The War on Neuroscience : Part 2 Split Brains, Split Souls Part 1 is here: www.youtube.com Part 3 is here: www.youtube.com Audio segments used for this part were taken from a couple other youtube videos featuring VS Ramachandran, a neurologist who is the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and a professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. And also neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga who did the original work on split brains: VS Ramachandran at Beyond Belief 2006 www.youtube.com Soul Searching 1 www.youtube.com The “Soul Searching” video is an extract from a documentary that discussed whether there was still a meaning to the idea of the soul. It’s not really friendly to neuroscience but it becomes obvious that those who complain about what neuroscience is discovering have nothing but very vacuous ideas of a soul or spirit to counter it with. Michael Gazzaniga’s research, done over 40 years ago, also resulted in a tentative theory about “the self” and the “location of the self” in the brain. It was one of the first glimpses of how we are capable of lying to ourselves in order to maintain an illusion of a rational self driving our choices. Many other psychology experiments have also challenged the ideas we have about free will, consciousness and this illusion of a soul since then.
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Emotions color our everyday individual existence and shape all aspects of our interpersonal and intellectual experiences. In this film, animations and fMRI images introduce students to what we now know about the sub-cortical emotional circuits in the brain and chemical processes that produce our emotional responses and contribute to our decision making and mental health. Live action sequences, both in laboratory and real life situations, illustrate Dr. Knutsons research on risk taking and provide intriguing examples of the factors involved in the interplay of affect and reason in making choices. This film is the most recent addition to an important documentary film series on neuroscience form Davidson Films. Further information on the series can be found at www.davidsonfilms.com
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@zarkoff45
Creationism is disputing the answer to a “how” question that science has figured out already. Philosophy is trying to answer not a “how” but a “why,” even when you work out the physics of “how” mind works. My turn to quote drop, from another physicist, Schrödinger: “It is convenient to regard [the world] as objectively existing on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence.”
@KingOfMadCows “Look at the Cochlear implant.”
Yes, that’s a good example interfacing to the sensory nerves:
watch?v=qnIUW7xnYB0
Thanks for commenting. I’ll make use of that decoded neural firing in a cat’s brain in future installments of this series.
Computer brain interface technology for humans is already pretty common. Look at the Cochlear implant. Also, look up a guy named Jens Naumann.
As for interpreting neuron firing as experience, we’re coming along nicely. Researchers at Berkley already managed to decode neural firing in a cat’s lateral geniculate nucleus to produce an image of the cat’s vision and that was back in 2000. It might take some more time to translate more complex stuff but it’ll probably happen sooner than later.
@ikkuj “It’s not out of date, you still have modern philosophers like Dennett and Chalmers arguing over it.”
That’s like saying creationism is still valid because Chuck Norris and Ben Stein are still arguing with Keith Olbermann and Bill Nye about evolution. Philosophers are not neuroscientists and to paraphrase Richard Feynman: the philosophy of mind is as useful to a neuroscientist as ornithology is to birds.
@zarkoff45
This debate is very much alive and well today. Look for the binding problem in neuroscience and the hard problem of consciousness. We are not detecting experiences, we are detecting electrochemical changes, or in the animal mirror test, we are detecting behaviors in response to stimuli. We’re using that “theory of mind” to assume that qualia are involved, because we ourselves are experiencing something.
@zarkoff45
It’s not out of date, you still have modern philosophers like Dennett and Chalmers arguing over it.
Can you not imagine an animal that has electrochemical signals flowing through it, causing it to change its behavior in different ways, that lacks an internal awareness of any kind of experience? It reacts to what we call “pain” in the same way, avoiding it or trying to reduce that signal, but it acts this way as part of its programming without the need for anything we call “qualia”?
@ikkuj “… detect qualia and indeed we haven’t.”
Who said we haven’t? That’s out of date 19th century philosophy, not neuroscience. We do detect qualia and track their paths from sensory input nerves to deep in the brain.
Google: “Three Laws of Qualia, What Neurology Tells Us about the Biological Functions of Consciousness, Qualia and the Self.”
If you’re not like a kid insisting there are little people in the TV set you might get it.
The qualia called pain:
watch?v=gQS0tdIbJ0w
@zarkoff45
You shouldn’t be able to detect qualia and indeed we haven’t. We can’t detect that they are having an internal experience, as you said we use a theory of mind to simply assume they have qualia which are causing their behavior.
@zarkoff45
The ability to record information and react to the outside world is something computers have already been able to do. Sure the robot is able to take very complex visual input and give the desired output, but what makes you think there is a necessary inner qualitative experience? It’s still executing programming functions line by line.
@ikkuj “so other animals are self aware. What has that got to do with what we were talking about in the first place?”
It was detectable. The p-zombie argument says you shouldn’t be able to detect consciousness.
@ikkuj “Do you really think that the robot is going to have any kind of inner experience?”
In a way, yes. That Asimo has a precursor to inner experience, it has reportable abstract knowledge that it learned on its own. That’s the beginning of a self-story and a sense of “I”. There is still a lot to do, however.
Whether its done by microprocessors or by organic neurons is irrelevant.
@zarkoff45
I certainly couldn’t have done it. But someone did, which is all my point is. I couldn’t program anything.
Do you really think that the robot is going to have any kind of inner experience? It’s working on line by line assembly programming of some type, just doing calculations with a microprocessor. What makes you think our brain is anything like a computer, with a central processing unit executing a programmed code line by line?
@ikkuj “It’s not much harder to program a computer to do categorization tasks either.”
So, you think this was easy:
watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg
And that it is not taking us closer to self-aware robots?
@zarkoff45
Yes qualia have to be conscious! that’s the definition! Qualia are the inner subjective experience of sensation.
A photodetector can easily be programmed to speak, in plain English, and identify a certain wavelength as a certain color. It’s not much harder to program a computer to do categorization tasks either. But where does the subjective experience come in?
@zarkoff45
Um ok, so other animals are self aware. What has that got to do with what we were talking about in the first place?
@ikkuj “then you must also think that a photodetector capable of differentiating between light of different wavelengths requires some internal qualitative experience to make the distinction…”
It depends on what you mean by qualia. Do qualia have to be conscious?
Also, you didn’t read well. A mere photodetector does not talk and report with language what it sees. It does not recognize a book as an object and associate a color with the object. There’s a lot of cognitive function in that.
@ikkuj “It is only self evident to me that I am aware.”
But you do have to use some “theory of mind” or theory of other minds to function socially, yes? You don’t deny that there is evidence that others are aware?
And we have tests for things like self-awareness in animals, like the mirror/mark test:
watch?v=vJFo3trMuD8
watch?v=AHUuX_rBuJE
By the way, before any assumptions are made, I am not a theist nor am I a pseudo-scientific new ager watching videos like what the bleep or the secret. I am just a student of both science and philosophy seeking to understand reality. I just finished a course in neurobiology this semester, and while fascinating, I still remain unconvinced of the materialist paradigm.
@zarkoff45
Sorry but I believe YOUR statement is dead wrong.
Qualia are not at all necessary for the function you’re speaking of. If you think they are, then you must also think that a photodetector capable of differentiating between light of different wavelengths requires some internal qualitative experience to make the distinction, even though it’s simply a result of different wavelengths producing different electrical signals in the computer.
@zarkoff45
Perhaps my wording confused you? I was speaking in second person because the argument was addressed at you and I realized you were the one going to be thinking it through, but no, it is not at all self evident to me that you are aware. It is only self evident to me that I am aware.
@zarkoff45
I never said we have full awareness of all of our thoughts, subconscious desires are a prime example of this, as well as the split brain patient. But the fact that there is anything having any awareness whatsoever isn’t really necessary in the materialist paradigm.
@ikkuj “The fact that you are aware is an axiom that is self-evident…”
Can you see how you just defeated your own p-zombie argument?
If I am aware to you than I obviously cannot be a zombie?
Perhaps you are talking about a different p-zombie argument I’ve not heard of.
@ikkuj “Qualia and subjective experience are unnecessary if you reduce everything down to clockwork mechanisms.”
I believe that statement is dead wrong.
Qualia and subjective experience are necessary for some functions. How would you know blue from red and report them to another person, saying “that book is red,” if you couldn’t distinguish red qualia from blue qualia?
@ikkuj “I am speaking of awareness of thoughts…”
If you pay attention to the video you’ll see that the split brain patients are not all that aware of all their thoughts. They just think they are until they are shown otherwise.
And have you ever seen a person insist they are not angry when they obviously are?
And have you heard about “proprioception”?
Our bodies could possess senses about themselves and the outside world of which our I-functions are unaware.
@zarkoff45
I am speaking of awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. What else would I be talking about?