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A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

sciencemag.org

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Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#151

Post by Nextgrid »

ketzo wrote: post #77
stormdennis wrote: post #75

When they gave him the foam 8 he didn't recognize it and they speculated it was because the brain prioritised sight over the sense of touch. Surely they tried the same experiment after asking him to close his eyes first?

Oh man, I wonder what he pictured in his head if he tried to picture an 8 instead of read one? Nothing? Squiggles? Headache? Honestly, I could ask a billion more questions about this situation. So fascinating.

I would’ve asked him to draw digits, potentially with his eyes closed, to see if he still has a representation of the shape of digits in his mind.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#152

Post by vinceguidry »

corin_ wrote: post #132
vinceguidry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics.…

I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of hu…

This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis.

> the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way.

You can obtain three samples of three different kinds of steel and perform a destructive test on all three of them, then when you're done you can obtain more. This is materials science and you can get paid a lot of money to do it.

There is "neuroscience" where you do the same thing, with neurons. Neurons are not minds. You'll never learn how a mind works by studying neurons, any more than you can learn how a building works by studying steel. If you're looking to learn how a building works, steel is just one of the hundreds of topics you need to understand.

There is no "building science" and there is no "mind science", because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination. Physically speaking, i.e. according to the best observation techniques the field of neuroscience can come up with, a newborn, a brain trauma victim, and a college student are all identical as your parent notes.

This deficiency in understanding is what the commenter you were responding to was pointing to. People thinking they can understand the mind by doing fMRIs. And thinking any kind of rigorous exploration and study as "science" leads to this kind of mistake.

Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments. Computers are not natural, nor are they physical. Silicon is, and you can study that by running experiments and observing the results.

To get epistemic, knowledge comprises justified true beliefs. Science is a type of justification. There are other kinds. If you use other forms of justification, then you don't get scientific knowledge out of it, overloading science makes people believe that all knowledge that comes out of academia is scientific, i.e. made through repeated experimentation and observation, such that we can rely on it to not fail on us.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#153

Post by phkahler »

akiselev wrote: post #87
pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #70

Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Also, in terms of problem solving, there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. It's not l…

All of the research you describe can be safely bundled into the same category as "dead salmon shows brain activity on an fMRI if you squint hard enough." It's phrenology for the 21st century, except with dyes and MRIs instead of head shaped calipers. The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science. At best, "consciousness" is an abstraction used by psychiatrists and laypeople over much d…

Funny about that fish. As soon as I hear "neuroscience" or "neoroplasticity" it triggers my BS detector. The former because it's used to add credibility to a lot of really fuzzy stuff and the later because it's a big fancy word for being able to learn or change.

That's not to say I automatically regard something as BS because of those words, but they increase my level of scrutiny.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#154

Post by Marsymars »

stordoff wrote: post #58
Marsymars wrote: post #42

Reading is weird. I've never had migraines, but a few years ago suddenly, and briefly, lost the ability to read and write. After a number of doctors and tests ruling out a TIA, best guess is one-time transient aphasia from a migraine aura.

Migraines in general are weird. It's rare[1], but I can occasionally tell when a severe migraine is about to occur because rooms feel too big. I walked into my bathroom a few days ago (which is about 2mx2m/6'x6'), and each wall seemed about 2 feet longer than it should, and the far corner looked about 3 feet too far away (it was more a feeling than a visual disturbance - it's hard to describe). I felt _small_, which…

Oh wow, I get that semi-regularly (couple times a year maybe) when I'm sitting with in front of my HTPC TV with my wireless keyboard. Everything feels far away, and I feel tiny and dissociated from my actions. Not subtle at all. Standing up snaps me out of it, but it feels kind of cool so usually I let it persist.

I don't think it's ever preceded any kind of headache, but I've never tried to correlate the timing with anything else. I'll have to pay more attention when it happens again.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#156

Post by criddell »

ghego1 wrote: post #91
pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #70

Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Also, in terms of problem solving, there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. It's not l…

> there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. This made me think of an async process

I recently listened to a podcast from Sean Carroll where they talked about consciousness being like a jury. There are competing systems that speak as one. So an async process might be a good way of thinking about it.

Experiments where they detect the decision being made a second or two before the person becomes aware of it may be picking up on this. Perhaps if they measured different parts of the brain they might seen alternate decisions being made.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#157

Post by arikrak »

Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Since he couldn't process numbers in any useful manner (when communicating, to remember his hotel room, to draw it, etc.) the simplest explanation is that it didn't reach the "central brain processing" area. While this might not be the same thing as "consciousness", it's unlikely that this visual recognition made it very far in the brain. (Maybe the brain damage blocked it from going anywhere at all.)

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#158

Post by war1025 »

war1025 wrote: post #24
bitbckt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren’t always numbered. Up north, there are still people who refer to Highway 40 as Lincoln Highway. I’ve heard a couple of LA natives say that’s an explanation for SoCal’s affinity for calling them “the 5”: they switched from “the Santa Ana”.

> there are still people who refer to Highway 40 as Lincoln Highway This is interesting to me because here in Iowa, the Lincoln Highway is "old Highway 30". In the 60s they rerouted Hwy30 about a mile south of the existing Lincoln Way so they could make it 4 lane and avoid towns.

In case it wasn't obvious from my post above, the Lincoln Highway referred to in both my post and the parent post is the same highway [1].

The part I thought was interesting is I assumed it would have the same number designation across the entire nation, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Highway

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#159

Post by eminence32 »

arikrak wrote: post #157
Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Since he couldn't process numbers in any useful manner (when communicating, to remember his hotel room, to draw it, etc.) the simplest explanation is that it didn't reach the "central brain processing" area. While this might not be the same thing as "consciousness", it's unlikely that this visual recognition made it very far in the brain. (Maybe the brain damage blocked it from going anywhere at all.)

> Since he couldn't process numbers in any useful manner

I don't think this is true, because the article says:

> Yet he could still do mental arithmetic and perform other mathematical operations. > He eventually mastered an entirely new digit system (where ⌊ stood for 2, ⌈ for 8, etc.); determined to keep working, he had his computer rigged to present the new numerals onscreen.

That suggests to me that he could indeed process numbers, but just couldn't see them

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#160

Post by [deleted] »

vinceguidry wrote: post #152
corin_ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of hu…

This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment . All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or…

[deleted]
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