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(by Misha Naimark)
Summary
I want to start with the “ideology”;
if you will like it, then I can proceed with more concrete and
accurate things. Of all sciences, this “ideology” is closest to
that of Freud's psychoanalysis. By the way, what do you think
of it? It is commonly understood just as pansexualism, but this
vulgarization has nothing to do with my hypothesis, and now it
will be appropriate to outline my idea of psychoanalysis:
1) Contrary to the wide spread
opinion, vast majority of human mind actions are unconscious.
By “actions” I also mean thoughts, motivations, ideas, memories,
dreams, etc. Brain usually functions like some kind
of automaton, and in this respect it does not differ from any
other material object, for instance, from an artificial automaton.
Phenomena of “self awareness” and “consciousness” are rather exceptions
than rules even in the brain. An
unconscious action can under certain circumstances enter the consciousness
and become conscious; the reverse process can also occur, and
conscious action may become unconscious again, but this late process
is very often abnormal and neurotic.
2) Thoughts can contradict one another, and motivations can conflict.
Such conflict situations are main sources of mental disorders
and neuroses; one can judge whether the neurosis is present by
appearance of so called “neurotic symptoms” (they are actions,
too) But sometimes conflict does develop into symptoms, and sometimes
it is being resolved in more healthy way.
3) The important discovery, made by Freud, is that conflict can
develop into neurotic symptoms only when at least one of the conflicting
motivations is unconscious; when both of them are conscious, the
symptoms never appear. Therefore a good way to treat a neurosis
is to make the unconscious conflicting side conscious, i.e. to
help it enter the consciousness.
4) There is no definition inside psychoanalysis as to what is
“consciousness”. For “motivations”, “thoughts”, “ideas” there
are no definitions either. You can conceive some idea of what these things are only with the aid
of several analogies (rather vivid):
First: Things like these (and like “ego”, which is related to
the “consciousness”,
and also things like “internal censorship”) are called “agencies”
(in Russian - by similar word “instanziya”, which is applicable
to social organization as well as English word “agency”), and
are imagined as interacting structures and organizations in society.
Second: These things are imagined as communicating persons or
beings of some sort (for example, a strong antisocial passion
as a wild beast). The “consciousness” has a room of it's own,
and the entrance to this room is guarded by guard - “internal
censorship”. Those of the beings who manage to pass the guard
and enter the room, represent conscious actions.
Third: They are compared to several nations, such as Germans,
Czechs and Hungarians, living on the same territory among each
other, but conducting different ways of life and speaking different
languages.
5)There is one “ideologically” important question: what is psychoanalytical
fact? Any theory must be based on solid facts, but psychoanalysts
often draw their conclusions from dreams, free associations, and
the like, and these things seem so unreliable, uncertain, and
sometimes quite absurd. Freud resolved this problem in following
way: the contents of a dream or an association indeed can be unreliable
and absurd, but these contents are not the psychoanalytical fact.
The fact is that the association
or the dream with such and such contents appeared in the mind
of such and such patient under such and such conditions, which
could be detected through some changes in the patient's behavior.
The two things - contents of the dream and the fact of the dream's
appearance are not to be confused, as former belongs to subjective
world, while the later to the real and objective one. In addition,
Freud claims that the facts of this sort are reproducible, a dream
or an association can come many times (especially when it is really
informative of the patient's condition), furthermore, it can even
become obsessive.
When I read Freud, the resemblance between his model of human
mind and social structures (either whole state with it's government,
censorship, suppression apparatus and plentiful organizations,
or an imagined small society of few “persons” - “consciousness”,
“internal censorship”, and several “passions” and “motivations”)
stroke me very deeply. I made a supposition, which is crucial
for the present hypothesis: that brain is indeed organized like
human society. This means that brain (or at least it's hemisphere's
cortex) supposedly consists of numerous interacting elements (I
am going to call them “subjects” in future), and the relationships
between them are in a sense similar to those between individuals
in society. Naturally, I tend to think that the subjects are nothing
but really existing neurons, though my approach does not necessarily
require this; subjects can be some structures (or even virtual
structures) inside real cells, or, on the contrary, may contain
several cells each. All mentioned above phenomena - “ego”, “thought”,
“internal censorship”, “motivation”, etc. are organizations of
subjects; for example, “ego” resembles government of a state,
“internal censorship”, naturally, state censorship, other thoughts,
ideas and motives are like numerous organizations (formal and
informal) existing on that state's territory. By “resemblance”
I now mean following thing: if we would draw two graphs - one
representing government, whose nodes represent individuals employed
there, and arrows - relationships between them, and the other
- representing “ego” with subjects in it's nodes, then these graphs
will look very much alike. A “thought”, or an “idea”, can be charged
with “energy” of some mysterious nature ( Freud's notion; he called
this energy “libido”) and then it acquires the quality of “motivation”
or even “passion”. So, an organization of subjects usually functions
as “thought” and “motivation” at the same time. The late two can
not exist without each other; when you feel that you want something,
and can not understand what, that only indicates that the thought
is having problems with entering your “consciousness”; that does
not mean the absence of the thought. In society one and the same
organization can be either rich or poor, and, therefore, can have
or have no influence and power to accomplish it's goals; it seems
likely that money in society play the same role as libido in brain.
I have a paranoid idea of reducing all various relationships between
subjects to the relationship of just one kind, namely, to the
relationship similar to ownership in society. Since
monetary transactions in society reflect these relations of ownership,
I expect that the signals by which the subjects communicate to
be in a sense similar to monetary transactions. Well, sounds too
paranoid for the moment; we can discuss money later. All I wanted
to say is that I am going to build a model of a brain with just
one kind of relationship between it's subjects, and all the arrows
on the graph will be of the same sort.
It is widely accepted in modern
neuroscience that neurons communicate by means of electrochemical
pulses going through synapses, and almost all of the brain cortex
synapses are of the same sort, they use acetylcholine as a mediator
(to be accurate, there are synapses of another sorts, using for
mediators some derivatives of adrenaline and opiates, they play
an especial role in maintenance of the general level of brain
activity). There would be no great exaggeration to think that
a real brain with just one sort of links between neurons can possibly
function.
Now let us consider
a simple example of subject organization; traditionally, I take
for this purpose the concept of “apple”. Let it be an image APPLECONCRETE
1 of an absolutely concrete physical body of an apple, let it
be, for certainty, big, round, and red. Moreover, the image have
to be taken at a concrete moment of time. ( I can ask you: count,
how many times you will see an apple? And then show you, say,
5 times one and the same apple. You will answer: 5 times. As you
see, one and the same physical body have created 5 different images
in your brain, i.e. 5 different organizations - APPLECONCRETE
1, APPLECONCRETE 2, ... APPLECONCRETE 5 ). Now we are interested
about just one of the organizations. Here we have to make next
important supposition: that to any of the subjects corresponds
some elementary idea, or a concept - for example, there exist
a subject, responsible for the concept “red” (I will denote this
subject as RED ) , another one - ROUND - for the concept “round”,
BIG for the concept “big”, and so forth. As we remember, an organization
of subjects is also responsible for some idea or a concept; the
difference is that this late idea or concept is not elementary
any more. Elementary concept, by definition, has no more properties:
for example, “big” is only big and that is; but “appleconcrete”
(non-elementary concept) has also properties of being big, red,
etc. In a sense, we consider an elementary subject as an elementary
organization, exactly like we could consider an individual as
an elementary social organization; I even going to call organizations
subjects, too (naturally, without adjective “elementary”). Among
others, there exist subjects, responsible for the meanings of
all words of our language; these word subjects are supposed to
have immediate links to speech apparatus of the brain. Organization
APPLECONCRETE 1 is to encompass all the elementary subjects
responsible for properties of the concept “appleconcrete 1”, i.e.
BIG, RED, ROUND, etc. But how are them linked together, and
then, what distinguishes two organizations containing identical
sets of property subjects? ( APPLECONCRETE 1 and APPLECONCRETE
2, for instance?) I propose the following model: any organization
consists of one leading central subject SUBCENTR and the set
of property subjects connected to the SUBCENTR by links, directed
from center to properties (the direction is conventional). Several
words, like “this”, “the”, “it”, “something” are relevant to any
SUBCENTR, they just indicate, that the speaker means a concept
as a whole, and not it's properties separately; subjects SUBCENTR
are too numerous to invent an especial word for each of them.
When it will not lead to confusion, I will call a SUBCENTR by
the name of the organization it is in charge of. ( by the way,
a very common situation with social organizations - they are often
called after their leaders and vise versa). Here I want to draw
your attention to the following fact: the word “property” in English
has two different meanings - first is “object of ownership” and
the second - “quality”. Exactly the same situation with Russian
word “svoistvo”. The verb “to have” by some reason became modal
verb, (also to certain extent it's Russian equivalent “imet'”).
In Hebrew we can say: “ha tapuach - baal zeva adom” ( the apple
is an owner (or a master) of red color ). Consider two phrases:
“ the man has (or possesses) an apple” and “ the apple has (or
possesses) red color” ( I believe the second one is understandable
in English; at least, Russian equivalent sounds perfectly well).
These phrases are grammatically identical, but they are applied
to absolutely different situations - the first describes social
relationship of ownership, while the second - reflecting capacity
of a physical body. How could it be explained? You probably anticipate
my explanation: I suppose that the second phrase reflects the
structure of the concept “red apple”, i.e. the structure of it's
correspondent organization in the brain. The organization is linked
together by relationship, which resembles ownership in society;
it consists of several property subjects belonging to one central
subject. People unconsciously feel this resemblance, and that
is why they call different things by the same words.
{ I should say, within the present approach I use such “strange”
coincidences in word usage very widely. From psychoanalytical
standpoint it is quite justifiable, specifically when equivalent
usage occurs in several unrelated languages. For example, in a
mathematical book you can encounter phrases like these: “This
conclusion is legitimate (or just, or justifiable)” or “this assumption
is justifiable under such and such conditions”. ( in Russian “spravedlivost”
and “zakonnost” are used in exactly the same way). But words “justice”
and “legitimacy” originally mean some social phenomena, they are
relevant to relationships between people; what they have to do
with making logical conclusions? More examples: state “censorship”
and internal “censorship”; individual “consciousness” and mass
“consciousness” ( or, say, class “consciousness” of workers, by
Marx); “interest” of an individual towards some interesting idea
and bank “interest” rate, and state “interests” of USA (look,
we unconsciously treat the USA and an individual as very similar
things: they both can have “interests”); physical “person” and
artificial (or legal) “person”. It is easy to explain why a human
being is similar to a chimpanzee ape - they both have two legs,
two hands and one head; but try to explain why a single human
being is similar to a crowd of them. }
There are clear indications that images of physical objects
in a real brain are not located each at a place - they are rather
scattered all over the cortex. When a patient has a certain zone
of his cortex damaged, (say, by tumor), he forgets the purpose
of all things - he can not use spoons, forks, pencils, apples,
etc. but he can call them by right words. When another zone is
damaged, the patient can use things but can not name a shown thing,
although he can repeat or even read the word aloud. There is no
zone in the brain cortex, whose damage would make the patient
forget one concept completely (along with it's purpose, it's name,
and other properties) and at the same time would leave the rest
of the concepts intact.
There exists the word a-p-p-l-e
in our language, hence, as we supposed above, must exist a subject
APPLE responsible for this word, and it must have something
to do with organization APPLECONCRETE 1. Usually we think of
the concept “apple” as a non-elementary concept: we believe, that
it possesses some immanent properties - say, it is something “round,
tasteful, hanging on the tree”. The question is a delicate one,
now I am suggesting two different approaches to it:
APPROACH 1
The mentioned above properties are actually not immanent ones,
since there exist apples, who are not round, but oblong; who
are not tasteful; and an apple does not necessarily have to hang
on a tree. A picture of an apple, drawn on a piece of paper is
still relevant to the concept, though it hardly makes a physical
body, it is just stains of paint on the paper. A chain of letters
or sounds a-p-p-l-e is as closely associated in human brain
with the “apple” concept as a sensory image including visual,
taste, touch, etc. properties. So, within this approach, the concept
can not possess any further properties, and therefore it is an
elementary concept. The corresponding elementary subject APPLE
goes among other property subjects on equal terms, it belongs
to the SUBCENTR just like any of RED, ROUND, SWEET, and
the like. Let us now consider a simple problem of the sort commonly
used to teach little kids numeracy: “Pete had three apples and
Ann had two; Pete gave one of his apples to Ann; how many apples
... (and so forth).” How are the images of such apples built?
These are abstract mathematical apples - all their properties,
such as “red”, “round” are omitted; the only property left is
the “property of being an apple”. We don't know, and don't need
to know, whether they are red, or yellow, round or oblong; while
solving the problem we don't actually imagine their colors and
shapes. Consequently, we have to suppose that each of these images
A, B, C, ..., consists of it's central subject (A, for example),
and just one single property subject APPLE belonging to it.
All these organizations - A, B, C, ... , use one and the same
property subject, so they can hardly function simultaneously.
Indeed, human brain would have problems imagining and processing
too many similar images at the same time: you can visualize, follow
and process a complex situation with a lot of diverse details;
but try to follow more then 3 apples simultaneously! Of course,
real brain is more sophisticated then our model, subjects could
be duplicated and triplicated to allow the processing of several
simultaneous images. To count apples we need some means to distinguish
between them (rather between their images, then their physical
bodies, see the previous speculations). Since the property subjects
of A, B, C, ..., are one and the same subject APPLE, the
only thing that distinguishes them is different central subjects.
As we see, this difference is enough to make the images countable,
i.e. is enough for them to become mathematical units. Generally,
these conditions - at least one common property (I am going to
call a common property otherwise an “analogy between images”)
and different central subjects - are necessary for a set of images
to become countable units. You can count images (i. e. In a sense
to add one image to another) of all red objects, presented to
you - they have RED as the common property subject; or round
objects - ROUND in common. But you can not add together dissimilar
images - shall we say, cows and dinner tables. Not until you will
find an analogy between them - they are both four-legged! And
now you can start counting all four-legged objects presented to
you - chairs, dogs, saw-horses, etc.
These speculations exactly coincide with that part of physics,
which deals with dimensional representations - there also it is
forbidden to add liters to kilograms. The analogy, or common property
subject, seems to play the role of dimensional unit, and the central
subject is somehow responsible for quantitative representation,
for the quality of an image to be “one” unity.
Letters of our alphabet are also considered concepts, and,
therefore, subjects - I will denote them, naturally, A, B,
C, ..., Z. When we say “apple a”, we mean an organization having
two property subjects - APPLE and A, exactly like “red apple”
means organization with property subjects APPLE and RED. When
we are labeling an image we are actually assigning an additional
artificial property to it; and this is a convenient way to bypass
the naming and denoting problems arising from multiplicity of
various SUBCENTR subjects and impossibility of inventing a separate
name for each of them.
Numbers are concepts and subjects as well; they can be used
for labeling instead of letters; but they have many more fascinating
qualities. I hope to discuss numbers in more detail later - it
goes beyond presentation of “ideology”. This approach represents
very conveniently many other basic mathematical concepts - such
as “set”, for example, which consists of the set's elements (who
are themselves concepts and hence subjects), belonging to a central
subject, who is not an element of the set, but represents the
set as a whole (it can, in it's own turn, be included as an element
into another set - a set of sets).
APPROACH 2
On the other hand, if I was asked a riddle: “what is this:
red, round, tasteful, hanging on a tree?”, I would be able to
guess - “an apple”. So, this set of properties seems to be more
relevant to an apple, then to any other object. “Red” or “yellow”
colors would better suit an apple, then “blue” or “violet”, “round”
shape better then “square”. Contrary to the approach 1 there must
be links between APPLE and RED and between APPLE and YELLOW,
for example, and these links must be much stronger then between
APPLE and BLUE and APPLE and VIOLET. These links are just
the ones who enable me to guess the riddle - i.e. to conclude,
that if an image has the listed above properties, than it most
probably has the property of “being an apple”, too. Identification
of images by sight, touch, hearing, taste is in principal similar
to guessing of a riddle - naming an image by a given incomplete
list of properties. It is probabilistic, too - an unusually round
pear can indeed be mistaken for an apple. There exists entire
branch of science based on this approach - it deals with image
recognition, decision making, artificial neuron nets with fuzzy
probabilistic links, fuzzy logic, and so on. The notion of “elementary
concept” becomes meaningless within this approach, and links seem
to lose their resemblance to ownership relations; even formerly
unrelated subjects, such as RED and SWEET establish links
to each other - there is some correlation between taste and color
of an apple - red one is probably more sweet, then green one.
Both approaches look consistent, each in it's own field, but
rather contradictory. A real living brain must somehow execute
both of the approaches without confusing them, how is it possible?
First of all, I should note, in
the very reality a brain lacking the concept “apple” can exist
and successfully function. It would examine, pluck, taste
and eat each apple individually, without knowing that it is an
“apple”, without setting them apart as a separate class of objects.
In some book I read about one tribe in Russian Far East, which
has no concept “tree”. They knew “pines”, “spruces”, “birches”
and others separately, and could process these images quite successfully,
but did not see an analogy between them. When a pupil from this
tribe came to the primary school and was asked to do a sum like
“Three pines and two birches grew on a hill. How many trees were
there on the hill?”, he came to a halt - adding pines to birches
sounded to him like adding liters to kilograms.
The most realistic explanation of what is the subject APPLE
and how it manages to execute it's functions both in accordance
to approaches 1 and 2, again requires analogy to a social organization.
Let us suppose, that the society contains many individuals with
similar demands - for example, they demand loafs of bread. To
produce it, one needs several ingredients: flour, water, salt,
firewood, a stove, etc. In a primitive society each individual
bakes bread on his own, he gets all the necessary ingredients
by himself (i.e. he must possess the ingredients as his own properties);
there is no especial organization for bread baking. This situation
resembles an uneducated brain, which has no subject APPLE, and
where each of SUBCENTR subjects has to establish all the necessary
links to the property subjects. In a more advanced society we
would find an especial “bread agency” - a bakery - an organization,
which has ready links (these are real ownership relations) to
all bread ingredients and sells loafs to individuals. I shall
take up the classic economist's idea of what is “selling” and
“buying”: when an individual buys a loaf of bread from a bakery,
that means he buys the working time of all it's employees, necessary
for the production of one loaf (it can be a fraction of second),
pays off all raw materials and depreciation of the equipment;
in other words, the buyer becomes a virtual owner of the entire
bakery for this short time. It is namely this “bread agency” that
resembles the subject APPLE of an experienced brain - APPLE
does some work for each of the SUBCENTR subjects - it provides
them with ready links to the property subjects, and, in it's own
turn, temporarily becomes SUBCENTR's property. Note, that existence
of APPLE is justifiable only when there is sufficient quantity
of apple images in the brain - an individual who saw an apple
just few times in his life will hardly develop an especial concept
for it, he would rather treat each apple as a separate concept.
The same in society - a bakery can exist only when it has enough
customers. So, the most realistic
notion of subject APPLE is a rather sophisticated organization
of many smaller subjects, and the graph, representing this subject,
would remind a graph of a social agency. A human brain contains
in average about 10.000.000.000 neurons; assuming that only 1%
of them are responsible for processing of concepts, and the rest
99% deal with other tasks - control of locomotion, orientation,
digestion, and the like, we have about 100.000.000 neurons responsible
for concepts; to estimate the number of concepts familiar to a
brain let us take a very big enormous dictionary, containing 1.000.000
entries. Under such estimation we should expect every concept
subject to contain 100 neurons in average, i.e. we have a right
to consider it a large sophisticated agency. Taking this into
account, many links who within approach 2 looked like fuzzy,
might appear to be ordinary links between smaller constituent
subjects, or “subsubjects”, as I am going to call them sometimes.
I want to point out now, that
the APPLE as a whole and any of it's constituent subsubjects
are called by one and the same word “subject” and they really
behave alike - they can establish links of similar sort with other
subjects, they are responsible for concepts, they may have corresponding
words in language. How it comes, that in this sense an assembly
of constituents behaves like it's one single constituent? This
seem to be the case indeed, smaller organizations seem to be built
on the same principal as bigger ones, and the whole network of
organizations therefore resembles self-modeling net. I can draw
a similar example from sociology: to study international politics
we would habitually choose for interacting subjects such large
masses, as nations and states; to study interior policy of states
it is convenient to divide the entire society into smaller subjects
- towns, regions, or political parties. To understand personal
relations we have to divide the society into separate individuals.
All these enclosed social subjects behave alike, first of all,
with respect to ownership relations - a state, a town, or an organization
can have a property, it can own something, just like an individual.
They also can have a thing called “interest” and many other things
mentioned somewhere above. Very often people even personify large
social subjects, creating images like “red bear”, “uncle Sam”,
“British lion”, and thus revealing their similarity to individuals.
Though, people also tend to personify concepts, thoughts, passions
- recall Freud's analogies, and that prehistoric people saw living
souls in every tree and stone, and that one can say such a phrase:
“the engine does not “want” to work”. The self-modeling principal
apparently goes not only beyond individual brain, but also inside
it, and a graph representing a concept would resemble a graph
of the whole brain.
This “ideology” treats all the
thoughts and concepts inside our head as a quite real living creatures
- they, after all, consist of real interacting gray cells, and
their difference from the whole brain is mainly quantitative.
They have no bones and muscles and bodies of their own, and have
to share the body of the individual, and sometimes one of them
or another can take complete possession of it.
Approaches 1 and 2 seem to be
mutually exclusive, at least one and the same neuron net can hardly
execute both of them, their links would interfere and cause confusion;
to resolve this difficulty, I had to suppose that brain has an
ability to switch temporarily off part of it's subjects, exclude
them completely out of the game. When a brain is considering some
arithmetical or logical problem, it switches on only those subsubjects
of all concepts, who are responsible for approach 1, i.e. it considers
all of the “apples”, “pears”, “dinner tables”, “cows”, “Petes”,
“Anns”, etc. as elementary concepts having no further links. I
will call such a phenomenon “consideration of a problem in an
aspect ASP” ( in this particular case it is “mathematical aspect”
- MATH or “arithmetical aspect” - ARITH), and thus set apart
subsubjects of all concepts I will call “constituents of the
ASP” (as we will later see, an aspect is organized very much like
a concept, so I will also call them “properties of the ASP”).
To clarify these things, I am going to bring forth a social analogy
again: let us take a network factories, plants, and firms, linked
together with innumerable links: they supply one another with
goods and raw materials and know-hows, their employees are linked
by friendship, marriage, through political parties, etc. Each
of the factories or firms has it's boss (or manager), and let
these bosses and managers come together in a top-level meeting
to discuss their business, to sign deals, and so on. Although
they represent their enterprises, they interact as ordinary separate
people at this meeting, all other members of the enterprises are
excluded from the interaction, and mentioned above innumerable
links have no immediate influence. By the way, bosses and managers
in real society are usually organized into organizations (formal
or informal) just with the purpose of such interaction; it is
just such an organization, who is similar to aspect MATH in
a brain. An aspect does not necessarily encompass only top-level
subjects. In society we can set apart, say, communist party members,
instead of managers and bosses, from among those employees, and
consider the social phenomenon of their meeting in exactly the
same way. In brain we can consider images, for example, with respect
to their color - when shape, size, “being an apple”, or “being
a pear” are of no importance, we interest only about their color.
That means, that we consider them in the aspect COLOR, in other
words, we have right to switch on only property subjects RED,
YELLOW, GREEN, ... VIOLET - these are constituents of the
aspect COLOR, they belong to the central subject of this aspect
COLOR just like property subjects of a concept belong to the
central one. As we see, there is no substantial difference between
concepts and aspects, it is often hard even to distinguish, where
is concept and where is subject, and it is very seldom needed.
Real neurons are commonly thought
to be binary units - at a given moment a neuron can be found in
one of the two states: either excited, or non-excited. When it
receives certain signal through it's receptor endings (who usually
detect acetylcholine, secreted by secreting endings of other neurons),
it gets excited; when the signal does not match the neuron's requirements,
the later remains non-excited. It was found experimentally, that
these requirements often can be described as so-called “excitement
threshold”, i.e. that the neuron excites when the number of pulses,
coming through it's receptor endings during certain time period
exceeds certain threshold number. This can suggest a simple model
of how the network of aspects and concepts function: excitement
pulses spread through links contrariwise to the arrows on the
graph, i.e. from center to properties; threshold of all subjects
equals 2. Consideration of our concrete red apple in aspect of
color means, that we excite two subjects: APPLECONCRETE and
COLOR, each of whom sends one pulse to each of his properties;
none of the properties can get excited, but RED, where two pulses
from APPLECONCRETE and COLOR converge and reach the threshold
of two. To get a bright and vivid picture of a concept we would
have to consider it in many aspects simultaneously, i.e. to excite
many aspects and accordingly lift the threshold of all subjects.
Pete and Ann from our arithmetical
problem are concepts, too. Let Pete be black and Ann - white,
meaning the color of their skin. Let one of Pete's apples be our
concrete red apple. Then the properties of PETE are: BLACK
and APPLECONCRETE, since the apple also belongs to Pete. But
these properties belong to different aspects, the former to COLOR
(in this very aspect APPLECONCRETE has RED), and the later
- to SOCIALOWNERSIP, where APPLECONCRETE has no properties.
Due to the difference of these aspects a speculation like: “APPLECONCRETE
belongs to PETE; RED belongs to APPLECONCRETE; therefore,
RED belongs to PETE, therefore, Pete is red” is incorrect.
Nevertheless it would be correct when the aspect is one and the
same: “POINT_A belongs to LINE_B; LINE_B belongs to PLANE_C;
therefore, POINT_A belongs to PLANE_C”. Here we consider an
aspect of “geometrical belongship”.
Now I would like to consider two individuals, otherwise two
brains, communicating by means of language. If we are still adhering
to the recently described model (subjects are binary elements,
and their state can be changed by pulses, coming from other subjects),
the language communication means that state of one's brain subjects
can somehow change the state of the other brain's subjects trough
pronouncing and detecting of sounds (or writing and reading of
signs; language of gestures and face expressions are considered
the same things in principal). We also know, that in all languages
of the world these sounds (or signs) are organized into words,
who, accordingly to our hypothesis, correspond to subjects - concepts
and aspects. In a simple case of declarative sentence, when the
first brain B1 sees a red apple and says: “This is a red apple”,
B2 (who does not see it) must conceive roughly the same image
as B1, after this chain of sounds have reached B2, as if he
has actually seen the apple. Subject RED in B1 - RED_B1 receives
exciting pulse supposedly immediately from red-sensitive cells
of retina, to whom it is naturally linked, and APPLE_B1 gets
excited owing to it's fuzzy links of the approach 2. { As to “how
B1 unifies these property subjects under a SUBCENTR?” is separate
important question; for the moment I can propose the following
model: physical time is broken up into equal short intervals,
called steps; during each step a subject emerge, who will later
play the role of SUBCENTR; all the subjects, who happened to
be excited during this step (RED and APPLE in our case) automatically
become linked to the future SUBCENTR as it's property subjects.
There are some indications (some facts about brain waves and others)
concerning step nature of the image processing in real brain}.
So, RED_B2 and APPLE_B2 must receive simultaneous exciting
pulses due to the heard sentence; it seems that the word r-e-d
results into a pulse that somehow reaches RED_B2 trough the
network of B2's links, and the word a-p-p-l-e simultaneously
results into the same thing for APPLE_B2. When RED_B2 and
APPLE_B2 thus get excited during one and the same step, they
automatically become property subjects of the newly organized
APPLECONCRETE_B2, similarly to APPLECONCRETE_B1. If so, there
must exist an organization inside B2 (a sort of subnet inside
it), that executes this function: it finds a right subject by
a given chain of letters, and delivers the excitement pulse to
it. Respectively, inside B1 there must be an organization, transforming
the excitement of a certain subject into the chain of letters,
i.e. finding the right one of the subjects A, B, C, ... Z at
a right time and delivering the pulse to it. {In fact, the elementary
unit of a word is not just a letter - it is the letter coupled
with it's position, which can be represented by a cardinal number.
Such a unit can conveniently be modeled by a subject, having two
property subjects - a letter and a cardinal number}. Naturally,
both B1 and B2 have both these organizations, since they are
supposed to communicate quite symmetrically. It is just these
two organizations that I will call “language” and denote LANGUAGE.
(there is some experimental evidence that the two functions -
recognition of a word and pronunciation of it are executed by
apparatuses interlinked so closely, that they can be almost considered
one apparatus. When a volunteer was asked to name aloud pictures,
appearing on a screen, and at the same time other words sounded
from a loudspeaker, he made a lot of mistakes: recognition of
a word interfered with pronunciation of another one.) Now again
I want to resort to a social analogy: of course, I am going to
compare LANGUAGE to a postal system (or a telephone company)
in society. Than a word will remind a send letter, the chain of
letters itself is similar to the address, written on the envelope
(or to a phone number) - by this the organization finds the right
subject, the addressee. The contents of the envelope are just
one excitement pulse to be delivered to the addressee. When you
speak before several individuals - say, before Pete and Ann, any
of your words will have several addressees - for example, a-p-p-l-e
will have APPLE_PETE and APPLE_ANN. To avoid confusion you
may add the “domain name” to the address, i.e. to say: “Pete,
apple” or “Ann, apple”. In this sense words are merely “extensions”,
added to real postal addresses and individual names to find necessary
subjects inside individuals. As well as post or phone company,
language uses some “technical means” and natural phenomena, such
as vocal cords, eardrums, and propagation of sound waves to convey
information over long distances, but the time scale of the communication
can dramatically change: in an oral talk you can expect answer
to follow a question within seconds, but if you write messages
you will wait for an answer for days. Intercellular communication
within brain is very quick - it takes fractions of milliseconds
for acetylcholine to diffuse across synaptic gap, while language
conversation between brains is thousand times slower. Nevertheless
it does not seem to impair the quality of communication, or impose
some principal restrictions upon it: all that can be achieved
by immediate contact can, in principal, be achieved by mail. (here
I mean one-channel language immediate contact, void of gestures,
mimics, etc.).
This definition of language, (an organization like postal system,
allowing several brains (several sets of subjects) to communicate
like distant parts of society through mail), I believe, is quite
productive, this is just another field where something can be
done with mathematical accuracy. Few simple models I have so far
developed, happened to coincide amazingly with classical mathematical
linguistics, but they look more vivid and understandable.
Accordingly to the common binary model, receptor cells, such
as light-sensitive cells of retina, sensitive cells inside ear
cochlea, taste cells on the tongue are binary units, too. They
get excited in response to the presence of certain correspondent
factor in the external world ( EW ), and when excited, they generate
pulses just like ordinary neurons, their endings secrete acetylcholine
to be detected by other neurons. Nasal smell-sensitive cells,
for instance, even look very much like neurons, the only difference
is that their detectors are adjusted not to the acetylcholine,
but to other chemicals. To the other hand, all final-control bodies
- muscles and glands are driven by neurons, to whom their cells
are connected by synapses; they contract or secret chemicals in
response to the coming excitement pulses. If we have set a subject
SUB apart from a brain B, we can regard it as a separate small
brain, and all the rest of B as EW with respect to SUB;
all incoming links of SUB are to be considered SUB's imaginary
receptors (their correspondent factors are excitements of those
subjects, from whom the links originate; or, otherwise, the factor
is acetylcholine, secreted at that point in space, where the pre-synaptic
ending of the link is located). All the outgoing links are to
be considered glands, secreting acetylcholine into a certain parts
of surrounding space. (Sure, some of the SUB's links may happen
to be real receptors and effectors in real EW). In such a peculiar
environment a subject lives, acts and conducts his own line of behavior, just like an individual
in society. Thus we can set aside only subjects we are interested
about, and exclude the rest of the brain out of consideration
as a part of “new” external world, which is a fruitful way of
analysis. Sociologists habitually use the same trick when they
set a social subject aside, say a country, a firm or even an individual,
and then regard all the rest of the society together with all
non-social natural factors as it's EW.
Now I am going to implement this trick, namely, I want to
exclude subjects LANGUAGE from both B1 and B2. Speech apparatuses
go to the EW, but instead of them virtual links between B1
and B2 appear; these links function very much like ordinary
synaptic links. We are not interested now about what factor mediates
between subjects in the link, is it just a chemical like acetylcholine,
or an entire sophisticated apparatus using sound waves. All we
require from the link is to conduct excitement pulses, so I am
even going to denote such virtual links by arrows on a graph,
exactly like real links. Then, if we display B1 and B2 on
such a graph, we will not see any border dividing them, they will
look just like one brain. Owing to the existence of language,
the whole society in this sense can be considered one huge brain
- million or billion time more powerful then individual. {Here
I have to point out a serious difficulty: unlike real links, the
virtual ones can not work simultaneously, they can only conduct
pulses one at a time, since a brain has only one speech apparatus.
For the moment I appeal to the example of two social organizations,
connected by a single telephone line. Although their members can
talk by the phone only one at a time, I feel that this communication
is not principally poorer (though slower) then immediate oral
conversation. I feel that the two organizations can even unite
into one this way}.
From the “ideological” standpoint this conclusion is very
important: for example, “intelligence” is commonly thought of
as a kind of mysterious substance, found nowhere in nature, but
in human brain; it is this substance that allows humans to send
a rocket to the moon. Accordingly to the present hypothesis, the
explanation is much simpler: human brain in principal does not
differ from an ape's or a dog's one; single human being is no
more capable of flying to the moon than a dog or an ape. But humans
have advanced language, and their brains are united into one,
incomparably more powerful and experienced (it exists hundreds
of times longer) than a single one. It is this monstrous being,
called “mankind”, that can launch moon rocket; “intelligence”
is a quality relevant only to this huge collective brain, but
not to a single individual. Some
people dream of “artificial intelligence”, or intelligent computer;
sometimes they expect a computer to become intelligent when it's
complicity level will equal to that of a human brain, i.e. when
the number of elements (triggers or transistors) contained in
it will reach the number of neurons in the brain. If this is the
case, they have to lift the plank millions times higher - to count
neurons of the whole society, but not of one brain.
There was another example in evolution history, when a plenty
of smaller beings have united together to build much more powerful
body out of themselves - when one-celled organisms integrated
into multicellular one. There the cells share functions and specialize,
and so do individuals in society, where each of them specialize
on his job.
Let us now consider another, more abstract concept - “energy”,
dwelling in the brains of two individuals - a farmer (B_FARMER)
and a physicist (B_PHYSICIST). In B_FARMER ENERGY has subsubjects
in very few utility aspects, it is somehow associated with “electric
illumination”, “kilowatt-hours” and “horse-powers”. It has no
links there in mathematical aspect to “force”, “distance”, “mass”,
“speed of light”, “volts” and “coulombs”; but beyond any doubt,
these links are crucial to the very existence of the concept.
When isolated inside B_FARMER, ENERGY would lose it's sense
and will soon bankrupt and die out. If this does not really happen,
then only owing to the fact that the farmer belongs to the society
which contains physicists, too. Within B_PHYSICIST ENERGY is
supposed to have all the necessary subsubjects and links; these
links seem to provide for the existence of the concept not only
in the physicist's own brain, but also in many other brains.
As we see, a concept can seldom be considered a self-sufficient
unit within a single brain - it is rather a part of much bigger
organization, scattered part by part among all the brains of the
society. (Social analogy - a political party, having cells in
many factories and plants; none of these cells can exist on their
own.) Nearly all concepts are such “interindividual” organizations
- the physicist might be unaware of some aspects of “apple” and
it's cultivation - but the farmer know them. So our united-social-brain
approach will be very convenient in studying concepts.
Now I want to perform a mental experiment: let us take a man,
having no concepts, acquired from society - he is completely
uneducated, and having no material properties, acquired from it-
he is naked. In other words, he has nothing to do with the society.
Suppose, he is a born genius, like Newton or Einstein. Let us
place him into virgin jungles and watch if he invents the law
of gravitation. Sure, he would perish within days without inventing
it, but why? Well, he need food, shelter, etc. These
things are usually provided by certain social structures to the
society members, so to have gravitation law we must have these
structures first, and our genius must occupy an appropriate position
in that society. But this explanation sounds too earthy, too low,
let us modify the conditions: put him into “nutrient medium”,
a place, where he can easily find all material products of civilization
- food, housing, clothes, scientific instruments, ink and paper.
But his mind is completely blank - he has no concepts to think
with or language to write with. In this situation he can develop
some basic concepts, he can even denote them with signs on paper
- this would be no smaller invention for him, than the gravitation
law, which he would not reach this way in his life-span. But such
a lonely explorer still does look somewhat unrealistic - he can
do it, but would he? We have to recall now, that motivations are
also related to certain subjects. Vast majority of motivations
(apart from pure physiological ones, like hunger) are social:
their subjects are “interindividual”, they can not exist in one
isolated brain, just like most of the concepts, (see
above). We usually imagine,
that we act on our own free will, which originates within us,
and fully controls our bodies. But think, how often your
hands and legs move to accomplish a purpose, originating in someone
else's head: people can pay you, or ask you; they can force you
or inspire you; there is a lot of ways to induce someone to do
something. Being isolated from society we would cease to “want”
most of the things we “want” while inside it, our “free will”
would fail to supply us with motivations - most of the motivation
organizations need a space of several brains to be contained.
So, probably, the only activities of that genius would be desperate
seeking for contacts and looking for fellow humans. ( I read that
a child, completely deprived of communication with people, would
suffer lethal brain disorders, so the experiment is not feasible).
When we communicate with someone,
we soon come to “understand” him, i.e. we acquire an ability to
predict his actions, anticipate his thoughts, opinions, reasons
and feelings. This can only indicate that we create a working
model of our partner's brain inside our own. The human ability
to model fellow humans is amazingly quick indeed; partly this
quickness can be explained by the fact of our making a tacit supposition
that the partner's brain is organized just like our own - this
supposition allows us to utilize the vast information we have
about our own brain for the model construction. (We usually call
this trick “to put oneself into someone else's place”; the supposition
is not always justifiable and sometimes leads to deep misunderstandings.)
It would be only natural to think that the model is organized
on the same principle as the original brain, after all it consists
of the similar “blocks” (neurons), connected by similar synaptic
links. The model is just a simplified replica of the original
brain, living inside another brain. Now, if we put together all
such replicas of your brain, existing in the heads of all your
friends, relatives and other communication partners, we might
get an assembly of neurons surpassing your own brain in size.
Presuming that “personality” is the organization of your brain,
we are forced to conclude that a great deal of one's personality
dwells outside his scull; moreover, it will continue to live even
after the original brain is dead. All valuable features of a personality
can further replicate and pass from brain to brain for unlimited
time. This phenomenon is quite a material thing, but it behaves
alarmingly like what religion calls a “soul”.{ it is an essence
of a personality, which can leave it's original body and exist
forever; “forever” does not mean physical infinity - the right
term is “le dorei dorot” or “le dorot olam” i.e. “for generations
of generations” or “for generations of the world”}. Prominent
and famous people have more “soul”, than ordinary ones, since
they have replicas in greater number of brains; generally, the
main object of an individual's existence is seemingly to provide
for the future existence of his “soul” - hence the common wish
to become prominent and Christian talks about salvation of souls.
There can be imagined situations when the whole “soul” would be
benefited by sacrificing it's original brain - when the individual
commits suicide in order to save his “honor”, or puts his life
in danger in a brave exploit. By this his “soul” can acquire new
strong and valuable features like “honesty”, “courage”, or gain
in size by becoming popular, and it's vitality can dramatically
increase in spite of the loss of the original brain. In this sense
our minds consist almost completely of the “souls” of people who
lived before us - the very words and letters I am typing right
now were invented by someone who lived may by thousand years ago,
but as organizations in my brain they still live and work. Along
with “souls” of real people, there live “artificial souls”, who
never had their own bodies
- literature or movie heroes and mythical persons.
By the way, these models of communication
partners can play another important role - do you remember that
difficulty arising from the slowness of virtual links and their
inability to conduct pulses simultaneously? Natural solution would
be something like hard disk cache in a computer, an agency which
would accumulate and store information, coming slowly through
language channel, and then make this information accessible thousand
times quicker. It seems that the described models execute this
function - my partner's words at first reach this model of his
in my brain, they modify and refine it; then the model continue
to function even when disconnected from the original. When I actually
think about what to answer him, subjects of my brain interact
with this model at full speed and intensity of real synaptic links,
connecting the model to the rest of my brain. For example, I am thinking quite alone right now;
but such models of people I once communicated with (parts of their
“souls”, if you want), are at hard work: they are ceaselessly
criticising the ideas I am writing down, asking questions, expressing
opinions; they are even checking my English for possible mistakes.
And not less important, they are supplying me with motivation
to write. It looks to me as a kind of internal dialogue; I believe
that most of my creative mental activities are of this nature.
Robinson Crusoe, although deprived of communication, retained
most of the motivations and concepts. This means that he had a
good stable model of the society in his head, the model which
could sustain a communication delay of many years.
This communication delay problem
often raised in society, too, specifically in ancient and medieval
times, when mail and traveling was slow. The problem is solved
in exactly the same way, by creating internal agencies, modeling
distant partner subjects. These are embassies of partner states,
various trade chambers and delegations. They act on behalf of
their distant “originals”, but they are accessible at “talking”
speed rather than “mailing” speed.
Now I want to discuss still more “ideological” question -
the question of “god”. One thing, called by this word g-o-d
does exist beyond any doubt: this is the concept of god in people's
heads. Accordingly to our hypothesis, there must exist a subject
GOD, responsible for the concept. This subject is evidently
“interindividual”, in other words, it is an organization scattered
among all individuals in the society. People tend to personify
this subject only too often, hence all these images of white-bearded
old man, sitting on a cloud, and Jesus Christ and others. It is
also supposed to dwell somewhere “high” in the sky, in the heaven.
All important and prominent officials in the society (on a tree-shaped
graph of society they occupy closer to the root nodes) are also
called “high” people, they occupy “high”, “top-level” positions.
Clearly, the word h-i-g-h is on some unknown reason associated
with close-to-the-root nodes in hierarchic organizations. {By
the way, this analogy with static mechanics goes further: here
the word h-i-g-h is relevant to a body which has more potential
energy in gravitation field; but “high” people also supposed to
have more “weight” in society, and can have more “power” or “force”.
“Libido” is also thought of as a kind of energy; if the present
hypothesis is right and “money” (or “wealth”) is indeed similar
to “libido”, it is like energy, too. (There seem to be even something
like “conservation principle” about money.) More “wealthy” social
subjects have more properties, i.e. have links to more subjects,
and therefore, they are closer to the root of the graph }. Besides,
GOD has very peculiar links: in some aspect (this aspect is
very much like SOCIALOWNERSHIP) it is linked to all other subjects,
they are GOD's properties. In other words, god possesses everything
and everybody, it is lord, master and owner. Thus the subject
GOD looks like the very root subject of the entire society.
If so, it might indeed rule everything and know everything, in
a sense. It is often associated with top government
officials, like pharaohs in Egypt (they were considered gods),
who are also root subjects in some other aspect; god is often
compared to a “king” beyond all real kings; now I can say that
this “king” might be indeed a living creature, consisting of real
gray cells. In the book of one of the prophets ( I don't remember,
which, and I can not recall the exact quotation) there is a phrase
like: “don't look for the god high in the sky; don't look for
him deep in the sea; god is within yourselves”. Many such “interindividual”
hidden organizations reflect some of their aspects openly into
social organizations, consisting of individuals; GOD reflects
into the organization of “church” in Christian society.
Phenomena of “consciousness” and “self-awareness” can now
be attributed to two things:
1) Self-modeling and hierarchy principles of brain organization:
root subject EGO of a brain can be regarded as a smaller brain
inside bigger one; EGO treats the rest of the brain along with
it's body as a part of EW, but from these peculiar parts of the
EW the EGO receives a lot more information, since they are
connected to it by plentiful synaptic links. When you pinch your
left arm with your right hand, your EGO treats this just like
someone else's hand pinching someone else's arm, but in the case
of your body EGO gets real information about pressure, pain,
etc. , through skin receptors.
2) Supposed presence of specific agencies in a brain, who function
like newspapers, radio or TV in society, carrying the same information
simultaneously to large numbers of subjects. When a baker bakes
a loaf of bread, the society is usually unconscious of it; this
resembles an unconscious action of an individual. But when a newspaper
correspondent arrives at the bakery, writes an article about the
baker and his work and plenty of people read it, then the society
becomes conscious of it; this resembles the transition of an action
into consciousness.
These two processes can combine and cause a lot of excitement,
when one is meditatively pinching himself an feeling utterly his
“self-awareness”.(by “excitement” I mean just the excitement of
his subjects, or neurons, if you want). Note that we presume here
that “consciousness” is not a quality unique to a human brain
only: it can occur in other subjects. For instance, GOD seem
to play in social “consciousness” a role similar to that of EGO
in individual.
To conclude with, I want to adduce a physiological argument
“pro” the hypothesis: big parts of the brain cortex (up to a half
of it or more) can be removed by surgery, but the brain recovers
all it's functions afterwards. When it was done in early childhood,
the recovery can be so complete, that changes in the patient's
behavior are practically unnoticeable, although total “quickness”
and “brightness” of the person has diminished. (this is often
compared to holography, where a holographic plate can be broken
and part of it removed, but size of the picture remains the same
- it is it's resolution that diminishes.) Exactly the same thing
can be expected if a part of individuals was removed from a society
- it would impair the society at first, but it will soon reorganize
and resume to work as before, though slower.
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