How are scintific theories produced?

[effie]

Morpheus,

I am looking forward to your manifesto

Enjoy holidays!

[effie]

B2b, where are you? I am worried sick

Oh, don't mind. I found you in the aesthetics forum ))))))

[Psychonaut]

Hi effie, I'm glad to know its appreciated, but I just can't say nothing when someone is going off on one like that.. Its beyond belief really..

My regret is that so far my only contribution on this thread has been to rebuke marks attacks, and not discourse on the nature of science which is of great interest to me..

Unfortunately its all got a bit dense on this thread, and its too late for me to catch up, but hopefully we can have some fruitful discussions in the future

[effie]

My regret is that so far my only contribution on this thread has been to rebuke marks attacks, and not discourse on the nature of science which is of great interest to me..

I regret that,too, because I have read some other posts of yours and find them pretty intriguing. You are very good at repartee

I would like to initiate another thread, because I think that I have mentioned many issues and I have created a chaos I will see to it...

Thanks again, psychonaut, have a nice day!

[Morpheus]

Morpheus,

I am looking forward to your manifesto

Enjoy holidays!

Agh! Now you've put me on the spot! I was going to have a moan about GM crops, 'intellectual property rights' and the associated 'suicide belt' in India. Governments are allowing corporations to take over the world's food supply (and much else). Later, then...

[bus2bondi]

hi eff, i'm right here, (i do leave the aethstetics section sometimes ) (i left another song there for you to review btw) (definitly not greek mariah carey lol!) the only thing you have to worry about are my pants getting all wet from the snow because i'm just getting ready to go walk through 10 inches of it, on my way to the store, (need milk) ugh! Don't you hate that when it goes up your pants, then when you get into your car it melts. Well, anyhow, thanks for your concern, i suppose my moods are well difficult to understand, sorry for causing you any worries, and thanks. Well off to scrape windows. Don't you hate it when all that snow goes down your glove and up your arm too (when scraping.) ugh.

later

[Arising_uk]

Roger Coghill is a British scientist specialising in electronics...

Told you elsewhere
Tin-foil hats and chicken-wire for my prezzies thanks.
Merry Xmas

[Arising_uk]

hi Effie,

Arising_uk,
I think we have started to mention hundreds of issues (et's live EM fields aside for a while) and it is really impossible for me to handle all of them in the same time (my English does not help ). Plus, there are literally thousands of opinions we could discuss. After all, it is a subject that has bothered mankind since antiquity.

Therefore, I think we should "restart" our conversation, beginning from the most fundamental parts of our discussion.

My understanding is that it has all been roughly on-topic and your replies show your English is excellent. I apologise for my lack of Greek, state-school education in the country that 'originated' a currently popular language
So by all means, lets recap.

Each living organism has an organ, a factor or an entity (the term does not matter) which is the final recipient of all the information and has the ability to utilize these information in order to determine the behaviour of the organism towards its environment. In other words, every organism has a central program which guides both its biological and behavioural reactions.

You are using 'organ' in a way I find odd but I think I understand you as saying living things have 'minds' that can move their bodies? Can't disagree with that. Its the idea of a 'central program' that bothers me. Work in A.I. has proved, to me at least, that a major breakthrough is going to have to occur if the top-down programming approach to Mind is to work. Bottom-up interconnected subsystems appears to be the way to go to produce 'mind' programatically and reflects, to me, what we apparently are? I can understand having a 'function' effectively running a simulation all the time based upon the 'inputs', in effect 'appropriating' a section of the subsystems 'time', and 'feedbacking' its outputs back into the subsystems, but not any "central program" as such.

What do you mean by the difference in "biological and behavioural reactions."?

Nowdays, the question is: which is the physical identity of this factor/entity/organ which we call with various terms, among which mind is the most suitable one? How exactly are intellectual faculties performed? E.g. how exactly are information stored? etc

I don't think the physical identity is in doubt. Its us, if you are asking where the mind 'is'. Where the 'mind' is in the Body will depend upon what you are 'looking' for in my opinion but for a general application of 'where' it is, I'd say its 'in' the CNS. Like I've said, I think we now know where the information concerning mind is 'stored', its the CNS, which is a massively powerful 'neural' network, so much so that its only now that we've passed the computational 'power-gap' that would be needed to emulate the CNS's real-time processing capabilities from the neck-up as well. Would this produce 'mind', maybe, but you've have to 'give' it sensors and a body to prove it("please make it a soft-spongy thing first-time if you are attemping this").

My experience is that we perform "intellectual" faculties very badly in general but you'd have to tell what you mean by this?

I know, beyond any doubt, that the idea that prevails today (regarding this identity) identifies Mind with Brain. Is this idea correct? Has any research proved it correct? (until some decades ago, experts were convinced that heart was the centre of emotion- or the organ which served one of the basic intellectual faculties. The first man to doubt this idea was Servet, who claimed that heart was nothing more than a pump which sends blood to the vessels. Servet was condemned as heretic and was burnt to death).

It is correct and incorrect in equal respects. Its obvious that we 'know' that the 'mind' is in that big lump I see upon others shoulders. So I can make a reasonable assumption that the same applies to me. I think your idea of looking 'for' Mind is also very like the old ideas about the heart and that this idea was based upon the experience of people who 'feel' very strongly and experience it in this 'feeling' effecting the heart, "I felt the clutch of death around my heart at the approach of my foe", etc.

I do not doubt that the Church persecutes those of free-thought and scientists.

What I am trying to say is that brain is not the entity which serves the intellectual faculties (perception, consciouness, emotion, orientation in time and space, memory, will, attention/concentration and thinking).

Okay! Some of those intellectual things.
What I'm trying to say is that your conception of a 'brain' is restricted by exactly the 'blindness' that your mentor appears to be trying to remove in his profession. Heres what I think about the intellectual faculties you've described. "perception", which one? the one where 'you' are having it or the one where you notice you are having it, etc...? To me, the first is the Body and the second is 'its' Mind. The same applies to "consciouness". "Emotion", tricky, emotions are products of the endochrine system, so Body but the 'experience' is Mind. "orientation in time and space", space is the Body, time is the Mind. "Memory", again tricky, I'd say, 'source' Body but the interactions with Mind in this one are to much for this mind. "will", Mind. "attention/concentration", Mind but can be not in the way these things are commonly understood. "Thinking", a generalised term for the above so can be many things.

Brain, in our opinion, is a specialized energy convertor: a central organ to which all information are headed in order to obtain their final physical form, and become able to reach and be incorporated in mind, where they will be analyzed and the reaction of the organism will be decided.

See what I mean, you've imported exactly the concept that you are trying to disprove, "a central organ to which all information are headed in order to obtain their final physical form", you just don't want it to be the big-lumpy thing at the end of the CNS so you are looking elsewhere to explain that we have a mind. You've also imported terms from Physics to explain things? I do not disagree that the effect is to produce a mind but to think that the Body was designed soley for the Mind to decide the reaction of the body is arse-ended in my opinion(if thats what you are saying, that is).

Since you are familiar with mechanics, please think about the following idea: all specialized organs of the human body (eyes, ears, muscles, etc) are specialized energy convertors (like every complex mechanical device). They participate in the function of the body offering their specialized work. E.g. eyes convert electromagnetic signals to electric pulses. uscles receive electrochemical signals and convert them into dynamic energy. Brain receives electric signals and converts them into what?

I can understand your idea of "specialized energy convertors " so I'd say the what are Sight, Sound, Taste, Smell and Touch.

Since you referred to technology and robots, wht do you have to say about the program of those devices? Are circuits enough? Obviously, robots have (at least substandard) memory. Where is this memory stored?

In their equivalent of a CNS.

Of course, anyone , if believes that brain IS mind, is free to carry on their work and try to describe (not discover, since you prefer this term ) how brain thinks, stores info, etc. (btw, with the term "memorization" I refer to the process with which info are stored). Fine by me. All I am saying is that this effort is not likely to succeed, as it happens every time a basic truth is wrong. (A.F Chalmers, "What is this thing called science?" presents some examples)

Always a good text for Phil of Science.
If that is what you mean by "memorization" then we already know how. I think you wish to describe how it is from the minds side as we will not be able to 'experience' the actual process.

As for the mental illnesses you have asked me for, most of them do not provoke any symptoms on the function of brain. Psychoses, Schizophrenia, amnesia etc most of the time are asymptomatic, brain-wise. Of course, there are other disorders which are produced by brain damage or hormonic disorders (psychosomatic disorders etc). The most impressive case I have wittnessed is that of a person who had been injured by a spear. The 30% of his brain was destroyed. However, exept for a short-period amnesia, which lasted for a month, no other mental disorder has been provoked!!!

Which to me proves that the CNS is a massively parallel system. My guess is that you are wrong if you think that 'mental illnesses' have no effect on 'brain'(there you go again) function. Its more probably that we have not developed the imaging systems yet or that we do not have enough trained subjects for neuroScience to identify what they are looking at(which I suppose explains why they go for 'mad' or damaged people as it gives clues as to where to look).
a_uk
p.s.
Good
p.p.s
It was more that I thought my tone may have been too firm.

[effie]

My understanding is that it has all been roughly on-topic and your replies show your English is excellent. I apologise for my lack of Greek, state-school education in the country that 'originated' a currently popular language So by all means, lets recap.

Hi You are very condescending, thank you!

You are using 'organ' in a way I find odd but I think I understand you as saying living things have 'minds' that can move their bodies? Can't disagree with that. Its the idea of a 'central program' that bothers me.Work in A.I. has proved, to me at least, that a major breakthrough is going to have to occur if the top-down programming approach to Mind is to work. Bottom-up interconnected subsystems appears to be the way to go to produce 'mind' programatically and reflects, to me, what we apparently are? I can understand having a 'function' effectively running a simulation all the time based upon the 'inputs', in effect 'appropriating' a section of the subsystems 'time', and 'feedbacking' its outputs back into the subsystems, but not any "central program" as such.

What do you mean by the difference in "biological and behavioural reactions."?

I use the terms "organ" or program to demonstrate that mind is a unified entity- it is not a mishmash of neurons, neuronic cells, hormones etc. Biological reactions: for example the reaising of your heart-beat when you are scared, the peptic procedures, in general all the "unconsious" biological activities.
Behavioural reactions: the reaction towards the environment, as responses to given stimuli- signals.

I don't think the physical identity is in doubt. Its us, if you are asking where the mind 'is'. Where the 'mind' is in the Body will depend upon what you are 'looking' for in my opinion but for a general application of 'where' it is, I'd say its 'in' the CNS. Like I've said, I think we now know where the information concerning mind is 'stored', its the CNS, which is a massively powerful 'neural' network, so much so that its only now that we've passed the computational 'power-gap' that would be needed to emulate the CNS's real-time processing capabilities from the neck-up as well. Would this produce 'mind', maybe, but you've have to 'give' it sensors and a body to prove it("please make it a soft-spongy thing first-time if you are attemping this").

I know that this is the prevailing "basic truth"- all I am saying is that it is wrong

I think your idea of looking 'for' Mind is also very like the old ideas about the heart and that this idea was based upon the experience of people who 'feel' very strongly and experience it in this 'feeling' effecting the heart, "I felt the clutch of death around my heart at the approach of my foe", etc.

The situation is exactly the same: then they though that heart was the center of emotion due to the observations you mention. Now, they think that CNS is mind due to the fact that it is activated when receiving a signal or when performing an intellectual faculty.

What I'm trying to say is that your conception of a 'brain' is restricted by exactly the 'blindness' that your mentor appears to be trying to remove in his profession. Heres what I think about the intellectual faculties you've described. "perception", which one? the one where 'you' are having it or the one where you notice you are having it, etc...? To me, the first is the Body and the second is 'its' Mind. The same applies to "consciouness". "Emotion", tricky, emotions are products of the endochrine system, so Body but the 'experience' is Mind. "orientation in time and space", space is the Body, time is the Mind. "Memory", again tricky, I'd say, 'source' Body but the interactions with Mind in this one are to much for this mind. "will", Mind. "attention/concentration", Mind but can be not in the way these things are commonly understood. "Thinking", a generalised term for the above so can be many things.

First of all, each intellectual faculty represents the total of intellect. In other words, a living organism must have memory in order to perceive: would you perceive anything about a book, if you didn't have any memory regarding the language in which it is written?
Furthermore, you claim that emotion is produced by endocrine system. Question: if someone threatens to kill you, will you feel fear due to the fact that your dopamine will raise? Or, vice versa, will your dopamine raise due to the fact that you feel fear????????

See what I mean, you've imported exactly the concept that you are trying to disprove, "a central organ to which all information are headed in order to obtain their final physical form", you just don't want it to be the big-lumpy thing at the end of the CNS so you are looking elsewhere to explain that we have a mind. You've also imported terms from Physics to explain things? I do not disagree that the effect is to produce a mind but to think that the Body was designed soley for the Mind to decide the reaction of the body is arse-ended in my opinion(if thats what you are saying, that is).

What concept am I trying to disprove?
I never said that "body was designed soley for the Mind to decide the reaction of the body". Body and mind are two interconnected systems. I just claim that body is not mind, since it doesn't have the required properties.

If that is what you mean by "memorization" then we already know how. I think you wish to describe how it is from the minds side as we will not be able to 'experience' the actual process.

Now I can see where our "disagreements" come from. I speak from the point of view of living organisms, while you speak from the point of view of A.I. However, even the most "simple" organisms (monocellular organisms) are muuuuuuch more complex than the most complex contemporary technological device. A.I. tries to simulate the living organisms. Trying to describe intellectual faculties of living organisms based on knowledge coming from A.I is at least absurd! The reverse procedure is the correct one: if we manage to raise our understanding regarding living organisms we will be able to create more complex devices simulating life.

Which to me proves that the CNS is a massively parallel system. My guess is that you are wrong if you think that 'mental illnesses' have no effect on 'brain'(there you go again) function. Its more probably that we have not developed the imaging systems yet or that we do not have enough trained subjects for neuroScience to identify what they are looking at(which I suppose explains why they go for 'mad' or damaged people as it gives clues as to where to look).

I never said (or I never meant )that mental disorders have no effect on brain. On the contrary, I said that mental disorders influence the function of the body as a total (psychosomatic diseases etc). However, I did say that mental disorders are not caused by brain damage/ disorder/ trauma, at least in the majority of cases. Of course, a CNS damage causes mental disorders (not always, however). This proves that CNS and mind are interconnected but not identified!

Effie

[effie]

Morpheus,

whenever you feel ready Take your time

Effie

[effie]

B2b,

1.The wannabe mariah carey wasn't greek, was bulgarian

2. Here it snows once every 3- 4 years (every Olympics ). It snowed last year, so we will have to wait until 2011, if my math is good As a consequence, we beg for some snow!

3. If you don't want snow to go up in your pants, put on a skirt



4. Is your mood an elevator? (up- down- up)

[Morpheus]

Roger Coghill is a British scientist specialising in electronics...

Told you elsewhere
Tin-foil hats and chicken-wire for my prezzies thanks.
Merry Xmas

Are you sitting comfortably Arising mate? Close your eyes and take few deep breaths and breathe out with a deep sigh of relief. Feel your body getting heavier and heavier as you relax into the chair. Feel your troubles melting away. Re....lax. Re....lax, Re...lax, sinking deeper and deeper. Down, down, down... You're now entering Aladdin's cave. There before you glinting in the candle light is a bale of straw, a hen house, a huge role of chicken wire, hammer, nails, fence posts, the lot. Everything you could possibly desire to make your Christmas special down on the farm. Take another deep, deep breath...ah, what's that endearing sound? Chuck, chuck, chuck...three welsh hens a-laying!

I'm counting slowly now from one to ten, and you will gradually awaken...1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, TEN. Now, take a good stretch from fingertips to toes. Go on, take a really good s-t-r-e-t-c-h. Ahhhhhh! Feeling relaxed, feeling good, feeling revitalised and at ONE with the world and ready to participate in the Christmas festivities.

Merry Christmas!

P.S. I've a phial of Santa's special available for the asking.

[Arising_uk]

Mmmmm!!!! Much better.

Thanks for that prezzie Morph.

Merry Xmas to you,
a_uk
p.s.
Whatever that special is I'll have a phial as I'm hoping its got a Welsh 'mushroom' kick hidden away in it.

[bus2bondi]

edit

[Arising_uk]

Hi You are very condescending, thank you!

I so hope this is not the case effie? But if so I'm deeply apologetic for behaving in such a way

I use the terms "organ" or program to demonstrate that mind is a unified entity- it is not a mishmash of neurons, neuronic cells, hormones etc.
Biological reactions: for example the reaising of your heart-beat when you are scared, the peptic procedures, in general all the "unconsious" biological activities.
Behavioural reactions: the reaction towards the environment, as responses to given stimuli- signals.

I'd agree that it is a 'unified' experience but you appear to be assuming that what we are discussing is already settled? Thank you for your definitions.

I know that this is the prevailing "basic truth"- all I am saying is that it is wrong

You'll have to show me why? Most of what I've said is my own opinion and I’m unaware that this is the common consensus as I'm not associated with any of the professions you have so far mentioned.

The situation is exactly the same: then they though that heart was the center of emotion due to the observations you mention. Now, they think that CNS is mind due to the fact that it is activated when receiving a signal or when performing an intellectual faculty.

Then they'd be wrong, as its a CNS linked with sub-systems ‘running’ around in an environment.

First of all, each intellectual faculty represents the total of intellect. In other words, a living organism must have memory in order to perceive: would you perceive anything about a book, if you didn't have any memory regarding the language in which it is written?
Furthermore, you claim that emotion is produced by endocrine system. Question: if someone threatens to kill you, will you feel fear due to the fact that your dopamine will raise? Or, vice versa, will your dopamine raise due to the fact that you feel fear????????

You are proposing a circularity that I think does not exist. Long before the verbal communication of intended violence is uttered the non-verbal signals would have been recognised by the body and have set in motion the activation of dopamine and maybe preparing an adrenaline response. The response to the bodys adrenaline rush can be considered as ‘fear’ and that is a Mind response.

Why must each 'intellectual faculty' have to represent the 'total'?
I agree that we must have a memory to ‘perceive’ and that ‘reading’ has a memory based component but you appear to think that the recognition of pattern, sign, is based upon mind? In my world its not, the recognition of symbols may be. So in your book I would recognise 'writing', I'd just not 'understand' it.

What concept am I trying to disprove?
I never said that "body was designed soley for the Mind to decide the reaction of the body". Body and mind are two interconnected systems. I just claim that body is not mind, since it doesn't have the required properties.

The concept that that Mind can be ‘identified’ as a ‘single noetic-unit’. To my understanding what you want to do is to transfer your concept of what the ‘brain’ is into a ‘brain’ without physicality? Hence I think that what you mean by, “Body and mind are two interconnected systems”, is that there are two actual physical systems, i.e. body and mind and because of this you are ‘looking’ for mind in a substance that is unperceivable to normal perception but also physical, hence, you’ve settled upon the Physicists concept of ‘fields’ and the apparent fact that the body generates a type of one, at least that’s what I understand you to be saying.

Now I can see where our "disagreements" come from. I speak from the point of view of living organisms, while you speak from the point of view of A.I. However, even the most "simple" organisms (monocellular organisms) are muuuuuuch more complex than the most complex contemporary technological device. A.I. tries to simulate the living organisms. Trying to describe intellectual faculties of living organisms based on knowledge coming from A.I is at least absurd! The reverse procedure is the correct one: if we manage to raise our understanding regarding living organisms we will be able to create more complex devices simulating life.

This would depend what you mean by 'complex' as the complexity in biological systems is the result of millions of years of evolution. I can imagine technology in a few million years as being pretty complex.

I thought I had said that the A.I. top-down approach of trying to 'define' Mind is pretty much over. What they have achieved is to have 'programmed' Logic and hence pretty much Deduction. So, to me, it looks like they will achieve models of the Reasoning faculties but they won't be Mind. The other approach is based upon biological concepts, e.g. 'neural nets', parallel processing, 'genetic' algorithms, etc.., and uses them to build real-time objects that interact with the world and as such are reverse engineering. No-one to my knowledge has yet programmed an 'endochrine' system but the idea of one to be used to provide the objects with more choices of behaviour has been proposed. What these approaches build will not be human minds but they might well be minds.

Since DNA appears to be being aptly described as a computational process, in effect a biological Turing machine, I'll keep paying attention to whats coming out of the A.I. labs I think. Do I think they will 'make' human 'minds', no, but do I think they give us better models with which to understand ourselves, yes.

I never said (or I never meant )that mental disorders have no effect on brain. On the contrary, I said that mental disorders influence the function of the body as a total (psychosomatic diseases etc). However, I did say that mental disorders are not caused by brain damage/ disorder/ trauma, at least in the majority of cases. Of course, a CNS damage causes mental disorders (not always, however). This proves that CNS and mind are interconnected but not identified!

As I say, I do not think that a CNS on its own can do anything, just that without one you can have no mind. I think that if many of these "psychosomatic diseases" and "mental disorders" are not due to damage then they must be the 'minds' disorders in that it is 'feeding' back 'contradictory' inputs to the CNS which then produces 'dis-ease' in the Body systems. I understand the Body to be the source of Freuds 'unconscious' and Jungs 'archetypes' as it transforms the outputs of the world into the 'things' that we call sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. For me, Mind is born out of Body, and the philosophical question is how much of this process can we 'recognise'? Can the Mind pay attention to how its 'unconscious' communicates Mind? As such, bringing in Physics to explain 'us' does not appeal to me. These 'fields' may have a function but I doubt its needed to explain us, as Darwin has been proved correct and the discovery of DNA has put Biology upon a truly scientific footing for the first time. And Biology identifies us as being an animal amongst other animals, of the Primate family. Many appear to not like this definition.
You want "psychosomatic diseases" and "mental disorders" to be what? Disturbances in the 'field'? And the solution to 'mental problems' will be a problem for Physicists rather than Psychiatrists?
a_uk