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From: David E. Weldon, Ph.D. <David.E.Weldon@DaytonOH.ATTGIS.COM>
Subject: Re: AI not subject to Heisenberg?
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Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 22:39:59 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:28591 comp.ai.alife:2871 comp.ai.philosophy:26349


@==========Gerard Malecki, 3/27/95==========
@
@In article <3kv2m4$qhj@newsbf02.news.aol.com> 
@mickwest@aol.com (Mickwest) writes:
@>kovsky@netcom.com (Bob Kovsky) wrote:
@>
@>
@>>	People also talk about "states of consciousness."  
@This seems 
@>>very strange to me.  Just try to get your consciousness into a 
@constant 
@>>condition.  It is very difficult.
@>
@>People use the term loosly there, but it is certainly not the same 
@at the
@>"measurable state of the brain" I was discussing. I suspect 
@"states of
@>conciousness" just means what you are thinking about (loosly) 
@at any point
@>in time. Which is why it is difficult to achieve a "constant 
@condition" as
@>minds naturaly wander. 
@
@Consciousness can indeed be considered as a state vector 
@changing with
@time. Ecah state corresponds to an unique (physical) qualia (the 
@virtual
@reality) as well as the emotional (or thinking) state. In normal 
@individuals,
@in the waking state, the physical part is rigidly governed by the 
@sense
@organs and the sensory cortex, thus the set of quales 
@experienced is a
@fairly accurate map of the physical world. In dreams and in 
@hallucinations,
@decoupling occurs that causes the quales no longer to reflect the 
@physical
@self. Another example is when neurosurgeons stimulate one 
@neuron of a
@patient, it causes the patient to sometimes relive a particular 
@childhood
@incident so true to life. 
@
@It is quite possible that the brain can be crudely modelled as a
@sequential machine, but with a continuum of states and whose 
@state
@transitions are given by Markov probabilities. Thus 
@consciousness can 
@possibly be mapped to a point in its state space moving along in 
@some
@random fashion. It is also possible that it creates a path behind, 
@much
@the same way a stream of water burrows the land. If stimulating a 
@particular neuron corresponds to resetting the state to some point
@where it had previously been, then the reliving of the past can be 
@explained in a relatively straightforward fashion.
@
@It is also quite possible that the transitions (or dx/dt) are  very
@sensitive to quantum mechanical effects, especially in the case of
@dreams.
@
@My 2 cents worth.
@
@Shankar Ramakrishnan
@shankar@vlibs.com
@
I thought I would add some interesting tidbits to this discussion which might
add to the notion that a mind trasitions through states:

It is well known that a major brain wave, called alpha, has about a 100 msec.
period for most people.
There is some interesting perceptual phenomena associated with 100 msec.
periodicity.
1.  Objects flashed on a screen within 100 msec. of each other appear to be
part of the same display.
2.  In apparent motion studies, (the basis of movies), two lights placed apart
are seen as one light moving back and forth if they are flashed slightly less
than 100 msec. apart.  Increase the flash interval beyond 100 msec. and they
are seen as two separate flashing lights.
3.  In studies of patients with certain types of visual cortex aphasia, the
patient no longer sees motion in portions of his/her visual field.  Instead
discrete images of the moving object are seen and the interval between the
images is roughly 100 msec.
There are literally hundreds of studies like these, but I won't bore you with
them.  I would argue that they imply that we process external information in
100 msec clumps.  That is, our brains have a set of input buffers that are
read by the visual cortex every 100 msec.  The visual cortex then unifies the
images during the next 100 msec. so we appear to see continuously.  IMHO, this
is consistent with states and transitions and the visual cortex must have
mechanisms to support them.

