Connectionists: how the brain works?

[james bower]

I would caution again that the brain  might know much more about the structure of the world at birth than we know.

That makes the traditional feedforward approach to object recognition (and learning) suspect.

IMHO

Jim bower


On Mar 14, 2014, at 1:17 PM, Juyang Weng <weng at cse.msu.edu> wrote:

> > It's clear that language and general intelligence doesn't require it.
> 
> This is clearly wrong if you know and understand our DN.  I believe that any brain theory will miss the boat if it cannot explain the First Principle.  The brain is not just an information processor, it is first a developer for the information processor.  If one does not understand how the information processor develops, he definitely misses the boat in explaining how the brain processes information. 
> 
> That is why although "theories of the brain will come in at multiple levels of abstraction", they may miss the boat.
> The brain uses a single architecture to do all brain functions we are aware of!  It uses the same architecture to do vision, audition, motor, reasoning, decision making, motivation (including pain avoidance and pleasure seeking, novelty seeking, higher emotion, etc.).
> 
> -John 
> 
> On 3/13/14 9:40 PM, Brian J Mingus wrote:
>> Hi John,
>> 
>> Theories of the brain will come in at multiple levels of abstraction. A reasonable first pass is to take object recognition as a given. It's clear that language and general intelligence doesn't require it. Hellen Keller is a great example - deaf and blind, and with patience, extremely intelligent. Visual and auditory object recognition simply aren't required! 
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Juyang Weng <weng at cse.msu.edu> wrote:
>> Danko,
>> 
>> Good attempt.
>> 
>> Any theory about brain/mind must address the First Principle:  How it learns visual invariance directly from natural cluttered environments.
>> Your article does not seem to address the First Principle, does it?
>> 
>> -John
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/7/14 11:22 AM, Danko Nikolic wrote:
>> I believe that the readers of Connectionists list my be interested in the manuscript available on arXiv (1402.5332) proposing the principles by which adaptive systems create intelligent behavior. It is a theoretical paper that has been recently submitted to a journal, and the editors agreed to post it on arXiv.
>> 
>> A nice context for this manuscript is, I think, the recent discussion on Connectionists list on "how the brain works?", -- including the comparison to how the radio works, arguments that neuroscience has not reached the maturity of 19th century physics, that the development should be an essential component, etc.
>> 
>> I assess that anyone who enjoyed following that discussion, like I did, would be interested also in what the proposed theory has to say.
>> 
>> The theory addresses those problems by placing the question of brain workings one level more abstract than it is usually discussed: It proposes a general set of properties that adaptive systems need to have to exhibit intelligent behavior (nevertheless, concrete examples are given from biology and technology). Finally, the theory proposes what is, in principle, missing in the current approaches in order to account for the higher, biological-like levels of adaptive behavior.
>> 
>> For those who are interested, I recommend using the link on my website:
>> 
>> http://www.danko-nikolic.com/practopoiesis/
>> 
>> because there I provided, in addition, a simplified introduction into some of the main conclusions derived from the theory.
>> 
>> I would very much like to know what people think. Comments will be appreciated.
>> 
>> With warm greetings from Germany,
>> 
>> Danko Nikolic
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> --
>> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
>> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
>> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
>> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
>> Michigan State University
>> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
>> Tel: 517-353-4388
>> Fax: 517-432-1061
>> Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
>> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
>> ----------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> --
> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
> Tel: 517-353-4388
> Fax: 517-432-1061
> Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
> ----------------------------------------------
> 

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