Quantifying Learning at the Synapse: Has the “Gold Standard” Been Set for Understanding Consciousness?
From Walter Donway (wdonway) the author: "The psychologist to which this article refers was Allen Blumenthal, one of the original circle around Ayn Rand that included his future wife, Joan Mitchell, Alan Greenspan, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, and a few others. When I first came to NYC, Dr. Blumenthal was very, very active in the practice of psychotherapy.and holding therapy groups to discuss the Objectivist theory of psychology...Highlight of the week for dozens of people."
"Jump, for a moment, from learning in the fruit fly to the most complex mental process known: “free will.” There is a theory in psychology that our volition is genuinely undetermined and that introspection—a valid level of observation of learning—suggests that this free will is to be found in the human choice to “turn on,” or “focus,” or elevate the level of conscious activity in response to challenge. Obviously, there is no evidence that this capability exists in species other than man because either they cannot introspect or cannot report their introspection—still the chief evidence for free will."
Edited to include the Rand context
"Jump, for a moment, from learning in the fruit fly to the most complex mental process known: “free will.” There is a theory in psychology that our volition is genuinely undetermined and that introspection—a valid level of observation of learning—suggests that this free will is to be found in the human choice to “turn on,” or “focus,” or elevate the level of conscious activity in response to challenge. Obviously, there is no evidence that this capability exists in species other than man because either they cannot introspect or cannot report their introspection—still the chief evidence for free will."
Edited to include the Rand context
The real answer is that we do not need to be cosmically important in order to have value.
Jan
Jan, 10 pointer now!
There was also a heavily repeated video of a dog going into freeway traffic to pull another dog who had been struck out of traffic.
To the subject at hand: Has anyone here read Julian Jaynes's "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"? I think the "focus" and "introspection" mentioned is addressed by his definition of consciousness. He also shows how learning and decisions are possible without being conscious of them, and does account for the differences between us and other animals.
My first book is based on Julian's observations and it answered for me the behavior of our old testament ancestors.
Physiologist mainly try to relegate Consciousness to the brain...it has little to do with the brain and it might seem to be a quantum result of the vibratory frequencies our brains are noted for that creates the mind. (kinda like the "cloud") The connection from the brain (survival) to the Mind,(true integrated wisdom) might very well be the Subconscious.
One can see this in society, those with a conscience and those without. It very well might be the only true division in society. Humanoid verses a Conscious Human Being, emphasis on the "Being".
I don't think I'd get much of an argument when I say that Government (Kakistocracy), is mostly Humanoid at the upper levels.
authorhouse.com or any other site.
This was a down and dirty discussion of how this upside down paradigm has effected everything and how it perhaps got that way.
You might like to check out "Spiral Dynamics"- quite a few written on this subject. (levels of awareness)
Working on the next book, will be very comprehensive and will be published Mainstream.
We don't even understand the workings of our own brains that well. Recent discoveries show that a kind of cell called a microglia actively "rewires" the trillions of neural connections as we age and as situations change, which might be a way of optimizing performance.
We are interacting via computers and the internet which relies on very low level hardware steps just as simple and yields incredibly complex activities. Such complex activity can make it seem disconnected from the underlying simple operations, but it CAN be reduced to them -- a very very large number of them.
So may it be with the brain. The key question, of course, is whether we are mechanistic, with incredibly complex but entirely physical characteristics or if there is something non-physical in the mind. Here we move into the realm of spirituality, an area that I'm uncomfortable relying on.
I suspect it all can be reduced to the individual steps -- or at least we must assume that it can until we have proof otherwise.
As to free will, my old boxer who finally died this last summer and I would go out for walks every night. We had two courses we followed, one slightly shorter and one slightly longer -- the longer one with a hill. On pleasant nights when I wasn't in a rush I would let him decide. He would sometimes sit at the corner and look both ways for several seconds before deciding which way to go. It sure looked like free will to me.
In signal theory we talk about the maximum amount of information that can be contained in a given 'channel', and I compare this to the ability of a single human mind to understand everything about itself. In essence, "where would you store the information?" and it becomes an unsolvable divergently recursive problem.
Some seemed to argue here that other species, like dogs, do have choice. Of course dogs have choice; when I call to Fido to come and my wife calls to Fido at the same time, Fido can't respond to both. But he doesn't free in place. He makes a choice. The point at issue is whether or not this choice is undetermined, genuinely "free," and there is no reason to believe that it is. In any case, the only evidence we can obtain about such matters, as of now, comes from introspection reported in language and, for that, humans are the only game in town. Thanks again for all the comments, friends. I would like to respond in more detail, but duty calls. Thanks very much for following "Savvy Street." By now, I have published some 50 articles, there.
The ability to reason does not automatically confer the desire to reason. Unlike bricks it takes a conscious choice to discover I am not a brick nor am I mortar. I am a brick layer.
One of the prime and hopefully early conclusions thinkers should arrive at is the ability to discern and apply the three tenents of objectivism is 'I'm no only special but I have a special responsibility. Translated to such terms as good stewards of nature's bounty. Without accepting responsibility rights, natural or conferred have little use.
The male has multicolored irises and pigmentations on the corneas of his eyes. When you look into his eyes you get the the most disconcerting feeling that there are thoughts pervading his mind.
All this trivia aside, and as interesting as it is to learn how the brain functions, the issue of free will is established in that any attempt to disprove free will requires the use of free will, thus qualifying it as an axiom.