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Hologramic Theory Of Mind

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Axiom

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I've recently read Dr. Paul Pietsch's book "Shufflebrain: The Quest of Hologramic Mind." In it he presents a rather unique theory about how the brain gives rise to the mind, and provides descriptions of a number of experiments (which he collectively calles shufflebrain) that seem to support what he is proposing.

The book is available for free at

http://www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/shufflebrain.pdf

and you can visit Dr. Pietsch's homepage at http://www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/

The thesis of the book is that the brain stores the mind as codes of wave phase, with the same characteristics as a hologram. And just as with a hologram the entire message (i.e, the mind) is contained in every subset of the medium (i.e, the brain). Essentially the brain is then a group of independent, but very flexible "modules" that code for various functions (in the most general sense of that word). A few startling preditions are made, and then experiments are described in support of them.

Be warned though, that a few chapters in the book get highly mathematical - in very layman's terms though. It's certainly understandable without much of a background in maths (if you try hard enough) but ideally you would have at least a Calculus 3 background.

Here are some quotes:

Note: He uses the term memory in a very general sense in the book.

"I use the term memory in reference to all the brain's stored information, whether learned, innate, or installed by some still unknown means. I use the term interchangeably with stored mind."

And now the juicy parts:

"I am an anatomist. I say that with pride and satisfaction, even now. And during much of my career, I was certain beyond a conscious doubt that the truth about life would reduce directly and explicitly to the architecture of the things that do the living. I had complete faith, too, that my science would one day write the most important scientific story of all: How a brain gives existence to a mind. But I was wrong. And my very own research, which I call shufflebrain, forced me to junk the axioms of my youth and begin my intellectual life all over again."

Page 3 (of the .PDF file)

"... Memory often survives massive brain damage, even the removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere. In the 1920s the celebrated psychologist Karl Lashley ... demonstrated that the engram, or memory trace, cannot be isolated in any specific compartment of a rat's brain. Certain optical holograms invented in the early 1960s, the most common today, exhibit just what Lashley had alleged of memory: A piece cut from such a hologram--any piece--will reconstruct the entire image. For as unlikely as this may seem, the message exists, whole, at every point in the medium."

Page 3

"... what about the mind after the loss of a visual lobe of the brain? Halstead's group had something to say about this, too. The twenty-two year old secretary had scored 133 points on an IQ test before surgery. A month after the operation, she again scored 133. And five weeks after the operation, she left the hospital and returned to her job--as a secretary, no less! About the filing clerk, whose IQ also

remained unchanged, Halstead et al. wrote, "Immediately on awakening from the anesthetic, the patient talked coherently and read without hesitation. At no time was there any evidence of aphasia [speech loss] or alexia [reading deficits].

Thus, in spite of the loss of half the visual areas of their cerebrums, despite a halved, or nearly halved, view of the external world, both young women retained whole visual memories. They are far from unique. Three floors below where I sit, there is an eye clinic whose filing cabinets contain thousands of visual-field maps and case upon case documenting the survival of a complete human mind on the

receiving end of severely damaged human visual pathways."

Page 15

"...in a hologram, the carrier of meaning--or phase-- cannot be reached with an eraser or a knife. Unlike our sheets, the hologramic code ought to survive any anatomical changes we can make. Herein is hologramic theory's most astonishing prediction: shuffling the brain will not scramble the mind!"

Page 56

"What is memory, then? If we transfer the principles we've developed to hologramic theory, we can define a specific memory as a particular spectrum of Ds in transform space. Again, what are Ds? They are phase differences --relative values, relationships between and among constituents of the storage medium--of the brain! Thus in hologramic theory, the brain stores mind not as cells, chemicals,

electrical currents or any other entity of perceptual space, but as relationships at least as abstract as any information housed in the transform space of a physical hologram. The parts and mechanisms of the brain do count; but the Ds they establish in transform space are what make memory what it is. If we try to visualize stored mind by literal comparisons with experience, we surrender any chance of forming a valid concept of the hologramic mind, and quite possibly we yield all hope of ever establishing the existence of the noumenon where the human brain stores the human mind."

Page 93

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There is one telling quote from page 24:

I can't think of anyone who has contributed more to our knowledge of functional human neuroanatomy

than the late Wilder Penfield. Yet the mind-brain question eventually forced him into mysticism. A

neurosurgeon who began his career early in this century, Penfield developed and made routine the

practice of exploring and mapping a region of the brain before cutting into it. Good doctor that he was,

he was preoccupied by the question of whether the treatment would be worse than the disease.

[...]With electrodes, he

stimulated a suspicious area and found out, firsthand, the role it played in his patient's actions and

thoughts. [...]

During the early and middle phases of his career, Penfield was a staunch advocate of the anatomical

point of view. In some of his last written words, he related how he had spent his left [years] trying "to prove that

brain accounts for the mind." [bold markup added] But he had seen too many paradoxes over the years.

Take, for example, a patch of cerebral cortex you're probably using this very moment as your eyes scan

this page. The patch is the size of a postage stamp, on the rear of your frontal lobe, about where a

[...] Viking's horn emerges from the side of his helmet. It's in a place called area 8 [...]. Penfield explored area 8 with electrodes

and found that it is indeed associated with voluntary eye movements. What do you suppose happens if

area 8 is cut out? The person may lose the ability to move his or her eyes, willfully, toward the opposite

side of the head (smooth, involuntary eye movements are handled by the occipital lobes). But the

voluntary eye movements usually return a few days after surgery. And sometimes the function doesn't

disappear at all.

Memory is even more puzzling. Penfield could often elicit vivid recollections of scenes from his

patient's distant past by stimulating the temporal lobe. Had Penfield tapped the seat of long-term

memory? Removal of the area frequently had no demonstrable effect on the person's memory.

For Penfield, the discrepancies eventually became overwhelming. Shortly before he died, he came to the

conclusion that "our being consists of two fundamental elements."[10] For him, those elements had

become "brain and mind" (my italics). Even the most faithful of the faithful have had trouble with mindbrain. [bold markup added]

I take this to mean, that it is the author's belief, that physical brain accounts for the mind, i.e., that mind is totally physical phenomenon and that would be contrary to Objectivist view.

I only read the text this far as of now but in the light of this quote, I would assume the rest of the book will be an attempt to show how the physical brain can account for mind. What might be shown however is different thing, it may not be what we call mind but just the workings of brain.

It certainly is interesting reading and perhaps the hologram model of how the brain works might describe how the brain in principle works (brain is marvelous piece of machinery to be sure) but in the end, what we call mind might not be covered under this theory at all (including free will).

vaclav (knowledge integration)

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I take this to mean, that it is the author's belief, that physical brain accounts for the mind, i.e., that mind is totally physical phenomenon and that would be contrary to Objectivist view.

No, that is not a correct interpretation. If anything I think this is one of the few theories I've seen that actually has some hope of accounting for a non-physical phenomenon like the mind. The rest either completely dismiss the mind (i.e, consciousness) as a byproduct, or at best explain it in terms of bizarre quantum effects that have nothing to do with consciousness (as though through sheer weirdness they can account for how the mind works.)

I'm far from knowledgeable about this subject, but what interests me specifically is how this theory can be applied to AI. I've been doing some work with artificial neural networks, and this might point to another approach (or a new angle on an existing one.)

If anyone is interested I'm building a neat little quadruped robot that I plan to test new control systems on. Should be finished in a few months (I'm still putting together the schematics in SolidWorks).

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I've recently read Dr. Paul Pietsch's book "Shufflebrain: The Quest of Hologramic Mind." In it he presents a rather unique theory about how the brain gives rise to the mind ...

These words piqued my interest so I looked through the book. I'm afraid I cannot share Axiom's admiration and interest for this "theory." The whole notion it is based on is so bizarre, and so far divorced from reality, that it is difficult to take any of it seriously. For instance, everything rests upon Pietsch's notion of "transform space," an abstract space in which a specific memory resides as a spectrum of phase differences. Just as mathematical transforms can go from one abstract space to another, so this phase difference spectrum in Pietsche's transform space becomes a stored memory. This is nothing but engineering-level terminology cloaking a fully platonic view of existence. I would recommend to others reading this thread that they not waste a moment of their time pursuing this "theory."

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Pietsch presents a new approach to thinking about neural computation - rather than looking for "literal comparisons" between the behavior of the brain and the results produced (i.e, mental states) he introduces the idea of the mind being created in a transform space, i.e, existing one level of abstraction above the physical operation of the brain. Instead of the actions of neurons being directly responsible for mental states, it is their actions within the context of a transform space. So in order to understand what's going on beneath the surface one has to look at it from "within" the transform space.

Think of it this way - if you were to look at the operation of an ALU unit inside a pentium chip you would see a literal relationship between the actions of the logic gates and what they represent (i.e, binary code), but if you were to look at the binary code for a .jpeg image you would see no literal relationships, because the binary code is a kind of transform space one step removed from the actual information contained in the file, which might be a picture of a tree. The tree is the literal, and the binary code serves as a useful in-between state for the information because it is easy to deal with for a computer (and note it is the exact opposite for humans - the binary code is incomprehensible, but the image itself is self evident.) This is the whole reason to have transforms - to convert information into another form in which it is easier to work with. This is what Laplace transforms do and this is what Pietsch believes (and I think I am beginning to agree with him) the brain does to do it's own computations.

The hologram concept comes in to provide an analogy of what such a transform space might actually look like and how it would operate. There is hardly any Platonism in it - especially since every conclusion and proposition he makes is directly tied to experiment.

I don't know of any other conceptual framework (and keep in mind that this is all that Pietsch is presenting here: a conceptual framework about how to think about the problem, not a working model) that even comes close to naturally fitting in with the seemingly contradictory experimental results coming out for neuroscience in recent years. Specifically the incredibly plastic nature of brain circuitry, and of course Pietsch's own shufflebrain experiments.

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I grant that Pietsch is an excellent prose writer, but beyond the prose lies little of substance that does not reek of pure rationalism and true platonism. If you cannot see this in the reification of memory as a spectrum of phase difference in transform space, then how about the reification in Riemannian space, complete with curvature and dimension as partial differentiation of species, as the hologramic mind. I mean, really, Axiom, how can you be taken in by such nonsense?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Consciousness, the ability to juxtapose all qualities of the human mind into a singular thought process. As conscious beings, we are able to reflect upon ourselves. We are able to study our senses, introspect our emotions, and understand the very nature of our lives. Rene Descartes, an existentialist philospher during the 15th century, once wrote "I think, therefore I am." This quote stated quite plainly that if one being should think, it must exist, for it is able to have active thought. If one should have deactivated thought, or non-controlable thought during unconsciousness (with the exeption of Dream Lucidity, which is just the use of the imagination on a particular dream), then it is logical that active thought may be connected to consciousness. If all consciousness is active thought, then it's metaphysically possible we are all nothing but thoughts trapped inside a complex system of neurons, electrical charges, and chemical responses. If consciousness is the transmission of active thought throughout the brain, then that is exactly what we are composed of, thought.

Thought though is only one sub-division of the actual mind. Without thought, one should not exist because one cannot know one exists, or know anything else exists. Other conscious beings may be able to find this unconscious, inanimate object and exclaim that this very being does physically exist before their eyes. But that being, within itself, is only physically existant based on theory. But based on theory, a rock also can physically exist. It is the science and phenomenon of thought that lets one exist in time and space. It is the chemical and electrical charges that stimulate awareness, emotion, and the thinking process in the conscious being, which allows it to exist.Thinking beings are drawn to the conclusion that time is just a myriad of choices, each one having in itself a definite consequence on one's existance.This conclusion is drawn from the fact that because each conscious being is able to produce thought, our thoughts then act upon the choices presented to us, or created by us. Hence, thought allows each conscious individual to self evaluate and make a free-willed decision. No creature able to reflect upon one's self can survive without the six conscious and unconscious features of the mind. These six features are perception, imagination, memory, emotion, will, and thought.

Perception is the achievement of understanding the stimulus and material around us. Not understanding in the sense of knowing where the material came from, or what the material does, but knowing that it exists before our eyes. Perception is created from the senses and how the events in our surroundings effect these senses. When affected, our mind switches to this mode of consciousness, becoming aware of the material world around us and understanding what can be heard, felt, tasted, smelt and most believably, what can be seen. Humans in particular, when it comes to believing, are most intrigued and more believing in things they can clearly see and understand. Perception is formed on the basis that everything our senses transmit to the brain must exist (with the exeption of imaginary conjurations which occur from within the mind, and not from the outside enviroment). If not, then some oddity within the ebb of the universe, or our natural ways on this planet, has been affected by some outside force not in concurrence with the planet. If perception is misguided, or disheveled, it can always be brought back onto the path of reason. Perception is only affected directly within the individual and the senses used to acquire such a perception through the mind. If perception is questioned, such as it is in the study of metaphysics, then research can be done to try and prove some parallel universe. Brought down to the most basic of instincts, what we perceive is what we sense with our five senses and is irrefutably existant.

Imagination is the creation of an image concieved completely from the mind that is neither thought of as real or present by the senses. Imagination is what has been thought to make the human species uniquely different from every other species on the planet. We are able to become innovative and imagine anything within a limit of what we actually know. Imagination does not need to obey the laws of reason. Humans desire truth and logic, with this we have within our minds the realistic portion. The opposite of this is the unrealistic portion, the abstract frame of the mind. With this we can juxtapose both logic and absurdity into a mix of ideas and objects humans can create. Using one's imagination is instantaneous, it is the actual creation of an image, whether desired or sought, that has some perceptible delay. Imagination is accompanied by originality, abstract ideas, and perhaps a form of genius. The imagination has seperated the minds of higher level thinking animals from the lower level species. With imagination we have the ability to deal and confront reality with the creative mental powers of the mind.

Memory is the encoded data of all the information in a being's span of life, within retrievable amounts, that is stored in the mind. Memory is associated directly with learning and the past, which both produce memories. Not much is known on the creation of memories except for that they begin to take shape in the form of neuron networks. These neuron networks form in a part of the brain called the Hippocampus. After completion of the neuron networks, the memories move to the Neocortex. After establishing itself within the Neocortex, new passages may form along the neurons to provide faster retrieval time for the individual. Memory is another quality directly associated with consciousness because of it's immense value. Memory allows conscious beings to remember past events, and try and predict the future. It allows beings to make mistakes, not only to recieve consequence from them, but to learn from them. Memory connects the past to the present. It creates the ability to observe one's own improvement or degredation, and learn from either. Memory at times though can be misguided. If an individual lies enough times, to any other being, or just to itself, that individual will begin to believe it's own lie. Memory is easily manipulated, however, it is also easily restored. Memory is a most beneficiary development within the mind, and allows all conscious beings to evolve through learning and remembering.

Emotion is the spontaneous rising, rather than conscious effort, of a certain feeling transmited through the mind. It is the chemical action involving hormones and other chemicals that produce "feelings" within our body. Pleasure, indifference, and displeasure are the three main feelings that all other feelings branch off from. Hedonism is a common factor for every animal, for it is the drive for pleasure which allows us to survive. A wolf eating it's prey finds pleasure, not only to gain energy, but so that the wolf will want to feast again. This is the animal instinct for survival. Humans, being animals, also have have these hedonistic ways of surviving. Indifference comes comes from not feeling any emotion for any event taken place. A forest can burn, and someone not sympathizing can be considered indifferent. Displeasure seems to be the largest emotion humans in particular feel. Whether it be from our own nature, or exuding from the individuals around us, displeasure comes in many different forms. When a conscious being feels displeasure, according to the behavior of that being, it will react in a number of different ways. Emotions are large contributors to the consciousness of a being, allowing it to introspect itself and evaluate which actions cause such emotional reactions. Emotion, scientifically, is the state of any mental activity relating directly to the chemical relay within the brain. Emotion, relating to the human feelings, is any one of the three main branches of emotion that an individual has spontaneously and simultaneously throughtout the span of life.

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I don't think this theory is necessarily nonsense. I haven't read the book, but I've heard a theory similar to the one the book describes. (I may have picked it up in Scientific American in the early 90s, when I used to read that sort of thing a lot. I also read Hans Moravec's Mind Children around that time, and The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose, and Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter, stuff like that. Not all of the theories in those books are compatible with Objectivism. My comments in this post, however, will pertain strictly to the hologramic theory.)

I can't think of anything in Objectivism that would contradict the hologramic theory, although it is very likely that the book combines the theory with philosophical statements which contradict Objectivism. Many scientific books are infused with that sort of thing. The question an Objectivist has to ask is, once all the philosophical falsehoods are discarded, is there anything left?

Objectivists already know that volition exists. It cannot be explained in terms of anything else; it is an axiom, which means the very act of explanation rests upon it. Due to the influence of faulty philosophy, though, the author(s) of the book might be unaware of the fact or might even explicitly deny it. So the Objectivist reader will have to discard their denials, implicit or explicit, and see if anything is left. I think something may be.

It is known that volition exists only under certain conditions. We know it exists in human minds and not in, say, tables. Why? What's so special about the living human brain that a mind may occupy it? Can these characteristics be identified and measured? Can machines be used to maintain these conditions in situations where the body and current medical technology would otherwise fail to do so? Can these conditions be created from scratch, perhaps in an artificial construction other than a human brain?

A book can attempt to theorize about answers to these questions, it can identify information about the conditions necessary for the existence of volition, and insofar as it does that, there is nothing philosophically wrong with it. You don't have to deny volition or any other Objectivist metaphysical axiom in order to claim that the mind stores memories in a distributed rather than localized way, or that the way it does so corresponds to certain mathematical functions.

One may still question whether such a theory fits the facts. As to the hologramic theory, some facts fit it and some do not. In the theory's favor is the fact that the brain does feature some built-in redundancy. Against it is the fact that different regions of the brain are well known to have different functions, and the loss of a region of the brain causes a loss of the corresponding function. If the brain were completely hologramic then it would be undifferentiated. I suppose I'd have to read the book to find out whether it explains this. I also don't think enough studies have been done to pin down the exact mathematics that govern how memories are distributed throughout the brain.

Sometimes I think the authors of these scientific books have theses that can be presented in a line or two, but then they have to come up with enough junk to fill up a book. A New Kind of Science is another book in that category; it contains hundreds of pages of beautiful computer-generated pictures, but its basic thesis seems to boil down to the idea that large numbers of components acting according to simple rules can produce complex behavior, and I think that idea is actually decades old. So I might check out the hologramic book at the library, but not buy it.

Another question is whether the hologramic theory is of any practical use. On that point I'd have to say "No," or at least "Not yet." Technology still has to advance some more before we get to the point where we can tinker with the brain at that level. Some scientists are trying to figure out how to use MRI machines to read your thoughts, and there is another scientist in Australia who can actually render you temporarily autistic by using magnets to shut off targeted parts of your brain. (The science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge anticipated that in A Deepness in the Sky.) Given the current political climate (Patriot act etc.) I actually find these developments disturbing (Project X), but there are also possible benefits.

In sum, I won't accept this theory just yet but it's an idea worth considering.

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In sum, I won't accept this theory just yet but it's an idea worth considering.

What "idea" is "worth considering?" Riemannian space and the hologramic mind? Memory as a spectrum of phase difference in transform space? My god, your bio says that you are an engineer. Surely you know that stringing together some mathematical jargon does not a theory make? It is utter nonsense, pure and simple.

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I have to emphatically agree with Stephen on this. Hofstadter, Penrose, Eccles, Edelman, Crick, Koch, Damasio, Pinker, Minsky, et cetera, et cetera have flocked to cognitive science for a certain reason--the field is new and foundationless allowing them to say whatever they want to. Many of them have made substantial discoveries in mathematics, physics, computer science and biology but when it comes to consciousness they haven't a clue. They come to their theories of consciousness by whim, not by rigourous scientific methodology as they may in other fields. For whatever reason, they seem to indulge in theories of consciousness as if it were a sort of heroin, the injections being of quantum fluctuations and psychons or any other subjective concept that they can push through their needle.

I haven't read the book either but I trust Stephen's review of it. I have surveyed the field extensively and have yet to find a single theory to be promising. It's my opinion that any substantial avenues to be carved into the science of the mind will come (and have come) only from Objectivist intellectuals. It is absolutely essential to get your metaphysics and epistemology correct before you can study consciousness.

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I have to emphatically agree with Stephen on this. Hofstadter, Penrose, Eccles, Edelman, Crick, Koch, Damasio, Pinker, Minsky, et cetera, et cetera have flocked to cognitive science for a certain reason--the field is new and foundationless allowing them to say whatever they want to. Many of them have made substantial discoveries in mathematics, physics, computer science and biology but when it comes to consciousness they haven't a clue. They come to their theories of consciousness by whim, not by rigourous scientific methodology as they may in other fields. For whatever reason, they seem to indulge in theories of consciousness as if it were a sort of heroin, the injections being of quantum fluctuations and psychons or any other subjective concept that they can push through their needle.

It does seem strange in a way that some accomplished in, say, physics, would not generally presume expertise in an area that they have not studied extensively, say, 16th century French literature, yet when it comes to consciousness they suddenly become "experts" in the field. Undoubtedly, as Bowzer says, part of the reason is that the cognitive sciences are relatively new as a separate field of study. But, I suspect that since we all (to varying degrees) possess a consciousness that can reflect upon itself, I suppose that that seems a sufficient-enough fact for some to appropriate the field, and then they apply the only technical knowledge they have, whether it be mathematics, physics, biology, or a combination of each. Unfortunately, to a man they miss the essentials that any student of Objectivism could tell them about, the proper functioning of a volitional consciousness.

Anyway, I just want to say that Pietsch's work, from a technical standpoint, is nowhere near the level of many of those mentioned, and does not even belong in the same category. Roger Penrose, for instance, is a brilliant mathematician, and as terribly wrong as his several theories are, they all represent first-rate mathematical analyses, not superficial pseudo-mathematical jargon strung together to wow the uninitiated.

I haven't read the book either but I trust Stephen's review of it. I have surveyed the field extensively and have yet to find a single theory to be promising. It's my opinion that any substantial avenues to be carved into the science of the mind will come (and have come) only from Objectivist intellectuals. It is absolutely essential to get your metaphysics and epistemology correct before you can study consciousness.

From your lips to god's ears. ;)

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What "idea" is "worth considering?" Riemannian space and the hologramic mind? Memory as a spectrum of phase difference in transform space? My god, your bio says that you are an engineer. Surely you know that stringing together some mathematical jargon does not a theory make? It is utter nonsense, pure and simple.

Well, I suppose this is what I get for commenting at such length about a book I haven't even read... and which really I don't intend to read... and at 11:00 on a work night, to top it off.

The only idea I think is "worth considering" is the idea that memory is distributed throughout the brain as opposed to each memory being stored in one place. That idea is not new at all, and there is some evidence to support it, although as I said, the book could easily consist of one page of good idea and its evidence, and the rest nonsense.

I imagine that the book is written for the layman and thus spends a lot of time trying to persuade people who have never heard of Fourier transforms that they and their like are valuable and useful. It probably does so by means of hypothetical but fictitious examples. I suppose that is Platonistic and detached from reality. I doubt enough data about the brain have been collected to develop an actual set of equations that describe how the brain stores memory. So the book probably doesn't even present a "theory." Just the one idea, and then hypotheticals to explain why the idea might be plausible. (I was mistaken to refer to the book's idea as a "theory" earlier.)

Regardless of errors in the book's presentation of the idea, I still think the idea -- that memory is distributed through the brain -- is worth considering. I think it is premature to specify any specific mathematical model of how that distribution takes place; I don't think there are enough data.

Stephen Hawking complained once that his book editors told him that every equation in his book would cut the size of the audience in half. Given that, I doubt that any science book in the popular press would contain very much of use to an actual scientist. The books lack the actual equations and the pages and pages of data to back those equations up. Instead the books have pages and pages of filler. That's why I stopped reading them.

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Well, I suppose this is what I get for commenting at such length about a book I haven't even read... and which really I don't intend to read... and at 11:00 on a work night, to top it off.

The only idea I think is "worth considering" is the idea that memory is distributed throughout the brain as opposed to each memory being stored in one place.

I do not mean to abuse you here, but when you make statements such as "I can't think of anything in Objectivism that would contradict the hologramic theory," then I feel obliged to point out that this judgment is in serious error. I do not know how to get from focusing on a single fact in regard to memory, to the above conclusion. That is quite an over-generalization, even for a late-night post. But, thank you for clarifying the context of your remarks.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Necrovore: "Objectivists already know that volition exists. It cannot be explained in terms of anything else; it is an axiom, which means the very act of explanation rests upon it."
So in other words the only innate knowledge that I have is that I am; as that philosophical heavyweight monty python states "Im Pink therefore Im spam". :D

But seriously; Anything else outside of this innate knowledge is an attempt by me to create an accurate model of reality. The conscious mind's nature is to bridge the gap between itself and the reality that it assumes gave rise to it. That assumption (or axiom) is the basis of all constructive thought, of reason.

Im not sure; but Im wondering if the proposed Hologramic theory of mind counters, through implication, that assumption.

Necrovore: "You don't have to deny volition or any other Objectivist metaphysical axiom in order to claim that the mind stores memories in a distributed rather than localized way, or that the way it does so corresponds to certain mathematical functions."

Obviously Necrovore has taken a side on that.

Necrovore "One may still question whether such a theory fits the facts. As to the hologramic theory, some facts fit it and some do not. In the theory's favor is the fact that the brain does feature some built-in redundancy. Against it is the fact that different regions of the brain are well known to have different functions, and the loss of a region of the brain causes a loss of the corresponding function. If the brain were completely hologramic then it would be undifferentiated. I suppose I'd have to read the book to find out whether it explains this. I also don't think enough studies have been done to pin down the exact mathematics that govern how memories are distributed throughout the brain"
As Americo observed in a previous post; human creativity is not optimal when it is under forced constraints. It is optimal when it is responsible for its actions. There is no doubt that imagination is inextricably inter-twined with creativity….These facts leave me considering that whatever system gives rise to the human mind is one that contains some chaotic systems under ordered coordination, I think that chaos must in someway give rise to the spontanaity of imagination. In thinking this I question the idea of a mind based solely on neural circuitry which seems somewhat too deterministic.

Necrovore "…and there is another scientist in Australia who can actually render you temporarily autistic by using magnets to shut off targeted parts of your brain."

Interesting. Can you give us a link/details?

I won't be reading the book; I am to study the brain for the next three years and dont think its the right angle from which to start my investigations. Im all for listening to new takes on the mind/thought processed but I wish to get a decent background in the actual science of it before I adopt a preference.

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Do supporters of the Hologramic theory of mind ever discuss Hopfield auto-association artificial neural networks?

It always seemed to me that the prescient aspects of the Hologramic Theory Of Mind can be explained much more simply through the elegant equations Hopfield developed to model a potential mechanism whereby neurons can remember patterns. In his model, memory is distributed across neurons (delocalized), and in practice there is very graceful degradation - meaning, the pattern as a whole is not unduly disrupted by the removal of one or more neurodes that make up the representation.

Anyway, I only have a passing familiarity with the 'Hologramic Theory', but it vaguely seemed like a fantastic theory, where one wasn't necessary.

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