Re: virus: Random thoughts & more poor analogies!

Robin Faichney (robin@faichney.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 09:57:47 +0100


In message <19980816170639.AAA17420@[205.240.180.37]>, Wade T.Smith
<wade_smith@harvard.edu> writes
>>Please define "first" in this context.
>
>'Tricky.'
>'But can you do it?'
>'No- but I can tell you who can....'
>
>Yup, wish I could. But it would be, I think, an electrochemical event, at
>a specific receptor or transmitter on a cell surface, in a specific and
>repeatable area of the brain, and able to be created in that area
>experimentally with a set of stimuli in a laboratory setting.
>
>In other words, it _will_ be findable. (I think....) And it will be
>unique to the brain and nervous system of homo sapiens sapiens, and it
>will be connected in a necessary and sufficient way to the means and
>processes of language.

I think you underestimate the complexity of operation
of highly interconnected networks. OK, so a single
neurochemical event *may* be identifiable, as both
necessary and sufficient for a given element of
behaviour, but only if it's directly connected to the
relevant motor neuron, and the behaviour we're talking
about is a simple physical movement. But at the level
of memes, which is approximately that of consciousness,
we're talking about unimaginably complex patterns of
neural activity. See Dennett and Kinsbourn (full cite
available) on the *impossibility* of locating
consciousness in the brain *either* spacially *or*
temporally. *And* the fact that no two brains are
wired in exactly the same way. Neural activity is to
memes (roughly) as molecular structure is to chess
strategy. Diggin down there ain't gonna get ya where
ya want to be!

-- 
Robin