[Paleopsych] From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism--Joel

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

Joel--What you say below sounds right to me.  If I understand it  rightly,  
time is a recursion of boundary-making, an iteration of a  differentiating and 
aggregating process, a multiplier of the voids spaced  between the nodes of 
isness, and a grower of the clusters between the voids--as  in your cellular 
automata model.  It makes sense.
 
And it fits with the notion that time is the most critical aspect of  
perception, an idea that Jeff Hawkins proposes in On Intelligence, one of  the few 
new-idea-generating books I've read in a long time.  Perception  in Hawkin's 
view is a flow, a music.  As in music, we spot thje  sensory world's ur-patterns, 
its repetitive themes and their  variations. 
 
In higher cortical regions, we create invariant representations of a stream  
of sensations, we sift the themes from of a parade of sense-impacts, we  
capture the pattern of a surge of  impressions that follow each other like  the 
notes in a melody. Hawkins thinks of these invariant representations  as "Name 
that Tune"-style song-spotting.  We send the prediction that  the name of the 
tune--the invariant representation-- implies back down to  the sensory level of 
the cortex.  If the song title predicts the  incoming stream properly, 
everything is fine.  If the incoming signal-surge  no longer follows the melody 
predicted by the song title, more cortical regions  are forced to rush in and try 
other song titles, other invariant  representations, other names for the 
possible melody.
 
The cosmos is process.  Time is as critical to understanding as are  
"things".  
 
Perception has to mirror the cosmos to work.  So perception is a  
time-process, a temporal-flow-identifier-and-predictor, a future-projector that  works by 
taking what's past and flipping it forward, sometimes with a new  twist.  
Music is practice for future-projection, for identifying patterns  in the flow.  
New musical styles and new songs are practice for the  novelties that may lay 
around the bend.  Howard
 
In a message dated 3/28/2005 11:07:39 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes:

I  actually think more in terms of an Ur-Process that leads to Ur-Patterns.
In  my view, our cognitive apparatus is comprised of zillions of  those
Ur-Processes, interlocked in certain ways.   The very  elemental  Ur-Process
involves local recursive discrimination of  differences.   Repeat:   LOCAL  
RECURSIVE
DISCRIMINATION OF DIFFERENCES is a key.    Interlocution of many
Ur-Processes yields global Ur-Patterns that are  pervasive in Nature, at all 
scales.
(Biology and genetics are subsumed  under these processes and involve the 
same
patterns.)

Such  Ur-Patterns come to our awareness as "snapshots" during the incessant
flow  of the Ur-Processes.





----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate  Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human  Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New  Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology  Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

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