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Bennett and Hacker: Village Idiots or Philosophers?

AlphaOmega2004 DRS_IS_AN_IDIOT at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 17 12:04:40 EST 2004


"Alex Green" <dralexgreen at yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:42c8441.0402170131.4e3f081c at posting.google.com...
> "AlphaOmega2004" <OmegaZero2003 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<2b87008a9fd70789cb534988f584011a at news.teranews.com>...
> > I think the conceptual error these guys make is that one cannot explain
the
> > psychological terminology by reference to neuropsychological concepts.
> >
> > These are *all* bona fide *ways* of conceptualizing a space that is
> > multi-dimensional in the broadest sense.  TO think one can divorce the
> > psychological from the neuropsychological is non sense.
> >
>
> Nicely put. The problem is literally one of dimensionality. It is
> possible to describe a square as a stack of lines or a cube as a stack
> of squares but these descriptions are only understood if squares and
> cubes are known.

Not only that - but we know that there are no real points. lines or planes
in Universe. Universe being at least 3/4 dimensional and any demonstrable,
erzatz point/line/plane can be shown to be such as it will be composed of
what we now have as matter (chaulk point or line on the chaulk board or
pencil on paper - all 3-D). Bucky Fuller set us straight on that. They are
merely figments of an imagination, platonic and remaining in the cave.


>This would be a trivial, obvious point if it were not
> for the fact that many neuroscientists and AI specialists are indeed
> claiming the equivalent of "I believe a square is an infinity of short
> lines".

You must have read Synergetics!

>
> The discovery of the connections within the brain and the nature of
> brain activity is essential for medical and neurophysiological
> progress. Unfortunately this data is being overhyped by some
> commentators. As an example, to declare that the experience of a pain
> in a leg is a particular succession of impulses at a particular place

I think the mistake is taking that to be the whole defintion as you are
pointing out; but I don;t think many actually believe that it is so
constrained and merely leave out all the other "AOTBE" processes.

>> is a mistake. An experience of pain in the leg is a zone of things
> within a geometrical manifold whereas an impulse in an axon is just a
> signal.  As people who are 'experience' we can imagine that impulses
> in axons may contribute to the content of experience but they cannot,
> by themselves, actually be that experience.
>
> As you said, "the conceptual error these guys make is that one cannot
> explain the psychological terminology by reference to
> neuropsychological concepts".

No totally anyway as reduction is a lossy process.

>  It is indeed possible to convert
> 'impulse' into 'experience'.  The transformation that is required is
> firstly to define the geometry of the manifold that we call

Baum call is the program we call experience; that such programs exploit the
compact nature of reality and are driven by DNA to come up with the
experience.

Bucky Fuller has a full development of mind/nature as
geometrically-described processes.

> experience, secondly to locate the physical field of things that
> creates the content of the manifold and lastly to determine how
> impulses modulate this field.
>
> Those commentators who 'jump the gun' and declare that experience is
> simply a set of signals and behaviours without specifying how those
> signals become the phenomenon of experience are doing science a great
> disservice.

Yes - that last step is the important one isn't it!?

>
> Best Wishes
>
> Alex Green





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