Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.alife,comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!gw1.att.com!fnnews.fnal.gov!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news.mathworks.com!uhog.mit.edu!sgiblab!swrinde!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!network.ucsd.edu!equalizer!timbuk.cray.com!walter.cray.com!mwd
From: mwd@cray.com (Mark Dalton)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <1995Jan17.165214.13861@walter.cray.com>
Followup-To: comp.ai.alife,comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai,alt.consciousness
Lines: 82
Nntp-Posting-Host: pajarito.cray.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 021193BETA PL3-CRIb]
References: <3f23q4$oc4@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com> <1995Jan12.184559.2530@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> <3f5nuu$mks@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <1995Jan14.153326.20818@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se> <3fbdcb$44t@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <1995Jan15.225423.23577@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 95 16:52:14 CST
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:26574 comp.ai.alife:1828 comp.ai.philosophy:24741

Greg Stevens (stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu) wrote:
: In <3fbdcb$44t@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> prem@ix.netcom.com (Prem Sobel) writes:

: > [...]
: >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.

: >Love is another example. 
: And here I thought love was the overstimulation of the opiate receptors
: in the hypothalamus.  :-)
: >Love is
: >not a pattern of bits encoded in the neural network of the brain.
: References?  Proof?

I guess first you will need to define 'Love', the feeling that one 
physically feels - yes opiate receptors.  The emotional/mental position
towards another I think is more that just opiate receptors.  Also in
biology there is almost never anything that is one for one.
ie. if 'a' therefore 'b'.  It is a MUCH more complex system.  Affection
is more than the physical warmth, lightness, and joy one may feel it
is also a 'stance/enthusiasm' toward a person.

: >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?
Not as far as is known.  Can you force someone to Love someone, ie. not
just the physical stimulation and not lust.  It is a sense of a person
being 'in sync', perhaps one day it _may_ be posible.  (But then is that
love??)

: > The feeling of well being,
: >anger, humor, the joy in learning, and so much more is beyond the
: >states of bits encoded in the brain. 

: Once again, do you have proof for this assertion?  References?  There is
: a lot of research going into emotions and their underlying neurochemistry
: and neurophysioanatomy, you know.  Should we tell them all to give it up?

Again, I think he is right.  It is not a matter of turn this switch and
it is okay.  We are talking about a VERY complex system, there are multiple
factors (100's of posibilities) for just one response, each response has
a variety of levels (fuzzy logic, it is not 0 or 1, it is somewhere in 
between) is the type of concept.

	No not to give up, keep getting closer to understanding.  There is
a lot of research into finding the smallest posible unit (atom,quark, etc.).
Will they ever find the smallest - probably not - infact there is a posibility
that space is just a convention (not a claim, just a posible reality). (For
example matter is just a condensation of a wave form in a stable state.)

There is importance in understanding the neurophysioanatomy and neurochemistry
but just because it is ONE factor does not make it true.

opiates also inhibit nerve growth hormones releasing factors, releasing factor,
but  the opiates absense does not 'cause' the release of that the first
factor or the second.  And neither does the releasing factor for the NGF-RF
cause the release of NGF-RF it is ONLY one factor.  (There are feed backs
from multiple levels, and many other factors, for ref's you should be able
to look it up in most endocrinology books, I found the psych books to do a
lot of false logic, same with psych journals, this was in 1987-1988 when
I was a TA for Logic).

Good luck!

Mark
-----------
Mark Dalton       CH3-S-CH2 H                      H      O       H
Cray Research,Inc.      |   |                      |       \      |
Los Alamos,NM 87544     CH2-C-COO    //\ ---C--CH2-C-COO    C-CH2-C-COO
mwd@cray.com                |       |  ||   ||     |       //     |
                            NH3      \\/ \ / CH    NH3    O       NH3
                                          NH
URL = http://lenti.med.umn.edu/~mwd/mwd.html

