In <35c077c6.0 at news.victoria.tc.ca> mentifex at scn.org (Mentifex) writes:
>>Stephen Wood <swood at papyrus.mhri.edu.au> on 30.jul.1998 from the
>http://www.mhri.edu.au Mental Health Reseach Institute writes:
>>Mentifex wrote:
>
- - - - - - (snip) - - - - - - - - - - - -
> The theory here appeals to logic. I do not know know which of
> your above cited varieties of neurons fits the bill for a long
> fiber holding a concept. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of
> a neuron to have a long axon with potentially up to 10K synapses.
>
- - - - - - - -(snip) - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>> For example, the main departure point for this theory of mind is
> the idea that logic dictates several things:
> 1. Sensory perception MUST feed into linear memory channels.
-----I don't know whether it is the logic or the language that's
-----lacking here. Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "linear
-----memory channels". What's linear, the channel or the memory??
-----What we know of sensory perception is that the channels are
-----divergent, parallel, and only slghtly redundant (i.e. the
-----channels carry different unique information based on the same
-----sensory input, en route to the hippocampus. Increasingly
-----"permanent" memory seems to be based on a return of this
-----information, in some form, to the regioon just traversed by these
-----inputs; whether to precisely the same fibers is not known yet.
-----Truth is stranger than fiction--sorry, I mean "logic".
> 2. There is obviously intermodal communication among the channels.
-------Not necesarily directly between channels. Would you accept "via
-------structures such as hippocampus and/or amygdala"?
> 3. Concepts MUST reside elsewhere than in the sensory channels.
-------Definition of "concept"? Not obvious why they MUST reside
-------elsewhere. Some current work suggests reactivation of the same
-------cells involved in original percepts.
> 4. THEREFORE, concepts must lie EITHER in the neurons linking
> the separate sensory memory channels, OR in neurons MEDIATING
> the linkage of sensory modalities. The second choice prevails.
-------Not clear what you mean by difference between neurons linking
-------them and neurons mediating tthe linkage. In either case, it is
-------a logical error to say the concepts "lie" or "reside" IN them.
- - - - - - - -(snip) - - - - - - - - - - -
>> People think across a whole range of modalities; we are concerned
> here with the generation of a COMMUNICABLE thought. If you are
> attending a lecture and formulating in your mind a question to ask,
> your auditory memory channel HEARS each surface-structure version
> of the sentence that you are generating in the form of a question.
> The auditory memory channel is your only SELF-PERCEIVING channel:
> whatever we think verbally, we also experience verbally -- in a
> creative loop of initial formulation and subsequent refinement.
>
------Well, here we have tthe root of the problem: as with centuries
-----of fruitless speculation before development of scientific inquiry,
-----you have elevated your INTROSPECTION (not even an honest naive
-----introspection, but one which the Introspectionists would have said
-----involved The Stimulus Error, influenced by whatever your readings
-----led you to expect) to the level of a Self Obvious Truth.
-----F. LeFever
>>> Dr. LeFever, sometimes History taps a man on the shoulder and he
>>> must choose to take advantage of that tide in the affairs of men
>>> which leads on to fortune. Please consider such options as wear-
>>> ing to your meetings a nametag or button: "Ask me about
Mentifex."
>>> Be either the great debunker of Mentifex or the great Dr. LeFever.
>>> Or be both! Or alternatively, give up on Mentifex and get on with
>> some serious research.