smart remarks 3

Smart Remarks 3: Leibniz, Maxwell, Turing, Churchland, Lockwood, Salam, Wigner

Leibniz

Besides, it must be confessed that Perception and its consequences are inexplicable by mechanical causes;

that is to say, by figures and motions.

If we imagine a machine so constructed as to produce thought, sensation, perception, we may conceive it magnified — to such an extent that one might enter it like a mill. This being supposed, we should find in it on inspection only pieces which impel each other, but nothing which can explain a perception. It is in the simple substance, therefore, —not in the compound, or in the machinery, —that we must look for that phenomenon [...]

Leibniz

computation

McCulloch

Turing

Neural Net

In 1943 Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts proposed a general theory of information processing based on networks of binary switching or decision elements, which are somewhat euphemistically called "neurons," although they are far simpler than their real biological counterparts ...

McCulloch and Pitts showed that such networks can, in principle, carry out any imaginable computation, similar to a programmable, digital computer or its mathematical abstraction, the Turing machine.

Muller, Reinhardt

Turing

NNs

Lockwood

Maxwell

Salam

When a beam of light falls on the human eye, certain sensations are produced, from which the possessor of that organ judges of the color and luminance of the light. Now, though everyone experiences these sensations and though they are the foundation of all the phenomena of sight, yet, on account of their absolute simplicity, they are incapable of analysis, and can never become in themselves objects of thought. If we attempt to discover them, we must do so by artificial means and our reasonings on them must be guided by some theory.

Maxwell

[...]all chemical binding is electromagnetic in origin, and so are all phenomena of nerve impulses.

Salam

JC Maxwell

EM tensor

What it would amount to, in terms of the present proposal, is that we have a 'special' or 'privileged' access, via some of our own brain activity, to the intrinsic character of, say, electromagnetism.

Lockwood

color

EM (pdf)

eye

Churchland, PM

Churchland, PS

Finally, and somewhat ironically, we note our agreement with Paul Churchland in respect of: (a) the neural implementation of matrix operations on input vectors; and (b) the observation, apropos the work of Pellionisz and Llinas (1979) that the cerebellum’s job is “the systematic transformation of vectors in one neural hyperspace into vectors in another neural hyperspace”; and the notion that (c) “the tensor calculus emerges as the natural framework with which to address such matters” and (d) the characterization of phenomenal properties as vectors.

Any physical system is completely described by a normalized vector (the state vector or wave function) in Hilbert space. All possible information about the system can be derived from this state vector by rules [...]

Byron & Fuller

Rich recurrence, especially with continuing multicortical area input to the thalamus and to motor structures, appears to challenge the conventional conception of a chiefly unidirectional, low-to-high processing hierarchy Of course, temporally distinct stages between the time photons strike the retina and the time the behavior begins do exist. There are, as well, stages in the sense of different synaptic distances from the sensory periphery and the motor periphery.

Churchland, PS

The processes on the retina produce excitations which are conducted to the brain in the optic nerves, maybe in the form of electric currents. Even here we are still in the real sphere. But between the physical processes which are released in the terminal organ of the nervous conductors in the central brain and the image which thereupon appears to the perceiving subject, there gapes a hiatus, an abyss which no realistic conception of the world can span. It is the transition from the world of being to the world of appearing image or of consciousness.

Weyl

laser

If you ask a physicist what is his idea of yellow light, he will tell you that it is transversal electromagnetic waves of wavelength in the neighborhood of 590 millimicrons. If you ask him: But where does yellow come in? he will say: In my picture not at all, but these kinds of vibrations, when they hit the retina of a healthy eye, give the person whose eye it is the sensation of yellow.

Schrödinger

forms

Wigner

[Let] us now turn to the assumption opposite to the “first alternative” considered so far: that the laws of physics will have to be modified drastically if they are to account for the phenomena of life. Actually, I believe that this second assumption is the correct one.

Can arguments be adduced to show the need for modification? There seem to be two such arguments. The first is that, if one entity is influenced by another entity, in all known cases the latter one is also influenced by the former. The most striking and originally the least expected example for this is the influence of light on matter, most obviously in the form of light pressure. That matter influences light is an obvious fact—if it were not so, we could not see objects. The influence of light on matter is, however, a more subtle effect and is virtually unobservable under the conditions which surround us [...] Since matter clearly influences the content of our consciousness, it is natural to assume that the opposite influence also exists, thus demanding the modification of the presently accepted laws of nature which disregard this influence.

Wigner

Since matter clearly influences the content of our consciousness, it is natural to assume that the opposite influence also exists, thus demanding the modification of the presently accepted laws of nature which disregard this influence.

Wigner

mind

matter

Llinas

Pellionisz

Umezawa

Does neural form follow quantum function?

As we have seen in preceding sections, manifestation of ordered states is of quantum origin. When we recall that almost all of the macroscopic ordered states are the result of quantum field theory, it seems natural to assume that macroscopic ordered states in biological systems are also created by a similar mechanism.

Umezawa

fractals