Fred56 Posted December 8, 2007 Share Posted December 8, 2007 Is there an experience available to us or any sentient kind of life which we can't conceive of with our thinking? Is there, in other words, an experience which "surpasseth all understanding"? What do EEG waves represent, or signify, since they are obviously evidence that there are patterns of activity, waves of electrical activity and signal processing. How much of this is our actual "conscious" awareness, and how much is our "unconscious" self (the one we are when we sleep). Can we 'hear' our own brains 'singing' to us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quartile Posted December 8, 2007 Share Posted December 8, 2007 Perhaps a real understanding of infinity would lack definition in our thoughts simply by virtue of definition implying finiteness. Regarding EEG waves and their nature as well as your last question... what if you rigged up an EEG wave machine to produce sound waves according to the EEG wave and let people try to think up some music? Then we really could hear our brains singing to us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred56 Posted December 9, 2007 Author Share Posted December 9, 2007 The problem with the traditional brain = mind = computer is that it should mean that when a computer gets up to the processing ability of a human it should become conscious. I very much doubt that it would, AI proponents frequently make that claim, but there is absolutely no evidence that machines can be conscious in any way, or could be in the future. The problem with this is that the people who make these claims (that the brain is nothing more than a computer) assume that the neurons in the brain, and their connections, the synapses, work as fundamental units. So for example we have roughly ten billion neurons, with about a thousand or ten thousand connections to other neurons, which gives us about 1015 operations per second, with each neuron acting as a fundamental unit. The problem is that neurons are much, much more complex than a simple switch. For example, consider a single cell [zooflagellate], like a paramecium, it swims around, it finds food, if you suck it into a capillary tube it escapes, and if you do it again it will do it quicker and quicker each time, so it can learn, it can find mates, it has a sex life, it does all kinds of things. It does not have any neurons whatsoever, it is just one cell. So If a paramecium can do all these things why should we think that a neuron, or a synapse, is just a simple on off switch? The capacity of a neuron seems much greater than that. Then if you go down to the next level of the cell and ask how it does that, it uses its internal structure, the cytoskeleton, which seems like a structural support but it is also the nervous system within each cell, mainly comprised of microtubules, which are hollow cylindrical polymers that seemingly are perfectly designed to be information processing devices at the molecular level. They are the nervous systems within each cell, and the nervous system within each neuron too. So these proteins (that’s what they are made of) switch much faster than neurons and there is many, many more of them, ten million within each cell for example, switching within nano seconds. So if we think of processing going down to that level there is as much processing going on at that level as there is in the [entire neural network] I take a similar view to Roger Penrose, that the there is something about our minds that is non computable: NP-complete , something that is beyond the realm of computation. So we can 'know' things other than through algorithms, sort of related to Godel's famous theorem. The only thing that can give us this non computable element in nature is a process that is not deterministic like other areas of science, and the only area of science that is not thought of to be definitive and deterministic is Quantum Theory. That’s my take on it anyway. -PlasmaSphere physicsforums.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 how about drug induced Synesthesia? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred56 Posted December 9, 2007 Author Share Posted December 9, 2007 How is that related to the concept of mind or consciousness? Do you know anyone who has experienced it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 How is that related to the concept of mind or consciousness? if you have to ask that question, you really should look it up Do you know anyone who has experienced it? Yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred56 Posted December 10, 2007 Author Share Posted December 10, 2007 Synasthesia is, (without looking at a wiki) the 'crossover' of sensory experience into areas of the brain that are meant for another sense, type of thing; as if the signals go to the 'wrong' place. Some 'see' sounds, or 'hear' colours; right? I believe something like this has happened in my brain (in past episodes that I can still recall) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 Fantastic! Thread Closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 Fantastic! Thread Closed. Fyi... action not yet executed on the above. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 it`s been a Busy day, thnx for the heads-up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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