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The Relativistic Brain: How it works and why it cannot be simulated
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In this monograph, a mathematician and a neurobiologist join forces to address one of the most crucial and controversial scientific questions of our times: can the exquisite capacities of the human brain be simulated by any digital computer? By combining mathematical, computational, neurobiological and evolutionary arguments, Ronald Cicurel and Miguel Nicolelis refute the possibility that any Turing machine will ever succeed in such a simulation. As part of their argument, the authors propose a new theory for brain function: the Relativistic Brain Theory. This theory accounts for decades of neurophysiological and psychological findings and observations that until now have challenged the dominant dogma in neuroscience. Altogether, this monograph contains the inaugural manifesto of a movement intended to emphasize the uniqueness of human nature while discrediting pseudo-scientific predictions that the replacement of humans by machines is imminent. In the authors' opinion, the misguided and misleading belief that digital machines can emulate all human behaviors defines one of the greatest threats that society faces in the future to preserve our way of life, our human culture and our freedom.
- Sales Rank: #759771 in Books
- Published on: 2015-04-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .26" w x 6.00" l, .37 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 104 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
26 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Not worth the time
By Amazon Customer #2
In this short book, Nicolelis and Cicurel provide a sophomoric attempt to create an original theory of brain function, and a reply to researchers such as Henry Markram, who believe that brains can be adequately modelled in computers. There's a bold display of poor scholarship by the two authors. A previous theory that is in fact quite similar to their own, developed by Johnjon McFadden, is mentioned very briefly after more than a third of the book has transcribed, and we are told that "all the experimental confirmations cited in McFadden's articles apply to [our] theory as well". Which experiments are that? In the following two-sentence paragraph, in which two critics of McFadden's theory are mentioned, it is explained that "our reply to these criticisms will be presented elsewhere". Important and well-defined philosophical concepts, crucial to the main thesis of the book, such as functionalism, computationalism and qualia are either not mentioned at all or inadequately explained. Despite opting not to cite proper technical jargon, the book introduces its own sort of jargon, and relies heavily on previous knowledge of the reader in several instances. As a result, this book is neither a good introductory read, nor a cogent philosophical piece from which insights can be extracted.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Conceptual Advance – and a Standard Problem
By Stephen E. Robbins
This work lays out, at a high level, a new conceptual model of the brain. In this vision, multiple populations of neurons are continually creating dynamically changing electro-magnetic fields, i.e., this is an analog feature of the brain’s function. The authors see neural frequency spikes as yet supporting a digital component. The overall effect of the fields created by the various neural populations is the creation of a neural space-time continuum in which an internal model of the body and the external world is maintained.
If this sounds a bit vague as to how things might work in detail, it is, and it doesn’t get too much better in this respect. The role of the digital component (via the frequency spikes) in either thought, language, perception, whatever, is little explained for example, as well as other critical things I will note below. However the authors’ justification for the existence of these fields via emerging neural evidence (albeit still speculative) and the glimpse of a real alternative model of the brain emerging, is itself worth the read, as well as the several principles of brain function for which they argue (e.g., extreme context sensitivity). Also of great interest are the several chapters in the second part of the book, based on the neural view given, which are devoted to the question of whether the brain can be simulated by a digital computer, to comparisons to a Turing Machine, to implications of Gödel, and very important, to Turing’s “Oracle” machine concept as essential in a broader form of computation, the form that very possibly characterizes the brain, the entire brain being perhaps an O-machine. In the authors’ example, a protein (as a tiny O-machine) finds its optimal 3-D configuration – an intractable computational problem – in an instant by following the laws of physics in the analog domain. This entire discussion, juxtaposed, say, with something like Bostrom’s (Superintelligence, 2014) which blithely extols the future of Whole Brain Emulation via digital computer, makes the latter look very naïve. This is a must read discussion for those who have not encountered the O-machine concept of Turing and its deep significance for the nature of computation; it can be a shocking revelation re the actual power (or not) of standard Turing computation.
As to the “standard problem” in this review title: The authors argue for an “internal model” - say, of my kitchen, the table, my coffee cup and spoon stirring away – created/supported in the neural-generated space-time continuum. This is but a very weak attempt to solve Chalmers’ “hard problem” of consciousness, wherein we must explain how any neural or computer architecture explains the “qualia” of the perceived world – the silveriness of the spoon, the whiteness of the cup. This problem has been misleading, stated as it is only in terms of qualia. Even form is qualia – the stirring spoon, the squares on the tile floor. It is better understood as that of accounting, in general, for the image of the external world. There is nothing in the neural-chemical flows that looks like the kitchen with its table and coffee cup. Nor does it help to say that populations of these flows, creating EM fields, accounts for this. There is nothing about an EM field that can be made to look like a coffee cup. The authors appeal to “emergence” – the kitchen/cup “emerge” over these flows/fields - but this concept is at best a vague hope, heavily critiqued in the philosophical literature (even Yudkowsky [Rationality: From AI to Zombies, section 36], ridicules it). What is interesting though is that this EM field view sees the brain, effectively, as a very concrete device, as concrete, say, as an AC motor generating an EM field of force. It entails the brain as creating a constantly changing, constantly modulated, very concrete wave form, and this is now approaching the conception of the brain that Bergson (Matter and Memory, 1896) required to explain the problematic origin of our image the external world. Bergson had presciently envisioned the essence of holography fifty years before Gabor's discovery (unfortunately leaving his contemporaries puzzled as to his model), attributing a holographic property to the universe 85 years before Bohm (The Implicate Order, 1980). As opposed to Pribram, who later saw the brain simply as a "hologram," Bergson viewed the brain as creating, in effect, a constantly modulated, very concrete, reconstructive wave passing though this holographic field, a wave specific to a subset of the vast information in the field, the specified subset by this very process being now an image of the field – the table, cup and stirring spoon.
There is obviously more to this, but this gives an idea of what a concrete mechanism for the origin of the image of the external world might look like, as opposed to appeals to emergence and to unexplainable internal models (the latter also with myriad logical problems). To add another point of relation to the book, one will ponder exactly why the authors call their model the “Relativistic Brain,” other than on the fact that a space-time continuum is supposedly built (with internal model) and that there is global constraint (like the light velocity constraint in relativity?), via the brain’s total available energy, on the neural firing rates (or flow velocities). Yet, as Bergson noted, the image is specified at a scale of time (another, ungrasped aspect of “qualia”). A fly moving by the coffee cup is seen with his wings a-blur at normal scale. But the fly (and the cup) could have been seen as a cloud of whirling atoms, or, with a lesser change, as a stock still, motionless fly. That is, the subset of the holographic field, which has no particular scale, is specified at a scale of time. This must be a function of the brain’s very concrete dynamics, e.g., the chemical velocities underlying these neural flows (thus the EM waves). The “relativistic” aspect comes through then if one now considers introducing a catalyst into the brain, or a set of catalysts, which increase the energy available to the chemical reactions (changing the value of the global constraint), increasing the chemical velocities (and increasing the EM modulation frequencies): At sufficiently higher than normal velocities, we could expect the fly to now be specified as though heron-like, barely flapping his wings, i.e., we have a new “space-time partition.” Correlatively, as in relativity, we would now require invariance laws which hold across space-time partitions (just as d=vt or d’=vt’) to specify events, e.g., as per laws advocated by J. J. Gibson (The Perception of the Visual World, 1950).
All in all, the book, imo. is very interesting preview as to where we are perhaps going in our views of the brain, with essential, definitely to be considered critiques of the unrealistic views of AI and brain emulation.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
In the right direction
By Victor S. Johnston
I enjoyed this book because it's in the right direction. It may not be correct in details, but it is full of good ideas. In particular, I liked their approach to the binding problem. Here are two suggestions that could strengthen their argument.
First of all, if the human mind is an emergent property of the brain that influences neural activity, it must use one of the four known physical forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, or gravity. The first two are confined to the atomic nucleus and gravity is just too weak to be relevant. So, as the authors propose, a mental space based on electromagnetic fields is the only logically possible choice. I am sure they are right about that.
Secondly, as I have argued in "Why We Feel", if natural selection favors any functional emergent mental property, it will, over generations, shape the neural structure responsible for that property. That is, selection for mental attributes will change the brains neural organization. If their theory is correct, the white matter pathways should reflect this organization.
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