Friday, June 15, 2007
Musings from last Night of the Newts
sleepy sleep, come to me.... ach, no yet... what about then, a sort of running commentary on the text, by the "author"... can give it a bit of structure by outlining (in a sidebar at the start of each chapter?) the plan of action, boxes'n'links style like say... could be good to point out "author-sensed-weaknesses" as we go through. Like the idea of having boxes and side-notes or footnotes in the text. These should appear near the main text, not at the end of the chapter, that's always a bit annoydart flickin forward and back aw ra time... mmm, sleepy sleep, descending like a giant grey fog... a giant grey frog... reddit.. there must be already a book written which is basically a preface "i intend to talk about... thanks to... " with no actual main text... why do i like that idea? is it even my own? how do we know what we have thought up ourselves and what is just a forgotten reference? and what is just putting a few more bricks in the edifices created by others... ahh, sleepy sleep, röh röh, zzzzzzz.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Spacecog scribbles May-Jun 2007
03.05.2007 – on crossmodal space. Neurons respond to spatial information from more than one modality. See Spence & Driver (eds). Some are “multimodal”, others are mostly unimodal yet respond to changes in other sensory modalities. Spatial attention also displays multimodal attributes, whether the attention is endogenous (“voluntary”) or exogenous (triggered by “outside” stimuli). So again we have here the issue of our phenomenology (separate sensory channels), and the more complex reality (multimodal processing both at neuron and neural network level).
Then there is also the fundamental issue of how it is that we build the various partial spaces, and how the different centricities are to be characterised. We think of our spatial world as unified, but the various centricities and the “scaffolding” of information storage (using the world as a storage space for spatial information and bringing various spatial-centrisms to make use of parts of it when required) make this a complex theme. The motor impact and input of/to learning can be taken even further though also with machines and virtual machines – cf. Phillipona, O’ Regan et al on a robot which learns by doing that the world (as well as it’s world) is n-dimensional [dd - ms available from internet, no other ref info to hand]. Cf also Quartz & Sejnowski’s “Neural Constructivism” (1997, 2002). [<- from “remarks on haikonen”].
Macaluso & Driver, “Functional Imaging of Crossmodal Spatial Representations”, in Spence & Driver (eds), Crossmodal Space and Crossmodal Attention (p266):
“We.. find crossmodal effects of spatial attention on areas traditionally considered to be unimodal (i.e. on occipital areas that respond to visual stimuli and that show more activity when vision is task-relevant). The fact that we now find this even for a case of endogenous spatial attention, where attention is directe voluntarily, impies a role for top-down modulatory signals (presumably sent by backprojections) in relating spatial information about one modality (e.g. which hand to attend for a tactile task) to areas that are primarily concerned with another modality (vision here). “
Also in Spence & Driver there are articles considering the different egospatial-centricities (body-centred, head-centred, retina-centred, gaze-centred, hand-centred). To what extent do these interact with “other-centred” spatial paradigms such as “in this box-centred”, other-person-centred, which we also seem to use. Other-centring and other centring decisions seem to be prime function of language understood in the cognitive linguistic paradigm, perhaps this is why Grush is such a fan of Langacker. See esp Langacker ch2 "Inside and Outside in Cora” in Concept, Image, and Symbol.
07.05.2007 – writers like to give “pointers for future research”… a kind of infallibility-I’m-the-best-game where each author seeks to give the strategic directions for others to follow gladly. This can be seen in a variety of philosophical and soft-science (linguists, human evolution) texts. Whereas I think future research should follow the principles as correctly established in my book, perhaps this should become a standard text for all...
14.05.2007 – On Alon.. ch 3 negative autoregulation is under selection for rapid response-times to protein production to a steady state level (homeostasis), works better (faster, more robust, more control then unregulated production to a set value) cf standard deviation against random network occurrence. Used for Positive autoregulation is slower but more “fate-determining” therefore useful in developmental trajectories.
There is good evidence for convergent evolution in selection of FFLs e.g. Z and Z´homologous, but X,X´and Y,Y´non-homologous. Thus evolution is strongly constraining transcription factor networks to use functional FFLs which maximise usefulness of two environmental inputs Sx, Sy. Two inputs are under selection as they increase the dynamic control options for protein production.
15.05.2007 – see Alon p93 for summary of sensory transcription network motifs, inc also SIMs (single-input-modules), multi-output FFLs, and DORs (densely organised regions), including their main physiological functions.
Joëlle Proust’s article mentioning Evans and Strawson on space.
Space and cognitive neuroscience; spaces egocentric and other. Systems biology and spatial knowledge. E.g. chemotaxis. Movement and cell biology – flagella; muscles and neurons. Phenomenal space and connectionism. Animal ego and allospaces.
04.06.2007 – Sole & Goodwin p136 – Freeman’s idea that the brain goes from a state of chaotic attractors to a (lower-dimensional, categorical-perception cf Gärdenfors) state of limit cycling when perceiving e.g. odors.
Then there is also the fundamental issue of how it is that we build the various partial spaces, and how the different centricities are to be characterised. We think of our spatial world as unified, but the various centricities and the “scaffolding” of information storage (using the world as a storage space for spatial information and bringing various spatial-centrisms to make use of parts of it when required) make this a complex theme. The motor impact and input of/to learning can be taken even further though also with machines and virtual machines – cf. Phillipona, O’ Regan et al on a robot which learns by doing that the world (as well as it’s world) is n-dimensional [dd - ms available from internet, no other ref info to hand]. Cf also Quartz & Sejnowski’s “Neural Constructivism” (1997, 2002). [<- from “remarks on haikonen”].
Macaluso & Driver, “Functional Imaging of Crossmodal Spatial Representations”, in Spence & Driver (eds), Crossmodal Space and Crossmodal Attention (p266):
“We.. find crossmodal effects of spatial attention on areas traditionally considered to be unimodal (i.e. on occipital areas that respond to visual stimuli and that show more activity when vision is task-relevant). The fact that we now find this even for a case of endogenous spatial attention, where attention is directe voluntarily, impies a role for top-down modulatory signals (presumably sent by backprojections) in relating spatial information about one modality (e.g. which hand to attend for a tactile task) to areas that are primarily concerned with another modality (vision here). “
Also in Spence & Driver there are articles considering the different egospatial-centricities (body-centred, head-centred, retina-centred, gaze-centred, hand-centred). To what extent do these interact with “other-centred” spatial paradigms such as “in this box-centred”, other-person-centred, which we also seem to use. Other-centring and other centring decisions seem to be prime function of language understood in the cognitive linguistic paradigm, perhaps this is why Grush is such a fan of Langacker. See esp Langacker ch2 "Inside and Outside in Cora” in Concept, Image, and Symbol.
07.05.2007 – writers like to give “pointers for future research”… a kind of infallibility-I’m-the-best-game where each author seeks to give the strategic directions for others to follow gladly. This can be seen in a variety of philosophical and soft-science (linguists, human evolution) texts. Whereas I think future research should follow the principles as correctly established in my book, perhaps this should become a standard text for all...
14.05.2007 – On Alon.. ch 3 negative autoregulation is under selection for rapid response-times to protein production to a steady state level (homeostasis), works better (faster, more robust, more control then unregulated production to a set value) cf standard deviation against random network occurrence. Used for Positive autoregulation is slower but more “fate-determining” therefore useful in developmental trajectories.
There is good evidence for convergent evolution in selection of FFLs e.g. Z and Z´homologous, but X,X´and Y,Y´non-homologous. Thus evolution is strongly constraining transcription factor networks to use functional FFLs which maximise usefulness of two environmental inputs Sx, Sy. Two inputs are under selection as they increase the dynamic control options for protein production.
15.05.2007 – see Alon p93 for summary of sensory transcription network motifs, inc also SIMs (single-input-modules), multi-output FFLs, and DORs (densely organised regions), including their main physiological functions.
Joëlle Proust’s article mentioning Evans and Strawson on space.
Space and cognitive neuroscience; spaces egocentric and other. Systems biology and spatial knowledge. E.g. chemotaxis. Movement and cell biology – flagella; muscles and neurons. Phenomenal space and connectionism. Animal ego and allospaces.
04.06.2007 – Sole & Goodwin p136 – Freeman’s idea that the brain goes from a state of chaotic attractors to a (lower-dimensional, categorical-perception cf Gärdenfors) state of limit cycling when perceiving e.g. odors.
Some notes on spacecog from 2006
11.07.2006 – to answer the question of what thinking is, we need to synthesise neuroscience, the evolution of language, and both the origin and subsequent most relevant) evolution of life.
Rose (“lifelines”): Genes are not privileged in evolution – also genomes, RNA, ribosomes, evo-devo processes, the co-evolving environment are part of the evolving organism.
Co-evolution is a fundamental part of evolution – thus the environment is not passive, and the organism is not passive in its interaction with the abiotic and biotic environment.
14.07.2006 – wittgenstein’s points about qualia (see Dennett – consns expld)… non-explanation of “private” language… sense-data a non-starter for theory-building, these aren’t describable… a point still missed in most philosophy papers to journals… “we define the model as a set of predicates SP such that statements P(L) map onto experiential states E of the world” etc etc. (my old dissertation contained some awareness of this).
18.07.2006 – memory as a stored pattern of synaptic weightings in neural networks. Similarity of declarative memories and perceptions, though perceptions always considered stronger e.g. Hume.
When considering neural models of perceptual representation and memory, difficulty that we are considering circuits with 10x neurons and 10y synapses. -> “grainyness” of resulting models when we think of our own experiences
26.07.2006 – tensor network theory and connectionism as theories showing how sets of neurons can map phase spaces using tensors etc (in Churchland – neurophilosophy).
15.08.2006 – Stiny on what constitutes a boundary – differences between points and higher dimension entities as boundaries. Lack of existence of any predefinable atomic vocabulary for shapes -> impossibility of counting (using rules to define a linear series). Fractals are unfinished but in their definition they are determinate (the rules are fixed, only the results lead to indeterminacy of boundaries).
25.08.2006 – not surprising that most of our language involves descriptions of movements or positions in a space, since motor understanding is the “basis” of “higher” cognition. See lakoff on metaphors, grush on egocentric vs allocentric space (in churchland, “brain-wise”).
06.09.2006 - Alva Noe and visual perception as process (temporal), like somatic perception. Avoid reification into “pattern/state”.
10.09.2006 – when the empiricists’ logical atomism failed, the mistaken way to deal with it was to think that philosophy “ended” with Wittgenstein, the philosopher who provided both the most mesmeric expression of logical atomism (in the Tractatus) and some of the most scathing, though somewhat gnomic, criticisms of that atomism (in Philosophical Investigations). The best way to deal with the end of empirical atomism is to know enough about the science of perception to be able to begin philosophising about perception again.
Although many neuroscientific experiments and actors are labouring under some old Cartesian and atomistic illusions, not all of them are, at least not all of the time. Bennett and Hacker’s book is depressing because of their deliberate narrow-mindedness on this point, combined with the repetitive “Wittgenstein was right – philosophy analyses how ordinary language is used”, as if thinking about perception or doing science was basically a subsiduary side-issue for philosophy.
25.09.2006 – evolution of language and communication. Cellular and molecular comms and the naturalistic turn to the concept of “information”. Neural comms and computation. Bioinformatics and mathematics – naturalism in mathematical logic. And complexity. Genetic switches. UV, biosonar, bioluminescence and biofluorescence etc animal sensation/perception and philosophy. Bug eyes (compound) and other eyes. A phenomenology of bee vision?
Animal comms and philosophy – see Lieberman also. Mimesis and meaning, and M-P. Lieberman p201 meaning and use. Macdonald 1994 reference in Lieberman. Connection between cognition, motor ctrl and language.
29.09.2006 – self/non-self e.g. at cellular, molecular, organism levels. Self-organisation - molecular /astrobiological/evo devo/neural. Fractal (repeating) aspect of levels in biology. Hox genes and dnA – how we’re all (nearly) the same – the biologic approach to philosophical issues. emergence of consciousness issue – biological aspect to mind/body problem. Problem of the interspecific boundary between types of consns or cons/non-consns. Perception - Need to broaden the enactive view out here, as Clark says in Is the vis..?
30.09.2006 – chance and necessity and evolutionary process. Contingency of existence – talkorigins, gould, monod, Sartre etc. biological processes and aesthetics (fractals, Fibonacci series, ramachandran on art).
01.10.2006 – on drosophila eyes: http://xray.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/cml/opt307/spr04/greg/
Konrad Lorenz institute: http://www.kli.ac.at/
02.10.2006 – issue of whether experience is continuous or gappy. Epistemological problem with both views is that we can’t experience “gaps”, and neither can we experience continuity. Wittgensteinian point – we don’t have anything to contrast the continuity with. The “Stream of consns” model is an inadequate metaphor. If consns is like a stream at, it’s more like a stream which has turned into an ocean seafloor current. It envelops its experiencer completely.
But Dennett, Ballard et al have good points against the “standard continuous” model, since through science we have shown that we are not continuously perceiving. The issue is to then explain why it doesn’t “seem gappy” if it isn’t “really continuous. Llinas tries to fill the gaps with the oscillatory “closed system” model.
Phosphenes – find out more about. The nearest thing to pure qualia around. 03.10.2006 Phosphenes are an entoptic phenomenon – see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon. Journalofvision.org, vision research (Elsevier) many articles available online
04.11.2006 - Entoptic phenomena are in some sense the “sensation” experiences, but as with other “sense-data” they remain fairly ineffable and are described always by perceivers who have the non-entoptic capacities and categorisations.
The problem for the animal of differentiating, and the problem of integrating, the sensory channels. How many sensory channels are there. Is there – can there be – more than one current perceptual channel, or if the sensory channels are perceptually integrated, what does this integration consist in?
09.11.2006 – [sth about p267 re Kirk Ludwig in the book "contemporary debates in cognitive science".]
Rose (“lifelines”): Genes are not privileged in evolution – also genomes, RNA, ribosomes, evo-devo processes, the co-evolving environment are part of the evolving organism.
Co-evolution is a fundamental part of evolution – thus the environment is not passive, and the organism is not passive in its interaction with the abiotic and biotic environment.
14.07.2006 – wittgenstein’s points about qualia (see Dennett – consns expld)… non-explanation of “private” language… sense-data a non-starter for theory-building, these aren’t describable… a point still missed in most philosophy papers to journals… “we define the model as a set of predicates SP such that statements P(L) map onto experiential states E of the world” etc etc. (my old dissertation contained some awareness of this).
18.07.2006 – memory as a stored pattern of synaptic weightings in neural networks. Similarity of declarative memories and perceptions, though perceptions always considered stronger e.g. Hume.
When considering neural models of perceptual representation and memory, difficulty that we are considering circuits with 10x neurons and 10y synapses. -> “grainyness” of resulting models when we think of our own experiences
26.07.2006 – tensor network theory and connectionism as theories showing how sets of neurons can map phase spaces using tensors etc (in Churchland – neurophilosophy).
15.08.2006 – Stiny on what constitutes a boundary – differences between points and higher dimension entities as boundaries. Lack of existence of any predefinable atomic vocabulary for shapes -> impossibility of counting (using rules to define a linear series). Fractals are unfinished but in their definition they are determinate (the rules are fixed, only the results lead to indeterminacy of boundaries).
25.08.2006 – not surprising that most of our language involves descriptions of movements or positions in a space, since motor understanding is the “basis” of “higher” cognition. See lakoff on metaphors, grush on egocentric vs allocentric space (in churchland, “brain-wise”).
06.09.2006 - Alva Noe and visual perception as process (temporal), like somatic perception. Avoid reification into “pattern/state”.
10.09.2006 – when the empiricists’ logical atomism failed, the mistaken way to deal with it was to think that philosophy “ended” with Wittgenstein, the philosopher who provided both the most mesmeric expression of logical atomism (in the Tractatus) and some of the most scathing, though somewhat gnomic, criticisms of that atomism (in Philosophical Investigations). The best way to deal with the end of empirical atomism is to know enough about the science of perception to be able to begin philosophising about perception again.
Although many neuroscientific experiments and actors are labouring under some old Cartesian and atomistic illusions, not all of them are, at least not all of the time. Bennett and Hacker’s book is depressing because of their deliberate narrow-mindedness on this point, combined with the repetitive “Wittgenstein was right – philosophy analyses how ordinary language is used”, as if thinking about perception or doing science was basically a subsiduary side-issue for philosophy.
25.09.2006 – evolution of language and communication. Cellular and molecular comms and the naturalistic turn to the concept of “information”. Neural comms and computation. Bioinformatics and mathematics – naturalism in mathematical logic. And complexity. Genetic switches. UV, biosonar, bioluminescence and biofluorescence etc animal sensation/perception and philosophy. Bug eyes (compound) and other eyes. A phenomenology of bee vision?
Animal comms and philosophy – see Lieberman also. Mimesis and meaning, and M-P. Lieberman p201 meaning and use. Macdonald 1994 reference in Lieberman. Connection between cognition, motor ctrl and language.
29.09.2006 – self/non-self e.g. at cellular, molecular, organism levels. Self-organisation - molecular /astrobiological/evo devo/neural. Fractal (repeating) aspect of levels in biology. Hox genes and dnA – how we’re all (nearly) the same – the biologic approach to philosophical issues. emergence of consciousness issue – biological aspect to mind/body problem. Problem of the interspecific boundary between types of consns or cons/non-consns. Perception - Need to broaden the enactive view out here, as Clark says in Is the vis..?
30.09.2006 – chance and necessity and evolutionary process. Contingency of existence – talkorigins, gould, monod, Sartre etc. biological processes and aesthetics (fractals, Fibonacci series, ramachandran on art).
01.10.2006 – on drosophila eyes: http://xray.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/cml/opt307/spr04/greg/
Konrad Lorenz institute: http://www.kli.ac.at/
02.10.2006 – issue of whether experience is continuous or gappy. Epistemological problem with both views is that we can’t experience “gaps”, and neither can we experience continuity. Wittgensteinian point – we don’t have anything to contrast the continuity with. The “Stream of consns” model is an inadequate metaphor. If consns is like a stream at, it’s more like a stream which has turned into an ocean seafloor current. It envelops its experiencer completely.
But Dennett, Ballard et al have good points against the “standard continuous” model, since through science we have shown that we are not continuously perceiving. The issue is to then explain why it doesn’t “seem gappy” if it isn’t “really continuous. Llinas tries to fill the gaps with the oscillatory “closed system” model.
Phosphenes – find out more about. The nearest thing to pure qualia around. 03.10.2006 Phosphenes are an entoptic phenomenon – see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon. Journalofvision.org, vision research (Elsevier) many articles available online
04.11.2006 - Entoptic phenomena are in some sense the “sensation” experiences, but as with other “sense-data” they remain fairly ineffable and are described always by perceivers who have the non-entoptic capacities and categorisations.
The problem for the animal of differentiating, and the problem of integrating, the sensory channels. How many sensory channels are there. Is there – can there be – more than one current perceptual channel, or if the sensory channels are perceptually integrated, what does this integration consist in?
09.11.2006 – [sth about p267 re Kirk Ludwig in the book "contemporary debates in cognitive science".]
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