More than just a bag of neurons, or, are we more than our brains?

My friend Phil Collier is posting some wonderful content on his Brain Science blog brain sparks. 

He posted an interesting question about whether we are merely the 'stuff of our brains' (i.e., if our neurons determine who we are, or if our identity and consciousness is more complex than that). 

Here's my response to Phil (please see his post here): 

Hi Phil, 

As I mentioned in our conversation this morning, I tend towards an inclusive approach that suggests that we are the stuff of our minds (of course 'the brain' extends into the body through the nervous system, and regulates and is informed through the endocrinatic system). As such we would have to say that in part we are our bodies (not just the cells of our brains, although those are important!) 

However, I have found Ken Wilber's all quadrant, all level (AQAL) approach to consciousness quite helpful in breaking down the false dualism between consciousness and matter. 

Thus, on an individual exterior level (my biology) the individual's brain has a great deal to do with their identity and consciousness. However on a collective exterior level (the human or mammalian brain) there is also an element of additional identity forming activity going on. Then of course you have the individual interior (what I think and believe about myself that forms me) and the collective interior (what 'our' culture, religion, socialization, has contributed towards my understand of myself in relation to others). 

You can read more about my understanding of Wilber here, and a few other Wilber posts here. 

Then, with regards to the idea of an objective mapping of the functions of the brain (i.e., how the electrical and chemical components function to create outputs of action or thought), you may be interested to read some of Ray Kurzweil's thoughts. 

He has done a great deal in trying to map and emulate brain function (his speciality has been speech synthesis and speech recognition), but more recently he has become knowing for his mathematical predictions of the exponential increase in computational capacity in machines. 

I discussed this at length (and also discussed Wilber and consciousness at length) in my doctoral thesis. See the following post for links and information about Kurzweil (discussed in chapter 2) and you can read about Wilber in chapter 4. 

I am currently under contract with Cambridge scholars press who will be publishing my Ph.D in a more 'popular' form as book in 2010 (the working title is 'Why you may not be who you think you are - adventures in neuroscience, strong artificial intelligence and philosophy'). So keep an eye on this space! I'll post updates on the progress as they come.

The original interview with Ray Kurzweil in h+ can be found here.

Blessings, 

Dion

Singularity and the Matrix... Spiritual Machines... Mmmmm... Contemporary crazies!? Maybe not?

John van de Laar gave an interesting persepctive on a 'religious movement' that has formed around the central ideas of the first Matrix movie.
I can certainly understand the appeal - after all, throughout history generations have always attempted to locate the sacred within the tools, symbols, and nomenclature of their contemporary culture. The Matrix seems to be so expressive of some of the existential questions, queries, and framing aspects of our reality (these include such issues as the relationship between humans and our technology, eternal existence in terms that we can understand, issues of good and evil etc.)

Some scientists have suggested that these issues may have a far greater influence, and in fact be truer than just sociology, theology, and psychology, could explain. Some others have suggested it is in fact nothing more than 'wish projection' (along the lines of Feuerbach and Freud's theory).

In short, every generation has a built in need to believe that there is more to life than just being born, living, and dying - we seek a transcendent truth (which you can read about in my Doctoral Thesis, by the way - please see the chapter on Neuroscience (chapter 3 I think it was) where I discuss the holistic and transcendent a-priori neural operators that are present in the human brain from birth). In our generation the 'mythology' of our time is intrinsically linked with technology (particularly those technologies that make our lives easier, and in some sense bearable).

A final perspective, which I think is the most rational of them all, is the perspective offered by Professor Cornel du Toit, who suggests that any duality that we create between ourselves and our technology is a false duality. Just think about it, your cell phone is not just an object that performs technological functions, it has become an integral part of your life. For many of us it extends our ability to communicate, it offers us a sense of security, connection with others, and for some (like myself) it even regulates how one lives one's life (e.g., my cell phone has a diary function that alerts me to appointments etc.). Another example cited by du Toit is contemporary banking. We have created both a hard technology (notes, coins, cards, ATM machines) and a soft technology (values, exchanges, commodities etc. which cannot be felt or weighed, or seen, but which have value). Just try to live your life without money and you will soon see how we have allowed a 'created' technology to become an integral part of our identity. How many people do you know whose identity is formed by what they earn, what they drive, and what they use?

I tend to agree with this - faith and technology are not separate realities that are discovering one another, they are complex interwoven system of creating and forming meaning. Both are dependent upon each other.

Anyway, enough of my 'ramblings'....

Read the article below for more on the concept of 'singularity':

Science fiction writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker takes a running swing at the idea of the Singularity, the moment in human history when we disassemble raw matter, turn it into "computronium" and upload ourselves to it, inhabiting a simulation of reality rather than real reality. It's a fine and provocative turn from our Mr Rucker, who has a fine and provocative and deeply weird and wonderful mind.

Although it’s a cute idea, I think computronium is a fundamentally spurious concept, an unnecessary detour. Matter, just as it is, carries out outlandishly complex chaotic quantum computations just by sitting around. Matter isn’t dumb. Every particle everywhere everywhen is computing at the maximum possible rate. I think we tend to very seriously undervalue quotidian reality...

This would be like filling in wetlands to make a multiplex theater showing nature movies, clear-cutting a rainforest to make a destination eco-resort, or killing an elephant to whittle its teeth into religious icons of an elephant god.

This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts.

Link (via Futurismic)

By the way, my own doctoral research considered some of the theological issues in relation to these notions - you can download a copy of my Doctoral Thesis here (please see chapter 2). Two other superb books to read are:

The age of spiritual machines, and Are we spiritual machines. By Kurzweil.
Wiredlife - who are we in the digital age? By Jonscher.

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