Category: Philosophy

Logic Versus Imagination

Logic (Wikipedia): the study of correct reasoning
Reason (Wikipedia): the capacity of consciously applying logic

Logic (Britannica): the study of correct reasoning, especially as it involves drawing inferences
Reason (Britannica): the faculty or process of drawing logical inferences

Great! Full circle in just two arcs!

But for us humans it could not be otherwise. The life-force drives us to stay alive. To stay alive, we must eat. To eat we must successfully interact with physical reality. Physical reality appears to have eternal, invariant properties and processes. In the micro-cosmos of our individual minds we can represent these invariants as logic, i.e., reliable rules for relating things so that we can successfully predict the future: the next instant, tomorrow, next month, etc. [1]

Logic and reason are sufficient to keep us alive, but not to evolve. In our minds we need to be able to spontaneously create entities that may, or may not, adhere to our current rules for reasoning. We need imagination.

Imagination (Wikipedia): the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses

Imagination (Britannica): the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality

Combining logic and imagination we can create social realities that are antithetical to physical reality. Applying logic in such realities can have disastrous results, e.g., Jamestown, 1978; the German Reich, early 1940s.

We presently have only one way to avoid such disasters. We can continuously check our logical/rational deductions against what we can surmise to be the case in objective reality. [3] This is not easy. After centuries of effort we do a fair job of matching logical/rational conclusions to physical reality. But our continuing failure to align our behavior to be in line with the imperatives of social reality is likely to result in our total demise.

Notes
[1] We also use logic to play games with propositions about imaginary entities, for example, affine geometry. [2]

[2] Exner, R.M. and Rosskopf, M. F. Logic in Elementary Mathematics, McGraw-Hill, 1959

[3] See Rational Versus Logical Argument (pending)

Who Are You?

The question: Who are you? Has a long and illustrious history that begins with the earliest philosophers.[1][2] But for now, I’d like you to just humor me and suppose that fundamentally, who you are is your consciousness, your mind. Further, suppose that your mind, a totally private and ephemeral entity, is created by your brain, a physical entity in objective reality. The chemistry and physics of your brain are now reasonably well understood by science.[3] Your brain operates according to the laws of physics, including quantum mechanics. In this respect it is no different than any other physical entity, like a sun or a river. However, your brain is more intricate and complex than any other entity in the known universe. Science understands a lot about your brain’s physical structure and its molecular level operation, but how it creates and interacts with your mind is still a mystery.

At the physical level your brain is unique, in the entire universe there is not another brain just like yours. [4] Furthermore, the memories stored in your brain are the result of your unique moment-by-moment experience from the time you took your first breath to the present moment.

Nature has arranged it so that your own mental images of ordinary things, for example, of a chair, is essentially the same in all human minds. So, you naturally think that most of the other mental constructs in your mind are the same as other people’s. You’re surprised when you discover they are not. You shouldn’t be. Think of how different your life experience has been from other people’s. The contents of your consciousness, and the way it is currently set-up to deal with objective reality is quite different from other people’s. “OK,” you say. “This is all obvious.”

Perhaps. But there is more. Since your nervous system is the control center that keeps your heart beating, and your lungs pumping, what your brain constructs as truth is not easily altered. The same goes for your feelings and behaviors. This is who you are. The fundamental processes of nature have so constructed you. You can change, you can willfully modify some of the concepts in your mind. But you won’t seriously do so unless you’re certain that doing so will enhance your life in some way. Why should you do otherwise?

Notes

[1] “… in ancient Greek philosophy, we could not find any systematic articulation of the concept of self. What we can find when we study the ancient Greek’s conception of the self are questions like … ‘What defines the fundamental identity of an individual?’”, Philo-Notes, Plato’s Concept of the Self, https://philonotes.com/2022/05/platos-concept-of-the-self  retrieved 07/30/22.

[2] “Aristotle’s concept of the self is more complicated [than Plato’s] … Aristotle’s narrative of the soul … guides us in understanding his concept of the self, that is, the human person is a ‘rational animal’”, Philo-Notes, Aristotle’s Concept of the Self, https://philonotes.com/2022/05/aristotles-concept-of-the-self ,retrieved 7/30/22.

[3] Nature Reviews Physics, The physics of brain network structure, function and control,  https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-019-0040-8 ,retrieved 7/30/22.

[4] There is no direct evidence for this assertion. Considering that the human brain houses 100 trillion connection points (synapses, estimated from physical counts by neuroscientists) that themselves are molecularly complex and constantly changing as your moment-to-moment changes, the probability of this assertion being false is humongously small.

Is the Mind Identical to the Brain?

Note: Dumb title. This was an essay assignment for the Mira Costa College class: Introduction to Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality (PHIL 101) delivered by Professor Alex Savone, Spring 2022

Introduction

In this essay ‘brain’ is used to refer to an instance of the physical entity whose outer edges are the sensing cells in our eyes, ears, noses, skin, and some organs, and the axon terminals that connect nerve cells to organs throughout a human body. These outer edge cells connect to the dendrites of roughly 100 billion neurons across roughly 100 trillion synapses.[1] Neurons resemble deciduous trees in winter. At one end are branches and twigs of dendrites that emanate from a central cell body. Leaving the body is a trunk-like structure, the axon, which terminates in a root-like structure. The tips of these ‘roots’, axon terminals, connect to dendrites in other cells via a tiny gap, a synapse. The outer sensory cells convert various physical phenomena that impinge on them into electron flows into an axon terminal. This flow triggers a flow of ions across a synapse to a dendrite of an adjacent neuron. Dendrites generate a flow of electrons into the cell body of these dendrites. Some of these flows are additive, some are subtractive. The cell body integrates these flows, and at some level sends a flow of electrons down the cell’s axon, which causes ions to flow across multiple synapses, and on to the next neurons, etc.[2] The speed of these electron/ion signals through a nervous system varies with the type of cell from 0.5 to 120 meters per second. [3] The billions of neurons in a brain interconnect in an intricate three-dimensional organic snarl. Each neuron connects to as many as 15,000 other neurons. [4] [5]

‘Mind’ is used in this essay to refer to all the sensations, feelings, thoughts, and intuitions that make up every person’s consciousness. Minds are not entities in objective reality. Minds are totally subjective entities. The only information anyone can have of another person’s mind is via body language and verbal and symbolic messages from that person. It is the great degree of similarity across individuals and cultures in these messages that allows us to conceptualize mind as an entity that can be examined and discussed.

Argument: Mind Is a Feature of Brain

Given the definitions above, the question that this essay assignment is suppose to address (Is the mind identical to the brain?) has an easy answer. Obviously, a physical entity is not identical to a non-physical entity. However, brains and minds are inextricably linked. This essay will argue that a mind is a feature of the way a human brain functions.

The only indication we have of the existence of a mind is communication from an individual person about what’s happening in her/his mind. But neuroscience now knows that such communication is associated with observable electro-chemical activity in that person’s brain. Investigating the connection between a brain and a mind is difficult. Early scientific evidence of this connection was demonstrated between 1928 and 1940 by the American-Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in a series of experiments on over 400 living human brains. The subjects were patients undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy. In such surgery the patient’s brain is exposed while the patient is conscious. Unknown to his subject, Penfield electrically stimulated regions of their brain and had the subjects report on what they experienced. The results were startling:

When stimulating the occipital lobe one patient reported “a star came down towards my nose”. Upon stimulating a region near the central sulcus, another patient commented “those fingers and my thumb gave a jump”. After temporal lobe stimulation, another patient claimed, “I heard the music again; it is like the radio”. She was later able to recall the tune she heard and was absolutely convinced that there must have been a radio in the operating theatre.

Electrically stimulating exposed brains during surgery to get a subject to report the associated effect in their mind obviously has limitations as a research tool. In the 1980s advances in molecular physics and electronics paved the way for the development of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machines that could detect increased electro-chemical activity in small regions of the brain. [6]

Not only have cognitive neuroscientists established a link between a brain and a mind, they have also now established that sometimes what appears in consciousness first appears in the brain. In Free Will, Sam Harris cites several experiments that demonstrate a firm link between brain activity as observed via activity-detecting instruments, and what a subject reported as a result:[7]

  • The physiologist Benjamin Libet used EEG [8]“to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move”[9]
  • Another lab extended Libet’s work using fMRI. “Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.” [10]
  • “More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.” [11]

A recent New Yorker article reported that cognitive psychologists armed with an fMRI machine can:

  • tell whether a person is having a depressing thought,
  • see which concepts a student has mastered by comparing her brain patterns with those of her teacher,
  • edit together crude reconstructions of movie clips of what you’ve watched, and
  • describe the dreams of sleeping subjects. [12]

Our new-found ability to construct machines (computers) that are capable of far more than ultra-fast logic and arithmetic can now provide some insight into how brains and minds might be related. Functioning computers have two major ‘parts:’ a physical part and a non-physical part. The physical part (hardware) provides a home for the non-physical part (software). An analogy with brain-mind is obvious.  A brain’s physical part, as described above, consists of an incredibly vast and intricate network of sensor cells and neurons that house an ever-active flow of electrons and ions. A brain’s non-physical part consists of the all the memories [13] that are stored in this flow of energy. Somehow each individual person has conscious experiences of the meaning of these flows as sensations, feeling, thoughts, and images in their mind.

At present, technology is not able to construct an analogue of mind. But to imagine how such an analogue might work, we must understand that a single computer can run many programs simultaneously. With that said, imagine that some of these programs (a brain-mind-interface) operate a visual screen while another set of these programs watches this screen (a protomind), and reacts to what it sees. What’s displayed on this screen can change in a few milliseconds. The protomind can react to these changes, also in a few milliseconds, by sending signals back to the brain-mind-interface, which can then make changes not only to the screen, but can also send signals to a robot (a physical body) to cause it to respond to what the protomind has seen on the screen. The brain-mind-interface and protomind are only loosely coupled. The brain-mind-interface automatically selects and displays only a small part of the constantly changing information in the rest of the brain The protomind reacts to what is displayed on the screen, but its reactions almost immediately affect what the brain-mind-interface displays. In this model of how a brain and a mind are linked, a mind is a feature of the way a human brain functions.

Mind is thus a feature of the evolution of life on this planet that has crammed more neurons per kilogram of body mass into the human skull than most other animals. It is also the case that some human neurons are distinctly different from other animals. There is speculation that this difference might have allowed the human brain to divert energy to other neural processes [like the creation of mind – ed.]. [14]

My imaginary model of how a human brain and human consciousness might be coupled leaves out a lot. It deals only with visual material. It ignores other features of mind such as thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc. None-the-less, it provides a model for some of the examples about the coupling between a brain and a mind described above. Also, an observant person will notice that she does not have much control over her conscious experience. For example, the first thing I do every morning is have a mug of coffee, or a cup of tea. As I walk downstairs, which of these I will have that day occurs to me without any conscious effort on my part. “Did I consciously choose coffee over tea?” No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence.” (Harris, S. 2012) [15]

Epilogue

Humankind now has comprehensive and coherent models for the entire universe in which it is embedded. The creation and continuing elaboration of these models is one of humankind’s more magnificent and significant achievements to date. Our understanding of our universe extends out 1026 meters to the edges of the expanding bubble of matter and energy that engulfs us, and down 10-35 meters to the murky, ever changing, ephemeral quantum interiors of the amazingly few elementary pieces of matter that are the building blocks of all that is. [16]

But there’s a gaping hole in our understanding of physical reality. How does the most intricate, subtle mechanism known to humankind, the brain, enable human consciousness? It is from consciousness that everything in our social universe has sprung; everything – all of our theology, philosophy, science, literature, music, art, comedy, etc. By what mechanisms does our human social universe emerged from our physical brain? And since everything in our social universe first appears in a mind, what can we do to ensure that we create a social universe that maximizes human potential for curiosity, creativity, empathy, etc. This is the final frontier!

Notes

[1] “The human brain alone contains around one hundred billion neurons and one hundred trillion synapses; it consists of thousands of distinguishable substructures, connected to each other in synaptic networks whose intricacies we have only begun to be unraveled.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience , retrieved 6/7/22

[2] https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/brain/brain-physiology/how-do-neurons-work How do neurons work?, retrieved 03/01/2022

[3] https://www.americorpshealth.biz/physiology/conduction-speed-of-nerve-fibers.html Conduction speed of nerve fibers, retrieved 03/01/2022

[4] In order to visualize how our brains are ‘wired’ we need to have some notion of the number of synapses (i.e., points of connection with other neurons) per neuron. However, in reality there are several types of neurons in the human brain and the average number of synapses per neuron varies widely. An average of 15,000 synapses per  neuron is cited in Total Number of Synapses in the Human Neocortex, UJMN: One+Two, Article 26, Fall 2010 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4812&context=ujmm retrieved 03/12/2022.

[5] [1]See https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=Awr9.1Z27itiKc4pWqA2nIlQ;_ylu=c2VjA3NlYXJjaARzbGsDYnV0dG9u;_ylc=X1MDMTM1MTE5NTcwMgRfcgMyBGFjdG4DY2xrBGNzcmNwdmlkA2RNNWxpREV3TGpKekJrbUxXcGRtX2dwUk5qa3VNUUFBQUFEWFo2dzMEZnIDeWhzLXRycC0wMDEEZnIyA3NhLWdwBGdwcmlkA2ZHZkxMeEw1UTRldjhXeFNvRzIuRUEEbl9zdWdnAzEEb3JpZ2luA2ltYWdlcy5zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tBHBvcwMwBHBxc3RyAwRwcXN0cmwDBHFzdHJsAzMxBHF1ZXJ5A21pY3Jvc2NvcGljJTIwdmlldyUyMG9mJTIwYnJhaW4EdF9zdG1wAzE2NDcwNDY3MTA-?p=microscopic+view+of+brain&fr=yhs-trp-001&fr2=sb-top-images.search&ei=UTF-8&x=wrt&type=Y149_F163_202167_052721&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp#id=1&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F54%2Fb8%2Fc8%2F54b8c88fb4dfb25ac84418a88964b34c.png&action=click retrieved 03/12/2021, to get some idea of the complexity of the neural network in your brain. This picture in centered on a single neuron. Recall that your brain contains billions of neurons, each connected in the same way that you see here to other neurons.

[6] For those of us not versed in the recent advances in molecular detection technology, fMRI seems to border on the magical. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging , retrieved 03/07/2022):

Certain atomic nuclei are able to absorb radio frequency energy when placed in an external magnetic field; the resultant evolving spin polarization can induce a RF signal in a radio frequency coil and thereby be detected. In clinical and research MRI, hydrogen atoms are most often used to generate a macroscopic polarization that is detected by antennae close to the subject being examined. Hydrogen atoms are naturally abundant in humans and other biological organisms, particularly in water and fat. For this reason, most MRI scans essentially map the location of water and fat in the body. Pulses of radio waves excite the nuclear spin energy transition, and magnetic field gradients localize the polarization in space. By varying the parameters of the pulse sequence, different contrasts may be generated between tissues based on the relaxation properties of the hydrogen atoms therein.

[7] Harris, S. (2012). Free Will, Simon & Schuster.

[8] EEG Machine: An EEG machine is a device that records the electrical activity of the brain. It contains electrodes that can detect brain activity when placed on a subject’s scalp. The electrodes record the brain wave patterns and the EEG machine sends the data to a computer. https://www.emotiv.com/glossary/eeg-machine/ retrieved 03/07/2022.

[9] Libet, B, Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential): The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 106(3), 623-642.

[10] Haynes, J.D. (201). Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(1); 9-24. 7 to 10 seconds? Does not appear to be consistent with the 300 and 700 millisecond intervals reported elsewhere

[11] Haggard, P. (20110. Decision time for free will. Neuron, 69:404-406.

[12] Somers, J. (2021, Dec. 6). Head Space. The New Yorker, 30-35.

[13] ‘memories’ is being used generically – knowing how to tie your shoe involves having a memory of the steps involved.

[14] https://news.mit.edu/2021/neurons-humans-mammals-1110 , retrieved 03/07/2022

[15] Your first-thing-in-the-morning experience may be different. You may consciously access personal factors that you use to choose your morning beverage (or not). But stay tuned. Watch. How many of the questions, thoughts, images, feelings, etc. that you become aware of as your day unfolds did you willfully call into your consciousness?

[16] Scharf, C. (2017). The Zoomable Universe, Scientific American

What’s “real”?

Most people say that thoughts and dreams are not “real,” but only what they can see and touch is “real.” I maintain that this a false dichotomy. What we usually think of as “real” is no more so than the pattern of bits that a driverless car uses to navigate a busy street. All the data we have about “what’s-out-there” begins as electrochemical signals from our sense organs. These signals are received by our brains. Our brains use these signals to construct and refine our biological analog of the pattern of bits in a driverless car. This seems self-evident to me. The only alternative I can think of involves an appeal to supernatural concepts. While I don’t find such appeals inherently wrong, they move the consideration of “what’s-out-there” beyond what can be objectively discussed, and I don’t find such considerations useful.

A word about “what’s-out-there:” It can be hypothesized that there is nothing “out-there,” that all of us are just dreaming. I can not take this seriously. It seems to me that we cannot all be having the same dream. There really is something “out-there” that is creating signals that our brains organize into images and concepts. But I do think that our images and concepts are just that: useful models of “what’s-out-there”.

Human beings have multiple sense organs that send signals to an incredibly complex data processing mechanism in their skulls – the human brain.  Our brains accept these signals as data. With this data, a human brain constructs its own patterns of how each chunk of data it receives fits into a multi-dimensional model. In most human cultures this purely mental and totally personal model is taken to be “reality.” It might as well be – for these mental models constitute the internal universe of each individual human being. For each of us this internal universe is all we know, it is our own unique universe.

If each of us constructs our own individual model of reality, how does it happen that much of one person’s constructed reality is very similar to that of every other human being? There are several reasons for this. reasons for this.

The first is that we all have pretty much the same neurological “machinery”, Also, we are all exposed to similar input stimuli. Hence it is to be expected that we would all construct similar models.

The second reason is that a primary biological imperative is that we continue to stay alive, to survive. To survive our mental models of “what’s-out-there” must be reasonably well aligned with “what’s-out-there.” Since we all live on the same planet, and can survive only in a narrow range of physical factors, we tend to all have similar models of “what’s-out-there.”.

The third reason is that in general, our survival depends on establishing mutually supportive relationships with other human beings. This factor works in conjunction with our brain’s aversion to contradiction, so given our need to be in relationship with other human beings, we tend to adjust our mental models to be in agreement with other humans.

Why then are there significant variations in the mental models even between individuals in small groups? Again, there are several reasons why this is so:

The first is that our brains are the most complex information processing mechanisms on the planet. Furthermore, they are inherently stochastic. That is, even if two humans receive exactly the same input signals, their processing mechanisms have built-in randomness so that there is usually some variation in the way identical input signals get integrated into an individual’s model of what’s-out-there.

The second reason is that a great many real-world factors operate in such a way that no two human brains are structurally exactly the same. Our long term survival on this ever-changing planet depends on this. Without this random variation in the physical/mental makeup of every human being, we would not have infiltrated into almost every environmental niche on this planet.

The third reason is that most of our important models are associated with strong, idiosyncratic emotions, which are also generated by processes within our brains. These emotions not only act as filters on what input signals get processed by our brains, but in how the data from these signals get integrated into our existing models.

Am I completely crazy? Only a crazy person thinks that our everyday reality is not “real.” I’m not saying it is not. I’m just saying that all of our perceptions and actions are mediated by our nervous systems and brains. In our brains we construct models of what’s-out-there, and by and large, it is these models that determine our perceptions, thoughts, actions, and emotions.

I consider all of what’s-out-there to be a collection of entities. In my ontology there are just three types of entities:

1. Many of the entities out-there exist independently of any action by any human being. Our sun is an example. I refer to the entire collection of such entities as objective physical realty.

2. Other entities exist only because a human, or group of humans created them. An economy is an example. I refer to the entire collection of such entities as objective social reality.

3. All other entities are amalgamations of human actions and physical entities. A statue is an example. For my purposes I consider the result of human action to be a social entity associated with an physical entity. The shape of a statue is a social entity attribute. The physical statue is an objective physical entity.

In our minds we each create our own subjective models of just a few of the physical or social entities that are out-there. The subjective physical models we share with others are for the most part identical. Virtually everyone who can see says that the sky is often blue. On the other hand, our subjective models of objective social reality are much more varied. Objective social reality is just the amalgamation of individual subjective realities. Evolution has ensured that there is a wide variation in subjective social realities. The result is that for each of us, our mental model of ‘country’ has more individual differences that our mental model of ‘moon.’

It is also the case that unlike the robots we currently construct, our brains send signals to our biological bodies that we experience as feelings. From an operational point-of-view, our feelings generally take precedence over our thoughts, especially in the short term. We can experience feelings in relationship to our interactions with objective physical reality, for example, a flash of anger when we are carelessly burned by a hot stove. There is such a strong correspondence between what’s-out-there and our models, that we typically do not experience any but a momentary emotion in relation to a physical reality event, like getting a careless burn from a hot stove.

But it is another story with our models of objective social reality. These models are largely constructed not from sensory input from what’s out there, but from our interactions with other human beings, and from the activity of our individual brains. Since these models are not closely tied to the signals we receive from what’s-out-there, they are much more variable; especially among different groups of people. And they are usually heavily intertwined with emotion.

In much of our ordinary living, it does not matter that most of us are under the delusion that our mental models are actually what’s-out-there. Where this delusion does make a difference, though, is in how we relate to other human beings that have different models of what’s-out-there. Especially since most of our subjective social models are closely associated with strong emotions.

In the course of eleven thousand years of civilization we have discovered and developed sophisticated methods for creating mental models of objective physical reality. Even if we don’t always agree with someone else’s model, we at least have strong methods for investigating its correspondence with what’s-out-there. Not so with our social models. For eleven thousand years we resolved critical differences between social models by violence. Only recently have we begun to use discussion, persuasion, and voting to resolve critical differences. But the use of violence still lurks in the background. [1]

Human civilization now stands at a critical inflection point. There is a good chance that sometime in the next one hundred and fifty years the few humans that remain on earth will at best have a Neolithic existence. Some think we can avoid such a future (or other dystopian vision) by further advancing our understanding and control of objective reality. I strongly doubt this. In fact, it may well be too late to avoid a dystopia future, but crucial to avoiding such a future,  will be increasing our ability to understand and tolerate each other’s subjective realities.

We can go a ways toward achieving such understanding, or at least a semblance of peace, if we really “get” that all the models in our heads are not real, that from a strictly personal and emotional viewpoint, my model of reality is no better or worse than anyone else’s. It is my hope that in some of the posts and comments we share in this blog, we can constantly strive to understand each other’s subjective reality. But this is not enough. To avoid the increasingly slippery slide into global dystopia we need to find the places where our model agree, and where they don’t, to figure out ways we can still live together with each other in relative peace.

Notes:

[1] It is also true that in the past subjection of the populous by overlords often kept ethic, religious, and ideology differences submerged. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/25/yascha-mounk-why-pluralism-is-so-hard-for-democracy/, retrieved 04/25/22, “Why pluralism is so hard for democracies” and The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk.