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Article 2069 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: From neurons to computation: how?
Message-ID: <60059@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 91 20:28:24 GMT
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In-reply-to: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)

In article <310@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>We may not have every detail nailed down, but every month brings us closer,
>and so far those working in neurology have found no significant barriers or
>discrepencies other then the sheer overwhelming *complexity* of a mammalian
>brain.

No significant barriers other than the "sheer overwhelming *complexity*"?

Do you realize what you wrote?  You sound like the doctor who said
"there's nothing wrong with this patient, except that he's dead".
Or how about the cub reporter for the gossip paper who is sent to
cover the big celebrity wedding, and comes back with no story, since
the groom didn't show up?

>So, until the neurologists find a problem with the model of mind as the
>emergent product of neural data processing, I will apply KISS and assume
>that this model is correct, or at least a useful aproximation.

**WHAT** MODEL OF MIND AS THE EMERGENT PRODUCT OF NEURAL DATA PROCESSING?

"Mind" is one of those things that neurobiologists get real edgy about.
A few have offered models (Eccles, Sperry, Edelman), but most settle for
the understanding of low level processing, like vision.

>|>      Of course it is impossible to prove that there isn't some
>|>other overlooked factor, such as a spirit or animus, from which
>|>the true consciousness arises.

>|Since it hasn't been proven that it arises from neurons, either, what
>|is your point?

>That by KISS (or Occam's Razor) one selects the simplest theory until proven
>wrong.  Right now that is that the human mind is an emergent property of
>the data processing operations of the brain.

Until one theory dominates and clearly explains giant chunks of how mind
works, there's no strength to appealing to any philosophical principles.
Experiment, not enthusiasm, not expectation, will decide.

>|I posted an article on an experimentally testable proposal of
>|Marshall that uses Froehlich's pumped phonon Bose-Einstein
>|condensation idea based on quantizing cellular dipole vibrations as
>|a basis for consciousness.

>Fine, and when someone does this experiment, *and* it shows a
>*psychologically* relevant effect as far as the human mind is
>concerned, I will keep to the simpler theory.

And how does computation show any special *psychologically* relevant
effect?  I don't see the point of applying KISS to go from one major
incomplete pretheory in order to conclude a different major incomplete
pretheory is the operant one.

Indeed, the whole idea of saddling neurobiology/psychology with the AI
theme song is totally anti-Occam.  

Consider immunology.  In many ways, it's a miniature version of the
problem of mind.  The immune system involves learning and pattern
recognition, and a knowledge of self.  Yet its subtleties keep the
researchers baffled and bewildered.  They've done enough flipflops
in theory to get a patent on perpetual motion.

>|>  Obviously, we have not the current
>|>technology to do this with humans yet, but we haven't found any data
>|>inconsistent with the neuron theory.  Have you?

>|So what do you think of nitric oxide signalling?  Pumped phonon Bose
>|Einstein condensation?  These are two fun questions that can keep
>|researchers busy for years.

>Actually, I seem to have missed the article where you described this.

I will post a longer description of the Froehlich-Marshall model later.
The references I gave were I N Marshall NEW IDEAS IN PSYCHOLOGY v7,n1,
pp7-83, 1989 and H Froehlich INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY,
v23,pp1589-95.

I haven't posted anything on nitric oxide signalling.  TRENDS IN NEURO-
SCIENCE has had a few summary articles, and just last week there was an
article in SCIENCE.

>So, enlighten me.  What relevance do these have to human psychology?

As much, more, or less than computers.

>What evidence is there that the brain makes use of Bose-Einstein
>condensation in its normal operation?

None.  There is evidence that it's rather common in biological systems.
Given this, it's presumably in the brain, a biological system.  Given,
this, what's it doing there?

It could be useful as a coordinating technique.  It could be useful as
a kind of amplifier.  Marshall claims (in unpublished work) that the
pumped phonon model can support holograms--a sometimes popular line of
thought concerning memory and consciousness.  (Note that laser light is
a kind of pumped boson model, so Marshall's claim is not in the least
bit unusual.)

>Just because there is a mathematical model of something does not make it
>relevant.  There must be observational evidence that the model applies.

Agreed.  Froehlich's model is more than mathematics.

>|>>>>>I must conclude that however our brain may achieve meaning,
>|>>>>>it is computable.

>|This is an incredibly big leap.  Computable in what sense?  Turing?
>|Edelman, for example, concludes at the end of THE REMEMBERED PRESENT
>|that his model is, in the final analysis, not Turing computable,
>|because the external world is too variable.

>|You can believe what you like.  But conclude?  Tell us how, please.

>And I mean computable in the sense that physical computers as we build them
>today could compute the same data transform as any given neuron (including
>the temporal variability we calling learning).

>I conclude it because all that I know about the operation of neurons (and
>that is considerable, since I am by background a biologist) is fully
>consistent with the theory that it is only the signalling properties
>of a neuron that are relevant to thought.

Really?  Then what is all that brain EEG going on for?  It is not noise.
EEG activity can be correlated with thought.  Correlating it with neurons
is not easy.

>					    That is the smallest relevant
>operation is the synaptic firing - involving *millions* of molecules,
>not the handful necessary for quantum effects to matter.

You seem to be misinformed about the word "quantum".  The Froehlich pumped
phonon model involves billions of molecular dipoles acting in a coherent
fashion, with the coherence taking place in the energy deltas--"phonons".
Think of a laser: the point is not that a few photons are lined up with
each other, but that uncounted zillions of them are.  This is a macro-
scopic quantum effect.  You cannot get it by classical methods.

>							   In fact there
>is even reason to doubt that the *individual* synaptic junction is of
>much significance, but that it is rather *clusters* of synapses, and clusters
>of firings that constitute the operational unit of the neuron, if so then
>variations in the response of a single synapse will not change anything unless
>it is correlated with matching differences in associated synapses.

Right.  This is the start, for example, of Edelman's Neuronal Group
Selection Hypothesis, which I haven't had the time or knowledge to
rant about yet, but I hope I've implied that I look favorably upon.

Meanwhile, Edelman concludes that computation does not follow from his
own model.  And the clustering effect is irrelevant to the nature of
the Marshall-Froehlich proposal.

>In order to challenge this conclusion you must show behaviorally or
>informationally relevant effects that are not derived from this type
>of operation.  As far as I know, no such effect has ever been found.

There are numerous such effects known, although they are usually not
described in this sense.  For example, human beings need sleep.  And
when awake, they need stimulus or else they go nuts.  These are baf-
fling and/or bewildering from a purely computational point of view.

Another: anesthesia is pretty selective about removing consciousness.
Patients can learn and remember what goes on in the operating room,
despite being completely unconsciousness.  Yet the anesthetics work
with no specificity as to which neuron membranes to impede.  This dis-
parity is a natural for Marshall's pretheory: the signaling involved
in learning can still continue at a slower rate, but the emergent
quantum phenomenon called consciousness has been blocked.

Your "in order to challenge" is incomplete, by the way.  I can also
challenge the computational mind paradigm from the other side: forty
years of coming up short is a dismal record for any research claim.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


