Re: [ontolog-forum] brainwaves (WAS: to concept or not to concept, is th

["Deborah MacPherson" <debmacp@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Pat and John -

The point I'm trying to get to is not to recreate processes that may never be fully understood about individual brains including why or how a person would think their thoughts - its the possibility of emulating a global brain. Groups of people using their machines and thinking together. Not by developing what John calls "a complete model" of every possible permutation and connection, a much more constrained scenario just mapping the well beaten paths and known connections because this is plenty to work with. The connections range from simple facts: water is made of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen, nobody argues about it anymore, where it gets really interesting is the same questions continuing to go unanswered and the references to "what has been right" in the past, for example, a 2006 Journal that still reaches back to accepted ideas from 1983, 1978, 1970, 1967, 1960. The topology of partial knowledge set in contrast to (relatively) complete and unchanging....records. 

Deborah

On Dec 17, 2007 7:57 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>Topologies ARE what I believe can be recorded and compared

No, really, they cannot. Even the brain itself is
not aware of its own topology. It could not
possibly be: that would need at least a much
bigger brain. Even if one were given a complete
(dead) mammalian brain, there is no conceivable
way to reconstruct all the neural connections in
it, since the total cross-section of a neuron's
end branchings greatly exceeds that of its axon,
and these neurons are tightly packed in the
cortex. Any way to 'take it apart' to find all
the neurons, therefore, would of necessity
involve breaking the connections which hold them
together. Put another way: its impossible to
assemble (or disassemble) a brain; it has to be
grown.

For more on this and many other fascinating
neural topics, see books by Valentino Braitenberg.

Pat

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Deborah L. MacPherson
Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC

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