MIND AND BRAIN

[Georges Metanomski]

The chapter "MIND AND BRAIN" has been updated and uploaded to

http://findgeorges.com/CORE/A_FOUNDATIONS/a3_mind_and_brain.html

Comments welcome.

Georges.

[LCC]

Interesting. It might be helpful to note that in extremity the brain
is capable of processing information at rates far in excess of its
"normal" rate. For example, as a 7th grader I was once so foolish as
to attempt to light a campfire by pouring white gas from a plastic jug
onto the very wet sticks in a slit trench campfire. Unknown to me, at
the moment the gas was being poured, a person at the other end of the
trench had decided to light some tinder to get the fire started. I had
an instantaneous view of my hand holding just the handle of the jug
within a fireball, and time enough to think only "BACK" as the
fireball blossomed. From a squatting position, I did a backward
somersault and escaped with just second degree and a small third
degree burns on my right leg, which presumably was the only part
actually touched by the fireball. I have no memory of what happened
from the decision to get "BACK" until I was on the ground about twenty
feet away, but am told that I either fell while running, or was
tripped by my dad, depending upon who is telling the tale. The point
is that with normal reaction speed, I doubt that I could possibly have
jumped backward from that position in time to avoid having my torso
and at least some of my other leg burned. There's nothing like a shot
of adrenaline to get the brain in gear...

Another thing which I noticed is that you seem to see the brain as a
single processor with multiple nodes as in a neural network. I am just
a layman, but I suspect that the truth is that there are many foci of
processing, each focus of which is dedicated to processing dependent
upon training and the situational state of the total brain. For
example, while asleep and not dreaming, the activity is rather low,
but when engaging in vigorous multi-dextrous physical activity (see
YouTube video The Ventures - Wipeout - the drummer in particular), the
different tasks are handled by different foci. From what little I have
read in neurology, I suspect that any neurologist would agree. Because
those different foci have shorter mean distances to their processor
neural cells than would be the case if the brain were a single
processor, results can be produced at far higher speed than simply N
nodes times the speed of a uniprocessor neural net. For example speed
= N nodes * brain radius / actual neuron mean activity path.

The integration of information state based upon memory and inputs
processing by a physical brain into mind/consciousness/awareness is
not well understood so far as I know. If you could elaborate on that
topic, then I at least would be pleased to read the text. Without
getting metaphysical, I see no way to reconcile the processes except
to invoke the much abused notion of emergent complexity...

[Georges Metanomski]

Thanks.
MIND AND BRAIN deals with the glaring physical proof that the
DISCRETE brain, or any other processor cannot perform by
itself any CONSCIOUS action, and that by over 50 orders.
The solution, or rather direction in which it may be looked for,
is suggested to reside in the fundamental Continuum/Discreteness
polarity of Einstein's Physical Reality.
(It's founded in "TIME, AWARENESS AND EVENTS"
http://findgeorges.com/CORE/A_FOUNDATIONS/a1_time_awareness_and_events.html
which I have mentioned in the answer to your "Nature of Time".)

Brain can, of course, perform fast UNCONSCIOUS acts learned and
imprinted locally by conscious repetitions.

I'm right now composing a blues "Wind is Blowing", in which, quite
a way down I play the chord of VI. Whistling under the shower, I
got the idea to replace it with V(9). Then I played, my fingers
moving automatically through the beginning, while my mind was all
the time concentrating on the V(9) to come.

Georges.
===================

--- On Sun, 12/19/10, LCC <clayl...@comcast.net> wrote:

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[LCC]

On Dec 19, 4:18 am, Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks.
> MIND AND BRAIN deals with the glaring physical proof that the
> DISCRETE brain, or any other processor cannot perform by
> itself any CONSCIOUS action, and that by over 50 orders.
> The solution, or rather direction in which it may be looked for,
> is suggested to reside in the fundamental Continuum/Discreteness
> polarity of Einstein's Physical Reality.

> (It's founded in "TIME, AWARENESS AND EVENTS"http://findgeorges.com/CORE/A_FOUNDATIONS/a1_time_awareness_and_event...

> which I have mentioned in the answer to your "Nature of Time".)
>
> Brain can, of course, perform fast UNCONSCIOUS acts learned and
> imprinted locally by conscious repetitions.
>
> I'm right now composing a blues "Wind is Blowing", in which, quite
> a way down I play the chord of VI. Whistling under the shower, I
> got the idea to replace it with V(9). Then I played, my fingers
> moving automatically through the beginning, while my mind was all
> the time concentrating on the V(9) to come.
>
> Georges.
> ===================
>

I had to give up whistling due to dental problems. Perhaps I will take
the art up again when I get dentures. From your statements, it is
obvious to me that you engage in situational awareness, as does most
every musician. As an analogy to computer pipeline processing, you are
hearing and correcting the current note, anticipating in your mind the
next note, with tone adjustment to transition from the current to the
next, and controlling your breath so that you do not run out of air
until the music provides a pause. Sadly, I have noticed that the art
of whistling has declined significantly during my lifetime. Some mean
spirited people who are incapable of performing well with the one
instrument always available to anyone claim that whistling "hurts
their ears", "is out of tune", "is not following the song", etc. etc..
What they really mean is that they can't stand to know that someone
can do something better than they can, with more versatility and
originality...

From the link above :
NOTE: As justified in "STRUCTURES OF MIND" (Reflection and Meaning)
words don't carry meaning, but more or less vaguely point to it. Very
vaguely indeed when concerning general and intuitive concepts such as
"universe" or "awareness". Particularly misleading are the possessive
adjectives like "my", prepositions like "of", etc. "My awareness", or
"I am aware" misdescribe for instance some "I" having "awareness".
Yet, such forms are unavoidable when using a natural language. Sartre
introduced a convention to put misleaders in brackets, like in
"conscience (de) soi". We shall use it in especially confusing cases
and write: "(my) awareness", "awareness (of) tree", or "(my)
universe". Not that it's any more precise, but at least it gives a
warning against misinterpretations.

To achieve precision, a language needs to denote the observer, the
observed object, the target which will receive the observation, and
the observables, with subclauses for all of them providing additional
information. Since I know of no natural language which does that much,
perhaps we will all have to wait for the linguists to come up with
something appropriate, hopefully without resorting to 1000 word long
sentences. One solution may be to get away from the notion that a
language must have a minimal number of root words and meanings per
word, and instead develop languages rich in both word modifiers and
contextual interpretation. Another solution might be to expand the
number of punctuation marks using iconic characters from the current
dozen or so in English to perhaps a hundred, as an aid to sentence
parsing. I am not a linguist, though I try to be cunning D:)+++

One of the reasons why I decided to focus upon software engineering
while in college was so that I could become more aware of my own
thought processes, debugging them where flaws were found. As an aid to
that task, I purchased and read (except for boring archaic and
specialized technical jargon) a Webster's Unabridged dictionary from
cover to cover, which took six months of my "spare" time. One of the
things which I noticed was the circularity of definitions when dealing
with atomic constructs such as the pronouns, articles, and simple
phase constructs such as prepositions. Long words and much lather was
being used to define the short words, with the shortest and most
ambiguous being referential to the observer, observed, and target of a
communication regarding the observed.

If you have never studied Latin, then I highly recommend that you
should give it a whirl. I took two years of Latin in high school, and
found the experience of trying to think in a different language highly
valuable when I first started programming at 17 in Fortran. I was able
to bypass tech school in the USAF by reading the Cobol test cover to
cover, then answering all of the questions based upon what I deduced
regarding the language and the multiple choice questions' answers.
Although I had never seen Cobol before, I scored 75 on the bypass
test, 50 being a passing score. Once in my assignment, I swiftly
learned Jovial, EXEC 8 Assembler for the UNIVAC 1108 and actually read
the study material for learning Cobol. While in college I learned
Algol, Basic, Xerox Sigma 9 assembler, Z80 assembler, PDP-8 assembler,
and various other less useful computer languages. I have a sister who
graduated with fluency in foreign languages Italian, German, French,
Spanish, Portugese and less fluency in a couple of others. So perhaps
my genetic heritage lends itself to learning various languages. I was
prevented from getting a BS as opposed to BSEE degree by the foreign
language requirement, with an enrollment in German which I was obliged
to drop almost immediately, and private study of Greek, which was not
fruitful.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[LCC]

"constructs such as the pronouns, articles, and simple phase
constructs such as prepositions."

oops phRase LOL

Lonnie Courtney Clay