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“For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.” - Khalil Gibran
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There is a taxonomy in the article on the classified theories mentioned on pages 3 & 4.
https://philpapers.org/archive/JONETO.pdf
"Abstract:
Neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing circuits work, but it has problems explaining experiences this way. For example, it hasn’t explained how color and shape circuits bind together in visual processing, nor why colors and other qualia are experienced so differently yet processed by circuits so similarly, nor how to get from processing circuits to pictorial images spread across inner space. Some theorists turn from these circuits to their electromagnetic fields to deal with such difficulties concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, and causality. They include Kohler, Libet, Popper, Lindahl, Arhem, Charman, Pockett, John McFadden, Fingelkurts, Maxwell, and Jones. They’re classifiable as computationalist, reductionist, dualist, realist, interactionist, epiphenomenalist, globalist, and localist. However, they’ve never been analyzed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology."
Introduction:
Electromagnetic-field theories of mind treat minds as identical to, or derivative of, the electromagnetic fields generated by neural currents. These fields have detailed spatio-temporal structures and they weaken rapidly with distance via Coulomb’s law[1]. They resemble and correlate with minds in various ways. For example, sensory images arguably arise from discrete neurons in field-like ways as fast-changing, continuous wholes spread across space, as we’ll see. These theories have existed for over seventy years, but they’ve proliferated only recently owing to growing recognition of their potentials for avoiding basic problems in neuroscience. One aim of this article is to explain and classify the various field theories. As we’ll repeatedly see, their differences involve how minds exist relative to fields, how fields unify minds, and how extensively fields and neurons interact (as well as lesser issues such as how fields create different types of experience). I’ve classified them in these terms in Table 1. The other aim of this article is to evaluate field theories in terms of their ability to deal with neuroscience’s basic problems, as well as their own potential problems (again see Table 1). Hopefully this humble advice will help field theorists and neuroscientists to better explain minds. Minds are characterized by their intelligence and consciousness. Their intelligence consists of their problem-solving abilities. The real challenges come from consciousness — the mind’s privately experienced inner life of perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. These experiences have conscious qualities (qualia) like pain or fear. Consciousness is private in that minds can’t access each other’s experiences. Consciousness also has unity, for example, the myriad shapes and colors in a visual image (and associated emotions and thoughts) are experienced as a unified whole. Consciousness also has causal characteristics, for it comes from brains and may affect brains. The authors below repeatedly address these characteristics of minds --qualia, unity, privacy and causality. Standard neuroscience explains them all in terms of how neuronal circuits and their computations work. But this raises serious problems. Field theories offer alternatives.
[1] These fields are generated by neuronal ions. The electric force between ions is proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of their distance (Coulomb’s law). As ions move, their currents create additional magnetic forces that are proportional to their charges and velocities, and are directed at right angles to the velocities. They’re weaker than electric fields at atomic distances, but both weaken rapidly with distance. As we’ll see, the brain’s electromagnetic field has a detailed spatio-temporal structure that is measured by EEGs (electroencephalograms) which detect electric potentials in neural currents, and MEGs (magnetoencephalograms) which detect magnetic fields from these currents."
https://philpapers.org/archive/JONETO.pdf
"Abstract:
Neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing circuits work, but it has problems explaining experiences this way. For example, it hasn’t explained how color and shape circuits bind together in visual processing, nor why colors and other qualia are experienced so differently yet processed by circuits so similarly, nor how to get from processing circuits to pictorial images spread across inner space. Some theorists turn from these circuits to their electromagnetic fields to deal with such difficulties concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, and causality. They include Kohler, Libet, Popper, Lindahl, Arhem, Charman, Pockett, John McFadden, Fingelkurts, Maxwell, and Jones. They’re classifiable as computationalist, reductionist, dualist, realist, interactionist, epiphenomenalist, globalist, and localist. However, they’ve never been analyzed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology."
Introduction:
Electromagnetic-field theories of mind treat minds as identical to, or derivative of, the electromagnetic fields generated by neural currents. These fields have detailed spatio-temporal structures and they weaken rapidly with distance via Coulomb’s law[1]. They resemble and correlate with minds in various ways. For example, sensory images arguably arise from discrete neurons in field-like ways as fast-changing, continuous wholes spread across space, as we’ll see. These theories have existed for over seventy years, but they’ve proliferated only recently owing to growing recognition of their potentials for avoiding basic problems in neuroscience. One aim of this article is to explain and classify the various field theories. As we’ll repeatedly see, their differences involve how minds exist relative to fields, how fields unify minds, and how extensively fields and neurons interact (as well as lesser issues such as how fields create different types of experience). I’ve classified them in these terms in Table 1. The other aim of this article is to evaluate field theories in terms of their ability to deal with neuroscience’s basic problems, as well as their own potential problems (again see Table 1). Hopefully this humble advice will help field theorists and neuroscientists to better explain minds. Minds are characterized by their intelligence and consciousness. Their intelligence consists of their problem-solving abilities. The real challenges come from consciousness — the mind’s privately experienced inner life of perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. These experiences have conscious qualities (qualia) like pain or fear. Consciousness is private in that minds can’t access each other’s experiences. Consciousness also has unity, for example, the myriad shapes and colors in a visual image (and associated emotions and thoughts) are experienced as a unified whole. Consciousness also has causal characteristics, for it comes from brains and may affect brains. The authors below repeatedly address these characteristics of minds --qualia, unity, privacy and causality. Standard neuroscience explains them all in terms of how neuronal circuits and their computations work. But this raises serious problems. Field theories offer alternatives.
[1] These fields are generated by neuronal ions. The electric force between ions is proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of their distance (Coulomb’s law). As ions move, their currents create additional magnetic forces that are proportional to their charges and velocities, and are directed at right angles to the velocities. They’re weaker than electric fields at atomic distances, but both weaken rapidly with distance. As we’ll see, the brain’s electromagnetic field has a detailed spatio-temporal structure that is measured by EEGs (electroencephalograms) which detect electric potentials in neural currents, and MEGs (magnetoencephalograms) which detect magnetic fields from these currents."
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(Excerpt of) The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance by Eva T.H. Brann
https://books.google.com/books?id=f4x9SvwlZqYC&dq=The+world+of+the+imagination&source=gbs_navlinks_s
The Space of Imaging
"Every claim that there is a human capability for imaging, an activity having internal origins and external consequences, finally comes to speak of some sort of inner space, a space-like field in which the particular depictions take place. This chapter begins with a somewhat groping exposition of spatiality (A). For in order to say what space-likeness is, one first has to try to say what space might be like, to articulate the nature of space or spatiality--an endeavor complicated by the profusion of available attempts. Next something is said of the internal spatial faculty, namely intuition (B). And finally, grasping the nettle, an attempt is made to delineate the nature of the imaging field itself as actuated inner space (C).
A. Spatiality: The Notion of Space
The notion I am trying to capture seems traditionally to have been pursued through five kinds of questions. The answers to these are naturally deeply enmeshed with one another and with the inquirer's world-view; a term somewhat less vacuous in this context than in most; since some perspectives on these questions are contiguous or complementary, others conflicting or incompatible. Is there some core insight they nonetheless share, such as might reveal spatiality itself?
The first question concerns the ontological standing of space: Is it a thing, real and intelligible (Descartes), or is it a no-thing, void and inapprehensible (the ancient atomists), or is it a bastard combination of these (Plato)?
The second question concerns its basic character: Is it a kind of primal opening, gap, or separation (Hesiod and Genesis), a receptacle (Plato) an envelope (Aristotle), the divine omnipresence (Jewish tradition), an absolute of locations (Newton), a relation of bodies (Leibniz), a form of sensibility (Kant), a manifold of points and dimensions (Riemann), or an environment in which bodies are implanted and which human beings inhabit (the Phenomenologists)?
A third question concerns its various structural dispositions: With respect to bounds, is it a finite cosmos (Ptolemy), an indefinite extension (Descartes), an infinite universe (Newton), or an unbounded, self-reentering world (Einstein)? With respect to dimensionality, does the number of dimensions exceed three and include time? With respect to continuity, is it conceivable that it has missing locations and a discrete structure? With respect to orientability, can figures that differ from each other only as do our two hands be made to coincide by being moved about? With respect to inherent places and regions, is space homogeneous and isotropic or are there distinguishable locations and directions of motion? With respect to curvature, can one, two, or no parallels to a line be drawn through a point?
A fourth question concerns the original contents of space: Are these geometric elements (Plato, Galileo), impenetrable bodies related by force (Epicurus, Newton), a plenum of extended substances (Descartes), various ethers, or geometrical, or numerical fields?
The fifth question concerns our knowledge of space: Does it arise through experience (Locke), through intuition, or through rational construction? Are the mathematical spaces of geometry, the experienced space of physics, an ordinary lived-in space diverse or coincident, and which of these is primary? (Buroker 1981, Jammer 1957, Koyre 1957, Capek 1976.)
If the way to spatiality leads through all of these clusters of questions, it is the last which determines the beginning. For it intimates that we might have a special faculty for apprehending space aside from sense and particularly aside from reason. Now in the hierarchy of geometries it is only the lowest "metric" geometry that is immediately descriptive of the space to which the spatial faculty here in question would apply. For a geometry is metric if each of its points has to all the others a unique relation called their distance, realized by a straight line between them. The higher, non-metric studies, projective geometry and topology, being constructions of thought abstracted from the space of experience and imagination, are spatial only figuratively. Clearly, the spatiality I am seeking, the primary, naive spatiality of actual, experienced space, be it psychic or physical, involves distances. All the questions above have behind them the metric sense of space as distance. (Russell 1897, Meserve 1955.)
That sense, in turn, is reducible to an intimation that the space about which those questions concerning its existence, character, structure contents and cognitive source are asked is always and ultimately some sort of connected separation, or spanned sunderance. One might also call it extensive exteriority: exterior insofar as it is the essence of the elements of space to be outside of, apart from, each other and extensive insofar as there is a way extending from each such element to every other. Consequently, extensive exteriority is analyzable under two complementary aspects. First there are termini, pegs of distinction, differentiating here from there, this location from that, making by their mutual externality what we call "room," which means literally an opening, a wide place. Obviously, "exteriority" is meant to apply equally to internal and external space. Second, there are the extensions stretching through this opening, from each terminus to every other, as signified by the word "space" itself, which is cognate with "passage," as well as by all the metric terms signifying passing through from terminus to terminus, such as di-mension, di-stance, dia-meter.
These related aspects are nicely illustrated in the two stages of the first geometric theories of space on record, those of the Pythagoreans. In the earlier stage space is understood as arising out of two principles: an originating unit and a principle of limitless duplication. This second source, the cause of all "two-ness," all opening, stretching, apartness, or otherness, is what Plato later call the "indeterminate dyad" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b). Dimensional space thus arises when the duplicating principle draws out of the primal unit indefinitely many point-units, all mutually paired: "for 'dimension' is that which is conceived of as between two termini" (Nicomachus II 6). Between two point-units arises the dimension we call the first, the line; three determine the second dimension by the simplest linear plane figure, the triangle, and four points give the basic solid three-dimensional configuration, the pyramid. However, in the later stage of theorizing, not the termini but the passages between them are emphasized. The point, by flowing continuously, produces a line, a line flows into a plane, and the flux of a plane makes the solid module of space, in this version a cube (Guthrie 1962). Some such understanding of space as externality and some such analysis of externality as a bonding relation between each and every pair of sundered terms is common to the few authors that care at all to ground their description of space in a notion of its essence, its spatiality. Russell expresses this notion most incisively: Space is relativity, "the possibility of relations between diverse things" (190).
Spatiality has its counterpart in whatever is monadic, discrete, item-like, digital; in sum, whatever is countable rather than scannable. The Pythagoreans who discovered dimensional space also tried to build space from discrete, countable units having position; from points; hoping to derive the visible world from countable elements. They failed, having discovered the scandal of ancient mathematics: the incommensurability of lengths in certain geometric positions, which betokened the fact that a line in space has more locations than there are articulable or "rational" numbers. Now there is a great modern construction of a line whose points are indeed numerable; by means of the real, or irrational numbers, not known to the ancients (Dedekind 1858). But here's the rub: Dedekind speaks of the point "of," not "on," a line. Stated explicitly this means that he understands the line as a set of point-elements whose continuity is exactly that defined for the reals. It follows that this reconciliation of space with number, this matching of what is now called the analogue with the digital realm, is here accomplished by the arithmetization of a geometric line. By this device its irreducible extensivity is bypassed; this line is not a distance but a "well-arranged domain" that meets a formal definition of continuity. But the spatial dimension I am after, the space of naive intuition, is a true extension, not a point-collection, a mathematical construction. It is that in experienced space which cannot be formalized away: its actual spread, the irreducibly non-digital.
It goes without saying all this does not amount to a sharp, impregnable concept but only to a speculative attempt to articulate our sense of space. The object of this admittedly abstruse exercise is to lay the foundation for distinguishing a faculty essentially devoted to space-viewing, namely the imagination proper."
https://books.google.com/books?id=f4x9SvwlZqYC&dq=The+world+of+the+imagination&source=gbs_navlinks_s
The Space of Imaging
"Every claim that there is a human capability for imaging, an activity having internal origins and external consequences, finally comes to speak of some sort of inner space, a space-like field in which the particular depictions take place. This chapter begins with a somewhat groping exposition of spatiality (A). For in order to say what space-likeness is, one first has to try to say what space might be like, to articulate the nature of space or spatiality--an endeavor complicated by the profusion of available attempts. Next something is said of the internal spatial faculty, namely intuition (B). And finally, grasping the nettle, an attempt is made to delineate the nature of the imaging field itself as actuated inner space (C).
A. Spatiality: The Notion of Space
The notion I am trying to capture seems traditionally to have been pursued through five kinds of questions. The answers to these are naturally deeply enmeshed with one another and with the inquirer's world-view; a term somewhat less vacuous in this context than in most; since some perspectives on these questions are contiguous or complementary, others conflicting or incompatible. Is there some core insight they nonetheless share, such as might reveal spatiality itself?
The first question concerns the ontological standing of space: Is it a thing, real and intelligible (Descartes), or is it a no-thing, void and inapprehensible (the ancient atomists), or is it a bastard combination of these (Plato)?
The second question concerns its basic character: Is it a kind of primal opening, gap, or separation (Hesiod and Genesis), a receptacle (Plato) an envelope (Aristotle), the divine omnipresence (Jewish tradition), an absolute of locations (Newton), a relation of bodies (Leibniz), a form of sensibility (Kant), a manifold of points and dimensions (Riemann), or an environment in which bodies are implanted and which human beings inhabit (the Phenomenologists)?
A third question concerns its various structural dispositions: With respect to bounds, is it a finite cosmos (Ptolemy), an indefinite extension (Descartes), an infinite universe (Newton), or an unbounded, self-reentering world (Einstein)? With respect to dimensionality, does the number of dimensions exceed three and include time? With respect to continuity, is it conceivable that it has missing locations and a discrete structure? With respect to orientability, can figures that differ from each other only as do our two hands be made to coincide by being moved about? With respect to inherent places and regions, is space homogeneous and isotropic or are there distinguishable locations and directions of motion? With respect to curvature, can one, two, or no parallels to a line be drawn through a point?
A fourth question concerns the original contents of space: Are these geometric elements (Plato, Galileo), impenetrable bodies related by force (Epicurus, Newton), a plenum of extended substances (Descartes), various ethers, or geometrical, or numerical fields?
The fifth question concerns our knowledge of space: Does it arise through experience (Locke), through intuition, or through rational construction? Are the mathematical spaces of geometry, the experienced space of physics, an ordinary lived-in space diverse or coincident, and which of these is primary? (Buroker 1981, Jammer 1957, Koyre 1957, Capek 1976.)
If the way to spatiality leads through all of these clusters of questions, it is the last which determines the beginning. For it intimates that we might have a special faculty for apprehending space aside from sense and particularly aside from reason. Now in the hierarchy of geometries it is only the lowest "metric" geometry that is immediately descriptive of the space to which the spatial faculty here in question would apply. For a geometry is metric if each of its points has to all the others a unique relation called their distance, realized by a straight line between them. The higher, non-metric studies, projective geometry and topology, being constructions of thought abstracted from the space of experience and imagination, are spatial only figuratively. Clearly, the spatiality I am seeking, the primary, naive spatiality of actual, experienced space, be it psychic or physical, involves distances. All the questions above have behind them the metric sense of space as distance. (Russell 1897, Meserve 1955.)
That sense, in turn, is reducible to an intimation that the space about which those questions concerning its existence, character, structure contents and cognitive source are asked is always and ultimately some sort of connected separation, or spanned sunderance. One might also call it extensive exteriority: exterior insofar as it is the essence of the elements of space to be outside of, apart from, each other and extensive insofar as there is a way extending from each such element to every other. Consequently, extensive exteriority is analyzable under two complementary aspects. First there are termini, pegs of distinction, differentiating here from there, this location from that, making by their mutual externality what we call "room," which means literally an opening, a wide place. Obviously, "exteriority" is meant to apply equally to internal and external space. Second, there are the extensions stretching through this opening, from each terminus to every other, as signified by the word "space" itself, which is cognate with "passage," as well as by all the metric terms signifying passing through from terminus to terminus, such as di-mension, di-stance, dia-meter.
These related aspects are nicely illustrated in the two stages of the first geometric theories of space on record, those of the Pythagoreans. In the earlier stage space is understood as arising out of two principles: an originating unit and a principle of limitless duplication. This second source, the cause of all "two-ness," all opening, stretching, apartness, or otherness, is what Plato later call the "indeterminate dyad" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b). Dimensional space thus arises when the duplicating principle draws out of the primal unit indefinitely many point-units, all mutually paired: "for 'dimension' is that which is conceived of as between two termini" (Nicomachus II 6). Between two point-units arises the dimension we call the first, the line; three determine the second dimension by the simplest linear plane figure, the triangle, and four points give the basic solid three-dimensional configuration, the pyramid. However, in the later stage of theorizing, not the termini but the passages between them are emphasized. The point, by flowing continuously, produces a line, a line flows into a plane, and the flux of a plane makes the solid module of space, in this version a cube (Guthrie 1962). Some such understanding of space as externality and some such analysis of externality as a bonding relation between each and every pair of sundered terms is common to the few authors that care at all to ground their description of space in a notion of its essence, its spatiality. Russell expresses this notion most incisively: Space is relativity, "the possibility of relations between diverse things" (190).
Spatiality has its counterpart in whatever is monadic, discrete, item-like, digital; in sum, whatever is countable rather than scannable. The Pythagoreans who discovered dimensional space also tried to build space from discrete, countable units having position; from points; hoping to derive the visible world from countable elements. They failed, having discovered the scandal of ancient mathematics: the incommensurability of lengths in certain geometric positions, which betokened the fact that a line in space has more locations than there are articulable or "rational" numbers. Now there is a great modern construction of a line whose points are indeed numerable; by means of the real, or irrational numbers, not known to the ancients (Dedekind 1858). But here's the rub: Dedekind speaks of the point "of," not "on," a line. Stated explicitly this means that he understands the line as a set of point-elements whose continuity is exactly that defined for the reals. It follows that this reconciliation of space with number, this matching of what is now called the analogue with the digital realm, is here accomplished by the arithmetization of a geometric line. By this device its irreducible extensivity is bypassed; this line is not a distance but a "well-arranged domain" that meets a formal definition of continuity. But the spatial dimension I am after, the space of naive intuition, is a true extension, not a point-collection, a mathematical construction. It is that in experienced space which cannot be formalized away: its actual spread, the irreducibly non-digital.
It goes without saying all this does not amount to a sharp, impregnable concept but only to a speculative attempt to articulate our sense of space. The object of this admittedly abstruse exercise is to lay the foundation for distinguishing a faculty essentially devoted to space-viewing, namely the imagination proper."
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