--- abstract: | This article uses database, evolution and physics considerations to suggest how the mind stores and processes its data. Its innovations in its approach lie in:- A) The comparison between the capabilities of the mind to those of a modern relational database while conserving phenomenality. The strong functional similarity of the two systems leads to the conclusion that the mind may be profitably described as being a mental database. The need for material/mental bridging and addressing indexes is discussed. B) The consideration of what neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) between sensorimotor data and instrumented observation one can hope to obtain using current biophysics. It is deduced that what is seen using the various brain scanning methods reflects only that part of current activity transactions (e.g. visualizing) which update and interrogate the mind, but not the contents of the integrated mental database which constitutes the mind itself. This approach yields reasons why there is much neural activity in an area to which a conscious function is ascribed (e.g. the amygdala is associated with fear), yet there is no visible part of its activity which can be clearly identified as phenomenal. The concept is then situated in a Penrosian expanded physical environment, requiring evolutionary continuity, modularity and phenomenality.Several novel Darwinian advantages arising from the approach are described. altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Brown given: Kenneth H. honourific: Mr lineage: '' date: 2005-12 date_type: published datestamp: 2005-12-23 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/45/21 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 4521 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/4521/1/MDNICogPrintsText.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: unpub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'Database, index, memory, modular, mental, consciousness, neural correlates of consciousness, cognitive neuroscience, semantic, phenomenal, evolutionary psychology, quantum physics.' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:56:09 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: The approach taken by this article has been further expanded elsewhere. Certain aspects have been further justified and extended. number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: |+2 Block, Ned, (1994), On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness Chalmers, David (1996), The Conscious Mind, p.xii-xiii Penrose, Roger (1995), ‘Shadows of the Mind’, p. 39 “we are trying to grasp [consciousness] in some way – a genuine scientifically describable phenomenon, playing an active … role in the physical world”. The thrust of Penrose’s work on consciousness is in this direction. In The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (1997) p.102 “Maybe future science will describe the nature of consciousness but present day science does not”. Penrose, Roger (1995), ‘Shadows of the Mind’, pp. 12-17. The purely computational approach corresponds to Penrose’s viewpoint A. Libet, Bernard (2004), Mind Time, pp. 157-84 Searle, John R. (1980a), The Rediscovery of the Mind (1994), p. 45 Penrose, Roger (1995), ‘Shadows of the Mind’, pp. 14-15 Blackburn Simon(1996), Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy pp. 233, 287 Eddington, Arthur, as quoted in Quantum Questions, p. 195, edited by Ken Wilbur(2001) Searle, John R. (1994), The Rediscovery of the Mind, pp. 12-13 Montero, Barbara (2001), Post-Physicalism, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (2), pp. 61-79. Blackburn, Simon (1994), The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 287 Gauna, Max (2000), ‘Montaigne and the Ethics of Compassion’, pp. 26-27 in English. The original French is: “Mais comme une impression spirituelle face une telle faucée dans un massif et solide, et la nature de la liaison et cousture de ces admirable resorts, jamais l’homme ne l’a sçue”. (II xii 520, A) Searle, John R. (1992), The Rediscovery of the Mind, p. 45. “The Chinese Room” demonstrates the semantic, phenomenal aspects present in a mind performing a data comparison action involving consciousness. Penrose, Roger, (1989), The Emperor’s New Mind, pp. 23 – 29. Penrose comes down on the side of Searle in commenting on “The Chinese Room” Searle John R, (1992), The Rediscovery of the Mind, pp. 206-8 Libet, Benjamin (2004), Mind Time (Harvard University Press) pp. 70-73 Block, Ned (1994), On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness Koch Cristof (2004), The Quest for Consciousness, p.13 James, William (1879; 1890), quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:- Epiphenomenalism … offered an intriguing variant of the argument from natural selection. If pleasures and pains have no effects, there would seem to be no reason why we might not abhor the feelings that are caused by activities essential to life, or enjoy the feelings produced by what is detrimental. Thus, if epiphenomenalism (or, in James' own language, automaton-theory) were true, the felicitous alignment that generally holds between affective valuation of our feelings and the utility of the activities that generally produce them would require a special explanation. Yet on epiphenomenalist assumptions, this alignment could not receive a genuine explanation. The felicitous alignment could not be selected for, because if affective valuation had no behavioral effects, misalignment of affective valuation with utility of the causes of the evaluated feelings could not have any behavioral effects either. Epiphenomenalists would simply have to accept a brute and unscientific view of pre-established harmony of affective valuation of feelings and the utility of their causes. Penrose, Roger (1997), The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, p. 59 Mills, Robert (1994), Space, Time and Quanta. See Chapter 15 on “The Observer”, pp. 359-375 Chiu J., De Salle R., Lam H.-M., Maisel L., Coruzzi G. (1999). Molecular evolution of glutamate receptors: A primitive signaling mechanism that existed before plants and animals diverged. Mol. Biol. Evolution 16 : 826-838 Allman, John (1999), Evolving Brains, Scientific American Library, 1040-3213; no. 68, p. 20-21, 68-71 Gazzaniga, Michael, Richard B. Every, George R. Mangun (2002), Cognitive Neuroscience (New York and London: W.W. Norton), p 578 ‘The human brain is a unique amalgamation of evolutionary old areas and new areas that have been modified in predictable ways through expansion or reduction of existing parts, formation of new connections and adaptations …’ , Cognitive Neuroscience p. 578 Allman, John (1999), Evolving Brains, Scientific American Library, 1040-3213; no. 68, p. 23 Gould, S. J ., Eldredge, N. (1977), Punctuated Equilibria, Paleobiology, 3: pp. 115-51. This theory doesn’t mean less steps per useful mutation; it only indicates that most of the steps are taken within short bursts, so continuity is conserved. Churchland, Patricia (2002), Brain-wise, pp. 224-229 is the most easily accessible reference. Naccache, Lionel et al (2005), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 102, p. 7713 Cited in the New Scientist of 21 May 2005, p.20 Libet, Bernard (2004), Mind Time, pp. 72-73 Gazzaniga, Michael, Richard B. Every, George R. Mangun (2002), Cognitive Neuroscience, p. 543 McCrone, John (2004) Science and Consciousness Review, who cites:- Star EN, Kwiatkowski DJ and Murthy VN. Rapid turnover of actin in dendritic spines and its regulation by activity, Nature Neuroscience 5:239-246 (2002) Ehlers MD.(2003), Activity-dependent regulation of postsynaptic composition and signaling by the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Nature Neuroscience 6:231-242 Shimizu E, Tang YP, Rampon C and Tsien JZ. NMDA (2000) receptor dependent synaptic reinforcement as a crucial process for memory consolidation. Science 290:1170-1174 Lisman JE and Fallon JR. What maintains memories? Science 283:339-340 (1999) Wittenberg GM, Sullivan MR and Tsien JZ (2002),. Synaptic Reentry Reinforcement Based Network Model for Long-Term Memory Consolidation Hippocampus 12:637-647 Becchio C., Bertone, C, (2005), Beyond Cartesian Subjectivism, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12 (7), pp. 20-24.. Koch Cristof (2004), The Quest for Consciousness, p. 34. www.cs.rochester.edu/users/grads/jshaw/neural/node4.html, Views from Artificial Intelligence Searle, John (1997), The Mystery of Consciousness, p.45, containing his famous Chinese Room thought experiment, (1980a) Two studies came to the conclusion that the “decision tree (symbolic) approach yields more accurate results than the neural network (subsymbolic) method.” They were by:- - Saedler and G. Theißen (www.inb.mu-luebeck.de/publications/ publikationen-d.html) - Werner Dubitzky, Martin Granzow, Daniel Berrar (www.infj.ulst.ac.uk/~cbbg23/papers/camda00_02.pdf) Pinker Stephen, (2002), The Blank Slate, (Viking Adult) Scott, Alwyn (1995), Stairway to the Mind, p.16 Penzias and Wilson (1978), while working as electrical engineers for Bell Labs. Koch, Christof (2004), for example “The Quest for Consciousness”, p. 3 Hugh Everett III (1957). The phrase "Many-Worlds" was first used by Bryce DeWitt relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 17:00:29 subjects: - bio-phys - comp-neuro-sci - evol-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: |- This article was submitted to "Cognitive Science". The editor was encouraging but felt that it was too broad in comparison with the normal articles in his journal. I agree with him. However, the approach needs all the supporting arguments from the different disciplines to hang together (this is why there are rather a lot of keywords). I've had some success with my colleagues only after making them aware of the fit with the different disciplines, some unknown to them (only through serendipity are they known to myself). I append the editor's comments for your information. His other problem was that I don't give much in the way of figures, to which I reply that I do give a lot of mainstream facts with sources and that phenomenality can't be reproduced on Turing machines (see references to Roger Penrose and John Searle) and so can't yet be treated numerically. I intend to submit the article to a more suitable publication in the near future. Should you have a suggestion I would be grateful to know of it. "Cognitive Science" - Editor's Comments:- December 10, 2005 Dear Mr. Brown, I am writing to you in regard to the manuscript "The Mind's Database" that you submitted to Cognitive Science. I have read through most of the manuscript now, and am still concerned about its appropriateness for our journal. You do an excellent job of integrating many strands of cognitive science. In particular, your combination of a computational-level account of what minds do (the "relational database" aspect) with neurophysiological considerations is unique, attractive, and ambitious. However, my impression is that the arguments are still too broad and multiply focused for our readership. For better or worse, the kind of computational model typically reported in Cognitive Science presents an explicit, working model that is compared to relatively large data sets taken from experiments. Our readers expect models to be tested, preferably quantitatively, against detailed data that is diagnostic for comparing alternative models/theories. This is not to say that your approach is wrong-headed. I am very much in favor of your broader, integrative approach. I am just not yet convinced that Cognitive Science is the appropriate outlet for this. I do realize that I am making a potentially controversial judgment call in not sending out your manuscript for external review, particularly because your work deals so centrally with many core issues in cognitive science: representation, computational neuroscience, consciousness, indexing, and modularity. However in light of mitigating circumstances, I am not too concerned about adversely affecting your work's timely reception. If you disagree with my opinion that Cognitive Science is not the most appropriate for this work, you can simply send your manuscript back to the journal in three weeks. My editorial tour of duty ends December 31 2005, and you may resubmit your manuscript any time in 2006, when it will be handled by the incoming executive editor, Arthur Markman. He may very well have a different vision for the journal, or simply view your paper's appropriateness for Cognitive Science differently than I do. So, if you do not mind waiting three weeks, I would recommend resubmitting the manuscript to Cognitive Science (you do not have to tell the new editor of my previous editorial action - I'll leave that up to you), but also asking him to make an initial assessment as to the manuscript's appropriateness. In any case, thank you for submitting this fine work to Cognitive Science. Sincerely, Robert Goldstone, Editor of Cognitive Science sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: The Mental Database type: preprint userid: 4666 volume: ~