Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!elroy!gryphon!sarima
From: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: MIND PART 1
Keywords: mind-model
Message-ID: <15324@gryphon.COM>
Date: 30 Apr 89 16:35:26 GMT
References: <1261@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen)
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 98

In article<1261@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>dwarren@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Warren) writes:
>     Although the mind exists within the brain, the mind is not a material,
>physical being.  The mind is a structure composed purely of information.  The
>physical structure of the brain determines the informational structure of the
>mind, but these two structures are not identical.  Put it this way:  The
>brain holds information, and information holds the mind.  The brain is
>organized physically, but the mind is organized logically.

	In general I find tend to find this a reasonable view of the
mind.  However, I have a small nit to pick here.  I would not use the term
"logical" for the organization of the mind, unless you mean something other
than Aristotilean logic.  I would rather say that the mind is organized
"topically" or "experientially" or "subjectively".

>     Your mind sits at one end of the loop and contemplates your environment
>at the other end of the loop.  Your environment is the whole cosmos,
>including your body, brain, and mind.  Your mind starts out as tabula rasa,
>"a clean slate."  As your mind develops and fills with knowledge, it tries to
>mirror internally the cosmos which it perceives externally.  Who can say
>which is the agent - the cosmos organizing minds, or mind organizing the
>cosmos?

	Another nit, I think that this is rather an oversimplification.
There is considerable evidence for at least some "pre-programming" of the
mental circuits, even those not strictly involved in sensori-motor function.
We call these pre-programs "instinct" and "predispositions" and other similar
terms.  I will admit that in the human mind the amount of pre-programming is
minute relative to the amount of adaptive learning, but it is still there.,

>Each fiber in the memory channel is like a series of millions of nodes. Within
>the particular memory channel for each sense, there are thousands of
>the nodal fibers.  Your oldest memories were deposited and permanently,
>unchangeably fixed in the first nodes of the lifetime-long memory channels.
>At each moment of sensation and perception, all the simultaneously occupied
>nodes among all the the memory fibers of each memory channel irrevocably fix
>their contents.  The group of nodes fixed on parallel fibers at one moment in
>time is like a "slice" of memory of that moment in time.

	This is my first *major* disagreement.  This is simply not supported
in any way by research into brain function!  Long-term memory components are
frequently re-used for later memories.  This is a well esablished fact of
neurobiology.  Mentally "advanced" forms like humans have a tremendous
capability for *reconstructing* old memories from the remaining, unerasedm
fragments, but the old memories are *not* kept intact forever.  Instead they
are selectively replaced by more relevent current memories.  Also, the new
memories are often patterned after the old ones, so that the structure is
retained.  We call this "bias", and "selective memory".
	An extreme example of this is found in certain songbirds that
change thier song slightly each breeding season.  In at least some of
these species the memetic structures for song production degenerate and
disappear in the non-breeding season, and are rebuilt from the ground
up before each breeding season.  The only *constant* portion being the
pre-wired general pattern for the species song.  And this annual rebuilding
of memory is accompanied by shifts in physical brain mass assigned to
vocalization!
	Admittedly there is no evidence of such extreme restructuring in
humans, but there is also no reason to assume a radically different
mechanism for memory!

>     Each sensory memory channel is like a pipeline full of nodal fibers.
>The nodal fibers are already there, genetically provided and ready to
>receive engrams of memory.  The pipeline is gradually filling up with memory
>slices all through your lifetime.  The memory-slices are so densely packed
>that you could live to be over a hundred years old and not run out of fresh,
>unused, tabula rasa memory locations.  The gradual fixation or consumption of
>memory-slices is like a slow burning fuse, so long that it takes over a
>hundred years to burn to the end.  Even if you did run out of fresh
>memory-spaces in your old age, you would still function as an intelligent
>mind with full retention of your many decades of old memories and with the
>loss of only your ability to remember each passing moment of the present.
>You could still speak, for instance, several languages and do anything else
>that you learned to do before your tabula rasa memory ran out.

	In light of the neurobiological research results mentioned above,
and based on actual human experience in the abscence of degenerative brain
disease, this is not how it works.  Rather the new memories overlay the older
ones in progressively greater degrees.  Thus old "event" memories are often
largely lost, unless they are renewed by cinstant use.  Skill memories are
less altered, but they also gradually deteriorate unless kept current by use.
Certainly older people continue to be able to speak all, or most, languages
that they ever knew.  But this is more due to renewal and reconstruction than
permanence.  For instance, I learned to read a German fairly well in school,
but now I can barely make it out, since I have had little opportunity to
use it on a regular basis.  Yes, I would relearn it much faster than the
first time around because fragments of the original knowledge remain on which
to build a newly constructed knowledge.  Also, much of my early knowledge
of German has been incorporated into my general knowledge of linguistics, and
is kept "current" by my continued dabbling in that area.



	In short, while I find your basic model of the mind quite useful,
I feel that you have been too influenced by a priori reasoning, and have
paid little attention to recent findings in neurobiology and psychology.
-- 
Sarima Cardolandion			sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM
aka Stanley Friesen			rutgers!marque!gryphon!sarima
					Sherman Oaks, CA