Here's some passages from the "Future" chapter in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience by Matthew Cobb that I've blogged about recently. (See here and here and here for my previous posts about the book.)
I especially like the passage that begins with "A related view" below. Almost certainly the brain isn't at all like a computer, for reasons Cobb describes.
I also enjoyed the open-ended possibilities of where brain research is heading that concludes Cobb's book -- the last passage i've shared.
With science, research can go in many different directions. That's a big appeal of science, how it follows truth wherever it might lead. Dead-ends aren't a failure, since they indicate more productive avenues of knowledge.
Here's the excerpts.
These repeated calls for more theory may be a pious hope. It can be argued that there is no possible single theory of brain function, not even in a worm, because a brain is not a single thing (scientists are even hard put to come up with a precise definition of what a brain is).
As Crick observed the brain is an integrated, evolved structure with different bits of it appearing at different moments in evolution and adapted to solve different problems.
...The nature of the brain -- simultaneously integrated and composite -- may mean that our future understanding will inevitably be fragmented and composed of different explanations for different parts. After all, as Marr put it, the brain is composed of 'a whole lot' of information-processing devices.
...The metaphors of neuroscience -- computers, coding, wiring diagrams and so on -- are inevitably partial. That is the nature of metaphors, which have been intensely studied by philosophers of science and by scientists, as they seem to be so central to the way scientists think.
But metaphors are also rich and allow insight and discovery. There will come a point when the understanding they allow will be outweighed by the limits they impose, but in the case of computational and representational metaphors of the brain there is no agreement that such a moment has arrived.
...A related view of the nature of consciousness turns the brain-as-computer metaphor into a strict analogy. Some researchers view the mind as a kind of operating system that is implemented on neural hardware, with the implication that our minds, seen as a particular computational state, could be uploaded onto some device or into another brain.
In the way this is generally presented, this is wrong, or at best hopelessly naive. The materialist working hypothesis is that brains and minds, in humans and maggots and everything else, are identical. Neurons and the processes they support -- which somehow include consciousness -- are the same thing.
In a computer, software and hardware are separate; however, our brains and our minds consist of what can best be described as wetware in which what is happening and where it is happening are completely intertwined.
Imagining that we can repurpose our nervous system to run different programs, or upload our mind to a server, might sound scientific but lurking behind this idea is a non-materialist view going back to Descartes and beyond. It implies that our minds are somehow floating about in our brains and could be transferred into a different head or replaced by another mind.
It would be possible to give this idea a veneer of scientific respectability by posing it in terms of reading the state of a set of neurons and writing that to a new substrate, organic or artificial.
But to even begin to imagine how that might work in practice, we would need both an understanding of neuronal function that is far beyond anything we can currently envisage and would require unimaginably vast computational power that precisely mimicked the structure of the brain in question.
...Every cell is not like a binary switch that can be turned on or off, forming a wiring diagram. Instead, the main way that the nervous system alters its working is by changes in the pattern of activity in networks of cells composed of large numbers of units; it is these networks that channel, shift, and shunt activity.
...When we extend this insight to understanding the brain, the key implication is that, as the title of a 1997 article strikingly put it, 'The Brain Has a Body.' And the body has an environment, and both affect how the brain does what it does.
This might seem trivially obvious, but neither the body nor the environment feature in modeling approaches that seek to understand the brain. The physiological reality of all brains is that they interact with the body and the external environment from the moment they begin to develop.
...Animals are not robots piloted by brains, we are all, whether maggots or humans, individuals with agency and a developmental and evolutionary history. Those factors are all involved with how our brains work and need to be integrated into our models.
...The significance of remembering that brains are in bodies can be seen from the way that brains interact with the gut microbiome. 'Germ-free' mice have no microbes living in their gut, and as a result show altered levels of serotonin in the brain and lower levels of anxious behavior.
The unlikely causal link between microbes and behaviour was shown when the introduction of a normal microbiome into the mice reversed both these effects: fundamental aspects of brain biochemistry can be affected by the microbes that live in the gut.
...Perhaps the various computational projects will come good and theoreticians will crack the functioning of all brains, or the connectomes will reveal principles of brain function that are currently hidden from us.
Or a theory will somehow pop out of the vast amounts of imaging data we are generating.
Or we will slowly piece together a theory (or theories) out of a series of separate but satisfactory explanations.
Or by focusing on simple neural network principles we will understand higher-level organisation.
Or some radical new approach integrating physiology and biochemistry and anatomy will shed decisive light on what is going on.
Or new comparative evolutionary studies will show how other animals are conscious and provide insight into the functioning of our own brains.
Or models developed to explain simple brains will turn out to be scalable and will explain ours too.
Or the default mode network identified in humans will turn out to be applicable to other animals and to hold the key to overall function.
Or unimagined new technology will change all our views by providing a radical new metaphor for the brain.
Or our computer systems will provide us with alarming new insight by becoming conscious.
Or a new framework will emerge from cybernetics, control theory, complexity, and dynamical systems theory, semantics, and semiotics.
Or we will accept that there is no theory to be found because brains have no overall logic just adequate explanations of each tiny part and we will have to be satisfied with that.
Or --
It is good to form questions. And it's equally good to answer them. In the effort to answer them, through measurement, through witness, through evidence, this also guides our questions. We are interested in questions that can be answered, not questions we like that cannot.
To ask the same questions over and over that cannot be answered as a context for smaller questions that can has purpose to keep our investigations going. But to ask questions rhetorically over and over to imply a particular view is wrong makes no sense. That's just argumentation and not investigation. Investigation requires an open, inquisitive mind. Argumentation requires a different, argumentative, Mind set.
The author argues against the concept of a free floating mind apart from the brain. But that dichotomy is old and out of date. Both states, physical and noncorporeal, are out of date. They lack the subtlety that science has demonstrated is in fact this reality.
It's all physical. And what we call physical contains mysterious fields of energy whose actions were once invisible and regarded as incorporeal. And the corporeal matter is made up of fields of energy and is mostly empty space. It is the pattern that distinguishes matter of one type from another. It is the "intelligence", the design, the arrangement of the elements that makes biology. And the intelligence of the pattern or design of that biology that makes intelligence.
That's how reality is. What you imagine isn't incorporeal. A wifi signal isn't incorporal. The image you see on your computer, though it is zeros and ones in one sense, is also a lovely photo of a sunset decoded properly. You can say it is just zeros and ones. But the photo is an image of something that is real. You just won't find that reality inside the laptop, however carefully you dissect it.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | June 04, 2020 at 04:12 AM
“'Germ-free' mice have no microbes living in their gut, and as a result show altered levels of serotonin in the brain and lower levels of anxious behavior.”
*******
A fascinating tidbit indeed. Makes sense as we have more serotonin receptors in our gut.
“Although serotonin is well known as a brain neurotransmitter, it is estimated that 90 percent of the body's serotonin is made in the digestive tract.”
Posted by: Sonia | June 04, 2020 at 09:45 AM
So, the below referenced article (my grammar sucks) isn’t as gluey sciencey but it’s relevant.
FYI, “sciencey” is a common term used in the Science community—they use it to avoid describing things in detail to layman or idiots. They just say, blah, blah, blah and you know, “sciencey stuff”.
Oh, and “gluey” is my term for brain matter.
********
Article:
What do we mean by meaning? Science can help with that
https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-mean-by-meaning-science-can-help-with-that-113269
Excerpt:
“Cognitive scientist W. Tecumseh Fitch, an expert in the evolution of human language, says what separates humans from other species is our ability to interpret things in a tree-like structure.
Our brains are built to group things and to arrange them into hierarchies, and not just in grammar. This opens up a whole universe of meanings that we are able to extract from language and other sources of information.
But complex structure isn’t all there is to meaning. If you’ve seen any computer programming you know that computers can also handle this kind of complex grammar. That doesn’t mean computers find it meaningful.
Research into human brains is trying to find out how we find information significant. We attach emotional and semantic weight to the utterances we speak and hear. The neuroscience of working memory may hold some clues.”
Posted by: Sonia | June 04, 2020 at 10:02 AM
Humans are basically just made of of air and energy waves. We’re not “solid”. So, yikes... rethinking everything with my air head energy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/11/03/how-the-human-body-creates-electromagnetic-fields/
Here’s an excerpt from the article linked above:
“How can I punch you, if your face, and indeed my hand, are just made up of fuzzy balls?
There’s no concept of “solid” at this level — so why should my hand make contact with your face?
The answer lies in the electric field.
Every atom has its own electric field, and when you put two atoms close together, they can mess around with the electric field of the other.
In some circumstances, this “messing around” is what leads to atomic bonding — the atoms and their electrons “find a way” to coexist in a way that minimizes their mutual energy, and they resist being pulled apart. This is what we interpret as an atomic bond.”
Posted by: Sonia | June 04, 2020 at 10:19 AM
The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man!
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-hippies-were-right-its-all-about-vibrations-man/
This is an awesome article, BTW. Here’s an excerpt but take time to read the full article if you can.
“All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields.
An interesting phenomenon occurs when different vibrating things/processes come into proximity: they will often start, after a little time, to vibrate together at the same frequency. They “sync up,” sometimes in ways that can seem mysterious. This is described today as the phenomenon of spontaneous self-organization.
Examining this phenomenon leads to potentially deep insights about the nature of consciousness and about the universe more generally.“
—S
Posted by: Science | June 04, 2020 at 01:24 PM
If Big Data could spontaneously self organize then humans would be in serious trouble. But it can’t. For now.
And now I’m gonna go sign up for a class or something... clearly spending too much time here. 😐
Posted by: AI | June 04, 2020 at 01:36 PM
Darwin’s theory of natural selection is about as solid a theory as science has.
It is the atheist mantra for explaining how we humans, and all other life, have developed.
It’s also been described as survival of the fittest, of nature red in tooth and claw. While this may be an oversimplification, one only had to ventute into nature or the wild to see how it’s the young, old, injured, sick or weakest of the herd that are targeted. There’s no fair play or morals involved here.
And yet we as humans beings, the very pinnacle of this cruel or even indifferent evolutionary law (at least here on planet earth), seem to have instead developed almost completely the opposite qualities.
I mean if this law is so fundanental to our development, would it not be more natural for our personalities to also be like that and for us exhibit these cruel tendencies more than any other animal.
The weak doves should have been weeded out by the strong hawks. Yet this is not how our societies and morals are structured. Why?
Our strongest impulse and aspirations unless you are a psychopath or a thug or ape, is not to be the strongest or to kill and harm others. Instead we develop entire philipsophies and religions like Buddhism trying to prevent suffering.
Preventing suffering is heretical from an atheist Darwinian viewpoint. I’m not saying someone who believes in Darwin’s theory is cruel, but I am asking if this is the process that determines our state, where do we get all this morality and goodness and compassion from?
Now I can accept there may be ways of trying to explain ‘altruistic’ behavior using Darwinian evolution. But does the atheist not still find it odd that in this indifferent universe where the strongest survive, the animal that has reached the top of the tree, has characteristics that are the antithesis or furthest away from the underlying law that created them.
The most respected among us, unless you are a moron or an ape, are those who are not the strongest or cruelest, rather they are our saints - those who are
kindest, forgiving, loving, compassionate - all the things that surely we should be the worst at if Darwinian evolution was our creator.
Humans are the only animal that will knowingly sacrifice our own lives for others, not just family. Where does that come from in a universe where survival is everything?
Does it not strike the atheist as strange that the best parts of human nature are so completely at odds with the very biological laws and process that created us?
Posted by: Georgy Porgy | June 05, 2020 at 02:22 PM