6 Degrees of Separation
6 degrees of separation
I propose that we can demystify consciousness, and so to an extent introduce to many more the potential of technologies that seek to replicate the human entity for future residence in more malleable substrates; by the following exercise.
I propose that one can propose any thought – as abstract or concrete – as simple or complex – as one likes and treat to the following steps; we can retrace this thoughts emerge from simple physical nature.
1. The thought itself is an amalgamation of some experiential reference contained in the synaptic connections and larger neural network (or refers to something in ones past and ones original design); and the application of language
2. ‘Conscious’ thought is an evolution of practising speech. The Supplementary Motor Cortex activates instructions prior to any physical movement of the body; or, in fact, prior to someone believing they are deciding to do something it is practiced in the supplementary cortex. This means that before you turn the steering wheel or move your foot you do a dress rehearsal in the supplementary motor cortex before the actual motor cortex directs movement. The first human language most likely evolved from an animalistic gesture-call system (dog barks and wags tail when pleased) para-language and basically motor neuronal actions before complexity made it seem such a non-movement part of the brain. Of course the use of the vocal chords and diaphragm etc clearly is controlled by motor neurons and it can be suggested that non-uttered background complexity mirrors the supplementary motor cortex’s role perhaps when man first began to accord certain meaning to certain sounds by use and repetition and had to decide before whether or not this particular sound was appropriate to this particular situation. In essence then while we did not cross the savannahs pondering our destinies we reacted to situations by deciding on what set of sounds most appropriately reflected the stimuli we were experiencing – and we gained social benefits from improving our ability to illustrate with these sounds with more complex preparation (thought)
3. This abstract thought then can be shown to have evolved in the individual from their own experiences and exposures to language, circumstance etc and their inherited evolutionary capacity to use language to communicate with others. It is important to see though that the thought is in itself coming from the same process type as that which allows you to breath, run or lift your hand. Neuroscientists have studied simple creatures such as Eric. R. Kandel’s viewing the gill withdrawal reflex through classical conditioning via hebbian learning in a marine mollusc. What this means in short is that as a little sea creature reacted to stimuli by withdrawing the gill. The more this withdrawal occurred the stronger the connection between the neurons at the point of the synapse became; and so we learn. Of course, neuronal activity and processing vast quantities of stimuli and parallel processing followed, probably by, probability and game-theory based ‘decision-making’ architecture is why we can genuinely look at our own species in awe – but is importantly not a reason to imagine that anything other than this synaptic learning is occurring at the base
4. Evolutionary biology can tell us much about how simple amoeba like creatures could have evolved into the immensely complex human – but the most important thing it tells us is; that it did. In truth with the wide variety of the current animal kingdom we can see remnants of almost all evolutionary routes we may have travelled down this path of increasing complexity; but in all cases we have seen in the last half century that the life-forms that surround us are the result of a protein generating code or DNA. There is a subjectivity trap in consciousness/thought which makes it exceedingly difficult to accept (as in point 3 above) that there is in fact no fundamental difference between an economists musing and a birds flight or an amoeba’s a worm excreting waste. There is an individual organism conducting certain actions through its unity of identity and its physical attention and activity in certain areas which in all cases can be seen as the result of certain cellular processes.
5. Now there is still nothing beyond conjecture as to how what we perceive as these autonomous ‘thinking’ amoeba or human evolved from matter we see as non-autonomous and non-thinking e.g. rock; and one can only add to that conjecture at this point as the secrets of approximately 3.8 billion years ago when ‘life’ began on earth are not so easily discerned but people allude to concepts such as swarm intelligence and how, as an example a group of ants by means of releasing pheromone which evaporate quickly, and so by successfully following the ant, coincidentally, traversing the shortest path between two points eventually more will choose this path; and you have arrived at an intelligent ‘decision’. It can be seen that neurons may well be behave closely to individual computers on a network that are connected in a whole array of swarm intelligent based architectural layers of varying levels of influence. Again we can extrapolate that unless ‘magic’ entered at around this point in history again probability resides in our intelligence being just many many times more complex than that rocks changing over time with gradually impacting elements from its environment, shifting positions and so on; or an intermediary point like a star that we would not see as intelligent but conducts relatively complex forms of transformation of basic elements and, in fact, conducts nuclear reactions that took any very great minds a great amount of time to arrive at here on earth.
We can hear the common arguement at this point as ‘but the sun doesn’t know it is doing this, like we do’. Well I am hoping that the arguements above will show that it is not that the sun does know but that we don’t know either. These thoughts of ‘doing’ are just ‘doing’ in themselves as explained above with language evolving from motor movements and motor movements accommodated within the framework of cells by the gradual accumulation of complex organisms via the long process of evolution. To repeat the subjective trap of ‘I think, therefore, I am’ needs analysis within the context of ‘Yes, I am thinking, but ‘I am also walking, receiving sensory information reflecting the weather, secreting saliva, digesting food and on and on; and in all this, too – I am.
6. Having journeyed from the thought to the brain, from the brain, to the neuron, to the cell, and tangentially to a rock or a star – we can try to bring the concept of intelligence back along our journey to fundamental physics as we understand them, now.
To begin perhaps viewing intelligence as learning and memory we can see the application from an individual’s progress through life plus the inherited genes progress through history – if nothing else ‘life’ has in all of its forms had a memory sufficient to procreate and learned via interactions
I would like to concentrate on this for a moment and suggest that learning is merely an interaction followed by a decision and the generation of a memory. Hopefully, we can see all of this easily enough when reflecting a humans learning but what of a particle. Well without delving any deeper the the standard model of physics lets look at one particle ‘bumping into another and having its path changed. There is an interaction – the bump, there is a decision – the new pathway, and there is learning – the new pathway into the future. We need to add the increasing complexity plus autonomy (what is it that makes one particle that particle only; and will not allow a rock to be another rock). Perhaps this autonomy can be seen as the recipe for the divergence that, in fact, gives us existence. The notion of asymmetry is a very important one in much of theoretical physics. We may ask if one thing was not unique then would not everything have to be the same. And if everything was the same how can anything be identified. It is via differentials that we can identify and these differentials are generated by the informational code; i.e. some of this plus a little of that gives me copper or some spin plus some colour gives me this particle and so on. And so information lies at the core of all and the symmetry of nothingness broke into existence and we, humans are wonderfully complex (vastly more complex than any other thing in the universe; but we are still of this universe. We are made of everything around us – as are our thoughts
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