𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁? Don't miss the Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon. Earl Miller and team will discuss recent paper and we'll have plenty of discussion. Open to all. Sept 12, noon EST-US umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence @earlkmiller.bsky.social
Yes, the interesting question is ‘how’. Once the ‘life force’ was replaced with molecular biology, DNA etc. Which led to the great sentence at the end of the original Nature paper. But we are very many years away from understanding how something as complex as a primate brain produces thought.
I don’t know why you go on about emergent. Of course cognition is emergent. A neuron doesn’t think. it is the whole network of neuron, the connectome, and inputs from the eye, ears and body that supports thinking.
I think they're just trying to be alluring and mysterious, but yeah, it seems necessarily the case that it's the pattern not the matter.
Emergence of intelligence implies we don't know how neurons work together to produce it. Emergence is an excuse for lack of understanding. Some seem to think it's a good thing. Instead, we should be sad to have to use the word.
"Emergence is an excuse for lack of understanding. " Exactly! Just like FEP, Bayesian modelling, TQE, etc..
No, emergence just says the whole has properties lacked by its constituent parts. The issue in the case of the brain is how, and we don’t yet have an understanding like the discovery of the structure of DNA.
Yes we don’t understand it. But I don’t see the harm in using a word which means that the whole does not function the same as its constituent parts. That is a fact, quite seperate from the issue of how this happens.
We know there is emergence, but at the moment haven’t a hope of knowing ‘how’. Best to work on drosophila and see how its nervous system controls flying.
Sure, but it's the idea that emergence is a good thing that bothers me. Some seem to think emergence is the only way cognition can happen, as if it's some magic that we'll never understand. And everyone likes magic, right?
I think we are just disagreeing over words. Emergence is not an explanation. If I say that a table has properties that electrons do not have (emergence) I am not explaining how the hardness of the table occurs. I am just stating a fact.
Stop trying to explain emergence to me. I understand it. Emergence IS an explanation, just not one that explains much. In a real sense, it is the prototypical non-explaining explanation. Calling it a "fact" is immaterial as I'm not disputing some instance of emergence.
Indeed. It promises a lot, but actually doesn't actually deliver sg. substantial. Like FEP, Bayesian modelling, The Quiet Eye, etc. etc..
No it is no more magic than a table being hard when electrons are not. It will certainly be difficult to explain for the brain, but the idea that it happens (we don’t yet know how) is not magic. The idea that dualism explains it, that IS magic.
Never mind. You aren't really listening to my point. Just want to tell me stuff.
Sorry, I was not clear on what you meant. Can you explain it to me so I can understand it.
Sorry Dick. It is already explained. At least all functional perception processes within all motor actions are explained which can lead to final physiological breakthroughs. Without an explanatory model science will never make any progress. www.researchgate.net/profile/Nj-M...
I accept that we can understand visuomotor behaviour. But the issue relates to higher cognition. Of course understanding the former may help us to understanding the latter.
Emergence has been used to avoid explanations, but it is possible to use it in much more productive ways. This event later this week may be a place to hear about that: www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re...
We're all interested in the *how*, so a multiplicity of proposals are considered. I don't view one specific view as "correct" but as potentially useful ways to understand challenging systems. If it were easy we'd be done by now!
If you missed it before, here's the link to the paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
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