Belief Doesn't Matter - Claude Benard

"Evolution doesn't care what you believe." Micah Holden

Does any natural process or material event record or memorialize my belief? Can my behavior - the outward and visible signs of my response policy towards my environment - come from some other place than my ensemble of beliefs. Or, can I simply tie my behavior to intelligent attempts to improve my homeostasis over time by cognitive machinery of the mind housed in my body which includes my brain. In short, what does belief really mean and how can opinions count without action? Can't we suppose that action happens and belief is a post hoc rationalization that stuffs the record of my just completed action into a shoebox labeled belief? My claim here is that my autobiography - the story I tell myself about my self (my objective and subjective self) bootstraps emergent cognitive sets - I end up feeling a different way and I then attribute my actions to something I delude myself into labeling a collection of beliefs. Beliefs no more drive my actions than the passengers on a bus drive the bus. The bus driver is my response policy of my interior milieu toward my cosmic environment. I (a subjective self) am modulated by my corpus (objective self or meat suit) which is modulated by a heterophenominological confluence of processes underpinning consciousness. This consciousness first emerged to make better and better guesses about what happens next.

Claude Bernard, a French physician of the 19th century used the term 'interior mileau' or interior environment to describe a necessary condition of all life and all living things. "The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life". This is still the underlying principle of homeostasis today. Homeostasis is the active process of maintaining bodily processes necessary for continued existence.

Does my belief in physical activity and exercise preceed my efforts at the gym -or- do these behaviors come from my will to health. Is my will tied to my belief or does my will spring from belief? What is a neural correlate of belief? Do beliefs exist?

I am asking specifically if brain states can be distinguished by some means or other and then correlated to outward manifestations of action, speech and the continuity of these processes over time. This is actually possible with MRI scans of people and monkeys fooling around while thinking thoughts. Across species of primates many, many activities produce many modes of cognition that are very similar. Moving a chess piece on a chess board (something only one type of primate can accomplish with mastery) looks very much the same in most primates who move chess pieces. Chess Masters and Chess Grandmasters have brain states that are different but most people with only a rudimentary conception of the game of chess look remarkably similar under an MRI. But do these people have 'beliefs' about chess that are visible as brain states? Not really. Chess is not ruled by beliefs - chess is described by strict rules that remain impervious to beliefs. I cannot say that I believe that a game ends when all my pawns are captured. This statement has no real meaning. I just don't understand the rules of chess. Chess wants me to invent strategies and tactics for better and better chess matches over time. Chess want to fill the design space of chess with novel content. But chess has no belief systems or distinct beliefs.

If I watch the big cats at the zoo I will avoid any temptation to get into the enclosure with them. Not because of my belief that lions and tigers are predators but because --- lions and tigers ARE predators and I can see this by the predatory looks on their faces and in their predator skeletal-muscle means. The testimony of my senses leads me to avoid direct contact with big, scary lions. The lion does not care what I believe. The lion can only respond to my behavior. I will taste the same with any belief I contain at supper time.

It is a fact that I maintain homeostasis - I maintain a healthy internal milieu - by behavior and not belief. The universe does not really care what I believe.

See the post on a Response Policy. I am programmed to respond with the interposition of cognition. Homeostasis does not care what I believe. The belief in belief - belief^2 - rests upon biases and heuristics. These support a response policy against the cosmic environment.

Thermoregulation

I was excited to hear Claude Manard (SP?) who wrote the introduction to Thermoregulation cited in Self Comes to Mind. The hypothesis from the cosmic environment reveals a layered response policy for predicting homeostatic fitness in the next time slice.

A Response Policy

From "Self Comes to Mind"
For each open thermodynamic system intent on optimizing homeostatic processes there exists a response policy. The response follows an expectation elided from an experience with the cosmic environment [cit. Claude Benard]. The response policy depends upon means for homeostatic fitness or efficient and effective interactions with other open systems.

Aristotle Who?

Starting at the level of single cell animals (plants do not have neurons), the response policy dictates the moves in design space. That is, algorithmic unfolding of telos. Telos is greek for intended 'ends' or outcomes or results. This is one of the four causes of Aristotle for each mental 'thing in itself'. Teleology is the study of intended results.

The response policy of the lower layers (cells) supports the upper layers (multiple cells of multiple types with neurons) with an ensemble of dispositions from the various parts, each possessing a response policy acting alone or in concert. At the level of large mammals, brain function emerges from and is linked to the response policy in many layers beneath the objective self of the actor. Imagine a cheetah on the savannah. The cheetah definitely has an objective self - a lump of biomass with intentions to take down zebras for dinner.

The subjective cheetah self seems to exist to fully support 'cheetah-ness'. In which case the cheetah has a response policy - run like the wind and catch zebras for supper. This response maintains homeostatis by making good predictions about what happens next.

If a burst of speed is called for a burst of speed results. If a quick cut to match an evasive manuever is called for that may be the response. Whatever the case, the response policy at many layers works in concert to produce a cheetah-like response.




Motivated Experimentation - why I move through design space.

The Presentation of Time from Sean

This is near perfect treatment of the time problem. This is just the slideshow

The bottom line is that far from thermodynamic equilibrium complexity creates life which creates imagination as a dissapative structure far from thermodynamic equilibrium.

Human Lineage in Gene Expression Blog

Comment to this article in Discover.

I tend to think of these processes as moves in design space across a fitness landscape. If my offspring from my Neanderthal mate has only the immunity improvement gene expressed then the totality of effects in the phenotype (good and not so good) from that collection of genes plus epigenetic influence either moves me from a fit phenotype (and offspring) on the fitness landscape to a more or less equal or slightly improved spot on the fitness landscape. But this is a moving target as my sister is sleeping with another Neanderthal and my nieces and nephews may turn out better or worse on the fitness landscape. These initial moves in design space have to propagate into significant populations. Which means they cannot die in floods or wild fires or be eaten by wild beasts. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Reverse engineering moves in design space across fitness landscapes gives me 'what fitness landscapes want' or the selfish fitness landscape.

Inverted Ideation

Inverted ideation is my ability to see myself as another sees me. I monitor my behavior and I monitor the observed behaviors of the other - I have emotional intelligence and I study body language. I listen for mood in the timbre and tone of the others voice. I participate by active listening. If I am sufficiently aware of my dual self - my subjective self with its knowing self along with the subjective self and the knowing self of the other - I can assume the role of both minds. I can invert my view and intent by becoming the other's self. I use the theory of minds to become another's mind.

My abilitiy to attach an identity to my self is ideation. There are two types of self to consider and the first is the physical self also known as a material self. That kind of self is 'self as object' or the meatpuppet self. One to two hundred pounds of Kirk. The second kind of self is 'self as knower' or the subjective self.

Other people with minds like mine think thoughts like I do. I can take on the ideation of these others as they interact with me as I can look at myself in a mirror. I can become the self in the mirror. I can become both the objective self or the subjective self on that side of the mirror and on this side of the mirror. When I switch back and forth I am seeing my self as my other self sees me.

I can do this with other people as well. I can see myself in their eyes. Actually I can see myself in their faces. I can see searching eyes  and nervous anxiety in body language and I can invert ideation and become that other person looking back at me.

Rough Beast Time - minimum energy on maximum homeostasis

The Hollywood universe contains several versions of the Singularity, all of which are equally valid. That is, HAL, Skynet, The Matrix and Blade Runner can and will all happen with equal likelihood in possible worlds. The spectre of our future is also likely in our current present and near past. The Rough Beast treats time as a control variable for our social and cultural selves - all of our 7 billions of selves. At each specious present, a near future possibility opens before us to choose.

For the most part, future possibilities become this present moment in a usual and mundane manner. If I am sitting in a chair there is a great likelihood that I will remain sitting in my chair during the upcoming specious present and the specious moment just past. The ordering of time in the 'consistent and uniform' direction of increasing entropy logically follows from the dictates of biology. Organic life ages, dies and decays. Human brains age, die and decay. No so human minds.

An emulated mind whether in meat or silicon advances and retreats across time. That is slipping in a nutshell. All humans do NOT share the same past and many humans do not share a common fate or aggregated future state of uniform sameness. Our time streams cross in our minds; we remember a movie differently, we disagree on the agenda of President Reagan, we scorn the other parties reading of history, we refuse to admit defeat and we cling to the delusion that we are fair and open-minded. We are but discreet sheep, we wait to see how the drove is going and we follow the drove. But many droves co-exist and all droves have a bone of contention with all the other droves.

Each Dream Now is different. Everyone anticipates a unique future and recalls a unique past. Does the Rough Beast have a unified self with a common view. The Rough Beast is a layered affair and proposes many options at once.

I had a strong sense as I drove along under the 183 flyover that I was in a movie. My present was one of a sucession of predictable futures and easily viewable pasts. I - my knowing self - occupied all of the time slots of past moments, the specious moment and the future moments. A pointer or indicator shown on the particular 3-second window that would afford minimal energy expended on maximum homeostasis.

The Poverty of Experience: Awesome Joe Chang

One of my best friends, Joe Chang, speaks more clearly and factually than any other person I know except Tom Gunter. Tom is my current mentor for that reason. Like Tom, Joe cannot tell a lie. Joe is a consummate explainer of the unexplainable. I am too but for a different reason. I take people way past the last concept they could understand and then - while they are completely lost. Then I ask them a question. I learned this from Joe who learned it from IBM. Hal taught me how to speak.

But enough about me, let's get back to Joe and the point of this post. Joe and I went to his home town of Taipei and he showed me around. We went to the best street for street vendors and noodle stalls. The real taste of this wonderful place.
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Then we went on the electronics market where everything is "off the truck" prices. Then we dropped in on the  market under the expressway. Eight or Ten city blocks filled with half of Taipei's population; picking up vegtables, looking for an onyx gift, finding a purse for work and just hanging out at the mall.

Then we got down to the whole point of the trip. We were looking for an 802.11 radio that we could integrate into a router chip. We went to two different labs that were developing a drop-in module. Except that they didn't We visited the design teams trained to make ASICs good, cheap and fast. They perfected the cheapest, just good enough embedded microprocessors imaginable. And they were stumped.

My point and I do have one is that vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and kinesteshia can all be called on when I was in the presence of Joe in business and pleasure. We will be able to do that over the internet. I just did it with some words on a page. This is only upholstered in an anecdote about my best friend.

Stand By Our Rational Mind of our President,
kirk holden

Next Joe and I went to Qing Dao in China, but that is a longer story.