For Human (and perhaps others):

With your indulgence, I would like to provide a more detailed explanation as related to your concerns about the common brain-mind metaphors noted in the previous post, and particularly your reference to the article “The Empty Brain,” with the subtitle: “The brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short, your brain is not a computer.”

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

It is essential in understanding these issues to first have some background information regarding cognitive science. Most importantly, we can point to the distinction within cognitive science between “cognitive neuroscience” and “cognitive psychology.” These are, of course, overlapping academic disciplines within cognitive science, with a subtle difference in emphasis, as exemplified by the academic background of the researcher. In general, “cognitive neuroscience” focuses on the physical brain, and how brain function affects cognition, including subjective mental states and functions. “Cognitive psychology,” on the other hand, starts with mental function, or the psychological aspects of cognition, and seeks correlations in the brain. So, what you have is a dual, mind-brain, dichotomy. Note, however, that mental functioning, i.e. how the mind works, is manifestly different from the functioning of physical systems, like the brain. As an example, we do not “think” or “reason” in the same way as the brain processes information. As such, brain processes do not “explain” mental processes as a one-to-one relationship. The fact that there is a clear correlation between the two is profoundly mysterious given how different the mind works from physical systems, like the brain. Notwithstanding, in cognitive neuroscience in particular, and also in cognitive psychology, there is tendency to want to identify one with the other; i.e. the mind with the brain. This is based upon a materialist assumption that is prevalent in science generally but in cognitive science in particular. THIS IS WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS. The result is that those who recognize that the mind does not function like the brain often point to the brain and deny that it is computational, or a computational system. This is what “The Empty Brain” does. But, in my judgment such a move is not correct. The brain *is* in essence a computational system. What should be denied is that the capacities of the mind are entirely dependent on the brain. It is clear to me that the mind “transcends” the physical brain as evidenced not only by the fact that it functions differently, but also by the fact that mental capacities, such as thinking, freewill, creativity, and problem solving cannot be explained by the rote, algorithmic, computational properties of the brain.

One further clarification:. There is a distinction between a “digital” computer, and computation generally. A digital computer is associated with a modern binary computer, with corresponding on-off switches in a complex electronic, computational circuitry. The brain is certainly not a digital computer. However, the brain *is* still a computational system, but of a different kind. Modern neuroscience considers the brain as a “neural network,” a computational system entirely different from a digital computer. So, when people insist that the brain is not a digital computer they often confuse this with the brain not being computational, which is just false. Again, the article, The Empty Brain exemplifies this confusion.

Given the above starting point, here is my response to some points made in The Empty Brain:

“No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’.

COMMENT: Although it is true that there is probably no representation of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in most brains—even the brains of those having heard it—it is not true that there is no representation of any part of it. After all, most brains have a representation of at least the first 4 notes. Thus, if these notes are played, it will trigger a physical response in the brain in the form of an association between the notes heard and Beethoven’s 5th symphoney. The same is true with words, pictures, etc. The brain represents such things in some neural pattern which responds when the appropriate environmental stimulus occurs. Thus, just because there are no images in the brain, or psychological memories, there most certainly are representations of such things in the form of neuronal patterns. It is rather silly to deny this in the face of modern neuroscience.
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“Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.”

COMMENT: The human brain does NOT work like a *digital* computer, as neuroscientists perhaps thought at one time. But that does not mean that the brain is not computational or mechanistic. (See above) The brain is thought to be a “neural network” consisting of neurons as units of computation that exhibit patterns of “action potentials” in accordance with environmental input. This is still computation, but not computation like a digital computer. So, the human brain is a physical system that is mechanistic in its operation within a neural network. In short, there are causal mechanisms throughout the brain that function computationally by processing environmental (and internal) input and generating physical effects. Again, it is rather silly to deny this in the face of modern neuroscience, and the author’s themselves seem deeply confused about this rather basic point.
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“To see how vacuous this idea is, consider the brains of babies. Thanks to evolution, human neonates, like the newborns of all other mammalian species, enter the world prepared to interact with it effectively. A baby’s vision is blurry, but it pays special attention to faces, and is quickly able to identify its mother’s. It prefers the sound of voices to non-speech sounds, and can distinguish one basic speech sound from another. We are, without doubt, built to make social connections.”

COMMENT: This whole discussion about newborns is a non-starter. It only suggests that human beings (babies) have capacities that transcend the mechanistic properties of the brain. It doesn’t suggest that the brain is not mechanistic. An explanation is needed, of course, as to where such non-mechanistic capacities come from, whether in babies or adults. This is the same mystery as to where consciousness comes from, or mind generally. Perhaps it is an emergent (non-mechanistic) property of the brain; or perhaps it involves a soul. But whatever the answer is, the brain itself is mechanistic and highly computational.
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“But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.”

COMMENT: What does the author mean by “we” or “born with?” Are we still talking about the brain, or has the discussion shifted to the person? The point is that the brain does (1) carry information; (2) make representations of environmental input; (3) operate algorithmically; and (4) process information. All of this is basic factual neuroscience that is not reasonably disputable. Moreover, presumably the brain developed these capacities through natural evolutionary processes. So, “we” develop biological, computational processes as instantiated in our brains. But—and this is a huge but—that is NOT all we are, and the computational brain does NOT explain or account for all human capacities.
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“We don’t store words or the rules that tell us how to manipulate them. We don’t create representations of visual stimuli, store them in a short-term memory buffer, and then transfer the representation into a long-term memory device. We don’t retrieve information or images or words from memory registers. Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not.”

COMMENT: Again, what is meant by “we?” Brains *do* store representations of words and grammatical “rules.” The brain *does* store representations of images, and retrieves such information. So, to suggest that computers do all these things and “organisms” do not, is just false, because organisms have brains that do precisely these things.
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“Computers, quite literally, move these patterns from place to place in different physical storage areas etched into electronic components. Sometimes they also copy the patterns, and sometimes they transform them in various ways – say, when we are correcting errors in a manuscript or when we are touching up a photograph. The rules computers follow for moving, copying and operating on these arrays of data are also stored inside the computer. Together, a set of rules is called a ‘program’ or an ‘algorithm’. A group of algorithms that work together to help us do something (like buy stocks or find a date online) is called an ‘application’ – what most people now call an ‘app’.”

“Forgive me for this introduction to computing, but I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.”

“Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?”

COMMENT: Brains, of course, use a different architecture than digital computers, but they still are physical, computational systems. The representations of the brain are NOT *symbolic* representations, like a computer program, i.e. they do not involve the assignment of symbols, but they are still representations. A computer has at least two levels of representation. First, the functioning electronic circuitry representing whatever input is presented for processing. For example, if a computer is presented with an image, via a scanning device, that image is represented by some electronic circuitry in the computer that can be stored and retrieved. But a computer also has a *symbolic* representation, as when the program represents the English language through letters of the alphabet that have been assigned by human beings and incorporated into a program. That kind of symbolic representation requires a human programmer in order to establish what the symbols are intended to represent. Brains create neural representations from environmental input, store that information, and retrieve that information in much the same way as computers do. However, with the brain there is no symbolic representation.
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“This kind of thinking [metaphorical] was taken to its ultimate expression in the short book The Computer and the Brain (1958), in which the mathematician John von Neumann stated flatly that the function of the human nervous system is ‘prima facie digital’. Although he acknowledged that little was actually known about the role the brain played in human reasoning and memory, he drew parallel after parallel between the components of the computing machines of the day and the components of the human brain.”

COMMENT: John von Neumann stated only his observations and comparisons based upon what was known about computers and the brain at the time. Neuroscience has evolved a great deal from that time. His error was in suggesting that the brain was “prima facie digital.” The brain is NOT a *digital* computer, but it *is* a mechanistic computational system in the form of a neural network. (A different computational architecture than a standard digital computer.) But, as Neumann pointed out, human reasoning and human memory are different considerations that little is known about. This lack of knowledge and understanding about how *humans* reason says nothing about how the brain appears to operate as a mechanistic, computational device.
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“Propelled by subsequent advances in both computer technology and brain research, an ambitious multidisciplinary effort to understand human intelligence gradually developed, firmly rooted in the idea that humans are, like computers, information processors. This effort now involves thousands of researchers, consumes billions of dollars in funding, and has generated a vast literature consisting of both technical and mainstream articles and books. Ray Kurzweil’s book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (2013), exemplifies this perspective, speculating about the ‘algorithms’ of the brain, how the brain ‘processes data’, and even how it superficially resembles integrated circuits in its structure.

COMMENT: This paragraph represents the author’s confusions as noted in above in my introductory comments.
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“The information processing (IP) metaphor of human intelligence now dominates human thinking, both on the street and in the sciences. There is virtually no form of discourse about intelligent human behaviour that proceeds without employing this metaphor, just as no form of discourse about intelligent human behaviour could proceed in certain eras and cultures without reference to a spirit or deity. The validity of the IP metaphor in today’s world is generally assumed without question.

COMMENT: I agree. It is a false metaphor, but the falsity is not rooted in a false understanding of how the brain works, it is in the false assumption that human functioning can explained solely by appeal to computational, mechanistic brains.
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“The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syllogism – one with two reasonable premises and a faulty conclusion. Reasonable premise #1: all computers are capable of behaving intelligently. Reasonable premise #2: all computers are information processors. Faulty conclusion: all entities that are capable of behaving intelligently are information processors.”

COMMENT: Yes! Human beings are NOT just information processers; but brains are. So, the moral of the story is that human beings are cognitively more than merely their brains. That is precisely the mystery to be explained.
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“A few cognitive scientists – notably Anthony Chemero of the University of Cincinnati, the author of Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) – now completely reject the view that the human brain works like a computer. The mainstream view is that we, like computers, make sense of the world by performing computations on mental representations of it, but Chemero and others describe another way of understanding intelligent behaviour – as a direct interaction between organisms and their world.”

COMMENT: It is quite clear that we do not, like computers, make sense of the world by performing computations on mental representations. It is quite obvious that we do not do that; we do not think computationally. Most cognitive scientists would insist that the brain is computational, and that the brain somehow creates consciousness, the self, and facilitates human reasoning in a manner that is not well understood. But, since it all comes from the brain, it must all be explained by the brain. In other words, their attitude is that “it must be the brain.” But, to suggest that we directly perceive the world through a mental representation ignores all of the facts of brain processing that intervene between the stimulation of the environment and our experience of it. It is quite obvious that the computational brain plays a role in such processing, even if it does not explain how humans put all of this together, and reason based upon the information stored in the brain and presented to us in conscious awareness..
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“We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key.”

COMMENT: O.K. We are organisms, and not computers. But then, if human capacities are not computational brain processes, what are they? Where do they come from? How *does* the brain produce them, if not by computational processes? To say that the brain is not a computer does NOT explain how and where the intellectual properties and capacities of the organism come from. If the brain is not a mechanistic, computational device—but you still insist that the brain is the basis for such capacities—then you owe the reader an explanation as to how the brain produces such capacities? In other words, if the brain is not a mechanistic machine of sorts, that deterministically produces our complex behavior, then what does produce such behavior or underlie such capacities like creativity, freewill, human reasoning, etc.

Thus, I agree that human capacities cannot be explained by appeal to a mechanistic, computational brain, but that does not mean that the brain is not mechanistic, or is non-computational. After all, there is no other explanation as to how the brain might work to produce such capacities. So, if you insist that human beings are more than just computational brains, then you have to look beyond the brain for an explanation.

Sorry for the length, but I hope this helps in addressing your concerns about brain-mind metaphors, or theories.

Your friend,
HB

Long but interesting read, Henry.

Two quick things:

Considering the possibility that a human brain is not *only* "computational brain processes" does NOT mean that an explanation is owed or must be provided. Specifically since we don't know the explanation. The point is to consider that the brain doesn't work like a computer -- we don't know exactly how it works yet, so let's find out and stop considering it to be a computer. "We don't know yet" is not only an acceptable answer, it's the only honest one.

That's also a reason to not go overboard and assume (without evidence) that "...mind transcends the physical brain." Since we don't fully understand the physical brain, and/or whether or not "mind" can be fully produced and function within it, there's no reason to assume (again, without evidence) that mind must include something beyond it. Or to assume (again, without evidence) that mind must be entirely within it.

The answer, again, is we don't know. Yet.
We might never know.
Whether we ever do or don't, unevidenced assumptions aren't at all useful, except *possibly* as ideas for hypotheses to try and verify/refute.

Indeterminate is a dirty word.

Considering the possibility that a human brain is not *only* "computational brain processes" does NOT mean that an explanation is owed or must be provided. Specifically since we don't know the explanation. The point is to consider that the brain doesn't work like a computer -- we don't know exactly how it works yet, so let's find out and stop considering it to be a computer. "We don't know yet" is not only an acceptable answer, it's the only honest one.

COMMENT: Well, cognitive neuroscience is committed to the view that the brain is the *sole* explanation for ALL of human cognition. This is famously stated by neuroscientist Francis Crick in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis:

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that 'You.' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

This statement and assumption represents the starting point for neuroscience. Thus, when any element of human cognition suggests something that cannot be explained by the brain, i.e. does not fit into the above paradigm, arguably some explanation is owed by those making such an assumption.

It is not disputed, or in my view reasonably disputable, that the brain is a mechanistic, physical system, that is to a large extent computational. It is very difficult to see how--even in principle--such a system can explain such human capacities as the self, creativity and freewill. So, within the parameters of modern neuroscience, the problem is much more than invoking a "wait and see" attitude.
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That's also a reason to not go overboard and assume (without evidence) that "...mind transcends the physical brain."

COMMENT: If the physical brain, as a mechanistic, computational system, cannot explain aspects of human cognition, where else are we to look? We know in general how such physical systems work, however complicated they might be. We know that they are deterministic, for example. So, where do we find creativity and freewill within such systems? (Note: by "transcend" I am not suggesting something necessarily supernatural. I am only suggesting that whatever it is goes beyond the brain as a purely physical system. ("physical" here is intended to encompass all of modern science.)

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Since we don't fully understand the physical brain, and/or whether or not "mind" can be fully produced and function within it, there's no reason to assume (again, without evidence) that mind must include something beyond it. Or to assume (again, without evidence) that mind must be entirely within it.

COMMENT: See above comment. I suppose the question reduces to what one thinks "is reasonable to assume" given certain facts and commitments. If one is pre-committed to the materialist view as stated in Crick's statement above, then *any* assumption that suggests a "transcendent" reality would be unreasonable. On the other hand, if one already believes in such a transcendent reality, applying it to human cognition in the face of the limitations imposed by the nature of the brain would be very reasonable.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
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> This statement and assumption represents the
> starting point for neuroscience. Thus, when any
> element of human cognition suggests something that
> cannot be explained by the brain, i.e. does not
> fit into the above paradigm, arguably some
> explanation is owed by those making such an
> assumption.

The brain doesn't explain anything. We humans explain things. Based on what we know. If we don't know, we can't explain. Not being able to explain only means we lack knowledge; it doesn't mean some "paradigm" is wrong (or right!). Or that unfounded assumptions are in order. It just means we can't explain.

> It is not disputed, or in my view reasonably
> disputable, that the brain is a mechanistic,
> physical system, that is to a large extent...

Thanks for including "to a large extent." Instead of "entirely." Since that's the case.

> ...computational. It is very difficult to see
> how--even in principle--such a system can explain
> such human capacities as the self, creativity and
> freewill. So, within the parameters of modern
> neuroscience, the problem is much more than
> invoking a "wait and see" attitude.

Very difficult does not mean "not possible."

And I'll venture that modern neuroscience is far more flexible than you're allowing above -- or at least most of the people who practice it are. They do indeed have their working paradigms. But when presented with evidence (so far lacking) that their working paradigm is wrong, or incomplete, they'd abandon it or update it in a heartbeat.

As for Crick...he argued for his hypothesis in a popular book. Like scientists do. He also would have happily changed his hypothesis if presented with contrary evidence, and I suspect would also have readily admitted that his statement wasn't to be taken as settled fact.

Carry on.

"And I'll venture that modern neuroscience is far more flexible than you're allowing above -- or at least most of the people who practice it are. They do indeed have their working paradigms. But when presented with evidence (so far lacking) that their working paradigm is wrong, or incomplete, they'd abandon it or update it in a heartbeat."

COMMENT: Not so. Although it is true that neuroscientists, like all of us, live our lives in a domain that does not necessarily conform to our scientific commitments, neuroscientists as a group are deeply committed to the Crick hypothesis. This hypothesis is what drives their research. Moreover, it is a hypothesis that in large part is supported by substantial evidence; notwithstanding the substantial anomalies presented in cognitive psychology.
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As for Crick...he argued for his hypothesis in a popular book. Like scientists do. He also would have happily changed his hypothesis if presented with contrary evidence, and I suspect would also have readily admitted that his statement wasn't to be taken as settled fact.

COMMENT: O.K. But, this has nothing to do with Crick's book being "popular." Both Crick and this book have been a mainstream resources in cognitive neuroscience for over two decades.

Oh, one more thing:

"I suppose the question reduces to what one thinks "is reasonable to assume" given certain facts and commitments."

For me, that's easy: nothing is reasonable to assume.
Assumptions may be useful for formulating testable hypotheses. But nothing else. They're otherwise useless.

"For me, that's easy: nothing is reasonable to assume.
Assumptions may be useful for formulating testable hypotheses. But nothing else. They're otherwise useless."

COMMENT: Nothing proceeds in science without reasonable assumptions. Such assumptions can be peripheral "useful hypotheses," or more basic theoretical assumptions in the form of commitments to be tested and evaluated.

The rise of computer technology in which computers appear to think like humans has lent spurious support for cognitive hypotheses in which people think like machines.

HH =)

We are all little googles.

Computer technology, including as applied to artificial intelligence, is digital. As such, however impressive such technology is, most modern AI theorists do not think that this reflects how humans actually think. This was at one time controversial, but not now. (Consider, Foder's book, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way.) How the mind *does* work is what is controversial.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
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> How the
> mind *does* work is what is controversial.

I'm glad mine is working...wait...is it?

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

God... Consciousness... Mind... same gobbledygook different day.

HH =)

"Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible."

COMMENT: No it is not! First, in science or philosophy metaphysics often surfaces as a reasonable, but speculative, explanation for observed phenomena. The "multiverse" is one example of many in mainstream theoretical science. Moreover, metaphysics may be difficult to comprehend, but in the hands of an expert scientist or philosopher, it is NOT unintelligible. Such a view as you suggest is a reminiscent of so-called "positivism" in science which has been rejected for decades, and for good reason.

Bemis wrote: “. Such a view as you suggest is a reminiscent of so-called "positivism" in science which has been rejected for decades, and for good reason”

“Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. ... If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.’ Stephen Hawking.

HH =)

There are probably multiple ways the mind works. And breaks. And adapts. Thus the term non-neurotypical for functional minds that operate in ways we can observe as very different from what we more commonly see. Temple Grandin's brain operates differently than my brain and into the skinny tail of the bell curve. But it certainly operates.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2018 04:53PM by dogblogger.

"There are probably multiple ways the mind works. And breaks. And adapts. Thus the term non-neurotypical for functional minds that operate in ways we can observe as very different from what we more commonly see. Temple Grandin's brain operates differently than my brain and into the skinny tail of the bell curve. But it certainly operates."

COMMENT: There are of course, vast differences between how minds and brains "work" in individuals. But whether a person's cognitive function is "normal" or in some sense extraordinary, the presumption is still that the underlying processing still occurs in the brain, and is still physical, computational, and deterministic. Savants press this assumption because defects in brain function unexpectedly result in selective enhancements in cognition.

Thanks Henry. I’ll get to this. I might not respond, but I will definitely consider this carefully.

O.K. But I will be disappointed if you do not share a thought or two about this, since it was your post that instigated this discussion. Moreover, I have no doubt that you both understand this post, and have insights worth sharing about these issues.

Cases of Hyperthymesia cast doubt on the brain’s storage capacity. Some people can recall any moment of their lives, on any specified day, as it just happened. Full video, audio, sensations, emotions, etc. Even the biggest hard drive wouldn’t handle that, when our brains total a measly 100 billion neurons. So something really weird is going on. The least weird possibility is that it’s stored in microtubules in the brain, as per Penrose and Hameroff’s “Orch OR” theory, which stretches the credulity of material science by itself. That or the information is not stored in the brain at all. It’s only integrated into the external (eternal) storage medium by the brain. Possibly by processes such as “Orch OR” that harness quantum entanglement. The supposed fairy tales of the “Lamb’s Book of Life” hit way closer to home than “accepted” neuroscience.

Intuition and precognition have even less explanation in material neuroscience. That’s the “Holy Ghost”, which works out of sheer belief. The physical reality is more like the human body’s immune system compared to “Osmosis Jones”. Not even close, but a cartoon is better than nothing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2018 08:35PM by babyloncansuckit.

Mapping a nueron to a bit in capacity is naive and unsupported as we don't know the mechanism for storage. A transbody mechanism would have to interact strongly with the atoms in the brain at body temperatures, an energy range whose interactions offer no evidence of unknown strong interactions.

I say strongly because the data throughput seems to be large as you noted. On the other hand the mental model we construct of our surroundings is colored by the brain filling in color and detail that the eye doesn't pick up continuously. So the visual model we use is lower data density than reality. It may well be the memory system is highly lossy rather than pixel perfect just as the brain perception itself is a lossy system.

One could log the day’s events into a text file of 100k bytes to match the neuron-to-bit model, although that would be a silly model. There’s no accounting for error correction and for replenishment if dying neurons. Plus, the storage mechanism can’t be localized. It seems holographic.

“A transbody mechanism would have to interact strongly with the atoms in the brain at body temperatures, an energy range whose interactions offer no evidence of unknown strong interactions”

The brain evolved to exploit weak forces. Quantum entanglement was first thought to be a nonstarter at brain temperatures, but is now accepted for an increasing variety of phenomena in the animal kingdom. Plus, animals show another window into memory in the form of instinctual behavior. Their memory is stored in the past. That suggests a non-material medium.

It also helps explain pet telepathy with their owners. Or telepathy between bonded humans, which must all be pretended away if the material-only model is going to work.

Those would all have to be demonstrated as a first step.

"Mapping a nueron to a bit in capacity is naive and unsupported as we don't know the mechanism for storage. A transbody mechanism would have to interact strongly with the atoms in the brain at body temperatures, an energy range whose interactions offer no evidence of unknown strong interactions."

COMMENT: Of course, mapping information of a system to the physical structure of the system is not naïve, but necessary. For every "bit" of information, there would be a reduction explainable by the dynamics of that system. If you allow for an exception in the form of emergent information, you are dealing with essentially magic; i.e. rabbits appearing out of mere hats.
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I say strongly because the data throughput seems to be large as you noted. On the other hand the mental model we construct of our surroundings is colored by the brain filling in color and detail that the eye doesn't pick up continuously. So the visual model we use is lower data density than reality.

COMMENT: Well, the brain can do remarkable things, and no doubt whatever contributes to memory storage the "data density" in the brain is much less that the data exemplified in the reality that is experienced and that is represented in the brain. My problem is not with storage capacity per se, it is with cognitive issues; i.e. how the operation of the brain produces human cognition in all its forms, including memory storage and retrieval. The assumption that it "must be the brain" is supported by evidence of correlation, but not in the dynamic details. (In my view.)
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It may well be the memory system is highly lossy rather than pixel perfect just as the brain perception itself is a lossy system.

COMMENT: Well, I think that is established simply by the nature and uncertainty of the facts humans remember.

"Cases of Hyperthymesia cast doubt on the brain’s storage capacity. Some people can recall any moment of their lives, on any specified day, as it just happened. Full video, audio, sensations, emotions, etc. Even the biggest hard drive wouldn’t handle that, when our brains total a measly 100 billion neurons. So something really weird is going on. The least weird possibility is that it’s stored in microtubules in the brain, as per Penrose and Hameroff’s “Orch OR” theory, which stretches the credulity of material science by itself."

COMMENT: Yes, good point. However, maybe there is selective storage, where the neurological structure of the brain provides a limitation on memory. It is not as if we remember huge amounts of data that could not be stored in traditional "memory banks"

I find the resort to quantum mechanics for an explanation of an otherwise classical neurological system a bit of a reach--including the microtubules of Penrose and Hammeroff. Quantum effects no doubt subtly contribute to the firing of action potentials, but once that happens classical neuroscience seems to take over. Explaining storage of information in the brain by appeal to something other than neurons makes one wonder why neurons are necessary in the first place; why not an entirely quantum system with an entirely different architecture where, perhaps, nothing "physical" is needed. (Just wave functions)
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That or the information is not stored in the brain at all. It’s only integrated into the external (eternal) storage medium by the brain. Possibly by processes such as “Orch OR” that harness quantum entanglement. The supposed fairy tales of the “Lamb’s Book of Life” hit way closer to home than “accepted” neuroscience.

COMMENT: Well, the information has to be stored somewhere; and that information has to be to some degree accessible and personal to the subject. In short, it must involve some sort of system; and there must be some sort of processing by which the information is retrieved and used.
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Intuition and precognition have even less explanation in material neuroscience.

COMMENT: Yes, and as I noted, savant cognition and creativity generally are left unexplained. Moreover, this lack of explanation is not simply a "ho-hum" scientific gap. It is a foundational limitation, as you seem to be pointing out.