Philosophy of Science

[snas (Stuart)]

Warren

Mate, that's really cool that you can achieve even the level you do. You may note that I am rather anti-quackery like homeopaths, but meditation is definitely an effective "alternative" treatment and as such is therefore not "alternative". Since it works, it therefore becomes genuine/mainstream.

Stuart

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by snas

The really curious thing to me is instinct. How does a dog who has never seen a snake seem to instinctively know that snakes are dangerous and either to be avoided or attacked and killed? How can information like this be inherited?

Evolution by natural selection !
Those earlier forebears of dogs who did not possess the instinct for running from snakes, became extinct themselves .. didn't reproduce … end of that line of genetically inherited traits !

How the original forebears possessed the instinct to run in the first place, may have been:

(i) a result of them being bitten once but not dying. They learned from the experience, (which may be even more primitive than the run away instinct), and passed it onto their offspring by example, or;

(ii) the original run away instinct was a mutation in the original forebears' genes, (and so was purely genetic), and thus was onpassed to the offspring.
?
Cheers

[CraigS]

This may be grossly off topic but Stuart started the 'instinct' discussion (and he originated the thread), and its highly interesting .. so take a look at this ..
Study examines how brain corrects perceptual errors
An interesting article about how the brain recalibrates itself in milliseconds, in order to predict based on instinctive memory.

But the very last paragraphs are fascinating …

"Surprisingly, we found the perceptual task is not performed uniformly across subjects. Different people use different strategies to perform this task," Shams said. "Secondly, the vast majority of people, at least 75 percent, use a strategy that is considered seriously sub-optimal."
…
"If they infer there is a 70 percent chance that the sound and flash are coming from the same object, for the majority of observers, 70 percent of the time they go with that estimate and 30 percent of the time they go with the unlikely estimate," Shams said. "Under conventional measures of optimality, which implicitly assume static environments, this strategy is highly suboptimal.

and here is the punchline …

"However, the conventional way of thinking about these problems may not be correct after all. In a dynamic world, things may change constantly. The optimal strategy is to learn, and to learn you need to take some risks. Even if that's not the best choice at that time, in the long run, it may well be the best choice, because by exploring different possibilities, you may learn more. So paradoxically, a strategy that appears sub-optimal may actually be near-optimal. Perhaps the way we think about brain function should be revised."

Pretty basic research .. and they're still finding out paradoxes coming from a very primitive part of our brains.

Learning ability seems to override just about all of our higher and lower brain functions.

We are all learnin' machines !! 'Go with the flow .. bro ..!!.. '

Amazing stuff.

Cheers

[bojan]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Bojan .. I am not at all convinced of your assertion here.
For example, you just defined what consciousness is (for you) in order to explain why anaesthesia works ! Ie you define consciousness to be:

"the acquisition of data from outside world"

.. in order for your explanation to make sense, as to ‘why’ it works.

I must disagree
I defined consciousness (or memory part of it) from behavioural point of view. I don't need to know technical details of the process - this is for the further study. For high-level analysis (as a start), it is crude but I think id describes well what is happening (or not happening) when being unconscious.. From majority of texts I have read on the subject (and personal experience) , memory (short term) is the vital part of consciousness.. long term memory is less important but without it, you are dealing with very crippled entity (intellect).
All this I didn't pulled out of sleeve for the occasion... As you yourself said, it is fascinating (I hope I understood you correctly here) proposition, I was thinking about it for years, and this is what crystallised after years of (occasional of course) thinking about the subject.
I don't fool myself with hope that I will ever reach the bottom of it

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by bojan

I must disagree

That's OK .. I'm no expert on this .. which is why I'm running for cover on this one … I need more input … (ie: I need to read more on it before commenting further )

Originally Posted by bojan

I defined consciousness (or memory part of it) from behavioural point of view. I don't need to know technical details of the process - this is for the further study. For high-level analysis (as a start), it is crude but I think id describes well what is happening (or not happening) when being unconscious..

Yep. I see this … and it conflicts with something else deep inside me .. I don't know what, just yet.

Originally Posted by bojan

From majority of texts I have read on the subject (and personal experience) , memory (short term) is the vital part of consciousness.. long term memory is less important but without it, you are dealing with very crippled entity (intellect).

Absolutely fascinating, isn't it ?
The associations are so clear, (as you mention), but the cause is so elusive!
What a classic !

Originally Posted by bojan

All this I didn't pulled out of sleeve for the occasion... As you yourself said, it is fascinating (I hope I understood you correctly here) proposition, I was thinking about it for years, and this is what crystallised after years of (occasional of course) thinking about the subject.
I don't fool myself with hope that I will ever reach the bottom of it

Good onya. I have a feeling I'm on the same path !
Cheers & Rgds

[avandonk]

Without memory you may as well not exist as you are then an automaton. Bojan is quite correct.

My thinking of inherited and environment is that the two are mixed beyond separation. It is YOU uniquely!

I can see behavioral traits of my father and mother in me at about the same level as I can see human traits in my dog! I just happen to look abit like both of them.

We are learning machines as Craig put it as I get the information how to work my phone from my nephews and nieces or any other twelve year old!

Bert

[CraigS]

I have had it said to me:

"That the hardest thing of all for a human to see .. is that which resides as closely to oneself, as one's own face".

Think about it for a minute .. if reflections, photos, etc didn't exist, how would you know what you looked like ?

We rely on others to tell us about how we present in the real world.
(Meaning the way our behaviours & identity, impress upon others, who live outside of our own little bubble of personal identity).

We see ourselves through a bunch of filters, built up by past experiences, which obscure who we are, in the real world.

We basically don't know the difference between ourselves … and a hole in the ground !

Hilarious, isn't it ?


Cheers

[Karls48 (Karl)]

I went thru same experience that Bojan describes. One second on operating table and then complete blank until I woke up in recovery ward. To me – what we are is a sum of our past memories. If someone was able to clone me during my operation and transfer all of my past memories to my clone, if we woke up in different recovery rooms – from the moment we experience different reality we would become separate entities. Meaning that if at any time our experience of reality would differ, we could not be same entity. I find Bojans analogy of our identity and the computers very fitting. After all, possibly closest simulations of our entities – artificial intelligence may be some time in the future created by using computer.
Some people are musing in this tread about inherited abilities of the children – I would like to hear what do you think about notions of “racial or genetic memory”

[snas (Stuart)]

Karl

That's an interesting point regarding the anaesthesia experience. As a veterinarian I obviously anaesthetise and also euthanase animals on a regular basis. It never ceases to amaze me, even after 25 years, how they are "there one instant" and "gone" the next. At what point is this dog alive and then dead? How do you define dead. Clinical death is defined as when I can detect no heart beat, no breathing and no responses. And yet about a minute after that you will sometimes see what are called agonal breaths. Obviously there is still a stimulus from somewhere to cause this to happen. And what a fine line do we walk when we anaesthetise an animal? How much further (or how little) do we have to go to go from anaesthesia to death? I have described anaesthesia as making your patient almost dead and then bringing them back.

I had an anaesthetic myself several years back which was quite interesting. I was lying on the table talking to the anaesthetist and surgeon. The anaesthetist said he was about to inject propofol, the anaesthetic agent. As he slowly injected it, I seemed to rise up off the table, but all of the people around me stayed where they were. I started to giggle. He stopped injecting and I came back down to the table. He said "It's good stuff isn't it?" I said yeah. He then injected the last bit and.....I awoke in recovery thinking about where is that line between consciousness and unconsciousness.

For those who may be concerned about anaesthesia, the death rate under anaesthesia in a 20-40 year old person with no underlying health problem is 1 in 40 000. So if your anaesthetist says he/she has done 39 999 anaesthetics since their last death, then you should come back tomorrow.

Short term memories are, if the same event or the same bit of learning happens repeatedly, gradually changed in the amygdala into long term memories which I think are then stored in a different part of the brain.

Stuart