Heidegger

27/11/2008. _Zgmet at yahoo.com_ (mailto:Zgmet@yahoo.com) writes:

Hi Jud,
Always nice to speak with you, especially when we have little disagreements..
Vive la difference!

Hi Georges, I feel the same about you mon ami Georges - vive la difference
say I too.

Georges:
However, here we have not a difference, but a simple misunderstanding, which
would make us talk at cross- purposes. So, let’s start by clearing it, so
that instead of ships passing in the night we may find ourselves on board of
the same one, having fun to argue over a good cognac about the deep seas we’ll
be sailing. You seem to be under the impression that -Bremermann used for
his calculations some mechanical linear-based computers. -… the Bremermann’s
limited calculations … are based upon old (and apparently already
outdated) linear computer science. Now, Bremermann made the same error as Podolsky
in the EPR viz. trying to explain too much, he hided the essentials behind the
explanations. Trying to be understood by laymen, he used computer allegory,
supposed graspable by all, which muddled everything. His essay does not
concern any computers, but the max amount of qbit markers which may be set per
second and gram of corpuscular matter, according to the Quantum Theory and SR’s
E=MC2. For the about 1 kg of human brain it gives 10e50 sets/retrievs per
second. As the max computational power of the brain arrives at 10e16 synapse
operations per second (see appendix), we should be thankful to Bremermann for
setting a limit higher by 34 orders. With the synaptic limit the brain would
need about 10e90 seconds to determine and to execute your monkey jump.
Bremermann lowers it to 10e60.

Jud:
I explain the neuro-physical events of the monkey-jump by supposing that the
brain works differently from a computer in that the
memory-recall-and-initiation of such physical coordinates involved in a monkey comprising of (say)

Monkey Business.

(1) Sensing the predator.
(2) Issuing an alarm call.
(3) Planning its escape route.
(4) Tensing the appropriate muscles.
(5) Launching itself into space etc.

Now from my observation of monkeys in the zoo, which having three young
boys, we visit on a fairly regular basis, it seems to me obvious that these
neuro-physiological operations are practised over and over again as part of their
play. The dominant male approaches a favourite perch and any female or
younger male quickly evacuates it leaps away and swings to another rest-branch. I
believe that such displacement strategies are so stereotypical, so
continuously repetitive day in and day out from infancy, that they become practically
automatic. I believe the brain organises such behaviour in integrated blocks,
or neurological *modules* which I may crudely describe as being self-contained
components (neuro-units) that are used in combination with other
action-components for speed of initiation, rather than the old fashioned clunking
memory-searches that take place on a computer disc for individual search and
transmission of *bits.*

Another Neuro-Physiological Metaphor.
Behold the cephalopods and the way that they epidermally change colour. It
involves the chromatophores which are used to create sharply contrasting
patterns on the body, often wide stripes or spots. This is best seen in
cuttlefish, who employ this technique more readily than other cephalopods. Reasons? The
first is for communication, both within species (intraspecific) as well as
with other species (interspecific). The second reason is for camouflage. The
ability of the cephalopods to change colour (background resemblance) is a
trait that has evolved over time due to a greater need to avoid predators and
become competitive in an environment shared with vertebrates. to break up the
outline of the animal to confuse predators. When faced with a predator,
cephalopods may show four of five body patterns within a few seconds; presumably to
startle or confuse it (Hanlon & Messenger 1996). According to the
information to be found in the link below the sepioteuthis chromatophore muscle fibres
expand and contract the chromatophore.
_http://ca-seafood.ucdavis.edu/squid/squidcol.htm_
 http://ca-seafood.ucdavis.edu/squid/squi…)
We are asked to think of the pigment cell in the chromatophore as a flexible
bag of colour. It can be stretched out to cover a large flat area or
retracted back to a small, retracted point. The cell is attached to 30 radial muscle
fibres at various points along the edge in a relative plane parallel to the
skin surface. These muscles are in turn controlled by a nerve fibre. When a
nerve impulse travels to the muscles, it causes the muscles to contract. The
muscles pull in different directions and expand the cell. Relaxing the muscles
causes the cells to return to a smaller and more compact shape, thus
reducing the area of the chromatophore, and making the pigmented area shrink.

Physiological Similarities.
The reason I mention the cephalopods is to call to your attention another
example in the animal world where changes take place incredibly rapidly, as you
will agree if you have seen the rapid undulations of merging colours that
flit over the whole of the outer skin-surfaces of these creatures. Although the
neurons are completely differing sorts of cells, and because when the
actions of the human brain are observed under a intra-operative magnetic resonance
imaging (MR) machine which scans three-dimensional images (encephalograms
etc) of the human brain a similar type of *moving cloud* of the active brain can
be observed.

Yes Georges, I admit that my layman’s evaluation of the behaviour of such
cells is crude and based upon the most flimsiest evidence , and is uninformed
by any experience in the field of neurology, but my intuitions (and I confess
they Are mainly based upon intuition) is that animal brains do not work like
computers and are not subject to the kind of synaptic time and speed limit
ations as envisaged by Bremermann.
Besides wishful thinking, the only simple and rational way out of this trap
is to admit some physical continuum, possibly the EM Field, cooperating with
brain’s neural network. Now, such field is known and used by encephalographic
and other devises of applied and fundamental neurology. It has nothing to do
with souls and spirits and it can support practically unlimited number of
actions per second.

Calling-Up and Acquiring.

Jud:
Assuming that we both agree in very broad terms that there is a different
pattern of the *calling up and acquisition* of *data blocks* (similar to the
dermal *colour gradient sheets* of the cephalopod) the going on in an active
primate brain, almost in the sense of (please forgive the metaphor) *plug and
play* peripherals of a computer, where large blocks of neuro-power are made
available very quickly, we then come to the question *How does the brain do it
- is there a need to posit another type of physical nature to the brain or
even a metaphysical one?
I believe that it is not necessary to conceive of some sort of parallel
system, which *cooperates* with the brain-meat - I think that the brain-meat
which it amazingly complex configurations of almost instantaneously responsive,
continuously coordinated, chemico-electro cellular structures and it is these
active meaty components and their interactions that the
*action-referral/monitoring* component of the brain experiences as an awareness that some people
call *mind.*

The Superfluity of Additional Ontological / Physiological Levels.

Thus, because the brain’s *call and fetch* modality is nothing like that
which Bremermann theorised, the number of active neurons/synapses for (say a
monkey) taking evasive action does not involve counting and multiplying the
estimated number of synapses by the average firing rate, his estimates are not
applicable or necessary, for … and this is my bottom line… that brain has
adapted itself to employ what computational power it has to its best
advantage, and in the same way that the brain devised reification as useful
communicational short cut for rapid linguistic response and action - so the circuitry
of the brain became modified over the millennia in order to use the material
in the quickest, most efficient way in line with staying alive to pass on
the genes of the species. When an eating animal eats it is the eating animal
that exists. There is no need to posit and additional ontological level called
*eating* that mysteriously engages with the eating human or for that matter
a complicated electro-magnetic *field* that is somehow linked to the
thinking meat. This was the icily realistic rock of meaty materialism upon which
the barque of Cartesianism mentalism foundered and why it lies wrecked and
rotting like a tiny Titanic at in the murky depths of human misapprehension..
How does the thinking and the eating, interface with the thinking, eating
continuous body of the thinking, human eater?

The answer which is embarrassingly simple and puts paid to thousands of
years of the wasting of human breath and brain-power is that – it doesn’t –
the meat does the whole job.

What do you think Georges?

Cheers,

Jud

Appendix. Brain’s computational power.
The total computational power of the brain is limited by several factors,
including the ability to propagate nerve impulses from one place in the brain
to another. Propagating a nerve impulse a distance of 1 millimetre requires
about 5 x 10-15 joules. Because the total energy dissipated by the brain is
about 10 watts, this means nerve impulses can collectively travel at most 2 x
10e15 millimetres per second. By estimating the distance between synapses we
can in turn estimate how many synapse operations per second the brain can do.
This estimate is only slightly smaller than one based on multiplying the
estimated number of synapses by the average firing rate, and two orders of
magnitude greater than one based on functional estimates of retinal computational
power. It seems reasonable to conclude that the human brain has a raw
computational power between 10e13 and 10e16 operations per second.

Sincerely,

Jud Evans.

Private Website: _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

*Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different
speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing.* William James.

Posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 7:00 am
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