Statements on Thought

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The Posthuman Manifesto

5. Statements on Thought, Meaning and Being

As long as models about how the brain might work are defective (being based on fallacious assumptions) the creation of a synthetic consciousness will be impractical.

5.1. Human thought is something which occurs with the Human body. It is not necessary to identify precisely where it occurs because it does not occur precisely in any part.

5.2. The combined biological processes that give rise to thought could be spoken of as a cognitive medium. At our current state of knowledge this would include neurons, the Nervous System, the brain, various hormones, bio-feedback mechanisms as well as others as yet unknown. Speaking of the cognitive medium allows us to locate thought in the biological processes of the Human body (i.e. thought is not independent of the body) without falling into the old trap of locating it exclusively in the Brain.

5.3. In as much as each thought is distinct it will occur as a distinct event within the cognitive medium.

5.4. It would be tempting to think of thoughts as blocks of data in the brain. This would be a mistake since it reinforces a static view of mental activity. A thought is a path through the cognitive medium. Think of it like this. Taking the London Underground Map as an analogy of how the mind works many people would say, Each of the stations on the map represents one of our thoughts and the lines represent the links between them. The lines are what enable us to get from thought to thought. The Post_Human would say, A thought is not a station on the map but the route from one station to another . That is, a thought is the action of travelling rather than any particular destination.

5.5. Given that a thought is activated, for whatever reason, it consists in a process of travelling through the cognitive medium. A thought does not exist unless it is being thought. The most likely journey that a thought may take once it has been activated defines its path. Similar thoughts will take similar paths.

5.6. Such paths can be created in a number of ways - direct experience, learning, pre-wiring, the act of thinking itself. The paths are described in neuro-physiological terms as the connections between neurons and the probability of their firing. The cognitive medium is not a static substance. It is continually changing in response to stimulation and activation. The cognitive medium is prone to adaptation just as the skin or muscles are.

5.7. The path that a thought takes is not linear in the way that we normally think of paths. It takes many different routes simultaneously. The occurrence of one particular thought may require that we bring together many different thoughts in combination.

5.8. The fact that different thoughts may lie in different paths, each of which are distinct in as much as each thought is distinct, shows us how we can imagine things we have never seen. We have never seen a girl with kaleidoscope eyes but we can imagine what she looks like by making a composite image of the components i.e. travelling through several distinct thought paths at once.

5.9. Although distinct thought paths must exist separately from each other (that is, physically dislocated within the cognitive medium) in order that one thought can be distinguished from another, this does not rule out the possibility that many thoughts may share parts of the same path. For example, all thoughts about green-ness may share the common thought path that is activated when green is thought about.

5.10. The activity of thinking is regulated by the conduct of energy in the cognitive medium. The cognitive medium is no different to any other system in that it represents a particular process of energy transformations. Where two thoughts are continuous (for example, blue and sky in the sentence The sky is blue ) the pathway between each of these thoughts is well established. It will require little energy to pass from one to the other. Where two thoughts are not well connected (for example between tree and sardine in the sentence "the sardine-tree") more energy is required to fuse the thoughts since they have less well established connections.

5.11. Ideas which can proceed from one to another with relatively little effort (energy) can be considered as continuous. Ideas which require great effort to travel between can be considered as discontinuous. The conceptual continuity between ideas is dependent on their proximity in the cognitive medium.

5.12. The presence or absence of meaning is determined by the amount of energy required to pass from one concept to another. Difficult meaning arises from the co-existence of concepts which are semantically distant. That is, when there is not a well established connection between them. However, the path between concepts which have little or no connection may be too difficult to travel. For example in the sentence The yesterday of refractive stepshine , whilst not meaningless, is certainly awkward to assemble by the standard of most sentences.

5.13. In order to maintain a sense of Being the Human tries to build up continuity through the stimuli it receives from the environment. Such stimuli are both stable and unstable since the environment displays different amounts of both. The development of stable thought paths which correspond to stable stimuli generates a sense of order. Over time such stability develops into a sense of Being.

5.14. Were the sense of order not perpetually threatened by the recurrence of random stimuli there would be no compulsion to reassert order. As it is, since Humans are continually faced with random stimuli it is necessary to keep reasserting order (maintaining meaning) so that we do not dissovle into chaos, thereby losing our sense of Being.

5.15. In Post_Human terms it is unimportant through what mechanism this process of Being occurs. The same effect can be achieved in a number of different ways. It is true that we can learn from the Human being how Being occurs, but this does not mean that it is the only way it can be done.

© Robert Pepperell

The Posthuman Manifesto 5. Statements on Thought, Meaning and Being
As long as models about how the brain might work are defective (being based on fallacious assumptions) the creation of a synthetic consciousness will be impractical. 5.1. Human thought is something which occurs with the Human body. It is not necessary to identify precisely where it occurs because it does not occur precisely in any part. 5.2. The combined biological processes that give rise to thought could be spoken of as a cognitive medium. At our current state of knowledge this would include neurons, the Nervous System, the brain, various hormones, bio-feedback mechanisms as well as others as yet unknown. Speaking of the cognitive medium allows us to locate thought in the biological processes of the Human body (i.e. thought is not independent of the body) without falling into the old trap of locating it exclusively in the Brain. 5.3. In as much as each thought is distinct it will occur as a distinct event within the cognitive medium. 5.4. It would be tempting to think of thoughts as blocks of data in the brain. This would be a mistake since it reinforces a static view of mental activity. A thought is a path through the cognitive medium. Think of it like this. Taking the London Underground Map as an analogy of how the mind works many people would say, Each of the stations on the map represents one of our thoughts and the lines represent the links between them. The lines are what enable us to get from thought to thought. The Post_Human would say, A thought is not a station on the map but the route from one station to another . That is, a thought is the action of travelling rather than any particular destination. 5.5. Given that a thought is activated, for whatever reason, it consists in a process of travelling through the cognitive medium. A thought does not exist unless it is being thought. The most likely journey that a thought may take once it has been activated defines its path. Similar thoughts will take similar paths. 5.6. Such paths can be created in a number of ways - direct experience, learning, pre-wiring, the act of thinking itself. The paths are described in neuro-physiological terms as the connections between neurons and the probability of their firing. The cognitive medium is not a static substance. It is continually changing in response to stimulation and activation. The cognitive medium is prone to adaptation just as the skin or muscles are. 5.7. The path that a thought takes is not linear in the way that we normally think of paths. It takes many different routes simultaneously. The occurrence of one particular thought may require that we bring together many different thoughts in combination. 5.8. The fact that different thoughts may lie in different paths, each of which are distinct in as much as each thought is distinct, shows us how we can imagine things we have never seen. We have never seen a girl with kaleidoscope eyes but we can imagine what she looks like by making a composite image of the components i.e. travelling through several distinct thought paths at once. 5.9. Although distinct thought paths must exist separately from each other (that is, physically dislocated within the cognitive medium) in order that one thought can be distinguished from another, this does not rule out the possibility that many thoughts may share parts of the same path. For example, all thoughts about green-ness may share the common thought path that is activated when green is thought about. 5.10. The activity of thinking is regulated by the conduct of energy in the cognitive medium. The cognitive medium is no different to any other system in that it represents a particular process of energy transformations. Where two thoughts are continuous (for example, blue and sky in the sentence The sky is blue ) the pathway between each of these thoughts is well established. It will require little energy to pass from one to the other. Where two thoughts are not well connected (for example between tree and sardine in the sentence "the sardine-tree") more energy is required to fuse the thoughts since they have less well established connections. 5.11. Ideas which can proceed from one to another with relatively little effort (energy) can be considered as continuous. Ideas which require great effort to travel between can be considered as discontinuous. The conceptual continuity between ideas is dependent on their proximity in the cognitive medium. 5.12. The presence or absence of meaning is determined by the amount of energy required to pass from one concept to another. Difficult meaning arises from the co-existence of concepts which are semantically distant. That is, when there is not a well established connection between them. However, the path between concepts which have little or no connection may be too difficult to travel. For example in the sentence The yesterday of refractive stepshine , whilst not meaningless, is certainly awkward to assemble by the standard of most sentences. 5.13. In order to maintain a sense of Being the Human tries to build up continuity through the stimuli it receives from the environment. Such stimuli are both stable and unstable since the environment displays different amounts of both. The development of stable thought paths which correspond to stable stimuli generates a sense of order. Over time such stability develops into a sense of Being. 5.14. Were the sense of order not perpetually threatened by the recurrence of random stimuli there would be no compulsion to reassert order. As it is, since Humans are continually faced with random stimuli it is necessary to keep reasserting order (maintaining meaning) so that we do not dissovle into chaos, thereby losing our sense of Being. 5.15. In Post_Human terms it is unimportant through what mechanism this process of Being occurs. The same effect can be achieved in a number of different ways. It is true that we can learn from the Human being how Being occurs, but this does not mean that it is the only way it can be done.

	© Robert Pepperell
	© Robert Pepperell