"How Your Brain Organizes Information" video

[robf]

@Bitking

@robf

What evidence do you have that there are fixed “basic facts in the center of the structure”?

…It is the center of both researchers’ work.
Grossberg models such as ART and various further incarnations are about “Adaptive Resonance theory.” It’s right there in the name.

Buzakis’ lab … touches on the idea that spontaneous neuron activity, far from being mere noise, is the source of our cognitive abilities.

Nice that Buzaki is addressing oscillations as fundamental and not just noise. But the question of interest is HOW are they fundamental?

Buzaki appears to be positing some kind of fixed hierarchy, which is activated by simultaneous (synchronous) spikes by synapses from below. So the “syntax” is a fixed (or slowly changing synaptic weight?) hierarchy.

Grossberg according to Wikipedia on Adaptive Resonance Theory “postulates that ‘top-down’ expectations take the form of a memory template or prototype that is then compared with the actual features of an object as detected by the senses.”

“Top down prototypes or templates” are certainly not a fit for contradictory or chaotic structure.

It’s unclear to me what you’re saying by citing them. Just the fact that other people have posited oscillations in the brain have significance beyond noise?

@robf

What evidence do you have that there are fixed “basic facts in the center of the structure”?

@Bitking

See this post and the referenced paper.

Here’s are the comments I made on that paper the first time you posted it to me:

Chaos/reservoir computing and sequential cognitive models like HTM

Very nice paper Mark. Thanks for that. That’s the most interesting paper I’ve read in a long time! : - ) I’ve seen very few (if any!) which map language mechanisms to neural connectivity. I wouldn’t argue with where semantic meaning is stored, especially in the sense of qualia, and the “feeling of being there” which @complyue described as the subjectively intuitive quality of elements we “recombine” when we “think”. It’s how they recombine which interests me. Actually, what I’m arguing has a…

I may not have commented on evidence for abstraction, because I didn’t believe the paper offered any. And I still don’t. The paper is describing how aspects of cognition will be anchored in embodiment (of which the whole point is that it can’t be abstracted, that’s what embodiment MEANS. Embodiment MEANS it can’t be abstracted. I would have thought that was obvious, and was probably too polite to mention it.)

The specific reference to language in the paper (and particularly another one referenced within that) was quite a nice attempt to guess what a syntax (combinatorial) mechanism might be. Which aligned very closely with mine. Except for the assumption that grammer could be abstracted. They don’t address that. The certainly don’t present evidence for it. They assume it. I show in my reply to you at that time that this abstraction is not necessary, and I suggest the opposite. With quite a lot of evidence, including Tom Mitchell’s nice presentation of the complete mixing of combinatorial representations in fMRI evidence. Not addressed in any reply.

I now notice when introducing the paper that first time you referenced Chomsky’s idea of “built-in” language features.

Is this also your “evidence”? A theory. Broadly disputed, and failing this last 70 years.

@Bitking

The foundation of language is grounded in the brain’s structures that are most closely associated with motor-sensory aspects of objects. The Chomsky “built-in” language features are certainly built around this grounding.

This is not evidence. It’s a theory. I’ve presented alternative interpretations for Chomsky’s own “evidence” for this theory elsewhere. (Basically what Chomsky takes to be evidence for “built-in” language features, is exactly actual evidence, that semantic abstractions for language cannot be learned! So his evidence is more evidence for a rejection of learning, than it is evidence for any actual abstractions. Which 70 years of searching failed to find.)

Not only are Chomsky “built-in” language features not “certainly” built around an embodied grounding. They are not built around anything at all. They almost certainly don’t exist. As I’ve argued repeatedly.

But OK. Good to see you don’t have any evidence for abstraction in semantic categories. Not worth labouring the point.

@Bitking

you yourself, being a student of western philosophy as you profess to be

Is this sort of personal inuendo the standard of moderation you seek to bring to this platform?

You seem to be bringing some kind of personal animus to this debate. It makes discussion tedious because objections become entrenched, and actually empty of content.