>Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 19:52:52 EST
>Reply-To: JOBRIEN(a)UCS.INDIANA.EDU
>Sender: General Anthropology Bulletin Board <ANTHRO-L(a)UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>From: "John O'Brien" <JOBRIEN(a)UCS.INDIANA.EDU>
>Subject: Consciousness conference - if interested in cog. anthr., etc.
>To: Multiple recipients of list ANTHRO-L <ANTHRO-L(a)UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>
>From: PO1::"aki%EGO.PSYCH.MCGILL.CA(a)UICVM.UIC.EDU" "Zografos 'Aki' Caramanos"
> 6-MAY-1994 17:49:28.13
>To: Multiple recipients of list BRAIN-L <BRAIN-L(a)MCGILL1.BITNET>
>CC:
>Subj: Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness (fwd)
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 15:32:48 +1000
>From: Kevin Korb <korb(a)bruce.cs.monash.edu.au>
>To: Multiple recipients of list PSYCHE-D <PSYCHE-D%NKI.BITNET(a)uga.cc.uga.edu>
>Subject: Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness
>
>>From: spotter(a)druggist.gg.caltech.edu (Steve Potter)
>
>Last week (April 12-17, 1994) I attended the following conference in
>Tucson, AZ:
>
>TOWARD A SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR CONSCIOUSNESS
>
>Here I will present a short review of this exciting meeting, along with
>some opinions on some of the ideas presented.
>
>The overall mood at the conference, about 300 attending, was unusually
>enthusiastic, due to the fact that this was really the first conference of
>its type, bringing together researchers from many fields to talk about what
>has been for the major part of this century a taboo subject in scientific
>circles. Recent advances in a number of neuroscience methods have made
>possible the objective, independently verifiable observation of a number of
>phenomena associated with conscious thought. Furthermore, new modeling
>paradigms associated with distributed processing in neural networks, chaos,
>and emergent phenomena have resulted in simulations displaying many of the
>qualities of conscious entities. These forces, and the fact that
>consciousness is something we all (hopefully!) have and care about, brought
>us together and will most likely result in the expansion of this and
>related conferences in the years to come.
>
>Attending were researchers from very diverse fields, including biological
>neuroscientists, computational neuroscientists, philosophers,
>anesthesiologists, physicists, mathematicians, psychologists,
>neurosurgeons, 'chaoticians' (a la Malcolm, in Jurassic Park), cognitive
>scientists, and a fairly large contingent of 'researchers' of the
>paranormal (ESP, shamanistic rituals, meditation). I was a little
>disappointed that the organizers did not weed out a few of the more flaky
>posters and talks, but the diversity was fun. The majority of the posters
>and all but a couple of the talks were in the non-flaky category, i.e.,
>relating to testable hypotheses and the scientific method currently
>accepted in the academic world.
>
>There were no parallel sessions, and the auditorium (at the U. of A.
>Medical Center) was packed, making coffee breaks in the small lobby fairly
>claustrophobic. A table was set up for anyone to display a book or paper
>they were pushing, for people to look at. I learned about a number of
>exciting books that I must go out and get ASAP this way, and think this
>ought to be done at more conferences.
>
>Abstracts for all of the talks and posters were provided along with the
>program, in a nice binder. It was announced that the complete papers will
>be published in a book, but I will not hold my breath, as the presenters
>are not even required to submit them for a month or so. A fairly complete
>list of those attending was also provided by the end of the conference.
>There were a number of field trips arranged that were too pricey for my
>taste. I brought my bike and arranged my own field trips for free.
>
>For official info about the conference or proceedings, dont ask me, ask the
>organizers:
>
>Alfred Kaszniak kaszniak(a)ccit.arizona.edu
>Stuart Hameroff srh(a)ccit.arizona.edu
>Jim Laukes jlaukes(a)ccit.arizona.edu
>
>Okay, here are some observations and opinions about the talks (and
>posters).
>A lot of folks gave whole talks on or at least paid lip service to the
>notion of quantum mechanics having something fundamental to do with
>consciousness. David Chalmers, in his excellent wrap-up put my opinion of
>this issue cleverly: "Consciousness is mysterious. Quantum mechanics is
>mysterious. By the 'Law of Minimization of Mystery', if you find two
>mysteries, maybe they are the same." I feel like QM may be a useful
>metaphor for some aspects of consciousness, but we know _way_ too little
>about either to apply QM literally as a basis for consciousness. Let's be
>careful not to mix up our metaphors and theories.
>
>Relating to this issue was something I had not heard about before
>(surprising, considering I was a brain biochemist as a grad student) and
>was quite interesting, was the possibility that microtubules could be
>computational or information-transmitting elements. Microtubules (MTs) are
>the major cytoskeletal elements of neurons, and basically all cells.
>Several talks (somewhat redundantly) described how tubulin, the monomer
>protein of which MTs are made, can switch between its two conformational
>states based on the conformational state of neighboring monomers. Anyone
>who knows jack about cellular autonoma will recognize certain similarities
>here, and they actually did simulations to show waves of conformational
>change propagating along the MTs. (Or along organized clusters of water
>molecules next to or inside the MTs.) As far as I could tell, this was all
>rampant speculation, yet to be borne out by experimental studies on real
>MTs, but had a number of testable predictions. Hameroff mentioned that the
>lowly single-celled paramecium has quite a complex repertoire of behavior
>(not quite on the level with human consciousness, I would argue!) and yet
>no nervous system. He proposes that its complex web of MTs may be its
>'nervous system'.
>
>Being fairly well-read in the neural nets literature, I am struck by how
>much has been accomplished with models using fairly simplistic 'neurons',
>and certainly nothing as sophisticated as _sub_cellular nervous systems
>within them. This leads me to believe that, whether MT processors exist or
>not, we dont need to invoke such theories to explain consciousness. I must
>not slight the boatloads of research that has shown that rearrangement of
>MTs and other cytoskeletal elements is important in learning and memory,
>but changing the cell's shape is a different issue than what these folks
>were proposing.
>
>Just about every single speaker had a quote from or mentioned the work of
>William James, who seems to have figured all this out around the turn of
>the century. I am _not_ well read in psychology, but am inspired to track
>down his writings, considering how progressive many of his ideas on
>consciousness were. For instance, he was well aware of the associational
>nature of all concepts, i.e., nothing has any meaning except in relation to
>other things. I enjoy taking this concept all the way down to the neural
>level, where the associations are between activated ensembles and such.
>
>I was very pleased to learn of the substantial work of Eric Harth on the
>importance of feedback connections in the brain in perception. These
>massive tracts, sometimes bigger than the feed-forward ones, are far too
>often ignored by neuroscientists, leading them to believe that the brain is
>stimulus-driven. Well, of course it is, but I feel (and Harth backed my
>feelings) that most of what we see, feel, hear, etc. emanates from our
>brain, the environment merely getting the thoughts started.
>
>One of my heroes, Walter Freeman, described how a stimulus makes the brain
>(the smell-centers, specifically) go from a chaotic state to a state of
>aperiodic oscillation, a basin of attraction probably corresponding to the
>conscious feeling of recognizing the odor. I bet the feedback connections
>play a major role in sending the system into its basins. (Perhaps he has
>knows this already, I am not sure.)
>
>I was disappointed that several other prominent Thinkers on Thinking did
>not attend the conference--were they invited? Notably, Douglas Hofstadter,
>Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Ray Jackendoff, Stephen LaBerge, the
>Churchlands, Robert Ornstein, Francis Crick, Geoffrey Edelman, Martha
>Farah, and Marvin Minsky, come to my mind. Perhaps next year!
>
>The conference was mostly synthesis, proposals and speculations, so no
>great answers about how consciousness happens yet. The best real data
>presented, IMHO, was from Bruce McNaughton, who records from up to 150
>neurons at a time in the hippocampus of a freely behaving rat for weeks at
>a time. Beside the fact that this is an extremely impressive technical
>feat (I know because I am trying to do very similar things with cultured
>neurons, that dont run around all night), it was a real window into the
>thought processes (consciousness?) of a rat. He recorded the neurons'
>activity while the rat was foraging around a box, and during naps before
>and after the foraging. He found 'place cells' that fire only when the rat
>is in a specific part of the box. He was able to use the place cell 'map'
>to accurately predict the rat's trajectory, based on the neural signals.
>He also showed the effect of subsequent learning on previously established
>maps. But even cooler was the observation that neurons that had correlated
>firing during the foraging and not before (implying that they are learning
>preferences to nearby places), also were highly correlated during the
>post-forage nap. Thus, the rat may have been dreaming of snippets of its
>box experience, reinforcing or consolidating the important associations.
>Neat stuff.
>
>I look toward functional MRI to come up with similar experiments on humans
>in the near future. Keep your eye on this amazing new technology: I
>predict that it will oust PET studies in a year or two, due to its far
>greater spatial and temporal resolution, and the fact that it does not
>require the poor subject to dose up on radioactivity.
>
>
>An excellent conference overall, with many speakers referring to other's
>talks in their talks.
>Subscribe to Psyche-D if you are into this type of thing and want to chat
>with like minded individuals who obviously have way more free time than I
>do.
>
>
>
>Steve Potter, Ph.D.
>Division of Biology 156-29
>California Institute of Technology
>Pasadena, CA 91125
>spotter(a)druggist.gg.caltech.edu
>
>
>Date: Sun, 24 Apr 1994 12:01:52 +1000
>Reply-To: "PSYCHE: an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness" <PSYCHE-L%NKI.BITNET(a)UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
>Sender: "PSYCHE: an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness" <PSYCHE-L%NKI.BITNET(a)UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
>From: Kevin Korb <korb(a)bruce.cs.monash.edu.au>
>Subject: Psyche in print
>X-To: PSYCHE-L%NKI.BITNET(a)cunyvm.cuny.edu
>To: Multiple recipients of list PSYCHE-L <PSYCHE-L%NKI.BITNET(a)UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
>
> 19 April 1994
>
>Hi,
>
>We at Psyche have printed the first issue in a professional quality
>manner and are offering the print version of Psyche for subscription
>to individuals and institutions. For distribution to individuals we
>will continue to offer Psyche free of charge electronically, as well
>as making it accessible at internet archives. We believe it is
>nonetheless useful to make Psyche available in a quality printed
>version since: many libraries do not yet adequately support the
>distribution and archival of electronic journals; many individuals may
>wish to keep a printed version on their shelves. Thus, by making
>Psyche available in both formats we expect to increase the visibility
>and acceptance of consciousness research.
>
>In order to be successful in this endeavor we require some minimum
>number of institutional and individual subscriptions. If you can
>subscribe or encourage your library to subscribe please do so. If a
>sample issue will aid you in this, please send me an email note to
>that effect, with your snail mail address, and I'll send you the
>first issue. (Serious inquiries only, please: the first print run is
>limited and has cost a good bit of money with no guarantee that the
>expenses will be recovered.)
>
>Subscription info:
>
>Individual rate: $45 (US; or $55 Australian)
>Institutional rate: $90 (US; or $110 Australian)
>
>Send a check to:
>
>PSYCHE
>Dept. of Computer Science
>Monash University
>Clayton, Victoria 3169
>AUSTRALIA
>
>or send VISA or Mastercard account number, expiration date with
>signature to the same address.
>
>
>Regards, Kevin Korb
>
>
Az alabbi ket dolgozat elerheto a koglist-en:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Cim: A tanulas bonyolultsaga a ``mindennapi'' neuronhalokban
Olah Beata & Szepesvari Csaba
Absztrakt:
Dolgozatunkban a neuronhalozatok toltesenek komplexitas-elmeleti
kerdeseivel foglalkozunk. A neuronhalozatok, pontosabban a
mesterseges neuronhalozatok idegrendszerunk absztrakt,
erosen leegyszerusitett modelljei.
A dolgozat egy resze Judd ``Neural network design and
the complexity of learning'' c. konyve
alapjan keszult (1990, A Bradford Book, MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachuttes). Ebben a konyvben Judd bebizonyitott egy tetelt,
mely a neuronhalozatok toltesenek NP-teljesseget mondja ki.
Dolgozatunkban egy szigurobb, de jol kovetheto matematikai
keretbe helyezzuk Judd eredmenyet, kiemelve, hogy Judd
tetele a legrosszabb esetu komplexitasra vonatkozik.
Kideritjuk, hogy Judd tetele milyen halozat- es feladat-csaladokra
vonatkozik. Kovetkezmenykent bebizonyitjuk pl., hogy a
teljesitmeny elvu toltesi feladat is NP-teljes problema.
Kiderul azonban az is, hogy Judd tetele a ``mindennapi
neuronhalozatokra'' nem alkalmazhato, azaz epp
azon neuronhalozatok toltesenek nehezsegerol nem mondd
semmit, melyeket leggyakrabban hasznalnak.
Elsokent bebizonyitjuk, hogy a Judd-fele un. kiterjesztett
feladatokra ezen halok toltese is nehez, NP-teljes.
Viszont kiderul, hogy a problema nehezsege itt mar
a feladatok komplexitasaban rejlik. A ``hagyomanyos'', binaris
feladatok koreben a mindennapi halok toltese megoldhato!
Vegul, meg utoljara visszaterve Judd gondolatmenetehez, megvizsgaljuk
a neuronhalozatok altalanosito kepessegenek problemajat.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cim: Fogalom formalas altalanositassal adaptiv autonom rendszerben
Kalmar Zsolt & Szepesvari Csaba & Lorincz Andras
Absztrakt:
Az autonom rendszerek epitesenek celja kornyezetevel allando
interakcioban allo tanulo rendszerek megvalositasa.
A rendszer tanulasa arra iranyul, hogy oroklott szuksegleteit
(celjait) a leheto legnagyobb foku kielegitettsegi szinten tartsa.
Egy autonom rendszer szamara rendkivul fontos, hogy alkalmas
fogalmakat alkosson a kornyezeterol. Megfelelo fogalmak segitsegevel
meg nem latott helyzetekben is kepes lehet celjai elerese erdekeben
cselekedni. Hogy kell egy ``ures lappal'' indulo rendszernek ilyen
fogalmakat alkotnia? Hogyan lehet a megalkotott fogalom-bazist
karbantartani? Mi az egyes fogalmak alkalmazhatosagi kore? Hogyan vann
a fogalmak abrazolva?
A hagyomanyos mesterseges intelligencia paradigman belul mar a fenti
kerdesek jo resze is szokatlan. Az itt ismertetett megkozelites
meglehetosen ujkeleteu. Nezetunk szerint a fogalom alkotast
``gazdasagossagi'' megfontolasok alapjan kell megkozeliteni.
A dolgozatban a fogalom formalas elmeleti alapjait dolgozzuk ki a DC
modellre (Cs.Szepesvari & A.Lorincz: Behavior of an adaptive
self-organizing autonomous agent working with cues and competing
concepts. Adaptive Behavior, 2(2):131--160, 1994). Szamitogepes
szimulaciok segitsegevel bemutatjuk, hogy a kiterjesztett DC modell
kepes fogalmak alkotasara es hasznalatukra. A kialakult fogalmak, a
varakozasoknak megfeleloen, valoban nagyon hasznosnak bizonyultak. A
rendszer ``teljesitmenyet'' tobb mint ketszeresere noveltek, s
emellett az algoritmus memoriaigenye is csokkent. Az algoritmus es
kornyezenek szimulacios szoftvere objektum-orientalt fejlesztoi
eszkozokkel C++-ban keszult.
A dolgozat az ICANN'94 (Int.Conf.on Artificial Neural Networks)
konferencian megjeleno anyag kibovitett valtozata.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
A dolgozatokat a
get preprints kalmar_szepesvari_lorincz.ps
illetve
get preprints olah_szepesvari.ps
utasitasokkal lehet lekerni a listserv(a)cogpsyphy.hu cimrol.
FTP-vel is elerhetok a fenti neveken az ftp.cogpshyphy.hu cimrol
a koglist/preprints konyvtarbol.
A file-ok POSTSCRIPT formatumuak!!!
Mindenfele az anyagokkal kapcsolatos megjegyzest szivesen fogadok
Szepesvari Csaba
Szeged 6720, Aradi vrt. tere 1.
Bolyai Matematikai Intezet, JATE
szepes(a)csilla.inf.jate.u-szeged.hu
Julius Moravcsik
Stanfordi Egyetem (USA)
1994. majus 6-an, penteken, delelott 11 orakor
az MTA Nyelvtudomanyi Intezet Konyvtaraban
(Budapest I, Szinhaz utca 1 - a Varszinhaz epuleteben)
Generics and Logical Form
cimmel eloadast tart.
Az eloadasra minden erdeklodot szeretettel varnak a szervezok.
Forwarded message:
From: IZABELL/PLEH
To: pleh, konya
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 17:20:49 GMT+100
Subject: Martin Prinzhorn
Martin Prinzhorn lecturer at Vienna University will be the guest of
our cognitive program at Department of General Psychology ELTE,
Izabella utca 46.
Martin is a generative linguist with a strong footing in cognitive
science.
He will talk on theory of mind, folk psychology and cognitive theory.
His scehedule is:
Monday, May, 9th, 6 P.M. Room 216 General overview of his
approach. (Regular cognitive seminar time.)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thrusday, 4 P.M. Room 310.
Detailed talks
Friday: discussion at agreed upon time.
Martin will stay at Izabella utca, and will be available on phone:
1-423-130, and email: martin(a)izabell.elte.hu.
All are most wellcome,
Csaba Pleh
Please post !!!!
Julius Moravcsik
Stanfordi Egyetem (USA):
1994. ma1jus 5-en, csutortokon, kozvetlenul az eloadasat kovetoen,
(elorelathatolag kb. d.u. 5:15-tol)
az ELTE BTK Gorog Tsz szeminariumaban kotetlen beszelgetesen szamol be
Platon matematikafilozofiajarol
(A matematikai objektumok statusa Platon filozofiajaban)