes to begin with (I would prefer hamsters from my limited experience).

By the same token, I know this thread has already changed the way I think about thought (I love metastuff) and the direction is clearly towards certain ideas others have expressed. I wonder how much the synchronization is an averaging process (what an average perspective would mean I have no idea [plus I think that even a small subtle idea can drastically change ones perspective {still if you think of the multidimensional space thought must exist in I would tend to think after the converstaion peoples perspectives would have reduced in distance}]). Do the most knowledgeable pull others towards them more? Do the ability to tug correlate with leadership skills? Intelligence? Seed supply? Verbal skills? Charisma?
 
By the same token, I know this thread has already changed the way I think about thought (I love metastuff) and the direction is clearly towards certain ideas others have expressed. I wonder how much the synchronization is an averaging process (what an average perspective would mean I have no idea [plus I think that even a small subtle idea can drastically change ones perspective {still if you think of the multidimensional space thought must exist in I would tend to think after the converstaion peoples perspectives would have reduced in distance}]). Do the most knowledgeable pull others towards them more? Do the ability to tug correlate with leadership skills? Intelligence? Seed supply? Verbal skills? Charisma?
Click to expand...

~~~

scilosopher, anyone...

Counterbalance is very interested in hearing some feedback on all that scilosopher has wondered about in the above paragraph.

This is a most intriguing thread...

thx,

Counterbalance
 
:) yes, i liked that paragraph too. I think the nature of thought is very much fractal, so there are probably very few variations as such but infinite interpretations of very similar ideas.
 
I think biology is very fractal, order at low levels will tend to manifest on high levels and evolution is a scale invariant force.

I'm not sure I agree completely with the interpretations part, but I definitely agree in part. I actually like the idea that Thomas Kuhn discusses in "the structure and function of scientific revolutions", where peoples view of the world is the integration of a constellation of realisations. The interpretation of this constellation is a paradigm (he was the one who coined the paradigm shift stuff that became another annoying business buzz phrase).

When a shift occurs your thinking can change significantly without the constellation changing much. I wouldn't say the interpretation isn't part of thought. I also think that most of the relationships people think of between things are probably quite abstract and can be applied to many different things. That's probably why teachers using analogies can be quite effective (though dangerous as if there weren't differences it would just be useless so it's never quite right).
 
Birds of a feather, flock together.

Ah thought space, multi-dimensional and with nonlinear functions. And gene space. And phenotype space. And maps from one space into another, discontinuous transformations representing phenotype jumps. Computational biology. Neat stuff.

“Do the most knowledgeable pull others towards them more? Do the ability to tug correlate with leadership skills? Intelligence? Seed supply? Verbal skills? Charisma?”

Ah...the group mind examines itself. This is an uncomfortable topic as it tugs in non-hamster directions. Certainly the terms represent real human traits and touch on group dynamics. However the terms carry with them social baggage this hamster would rather avoid.

(Warning: Hamster meandering ahead…)

In high school students experience a homogenous environment. Intellectual differences predominantly determine the knowledge acquired. A pattern of thinking that only “smart” people have worthwhile information may develop. As humans expand into the much more varied “real” world and have years to acquire unique experiences and talents that early pattern of thinking could lead one astray.

Going through life everyone gains special insight, knowledge, and skills. If one focuses on what another person doesn’t know or the mistakes they make, one can miss valuable seeds. If one is arrogant one may be blind to one’s own errors and faults. If one places too much value on one’s own ideas one might not truly listen to another person. If one chatters too long or too loudly one may not hear the wisdom surrounding one. (One strives to be a hamster but this one often falls sadly short.)

The concepts leader/follower, teacher/student, boss/employee, commander/soldier, and parent/child relate to asymmetrical relationships. Such relationships may foster arrogance and unhealthy respect for authority. They may provide fertile grounds for dominance games. “Debate” may become an ego competition rather than a cooperative search for good seeds. This hamster feels asymmetric relationships are a poor model for exploration and discovery.

This hamster favors peer relationships. A bird leads the flock for a short time in one direction, then an interesting seed catches another bird’s attention and the flock follows a new “leader”. Any bird may find a new seed and capture the flock. If only one bird found new seeds and led the flock, the whole flock suffers including the “leader”.

(Back to the group mind examining itself…)

Mutual exploration leads to mutual discovery. Even when the facts are in one’s head they may mean little until explored by sharing. Each person brings unique experiences and perspectives. Thoughts converge in some areas and diverge in others. Mutual respect grows in either case.

“Do the most knowledgeable pull others towards them more?”

Attitude may be more important than knowledge or intelligence. Willingness to be wrong, acknowledgement that one doesn’t know or is unsure, openness to new ideas, respect for differing beliefs, kindness rather than cruelty, shared pleasure in discovery create a community mind that is more knowledgeable and intelligent than any individual.

Brilliance that excludes and condemns isolates itself and damages a community.

This hamster suspects individuals cluster. Shared beliefs or modes of thinking pull some together while pushing others away. Some individuals are left in isolation on one thread while strongly interacting on another.

Stryder’s contributions always make this hamster think. Yet this hamster seldom directly responds. Why? Usually this hamster only follows part way before diverging. The part this hamster follows has a good taste but the part this hamster doesn’t understand makes responding difficult. Such partial connections make the group dynamics even more complex.

And again this hamster chatters too long. Sigh.
 
Whatsherface,
I just was rereading the thread and I actually think I agree with you completely. My reply was against an interpretation that you were saying all thought was the same, but interpretations varied. You didn't say that though ... everything I wrote agreed with your comment.

Imahamster,
I was just picturing those schools of fish that swim with the flocking behavior (birds do it to of course), except there were a bunch of groups and sometimes fish jumped from one to another. Then groups talking in parties. Then the way people with similar views clump (I think this was an implicit part from the birds of a feather ...), until they get tired of what they hear and jump to another group for a fresh perspective. The people who bounce around searching. And all through this ideas are bouncing (between clumps in the parties, people switch parties, workmates, family members, classmates, dead people through books, living people through books, people on the internet ... ) and the ideas get more complex as each individual diffracts or absorbs evolves and re-emits differently based on experience and nature and that is thought. You can't sum it up in a single individual as I was mainly thinking (I guess I did a little, but not explicitly). Thank you for your words (you too whatsherface ... the interpretations part got me going too).
A link from another thread ( secular christian indoctrination of all things - http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/ethics.html ) mentioned cultural mutations and I had thought of education and history as information propagation before in analogy to the propagation of information in genetics before, but I remembered what Imahamster said about someone interpretting a comment in a different more intelligent way. I realized that thought actually has a mode of generating smart mutations due to reinterpretation (and it is probably due to harmonization with ideas someone has in their head with your comment [the one that gets interpretted more inteligently that is]). Genetic evolution can't really do this. The way an amino acid sequence is interpretted into it's functional form is pretty much fixed (though regrouping of genes in a protein complex is mildly analogous, but MUCH more constrained). If you add that in, the mere process of propagation acts as an intelligent filter adding necessary complications and simplifying unnecessary complexities. I wish I could see the dancing picture on the wall and not just a few pixels around me blinking -> though they are pretty interesting pixels for the most part ...

{aside: Computational biology is the best, seems any type of ordering principle you see anywhere appears in biology at some level. By the same token biology is so complicated it's hard to do relevant theory. I've been forced to descend into the dark side of experiment in search of reality.
Also, I'm thinking about how to discuss evolution, but it's one of those things where I can't decide the best place to start. So complicated if you start in the wrong place. So simple in essence.}
 
Bring on the memes.

What no memes? No thought critters of the id? Forgot to discuss the ecology of ideas competing, spreading, evolving in Darwinian fashion. What an oversight. Bring on the memes.

Hmmm…a quick search shows memes have been mentioned on SciForums but largely in the context of viruses. This hamster favors a more positive meme model. One more in tune with Scilosopher’s description of ideas improving with transmission through intelligent minds.

(Scilosopher you mentioned starting a thread on organizing principles operating on random events leading to a non-random macroscopic world…or something like that. Looked but never found your thread. Interested in how evolution is self-similar at multiple scales.

This hamster may understand the dilemma with an evolution thread. The topic is too big and the interesting stuff quickly becomes specialized and technical. This hamster was most interested in an organizing principle that would apply some structure on the gene discoveries that are announced daily. Tried to view it as a transformation from gene space to phenotype space mediated by environment. Quickly found this hamster doesn’t know enough.)
 
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