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".]
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