Mental Brains

Mental Brains

Mental Brains

Hemispherectomy” the operation where half the brain is removed sounds too radical to ever consider, much less perform.

In the last century, however, surgeons have performed it hundreds of times for disorders uncontrollable in any other way ….

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole/

 

In this post the dialogue is realised by an interaction of virtual characters, for more information please check the page “Virtual characters

Cho

OK, I’ve read your draft. 😊
Again: I’m not an expert in philosophy or psychology, so you’ve got to explain some things.

Today 11:34   

Cho

I mean, both to me here and now, and in the paper, so the readers can follow along

Today 11:34   

Julia

Sure, I’ll try my best.. ☺️

Today 11:32  

Cho

So, the “identity theory”: mental events are brain events                              

Today 11:36   

Julia

They argue it has to be the same brain process for each mental process.

So if I say that we both believe something, then we have to have the same brain processes …

Today 11:36  

Cho

… and that is nonsense of course 🙅🏻‍♀️                                                                 

Today 11:37

Cho

Not only do different people have different brains, an individual brain also changes during your lifetime                                                       

Today 11:37

Julia

That’s exactly the kind of information I needed!
Can you elaborate on that?.

Today 11:38   

Cho

Sure ! 

There are records of people with vastly different brains that still have mostly normal behavior and cognitive abilities                                                

Today 11:40  

Cho

Like the patients who have undergone hemispherectomy as children to cure certain forms of epilepsy.

Today 11:44   

Julia

I’m not a neurosurgeon, but I’ve had greek in highschool … 🤔 

“hemispherectomy” means something like “cutting away half the sphere”? 

Today 11:44   

 

Cho

Well done with the greek!👍🏻 That’s exactly what it means.                   

Today 11:44

Julia

But it can’t mean removing half the brain, right? 😰

Today 21:44   

Cho

Oh yes it does! We can remove half the brain, generally in very young children, which then develop relatively normally.                   

Today 11:45   

Julia

I can’t believe this! Half the brain! 🧠 😳

Today 11:46   

Cho

Yes, and “relatively normally” means that most impairments are mainly due to the illness, not the surgery itself.                                                                                           

Today 11:46   

Julia

We can remove half a brain … with no ill effects? 🤨

Today 11:47

Cho

Well, that does sound a bit too good to be true😊😊… but more or less, yes!

If the children are still young, the remaining hemisphere is adaptable enough to compensate for the missing half.

Today 11:48   

 

Julia

That’s … wow … that’s amazing!  ☺️🤗
And I see why that would be a problem for the theory ….

Today 11:47

Cho

Yes! they think and feel just like everyone else, but with a completely different brain structure.                                             

Today 11:48   

Julia

So we can’t point out one-to-one correspondences with such large neurodiversity. 

Today 11:47

Cho

That would be a problem indeed. Still, I saw there was another very similar position that could accommodate this …                                        

Today 11:48   

Julia

Could I first revise this part and then get back to you?

Today 11:47

Cho

Sure thing! ☺️                                                                                                 

Today 11:48   

… Continue to read the conversation between
Julia and Cho on Saturday 27th … 

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My Brain is Me

My Brain is Me

My Brain is Me

“There are two things about the human soul on which all the knowledge we can have of its nature depends: one of which is that it thinks, and the other is that, being united to the body, it can act on and be acted upon by it.”

Descartes to Elisabeth, 21 May 1643

https://philosophynow.org/issues/65/How_Are_The_Mind_And_Brain_Related

 

In this post the dialogue is realised by an interaction of virtual characters, for more information please check the page “Virtual characters

Julia

Dear Professor, I am writing an essay on the relation between body and mind.

Could I ask you some questions?

Today 11:32  

Cho

Sure, happy to help   😀😀                                                                           

Today 11:34   

Julia

Thank you! I want to discuss all the classical positions on the relation between brain and mind

Today 11:34   

Julia

I’d like some input from a real neuroscientist on this, because some of them sound …. really weird and implausible?

Today 11:35  

Cho

Ok, but I’m not really an expert in philosophy or psychology as such.             

Today 11:36   

Julia

Oh but it is specifically about what the brain can and cannot do that I have questions …

Today 11:36  

Cho

That actually is my area of expertise, so fire away!                       

Today 11:37

Julia

So I’ve reviewed the classical positions, like Cartesian Dualism, where mind and brain are separate and don’t interact …

Today 11:38   

Cho

… that _is_ weird and implausible …                                                

Today 11:40  

Julia

Right! But what I actually have the most trouble with is the identity theory: that the mind just is the brain, full stop.

Today 11:43   

Cho

On first sight that also is weird and implausible!                           

Today 11:44   

Julia

Yeah, so there are a couple of variations on this theory, but the gist seems simply that “we are our brains”

Today 11:44   

Cho

I’m sure it is more complicated than that … I can tell you straight away, I’ve lots of brains close up, but never a  thought …                                      

Today 11:44

Julia

Ooh, that’s a good one, can I quote you on that? 😍

Today 21:44   

Cho

It’s just the punchline from an old joke, but sure …😄                     

Today 11:45   

Julia

Right, but there are some variations on this theory and this is where things get confusing for me …

Today 11:46   

Julia

One says that all mental processes correlate one-on-one with physical processes in the brain, hence the mind is the brain

Today 11:46   

Cho

Literally?    🤔                                                                                             

Today 11:46   

Julia

Yes, they argue the mind isn’t caused by the brain, but coincides with the brain? Like lightning isn’t caused by an electrical discharge, but simply is an electrical discharge?

Today 11:47

Cho

OK, that actually sounds … intelligible. Send me your draft and I’ll check it out.                                          

Today 11:48   

Julia

Thank you! That’s very helpful! ☺️

Today 11:47

Cho

I’m actually curious what else they have to say about the  brain … 😮😮                                               

Today 11:48   

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Things that Think

Things that Think

Things that Think

What do we mean by “thinking”? What are the technical requirements on the machine? Does it need to process information in the same way that humans do? Massively parallel, biochemically, etc. like a human brain?

Can machines think?

Introduction

Historically, one of the fundamental questions in AI and Cognitive Science has been “Can Machines Think?”, at least since Alan Turing tried to find a way to answer it in “Computing Machinery And Intelligence” (Mind, Volume LIX, Issue 236, October 1950, Pages 433–460). Actually, there Turing tries to bypass the question by proposing his famous Imitation Game, aka “The Turing Test”, and then asking “Could a machine pass this test?”. Why does Turing do this? Well, he thinks that we cannot come up with workable definitions of “thinking” and “machine” (“The original question, ‘Can machines think!’ I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.”). Of course he then goes on to define precisely what kind of machine he means: digital computers (such as they were up to 1950).

Yet, het does not do so for “thinking”. Since then, trying to answer the original question has acquired the aura of a quite dubious affair, of a purely a speculative question that belongs to philosophy rather than to any exact science. And yet, a scientific approach to the question of what “thinking” actually is was born more or less at the same time we started developing the kind of devices that inspired Turing’s question in the first place: computing machinery. Both scientific psychology as well as universal computation are paradigms that originated and developed in the 19th century.

INSIGHTS

Can machines think?’ This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms ‘machine’ and ‘think’. Full article at

{

Pratchett “The Hogfather”

‘He just looks as though he’s thinking, right?’

‘Er … yes.’

‘But he’s not actually thinking?’

‘Er … no.’

‘So … he just gives the impression of thinking but really it’s just a show?’

‘Er … yes.’

‘Just like everyone else, then, really,’

Brain or machines?

In a very real sense, in one form or another, the question about the relation between “thinking” and whatever is being used to “think” (brain or machines) affects any and all scientific disciplines. Moreover, to even make sense of the question you would need nearly all arts and sciences.

Let’s start where Turing started: What do we mean by “machine”? What do we mean by “thinking”? What are the technical requirements on the machine? Does it need to process information in the same way that humans do? Massively parallel, biochemically, etc. like a human brain? Or by the same algorithm, but implemented differently? Does the machine need to resemble a human aesthetically to correctly express its thinking? Does it actually need to be some sort of robot or can the machine be a box on a desk? Does it need sensors to perceive the actual world or would a virtual world suffice? 

…. And so forth and so on ….

What do we mean by “machine”?

What do we mean by “thinking”?

What are the technical requirements on the machine?

Does it need to process information in the same way that humans do?

This involves far more than engineering and math, philosophy and programming: psychology, sociology, neurobiology, logic, etc. all can contribute to refining and addressing such questions. In other words, something like “Can Machines Think?” is necessarily an interdisciplinary question and the field of the Cognitive Sciences (plural, of course) has grown up at the intersection of philosophy, programming, psychology, etc. to try to tackle it in its original form.

There is no single answer: coming at it from different individual disciplines will yield different answers. A philosopher might say “No, but …”, while an expert in machines learning might say “Yes, if …”

It is only when we allow multiple very different disciplines to collaborate, to enter in a dialogue as equals, that we can hope to do justice to the complexity of the question. As Turing prefigured in 1950, the idea of a “thinking machine” is no longer foreign to us and we talk seriously about machines and algorithms possessing “Artificial Intelligence”.

The machines and their programming have evolved a great deal since Turing’s time, but the question is still puzzling us. Is all this intelligent information processing really the same as “thinking”? Psychology and philosophy, not to mention neuroscience, have also come a long way since then.

We are progressively figuring out the structures and rules underlying human thinking and implementing them into other things. Some of the most promising approaches go right back to

Turing himself: not to program a fully fledged human-level intelligence, but to make a learning machine capable of evolving intelligence and thought.

This blog will try to show some of the interdisciplinary conversations on cognition and computation as well as the historical and philosophical underpinnings of current debates. What idea or debate from the present or the past do you think should definitely be addressed here?

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