Re: where do copies come from?

From: Johnathan Corgan <jcorgan.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 19:48:29 -0700

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> It is likely that multiple error correction and negative
> feedback systems are in place to ensure that small changes are not
> chaotically amplified to cause gross mental changes after a few seconds,

On the other hand, the above may be precisely how consciousness operates!

Picture a system that traverses through many different states as
"chaotic attractor" cycles, and outside stimuli act to nudge the system
between grossly different chaotic attractors. You have a system that
needs to be exquisitely tuned to subtle input changes, yet also robust
in the face of other types of changes (damage, etc.)

In the brain, these "state trajectories" would be neuronal firing
patterns and synaptic chemical gradients. Determining the chaotic
attractors themselves would be neuronal morphology and ion channel types
and locations.

The "short-term" information about a brain might not need to be stored
in order to reconstruct a brain. That is, individual neuron on-off
states and synaptic chemical gradients may be "how you feel and what you
are thinking this moment"--but discarding (or not measuring) this info
might only mean the reconstructed brain would start from some "blank"
state. Chaotic attractor dynamics would "pull" the system into one of
the aforementioned chaotic cycles and the system as a whole would
eventually recreate the short-term firing patterns and chemical
gradients needed for normal functioning.

(The above might be wrong in particulars, but I strongly suspect the
concept of small changes perturbing a chaotic system to shift between
chaotic attractors will play a role in the ultimate explanation of how
neuronal processes give rise to conscious experience.)

-Johnathan
Received on Sun Jul 10 2005 - 22:50:31 PDT