Neuroscience

The mirage of the computational mind

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Natural/artificial neurons in tandem Neuroscientists are currently very busy refining neural/mental correlations. They are helped in this by analogies with artificial neural networks, especially SSL Self-Supervised Learning. It is very easy today to record the activity of hundreds of thousands of natural neurons in response to images or spoken stories. Activation sequences are obtained. If … Read more

Another decapitated consciousness!

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Behaviorist crisis “The new theory of the unconscious, it is it who commands!” says Anne Debroise in Science & Vie, after reading Andrew Budson, a neurologist in Boston, but without having understood him well. I no longer know whether to rejoice or be sorry for this litany of articles aimed at de-pedestalizing our unfortunate consciousness. … Read more

Neurocognitive Mechanisms by Gualtiero Piccinini, critical review

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Abstract: Neurocognitive Mechanisms (2020), by Gualtiero Piccinini, is a philosophical and neuroscientific work, seeking to ground cognition and its phenomena in a comprehensive neurocomputational theory. But the philosophical treatment is wrong. The introduction of “aspects” of a single level of reality also introduces something that looks independently of that single level. We fall back on … Read more

Compare theories of consciousness?

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Striking spirit What is immediately striking about the theories of consciousness is that they don’t look alike at all. Of course we group them into major fields, scientific, religious, philosophical, but each group is heterogeneous. Among scientists, disciplines as diverse as neuroscience, complexity, and quantum physics compete for copyrights on consciousness. Every mystic wants to … Read more

How does the brain represent the world?

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A brain that gets brushed! A baby looks at a brush. The object has no meaning for her. She sketches one when her mother grabs it to straighten her hair. Years later, the brush is part of a rich mental universe of utensils with well-defined functions. It proposes itself to the consciousness of the baby … Read more

Two speeds for thought?

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Pretentious turtle and dumb rabbit In psychology, theories with double thought processes generally oppose unconscious automatic mode and conscious controlled mode. They were popularized in particular by Daniel Kahneman in ‘System 1 / System 2, The Two Speeds of Thought‘ (2012). If the book has been so successful, it is because it is easy to … Read more

Do words create the idea?

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It’s clear! Bertrand Perier, lawyer: “It is quite clear to me that words create the idea and not the other way around.” Amazing divinization of communication, words that would be there before their constituent abstractions. It is the transposition to the language of creationism; a God formed of all possible words is at the origin … Read more

Neuroscience and justice

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The philosopher’s outstretched hand I have not found a better synthesis on this subject than a remarkable issue (60) of Cités published in 2014 (french): “What do cognitive neuroscience think and want?”. The theme allows the confrontation between philosophers and neuroscientists about the mind/body problem. Yves Charles Zarka, for philosophers, begins by giving a hand: … Read more

Can I freely put the ball in the hole?

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Should I have or could I have? A golfer, his feet well camped on the green, tries to put his ball in the hole. He completely misses this putt, usually easy for a player of his level. Which brings us to the question of his free will. If he has one, was it on vacation … Read more

Stratium (theory of mind)

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Abstract: Stratium is a theory of mind as a multi-tiered system adding layers of meaning. There is no homunculus to read the result, making it necessary to say that these levels themselves read their constitution and “thicken”, degree by degree, the phenomenon called “consciousness”. To this teleological and functional theory is added an ontological theory, showing how the networks are anatomically concentrated at the base of the neural hierarchy, and very dispersed at the upper levels. ‘Stratium’ is a contraction of ‘strata’ and ‘atrium’.

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