quantummechanics

[Corrie van Wijk]

In quantummechanics information gives form and identity to matter.
A quantumcomputer entangles 0 and 1 until it is measured.

Analogous, would sensory information get its form and identity only until you(r body) 'measure(s)' it in terms of what it means (for your survival).

Would that evaluation result in an emotion that gets entangled with the sensory information, so 'measuring' it through association by means of similar sensory information (space) brings back the emotion from memory?

[Corrie van Wijk]

Ä neurobiologist wrote me: "That seems to me a comparison, that is much too vague, and is not very helpfull."

"The combination of sensory processing (including internal milieu variables) with short- and longterm memory explains why a particular brain at a particular moment in time is inclined to favor one stimulus over another. We can even imagine this to occur in brains (or machines for that matter) without any phenomenal experience.

From: Victor A. Lamme: Why visual attention and awareness are different. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2003.

[phil]

Ä neurobiologist wrote me: "That seems to me a comparison, that is much too vague, and is not very helpfull."

It IS a comparison, since it is a metaphor, and how else do we make sense of the world except by comparing things? I mean not just by using overt metaphors like 'entangle' to represent the kind of relationship that might exist between 'emotion' and 'sensory information' but also apparently conceptual words like 'information' which are metaphors too.

I wonder how vague Einstein was being when he 'compared' how light and time are related with what it might be like to be riding on a light beam? And how helpful?

And how precise is it to say something is 'too vague and not very helpful'?

"We can even imagine ... without any phenomenal experience" - that I would like to 'see' :D

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Victor wrote that a metaphor for the neurological processing of information and the subsequent reactions of the organism would be:
"A path that can be smoothened or a path that can be constructed (genetically, or by experience) or a path that was just created because somebody trampled down the grass. But also a path with many possible forks, and the water that runs down it coincidentally chooses its direction because of a pebble lying on one path and not on the other. And, because of that choice, the water erodes the choice once made. And of course a path, one fork of which leads to a restaurant with delicious food and the other into a dry desert..." (my translation from Dutch).

[phil]

I like that metaphor, as far as it goes. And once the erosion has started, removing the pebble will not be enough to change the course of the flow.

So what happens to change? How can that happen when a path is eroded?
Perhaps a new diversion of the flow before the pebble? And what then happens to the old course of the flow?

There's a book about China by John Hersey called "A Single Pebble" I think it contains echoes of this idea.

I think a network metaphor works better for the neurological process - more dimensions.

Phil