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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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Date: Thu, 19 Jan 95 06:08:23 GMT
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In <3fcp55$2if@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> prem@ix.netcom.com (Prem Sobel) writes:
>In <1995Jan15.225423.23577@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> 
>stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) writes: 
>>In <3fbdcb$44t@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> prem@ix.netcom.com (Prem Sobel) 

>>>All who have taken the time and care to learn about consciousness, to
>>>study it through the means appropriate to it have discovered, or 
>>>rather verified, that there are sources of knowing beyond the physical.
>>>
>>>Creativity itself is one example. 

>>Well, it's physical, just not experiential -- innate heuristic 
>>knowledge.

>Mozart's musical creativity is innate huh? 

Are you saying it is learned?  I would guess that when it comes to musical
talent, and other talents, tequnique is learned and ability is inborn,
though the two are often confused because of the presence of over-learned
people with no talent surpassing under-practiced people with great amounts
of talent.

>The ability to
>dream the future is innate (yup :) but not physically).

This leaps into a whole other bed of contraversy.  I do not disbelieve
such things, but I do not try to fit them into my personal theoretical
structure because I am woefully inexperienced in such matters and couldn't
make an informed conclusion.  It would be like a physicist trying to
predict economics.  

>>>Love is another example. 

>>And here I thought love was the overstimulation of the opiate receptors
>>in the hypothalamus.  :-)

>I see the smiley, but have to say anyway:  love!=sex.

And sex wasn't what I was describing either.  Heroin (an exogenous opiate)
addicts do not simply describe their feeling as one of orgasm, but describe
it as a feeling of togetherness, of not being alone.  One street nickname
for heroin is "Mother."  This is not sex.  The injection of opiate receptor
blockades has produces in subjects feelings of lonliness, anxiousness, and
isolation, "as if a close friend just passed away" (email me for refs on
these studies, if you like).  This is not sex, either.

>>>Love is not a determinism of automata theory. Is feeling how another 
>>>is feeling, through empathy, through identity, even through physical
>>>observation and reasoning by analogs of our own experience still
>>>comes to down to an inner state of feeling.

>>This can't be coded in the brain?  This can't be physically 
>>experiential?

>Your missing the point. Where/how do the bits become a feeling?
>No amount of bits in a computer will invoke the experience of
>feeling. Love is not a pattern of bits. As we all know the
>meaning behind a pattern of bits in a computer or any digital
>system is totally abritrary and assigned by the designer who could
>have made other choices (and likely did in another system or program).

Ah, the old symbol-grounding problem.  Many subjective experinces have
been shown to be correlated with neurological activity.  No, this
doesn't mean the subjective experience IS JUST the neurological activity --
when I see a box, I don't feel thousands of photoreceptors being stimulated,
I see a box -- however, we know from neurology that these correlations exist.
Not just with sensory processing, but with emotions.  I can make you feel
anxious by injecting nalaxone. I can make you sedated with morphine.  I
can relieve depression with any number of things.  If there weren't a
correlation between the physical and the experiential, how would drugs
do anything to our experience?

So what I am saying is that there can be an underlying physiological
correlate for "love" -- that is, it can be coded in the brain.  This does
not mean that when I feel "love" I feel neuropeptides pulsing. It
just means that underlying the feeling there is a correlated neurological
phenomenon.  This is really all neuropsychology is about.

As to whether ANYTHING with such an underlying physiological structure
would have the EXPERIENCE of love -- that is, change correlation to causation
and say that these brain activities CAUSE the experience, is another matter,
and is in hot debate in AI.  One stance I was proposing was that in fact
it is the physiological structure which necessarily gives rise to experience.
I think if you meditate on this, you will find that your PHYSIOLOGY
is intrinsically connected with HOW you experience the world.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

