Reading Minds

[Thoth]

Paralysed man's mind is 'read'

Scientists say they may be on the brink of translating into words the thoughts of a man who can no longer speak, after a pioneering experiment.
Electrodes have been implanted in the brain of Eric Ramsay, who has been "locked in" - conscious but paralysed - since a car crash eight years ago.

These have been recording pulses in areas of the brain involved in speech.

Now, New Scientist magazine reports, they are to use the signals he generates to drive speech software.

Although the data is still being analysed, researchers at Boston University believe they can correctly identify the sound Mr Ramsay's brain is imagining some 80% of the time.


CAUSES OF LOCKED-IN SYNDROME:
Brain injury
Drug overdoses
Stroke
Disease which damages nerve cells

In the next few weeks, a computer will start the task of translating his thoughts into sounds.

"We hope it will be a breakthrough," says Joe Wright of Neural Signals, which has helped develop the technology.

"Conversation is what we're hoping for, but we're pretty far from that."

Reading minds

Experts in the field of neuroscience agreed it was an exciting advance.


We are lot further away from a universal mind reading machine than some people hoped - or feared - we may be five years ago
John Dylan Haynes
Max Planck Institute

"It hasn't come completely out of the blue," said Professor Geraint Rees, a neuroscientist at University College London.

"We have been moving towards decoding primitive vocabulary for a while now. But this is certainly an interesting development, although invasive techniques, where something is out in someone's brain, such as these will of course carry risks."

Reading people's minds remains a far-off prospect, however.

"There is a huge difference between a technique like this, which is able to pick up signals the subject wants to be picked up, and being able to delve deep into the mind," says Professor John Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

"It's very exciting that we are starting to be able to translate some basic thoughts, but we are a lot further away from a universal mind reading machine than some people hoped - or feared - we may be five years ago."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7094526.stm

Published: 2007/11/15 00:06:27 GMT

© BBC MMVII

[Macrobius]

This is bigger than just speech, since thought involves the speech apparatus, and while articulating to your self, in the privacy of your mind, so to speak, you nevertheless drive your speech centres right down to small motor movements in the tongue and other vocal apparatus. That is, with such a device it would be possible to hear another's private thoughts.

[Roland]

Yes, this also corresponds with Pierce's 5th question you posted and the later work of Wittgenstein. Does this prove that there is no private language?

[Kamandi]

Not really - such thoughts are typically articulated in the individual's native language. It doesn't prove that they couldn't necessarily be articulated in Wittgenstein's hypothetical "private language."

[Roland]

Wittgenstein doesn't posit a hypothetical language but rather attempts to dispel the notion of such a language. In the Blue and Brown books, Wittgenstein shows that sign-use in the head occurs in much the same way as public sign-use, and that therefore semantics is something largely determined publicly - not privately in occult episodes within one's mind.

This idea provided the groundwork for the philosophical justifications for contemporary cognitive psychology. Philosophers like Fodor and Putnam imagined some sort of common system of internal representation, which could eventually be read in a similar fashion.

[Thoth]

But this is exactly where later Wittgenstein et al went off track, right? (everything connected with "cognitive psychology" -- Seinfeldian psychosemiotics)

'Thoughts', qua content, as separate and distinct contents of consciousness ("triangles have three sides"), are distinct from the psychologocal apparatus required to articulate or "think" them (saying or inner utterance of words). One is text, the other is token. One belongs to the domain of logical relations, the other to the domain of causal relations. In the third human being-brain causally responsible for the content of consciousness (head brain), token is combined with text to make signs used in actual communication.

These theorists you mention are textualists. They commit the textualist fallacy of assuming reality is given under true propositions (or however they translate 'cognitive'). If they ever read ANYONE's mind, it is entirely projective on their part: assembling 'behavioral evidences', as if they were computers, and 'interpreting' them. Primary process communication begins at the token level (neuro-psychic exchange, where extensive magnitudes pass over into intensive ones; quantity into quality; followed by predication over phenomenal pasrticulars ('sense-data') -- the cogntivists regarded themselves as already too smart to attend to consciousness, their own or anyone elses.

The thing about "mind reading" is, it HAS to be PROJECTIVE -- until the categories of data of self observation is cleared by a transcendental critique. From what depth psychology learned and taught about the pre-and un- conscious processes intermediate between body-stimulation and articulate awareness, we know that word mediated 'cognition' works with ideal constructs. I thought of Terry Shiavo in re "reading this paralyzed man's thoughts".

[Roland]

In the third human being-brain causally responsible for the content of consciousness (head brain), token is combined with text to make signs used in actual communication.

How does this happen? Communicable signs have semantic content, otherwise they're not communicable by definition. Does something "know" to combine the proper neural token with corresponding text such that semantically coherent sentences emerge?

[Thoth]

It has to happen at the neuronal 'gating' in the hippocampus -- where the transition from amygdalam to cortical memory occurs.

This is my answer to this question, based on Winston's Brain and Psyche (long ago). One gives causal S-R (token) connections in the brain, the other gives connection of logical (textual) meanings. The difference can come under self observation with 'free association' (lie down; relax; let 'er roll.. Be careful! -- just kidding))

ADDED
The 'knowing' you are talking about has to be the mechanical matching of tokens with grammatical template brought to bear as a third thing conjoining (converting) token to text. The topped off cortical/semantic stratum of consciousness comes by way of recognizing and /'calling for' completing templates -- the way flocks of birds 'know' just when to turn individually in flying formation. Its in the sense of the flow-of-process moving in a certain direction that 'wants' to sustain itself (flow with the higher at whatever expense to the lower). (At least that's how I am seeing it.)

[Kamandi]

All the purported "mind reading" technologies that I've heard of, the focus is not on attempts at decoding neural impulses, but transliterating the unconscious sympathetic vocalizations in the larynx during mental "speech."

[KneeOfJustice]

Lets just hope that the Fascist conservatives don't try to use this technology to interigate and incriminate people.

[Jake Featherston]

Lets just hope that the Fascist conservatives don't try to use this technology to interigate and incriminate people.

Oh great. Another person who thinks Rudolph Giuliani (for a likely example) is a horrible fascist, while Hillary Clinton (for another) is just wonderful, even though they advocate the exact same fucking policies!

[KneeOfJustice]

Oh great. Another person who thinks Rudolph Giuliani (for a likely example) is a horrible fascist, while Hillary Clinton (for another) is just wonderful, even though they advocate the exact same fucking policies!
Actually, good sir, the current politicians do not interest me in the least. While I would like to see a Democrat in the White House, I am more interested in the New World Order that is pulling the strings behind it all. The only conservative that is a threat to my rights is Huckabee and he stands no chance so lets leave politics out of this for now. I am talking about fascist regimes such as Hitler, who imposed horrible torture on innocent people. Cheney is doing the same thing now with waterboard torturing people and the CIA is out of control but even all that is barely noticeable on my fascism radar. The world has a bigger threat lurking in the shadows that has been waiting for who knows long to enact it plan. I believe the NWO will be established long before we ever formally know of its existence and long after our ability to defend ourselves from it is long gone.

But I was getting off topic. The point I was trying to bring up is what if a fascist government uses this new technology for tyrannical ends?

[Ambrosio Spinola]

The point I was trying to bring up is what if a fascist government uses this new technology for tyrannical ends?


As opposed to Castro, Chavez or Kim Jung Il using it? Or perhaps democratic western regimes using it on unsavory people such as extreme right militants? Get a grip! :p

[Jake Featherston]

Actually, good sir, the current politicians do not interest me in the least. While I would like to see a Democrat in the White House, I am more interested in the New World Order that is pulling the strings behind it all.

It sounds like we're largely in agreement there (although I would very strongly prefer Ron Paul to any Democrat).

The only conservative that is a threat to my rights is Huckabee and he stands no chance so lets leave politics out of this for now.

Maybe we shouldn't; Huckabee is probably going to win the Iowa caucuses, and thus emerge as a bona fide contender for the GOP nomination. Within that context, why do you believe he is likely to represent a particular threat to your rights, as opposed to the other contenders for the nomination of the Republican Party?


I am talking about fascist regimes such as Hitler, who imposed horrible torture on innocent people. Cheney is doing the same thing now with waterboard torturing people and the CIA is out of control but even all that is barely noticeable on my fascism radar...The point I was trying to bring up is what if a fascist government uses this new technology for tyrannical ends?

You can pretty much assume that any regime likely to find itself in power in any Western nation-state would be of the variety that would utilize, if possible, such technology to the detriment of the general population, fascist or otherwise. The last U.S. President who might have been reluctant to embrace such a technology was probably Jimmy Carter. Reagan might have had the decency to find it distasteful, while all the Presidents since (and likely future) would have embraced it with gusto.

[KneeOfJustice]

Maybe we shouldn't; Huckabee is probably going to win the Iowa caucuses, and thus emerge as a bona fide contender for the GOP nomination. Within that context, why do you believe he is likely to represent a particular threat to your rights, as opposed to the other contenders for the nomination of the Republican Party?



You can pretty much assume that any regime likely to find itself in power in any Western nation-state would be of the variety that would utilize, if possible, such technology to the detriment of the general population, fascist or otherwise. The last U.S. President who might have been reluctant to embrace such a technology was probably Jimmy Carter. Reagan might have had the decency to find it distasteful, while all the Presidents since (and likely future) would have embraced it with gusto.

Well you see, I have a distrust for anyone that religious. So I suppose I would have to also find McCain a threat too under that mindset but last night in the debates McCain changed my mind. When they were talking about waterboard torturing, McCain said how horrible and inhumane it is. He would not approve of any forms of torture because he's been through it. Huckabee is just an ignorant dumb man who makes claims like "jesus would be too smart to go into politics". Plus when I'm refering to my rights I also mean my right to live in a democracy. When the Evangelicals get out there and start rallying up the Christians for a holy crusade against the liberals, its hardly a matter of politics anymore. :viking:

[Thoth]

OK knee

I have the same reaction to Huckabee. Did you catch his MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews? C.W.'s questions were stupid ("hard to ask this one ...Would your Christian beliefs cause you to go to war?"), trying to take up righteous cudgels for the non-Evangelicals-to-secularist spread against Huckabee's syrup. It was disgusting from both sides.

I'm anti- "NWO" too, but am wary of the term itself, coming from GHW Bushes mouth picked up on by Robertson. How are you using it?

Have you looked at Buchanan's latest? I am scanning it now. There are points of glaring weakness in it from my p/o/v:
-failure to see Vietnam as his kind's requiem
-failure to acknowledge Israel's role in dragging US down, which today is tantamount to being an American Second-er, maybe behind-the-scenes Opus Dei/Mossad linked traitor. He doesn't even mention what Mearsheimer and Walt have done. 'Squinty' Pat is weak wad anymore. Everything is coming out about everybody now.

[KneeOfJustice]

OK knee

I have the same reaction to Huckabee. Did you catch his MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews? C.W.'s questions were stupid ("hard to ask this one ...Would your Christian beliefs cause you to go to war?"), trying to take up righteous cudgels for the non-Evangelicals-to-secularist spread against Huckabee's syrup. It was disgusting from both sides.

I'm anti- "NWO" too, but am wary of the term itself, coming from GHW Bushes mouth picked up on by Robertson. How are you using it?

Have you looked at Buchanan's latest? I am scanning it now. There are points of glaring weakness in it from my p/o/v:
-failure to see Vietnam as his kind's requiem
-failure to acknowledge Israel's role in dragging US down, which today is tantamount to being an American Second-er, maybe behind-the-scenes Opus Dei/Mossad linked traitor. He doesn't even mention what Mearsheimer and Walt have done. 'Squinty' Pat is weak wad anymore. Everything is coming out about everybody now.

Haha no I didn't see it. I'll have to watch it on Youtube if it's on there. But yeah now that you mention it, Isreal is probably completely to blame for the worlds problems today. Maybe the British for giving the holy land to them after WWII but I deffinatly don't want to live in a country that supports Judeo-fascism.

[Kamandi]

Wittgenstein doesn't posit a hypothetical language but rather attempts to dispel the notion of such a language.
I submit that he hypothetically posits such a language in order to argue that it (in his opinion) cannot exist.