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

Daneel Visits Princeton

“Good grief. What the devil? Who are you?” Dr. Norman exclaimed as he opened the door to his office at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

A good looking, youthful man, a complete stranger, dressed in what appeared to be some sort of iridescent lab coveralls, jumped up and said, “Excuse me Director Norman, I thought I might as well sit until you arrived.” The young man stood and extended his hand. “I’m R. Daneel from the 25th century. I’m really sorry to barge in on you like this, but I’m afraid my colleagues at the Princeton Temporal Exploration Institute blundered badly and sent me back in time rather than forward. I appeared here about five this morning and thought I might as well wait here until you came in.”

To say Dr. Norman was surprised would be an extreme understatement. His first reaction was that some Princeton undergraduates were up to their usual spring mischief. Ignoring Daneel’s outstretched hand he said, “Look Mr. Daneel, or whatever your real name is, I’m not in the mood to be part of some elaborate undergraduate joke. I’m calling security!”

“No problem, Director Norman, I’ll go quietly, but it you kick me out you are throwing away a good chance of making a Nobel prize level contribution to cognitive neuroscience.”

Taken aback, Dr. Norman responded sarcastically , “Oh, really? Just what makes you say so, Mr. Daneel?”

“Allow me to demonstrate, Director Norman.”

Daneel then proceeded to slide a finger over the mechanisms that held his lab coveralls and closed his lab shirt. As they fell away a dull grey metallic chest was exposed.

Dr. Norman gasped. But Daneel wasn’t finished.

He placed a finger on the side of his neck and the two panels that covered his chest slide back, exposing an intricate set of electro-mechanical mechanisms.

After a moment of speechlessness, Dr. Norman managed to sputter, “My god, you’re a robot!”

“Quite right, Director Norman; a robot the likes of which won’t appear on Earth for another three hundred years. But what’s important is that except for controlling some bodily functions that I lack; my brain and mind are functionally identical to yours. What’s more, not only will I be a willing subject on any neuroscience experiments your Institute would like to perform; I can also help you build sensor technology that will enable you investigate how my brain operates to create my mind.”

Dr. Norman’s eyes glistened. if R. Daneel was really as intelligent as he appeared to be on first sight, and if indeed his artificial nervous system had the same functional capabilities as a human’s, then yes, earth-shattering neuroscience results might be possible!

“Alright Mr. Daneel, clearly you are not part of an undergraduate prank. … Mister Daneel, is that correct?”

‘No Director, it’s Doctor Daneel Olivaw. My PhDs are in Human and Robotic Psychology, Computer Engineering, Computer Software, Artificial Intelligence, and Temporal Science.”

Dr. Norman raised his eyebrows, “Really?”

“Too many degrees? My mental processing speed is about four times that of an excellent human PhD student. Also, my life span is only limited by my manufacturer’s ability to keep replacing parts that wear out. Most 25th century sentient robots have earned at least six PhDs. It’s a way for our sponsors to maximize our usefulness.”

Dr. Norman’s knees were starting to give way. He sat down in the chair Daneel had just vacated. “Alright Dr. Olivaw, assuming that your offer might possibly result in my Institute achieving some neuroscience break-throughs, what do you want in return?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I need to build a machine that can send me back to the 25th century. I’ll need your help and the resources of the Institute to do that.”

Dr. Norman took a deep breath, “Ah. I see. Not an unreasonable request given the circumstances. But will an investigation into your artificially created mentality really yield useful information on the relationship between a human brain and a human mind?”

“I think so, Director. At any one moment I am conscious of only a small part of my memory. I can consciously tune into how my brain is managing my bodily activities, and willfully direct these activities, but normally I’m not conscious of them. Like a human, I experience my mind as a multi-media production that I have only some control over.”

“Well, that sounds like you might make a useful subject. We will need to be able to monitor your brain’s activity and correlate that with what you can report or demonstrate about what’s in your mind. Can you help us build the instruments we’ll need to that purpose?”

Smiling condescendingly Daneel said, “Yes, of course. In fact, we should get started on this right away.”

As his scientific curiosity started to override other concerns, Dr. Norman started planning. “Alright, we’ve got a empty office and adjacent lab that I can assign to you right now. I know Professor Baldassano will be wanting to put his current project on hold to start working with you immediately. I’m sure some of our other researchers and graduate students will also want to be involved. I assume you won’t mind if we immediately start a clinical assessment of your psychology and mental abilities.”

***

The clinical assessment of Daneel’s psychology revealed that his creators had indeed constructed an artificial human, at least from a psychological perspective. His rational abilities were essentially that of a highly intelligent human, just four times faster, and unfailingly accurate. The scope and intensity of his emotions were much reduced, but after allowances were made for the radical difference between Daneel’s artificial “biology” and that of a human, there remained a remarkable similarity.

The construction of instruments that could detect various external aspects of the dynamic functioning of Daneel’s brain proved easier than Dr. Normas anticipated. At the functional level Daneel’s brain was organized much like a human’s. Like a human’s it was an intricate network of “neurons” and “synapses.” One difference was that his brain contained about 600 billion “neurons” interconnected at 600 trillion “synapses.”[1] The volume occupied by his brain was about twice that of a human’s and was located in his chest cavity where it was easily instrumented to detect phenomena within Daneel’s “brain.” With Daneel’s help the Institute team was able to get real-time data on both individual “neurons” and a cluster of as many as 1024 “neurons.’ During the last stages of the investigation the team could get data on as many as 16 “neuron” clusters. This was important since it turned out that Daneel’s brain, like human brains, was organized by layers into functionally differentiated modules. [2]

Investigation began as soon as the initial instrumentation was ready. All the reported experiments on the link between a human brain and a human mind were repeated. The experiment reported by J. D. Haynes that measured the time between the acquisition of the image of a letter on a retina and when that letter was recognized in the mind yielded similar results.[5] Daneel’s timing was just four times faster. A similar result held for all the other experiments.

As experiment after experiment on Daneel produced functionally the same result as they had on humans, the team at PNI became more and more excited. They were putting the final nail in coffin of Descartes’s view that the body and the mind were two separate entities.[4] Here was indisputable evidence that the mind was a feature of physical complexity and not something outside of the physical universe.

***

“Well, Daneel, I guess this is good-by.”

“Yes, Director Norman, when I close this door I will be instantly back in my own time in the 25th century. Three microseconds later this time-warp chamber will self-destruct into a lump of metal. We’ve had a great time together. You and your team now have soild data to support the proposition that a mind is created by a physical brain. With this knowledge you will be able to design research projects that will eventually result in a Nobel prize. Unfortunately, none of the result we have obtained here can be published!”

“Oh, no?! How so?”

“When I am gone there will be no way to replicate our experiments. Good-by Director.”

***

Poof!

Notes

Research on the creation of artificial minds is currently underway. [5]

[1] A human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-many-neurons-are-in-the-brain-2794889 , retrieved 05/12/2022; google: number synapses human brain?, 05/12/2022. Daneel’s chest cavity is about 6 times larger than a human cranium

[2] Gazzzaniga, Michael. (2018). The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[3] Hayes, J. D. (2011). Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(10; 9-24.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism. retrieved 3/29/2022.

[5] Gallagher, Brian. (March 23, 2022) Robots Show Us Who We Are. Nautilus, New York.

Author’s Posting Comments

  1. An entertaining illustration of the plausibility that a brain creates a mind.
  2. A companion to Is the Mind Identical to the Brain?

Frank’s Mornings

One of the gifts of retirement is that I am freed from the necessity of structuring my daily and weekly routines around a job. But a downside of postponing retirement until I was 80 is that the needs and rewards of health maintenance now take up substantial chunks of my time. These needs also require that I maintain more regular habits than I did during my working days. I lay down to sleep between 10 and 10:30 and rise between 6 and 6:30. My aged body no longer produces enough melatonin for a solid night’s sleep, so I supplement with two milliliters of liquid melatonin. As a result, I’m sometimes a bit groggy when I first get up, so the first event of my day is to boil a cup of milk for a double cappuccino.

I enjoy my cappuccino while taking two thyroid pills and using my two Pro iPads to scan the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Letters to America blog. I’m looking for comments that shed light on the fundamental physical, and social forces that are driving the social order of my country, and the First Worldwide Civilization,[1] toward a possibly imminent disastrous dark denouement. A half hour after finishing my cappuccino, I mix and drink my first dose of the daily medicine I need to keep my surgically shorted and disturbed bowels in normal order. A half hour after finishing my cappuccino, I mix and drink my first dose of the daily medicine I need to keep my surgically shorted and disturbed bowels in normal order. Half an hour later I’m ready for a breakfast of two easy-over eggs, a single piece of toast, and a dish of fresh berries and yogurt. Alternatively, I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal, banana, berries, and Ensure. My wife, Hwe, usually makes me breakfast. When I’m pressed for time, I make my own oatmeal dish.

My whole morning routine, which includes taking notes on my internet perusals and my reactions, usually consumes the first two or three hours of my day. My mind comes alive as the caffeine wakes up my groggy brain and the pieces I read stimulate questions and thoughts . Since I usually have no must-do-today tasks, I can give my brain free rein to run and romp with only minimal direction from my mind. But like the tourist who feels compelled to interrupt her pleasure in a new experience to take pictures, I often interrupt my hither-and-yon brain romp to capture in writing some of its restless explorations; like what you are reading just now.

[1] “First Worldwide Civilization:” my own designation. There are presently many disparate cultures in the First Worldwide Civilization, but we all see/hear the same daily news, watch the same movies, read the same books, wear the same clothes, travel in the same conveyances, use the same calendar, etc. Not an original concept, see The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Frank’s Incredible, Wonderful Universe

Twenty-four seven my nervous system[1] is constantly receiving input signals from what’s-out-there[2]. From these inputs my brain creates mental patterns of what’s-out-there, i.e., my subjective reality. I am fully aware that these patterns are only approximations of what’s-out-there. I am only human. All the input signals I have received in 82 years are only an infinitesimal part of what is actually out there. I realize that my mental models are only subject to change, incomplete approximations of objective physical reality[3]. Also, my mental models may be incorrect in important aspects. Yet, as I contemplate my mental patterns of objective physical reality, I often experience mind blowing wonderment.

After about 6 thousand years of careful observation, ever increasing reams of data, and ever critical analysis, humankind now understands that it lives in an incomprehensibly large universe of 100 billion galaxies[4] each composed of 100 billion stars. Our current understanding is that all of this came into existence 14 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion of proto-matter. This proto-matter condensed into all of the galaxies, stars, planets, moons, and dust we can detect today. The original explosion sent all of these 100 billion galaxies racing away from each other to create a universe that is presently a trillion trillion trillion kilometers (1027) in diameter. This universe contains about 1052 kilograms of matter. All of this matter is composed of only 100 different kinds of molecules. These molecules are in turn composed of only 3 fundamental particles.

In the midst of the vastness of the universe, large, complex, self-replicating molecules came into existence on a middle size planet orbiting around a middle size star in a middle size galaxy. These molecules had an incredible property: they could reproduce! That is, in a suitable environment they were able to spontaneously create copies of themselves. From there they assembled other molecules into entire living organisms that could reproduce. Still more wondrous, embedded in the molecular machinery that drives reproduction of organisms are other mechanisms that ensures that child organisms are not exact copies. So, over the 3 billion years of the existence of life on this planet, these random reproduction ‘flaws,’ (in concert with the necessity that to be successful every lifeform must survive and reproduce) has produced the 2 million species that now inhabit our planet. This intricate natural process of reproduction and environmental interaction eventually produced an animal with a brain that could be used to adapt the animal’s behavior for survival and reproduction in changing environments. So equipped, this animal, homo sapiens, has over the last 20 thousand years come to inhabit almost all of the planet’s terrestrial environments.

There’s more. From her first steps on our planet, to her first steps on the moon, homo sapiens’ big brain enabled her to consciously experience the awe, majesty, and mystery of the universe, and to express her feelings in religion, art, music, and storytelling. Her innate, irrepressible curiosity, and her fierce drive to understand, has led her to unravel the secrets of atoms, the molecules of life, the origin of the stars and planets, and the even the underlying dynamics of the entire universe. With each kernel of knowledge, her sense of the mystery and awesomeness of it all deepened.

So, here I am, one of her sons, awestruck by the wonder of it all. Now, satisfied with my life’s journey and work-free in my twilight years, it pleases me to focus a significant portion of my attention on understanding all that I can of both physical and social objective reality. Every atom of my body was forged in a star; every neuron of my brain a million-year-old inheritance. I am enormously grateful that for 82 years I have been able to consciously appreciate and participate in all that is. I am at ease at the approaching time when my consciousness will wink out, and all the dancing molecules that have enabled it will be released to participate in the universe’s continuing unfolding. Such is the life of all physical entities, from galaxies, to stars, to planets, to living cells.

[1] neuronic system: the body’s network of neurons plus the cells that respond to external signals by activating connected neurons

[2] Even when I am unconscious or asleep my neuronic system is receiving input from other parts of my body and responding with output signals that keep me alive.

[3] I think that there are two distinct parts to what’s-out-there, i.e, objective reality: physical reality and social reality,

[4[ All quantities are approximations for easy comprehension.

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.

Introduction

Greetings! Welcome to FrankAndFriends

The focus of this blog is the discussion of what was, what is, and where appropriate, what might be. In order to fully understand a presented idea, I will sometimes post strictly personal pieces, and make personal remarks in objective posts. Contributors and commentators are encouraged to do the same if they are so inclined.

I believe that the overriding issue of our time is the long-term continuation of our civilization. In the present era I see three possible long-term futures for humanity:

1. It will be entirely wiped out.

2. It will regress to a Neolithic existence on a decimated planet.

3. . It will continue to evolve, to survive and flourish, to continue its long-term upward arc in all its creative and humanistic endeavors.

In this blog, with useful posts and comments from others, I will attempt to discern and understand the forces that are driving us toward one of these futures, and to consider policies we might consider, and actions we might take, to move to a desirable future for humankind.

It is my experience that only via interpersonal discourse can I develop truth-approaching opinions, so any post I make is an invitation for comments. Similarly, for comments on comments.

Anyone visiting this blog may comment on a post or another comment. However, if I don’t judge your comment to be appropriate for productive and civil discourse, I may not publish it.

I’m an exceptionally poor clerk. I labor hard to make my posts grammatically and lexically correct. I appreciate any comments on where I have goofed.

If you would like to make a post for me or others to discuss, you can email me via the Contact tab on this site’s ribbon.

Lately (September, 2022) I’m started to use my Facebook page (A Frank Ackerman) for briefer, more elementary posts on some of the topics covered in this blog.

A Brief Personal Biography

I was born in Washington, D.C. in 1939, the year WWII began in earnest. My father was a US Labor Department economist. He was the middle of five sons of a German speaking, Lutheran pastor in rural Minnesota. My mother was the fifth child of an Oklahoma cotton broker and Alabama cotton farmer.

I do not have any significant memories from my early childhood. Early in 1946 my father took a job as a civilian consultant to the US Army occupation group in Vienna, Austria. In the fall of that year my mother, myself, and my two younger brothers boarded a US Army transport ship to join him in Vienna.

In Vienna I attended a US Army run elementary school. As a dependent of a civilian contractor I didn’t fit in very well with my classmates. Most of them were US Army scions. Our living quarters were all commandeered from ex-Nazis. We had little contact with the Austrian people. We lived in our own occupied-forces bubble. We traveled on US Army bus routes in the American Zone or in an imported US car, and bought all of our essentials at the PX with Army script. As a result I was imprinted with an enduring sense of patriotism that I still carry with me.

In  the spring of 1951 my family returned to the US. While my father did contract work, my mother, my bothers, and I lived with my maternal grandparents in a small agriculture supply town in southern Alabama. Here I was exposed to the rural southern culture of the 1950s.

In the summer of 1951 my father landed a new job with the US Labor department and we moved to a large house in a working class neighborhood on a trolley line in Washington, DC. The next year we moved to a duplex on a bus line on the edge of one of DC’s upscale neighborhoods, and I took a public bus to the area’s middle school. After middle school I went to one of DC’s upscale high schools. In the summer before high school I read Plato’s Socratic dialogues, joined the school Philosophical Society, and began to wake up to the world around me.

On graduating from high school I took advantage of a scholarship at the University of Chicago to become part of UofC’s College, where world-renowned professors taught seminars to small groups of undergraduates. After a short run as a physics major, I had a even shorter run as a philosophy major. In my junior year I got concerned about making a living with a BA and went to the school counseling service. They looked at my grades and said, “Hey, you do OK in math, there’s this new thing. It’s called a computer.” So I enrolled in UofC’s first computer classes, and ran my first program on a Univac I.

On graduating from the UofC in 1961 with a bachelor’s in math, I got my first job writing submarine warfare simulations at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Here I spent about two years developing a very large FORTRAN computer program that officers working for Chief of Naval Operations could use to study submarine warfare at an ocean-level scale. This was my first brush with using a computer to study the real world. The experience stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Programming computers, trying to make software engineering a profession, and teaching programming and software engineering to undergraduates completely occupied my mind from 1961 to when I retired at the age of 80 in 2019. When I retired, I thought my mind would still be occupied with computer science, but when I discovered that our retirement funds were likely to be sufficient for a comfortable old age, I was free to let my mind roam widely over all of the branches of human knowledge that might be germane to exploring the future of human civilization.

Who’s Writing?

Traditionally pundits do not include any personal details in their philosophical, scientific, or analytical writings. There are good reasons for this: doing so lets the reader focus on the intellectual content without being distracted by personal bias. On the other hand, as the philosopher William James pointed out, we tend to argue from subjective temperament rather than objective reasoning.[1]

It is my view that to truly understand anyone’s intellectual position it is helpful to have at least some personal knowledge about the presenter. Thus, this blog has personal as well as strictly intellectual pieces. If you are so inclined, I encourage contributors and commentators to do the same.

[1]  William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture 1 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 6-7: The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.… Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is not conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises.