Thanks for the great post, good to see you increased your posting frequency

I blogged about it <a href=”http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/12/objective-measure-of-consciousness.html” rel=”nofollow”>here.</a>

Doesn’t talk about the function of consciousness per se, but it implies that the function might be storing information over time, as it were.

JK: Thank you for the link. I appreciate it. Normally I follow every posting on your blog but I guess it missed some things over the holiday. Indeed there is a hint of another function; I will being reading the paper. Thanks again.

Would you place high speed running in the same category as walking…a “complex patterns that we are almost always aware of and can initiate but do not think about on a continuing basis”?

Thanks,

Ken

JK: Thank you for commenting. Yes I think that running, for someone who runs often or occasionally, would be like walking – ditto a long-term car driver, cyclist, swimmer etc. It might be different for someone as old an arthritic as myself who has not actually really ran for more than 20 years to just up and run but if there were a fire, I bet I would find running fairly automatic. I was a fairly good touch typist in my young days. I could copy type while thinking about other things or talking. I was aware that I was typing but not what I was typing. I did not even always notice the little bell and my movement to the next line. Now I am aware of the letters I am typing, while I watch the screen and occasionally have to look at the keyboard. But when I got up once in the night and tried to enter my password without being able to see the keys or having anything to copy on the screen, I was completely unable to type my password and even trial and error was not there because the password letters do not show on screen. It was the eye to hand skill that was automatic and not the single unseen letter in the mind to hand – that had no skill at all. I think these things are individual and depend on how deeply the skills are learned, how recently they have been used, attention and even mood. How much we are aware is a spectrum rather than a yes or no. Thanks again for commenting.

I would like to direct you towards this article, I thought you might find it interesting:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1111.3328

It discusses how quantum states must correspond to physical reality–even under our current model. If this holds true, does your argument change?

JK: Sean, Thank you for the link. I have read the paper as best I can (in a limited way). My position on quantum physics is that I trust physicists when (1) they have a consensus in their community (2) what they are saying is based on actual experiment, not disembodied mathematics, logic, or thought experiments (3) they are talking about the facts of the experimental data and not alternative interpretations. This means that I am agnostic on most of what physicists say about quantum physics. I am familiar with quantum ideas in the domain of chemistry, trust the experiments and much but not all of the interpretation. Otherwise I am sitting on the fence.
As far as prediction is concerned there are three levels of problem. First, we do not have, at the present time, the equations to predict a human decision nor do we have any assurance that we will ever have those equations. There is a little worm with 302 neurons and we know exactly how they are connected and which neurotransmitters the synapses use and we know the genome. We cannot predict what will happen next in this nervous system. There is a long way to go. Second, we will never have the resources (material, energy, time) to solve such huge problems as brain process to a level of unmeasurable error – assuming we found the equations. And third, the fastest and most accurate way to know what a brain will decide is to let the brain make the decision. No possible calculating system is going to be faster and more accurate that that. So although I think that there is no thought that is not the product of a material, physical brain (nothing but natural processes) that does not imply that a thought is predictable. We must in the end go through the whole process of making the decision for real – there is no shortcut.
Of course there is a chance that in some far future time, we can predict decisions individually and accurately, in which case we will have to deal with it – until then (if then even comes) we cannot predict our decisions.
I did find the paper interesting in its own right – thank you again for the link.

In launching generative grammar, Chomsky famously asked “what do we know when we know a language?” and proceeded to speculate based on the “fact” that all humans have language.

The obvious answer to his question is to compare people with it to those without it. That this has never been done stands as an indictment to the field of linguistics.

Great post..Human is a unique animal that could not compare to any. Thank you for sharing..