978 lines
73 KiB
HTML
978 lines
73 KiB
HTML
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<title>The gradual evolution of mammals</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS06_09" align="right" hspace="4" width="275" height="35" border="0">he
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gradual evolution of mammals. </b></font></font>Though mammals are
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named after their distinctive mammary glands, their neocortex is an
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equally distinctive trait, and as suggested in discussing the
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structure of the non-mammalian vertebrate brain, it comes from a
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reorganization of the thalamus that transfers responsibility for all
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three subfunctions of the animal behavior guidance system to the
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forebrain. Since the neocortex derives from the reptilian DVR,
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mammals could not evolve until reptiles had evolved. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
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reorganization had be tried out soon after reptiles, however, rather
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than later, for it is such a radical random variation that only the
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most primitive reptiles could continue to function. By the time
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reptiles had acquired as much power as possible for animals of their
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kind, their DVR would have become so essential to so many different
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kinds of behavior that such a radical random variation would probably
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have been fatal. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This
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obstacle is most obvious in the avian brain, where the DVR/striatum
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is divided by well-defined laminas into many separate regions serving
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special functions, such as controlling pecking and generating bird
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songs. Each part of the telencephalon generates behavior separately,
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by its influence on the midbrain and hindbrain. It is not that the
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advantages of complete circuits through the forebrain are entirely
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overlooked in birds. It does occur, but in a more limited way. As we
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have seen, birds evolved a mammal-like memory; the "visual
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Wulst" is part of a mechanism that resembles the mammalian
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<i>memory</i> circuit.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym"><sup>i</sup></a></sup>
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But the avian brain lacks spatial imagination, because without a
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<i>behavior generator </i>that operates on a somatotopic
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representation of the body, it cannot acquire behavioral schemata
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from experience with the structure of space, but must rely on
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mechanisms supplied by the primary structure. Nor does avian memory
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include any sensory modalities beyond vision. It appears that the
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DVR-striatal circuit had become too complex by the time birds evolved
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for the DVR to migrate to the dorsal cortex and become a neocortex.
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Thus, birds have only a memory which is, at most, an advanced
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telesensory memory, that is, using a one-dimensional series of
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stimulus-response connections to get around in space as part of an
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instinctive routine for controlling specific conditions. But the
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visual Wulst is all birds need to record locomotor commands in
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relation to visual images and calculate directions and distances to
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unseen objects, for that enables them to find their way back to their
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nest, patrol at territory, and migrate with the seasons using visible
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landmarks. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Fossil
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evidence shows that mammals did evolve from primitive reptiles as our
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theory predicts. The last common ancestor of mammals and extant
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reptiles was 300 million years ago, about the time that reptiles
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first evolved. But there is still a problem with our explanation of
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mammalian evolution, which accidentalists often use to argue that
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mammals are not inherently superior, but merely different from,
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non-mammalian vertebrates: if mammals are more powerful, why were
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they dominated by dinosaurs for nearly 150 million years before the
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radiation of mammals? It seems that there would never have been a
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radiation of mammals, if it had not been for the impact of an
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asteroid. To answer this objection, we must consider the course of
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mammalian evolution. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Earth
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was dominated by mammal-like reptiles before dinosaurs evolved (about
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225 million years ago). Mammal-like reptiles (therapsids) had
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tucked-in elbows and legs positioned more directly under their
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bodies, so they were better able to scamper over land than reptiles
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and probably fed on them. They used the energy, not only to stand
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upright, but also to supply a warm-blooded metabolism. Although some
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therapsids were as large as wolves, they were largely eclipsed by
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two-legged predatory dinosaurs about 225 million years ago. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">But
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mammals continued to evolve during the age of dinosaurs. About 190
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million years ago, mammal-like reptiles gave rise to a branch of
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primitive mammals (prototheria) which seem to have living
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descendants, the monotremes: the duckbilled platypus and the spiny
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anteater. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To judge by
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them, primitive mammals were warm-blooded and hairy. Although the
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platypus is still an egg-laying animals, it nurses its hatchlings and
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cares for its young, which is a radical innovation, considering that
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most reptiles have so little concern for their offspring that they
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sometimes eat their hatchlings when they come across them hungry. And
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monotremes have the mammalian neocortex (although it is not
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differentiated into as many areas and lacks the corpus callosum, the
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massive bundle of fibers that links the two hemispheres of neocortex
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in true mammals). </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Later
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during the age of dinosaurs (about 135 million years ago), marsupials
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(metatheria) branched off from true mammals (eutheria), indicating
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that mammals had evolved all the basic traits that distinguish them
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from non-mammals during the reign of the dinosaurs, including live
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birth. But that did not enable mammals to replace dinosaurs in their
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energy-rich ecological niches, even though prototheria had about 55
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million years and metatheria and eutheria had 70 million years to do
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so. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
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seems, therefore, that what finally brought the age of dinosaurs to
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an end was not the inherently greater power of animals from a later
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stage of evolution, but an accident — the impact of a giant meteor
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or asteroid about 65 million years ago. The age of mammals might
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never have begun, if it depended only on the greater power of a
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higher level of part-whole complexity in the brain. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
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accidentalist argument against the inherent superiority of mammals
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can, however, be answered when evolution is explained by reproductive
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causation. Incumbency in an ecological niche has an obvious
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advantage, and to deny that evolution is merely a matter of tracking
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changes in the environment is not to deny that catastrophic
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environmental change shakes out the natural kinds best suited for the
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more energy-rich ecological niches by forcing incumbent species from
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earlier stages to compete on a more equal footing with inherently
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more powerful kinds of living objects. This is the role of
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environmental change in the case of mammalian evolution. Indeed, it
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suggests that the question should be turned around. If mammals were
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not inherently superior, then how did they manage to displace
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dinosaurs when a catastrophic change did finally occur? </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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mammalian nervous system evolved during the age of dinosaurs, and the
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more profound question is how mammals could evolve at all in
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competition with the incumbent dinosaurs. The answer seems to be that
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mammals occupied a more demanding ecological niche, where dinosaurs
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could not compete. And what made that possible was an animal system
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of representation with spatial imagination. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The first
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mammals were small, rodent-like animals that apparently foraged (for
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insects) at night, when dinosaurs could not see them or, perhaps,
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were immobilized by the cold. Sight was not their major telesensory
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modality, if we judge by the relative smallness of their eyes.
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Instead, they had long snouts and external ears, which suggests they
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had highly developed olfaction and hearing, both of which can be used
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just as well in the dark. Since all the telesensory modalities
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contribute in the same way to spatial <i>memory</i> in the subjective
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animal system of representation,<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym"><sup>ii</sup></a></sup>
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mammals could get around in the dark at least as well as reptiles do
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with light using only touch, hearing, and olfaction. Touch (including
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whiskers) would enable them to detect nearby objects, and using their
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map of the territory, they could get about well enough by keeping
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track of how far they move in each direction. Their spatial
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imagination would give them an experience of moving among salient
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objects in their territory much like the "virtual reality"
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generated by computers. Hearing (and olfaction) would tell them about
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objects at a distance, both their location and kind. And olfaction
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would enable them to recognize particular objects, confirming
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locations in their map. Thus, mammals could get around in their
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territory just as well when they could not see.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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subjective animal system of representation also explains parental
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behavior, including nursing, by which mammals are named. We have seen
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how the structural cause for various kinds of behavior, that is, the
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behavior schemata for setting up and using both <i>local images </i>and
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maps of the territory, are acquired from experience with the
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structure of space in moving around among objects in 3-D space,
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rather than from the biological behavior guidance system. Thus,
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mammalian young are simply not able to acquire energy in the
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ecological niches they inherit from their parents until they have
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matured enough to construct <i>local images </i>and link them
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together in their own maps of the relations of objects in space, that
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is, as a World Image. Just as birds must care for their offspring
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before they can fly and acquire energy for themselves, so mammals
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must care for their offspring until experience in locomotion enables
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them to develop a spatial imagination. Thus, mammillary glands (in
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monotremes) and live birth (in marsupials) are probably just an
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elaboration of the nurturing behavior required by the subjective
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animal system of representation (as indicated by the early evolution
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of the neocortex). </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">One
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hundred fifty million years is surely long enough to make the
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subjective animal system as effective as possible in representing the
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world as a world of objects in space, and so, when the impact of an
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asteroid caused clouds that changed the climate, destroying rain
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forests and rich vegetation over much of Earth, mammals were better
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able to adapt to the new conditions than dinosaurs. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">As
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telesensory animals, dinosaurs had to rely on more or less complex
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fixed action patterns that enabled them to construct maps, acquire
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energy, and attain other goals in the previous, lush environment, and
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reproductive causation was the only way to adapt those complex
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instincts to radically new conditions. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Mammals,
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however, had the advantage of spatial imagination; when a desire was
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strong, they had the capacity to predict what would happen if they
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moved their bodies in space before they acted, so that "hypotheses
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die[d] in their stead." And with a <i>behavior generator </i>that
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operates on a <i>body image </i>to send separate motor commands to
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all parts of the body, mammals were able to generate new kinds of
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behavior by putting local motor commands together in new ways and,
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thus, could learn new kinds of behavior by trial and error within a
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single lifetime. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Hence,
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mammals had a distinct advantage when the environmental catastrophe
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put them on a more equal footing with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were, of
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course, already much larger animals, and so it is not surprising that
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it took many generations before the mammalian population increase and
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the adaptation of their bodies to the new ecological niches deprived
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dinosaurs of their sources of energy. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Dinosaurs
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may have continued to exist for thousands of years after the impact
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of the asteroid, but that would not be long enough for them to evolve
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the new instincts needed to exclude mammals from their high energy
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ecological niches. Or to put it the other way, if there had been no
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mammals, dinosaurs would not have had to compete for energy, and they
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would probably have adapted to the new environment in the end. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Therefore,
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although the “radiation” of mammals was occasioned by the
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extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, the basic cause
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was not that dinosaurs were selectively wiped out by an asteroid,
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leaving mammals to inherit the earth. The asteroid merely changed all
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the sources of usable energy tapped by animals of both kinds so
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radically that mammals were able to replace dinosaurs in the new
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ecological niches because of the inherent superiority of the
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mammalian brain, with a neocortex, in which a <i>spatial imagination</i>
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made them better able to acquire usable energy. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
|
||
may still seem that the evolution of mammals is not inevitable,
|
||
because evolution would not proceed through the whole series of
|
||
possible stages if it were not for such catastrophic events shaking
|
||
things up enough to make subsequent stages of inherently more
|
||
powerful primary structures inevitable. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">However,
|
||
it is not an accident that radical changes occur in all the
|
||
ecological niches at once. It is inevitable on planets like ours. For
|
||
example, if asteroid bombardment is a result of perturbations in an
|
||
Oort cloud of debris farther out from the star than where planets can
|
||
form, as has been suggested, it would probably happen on any planet
|
||
where life evolves at all. And there are other sources of asteroids.
|
||
Thus, catastrophic events are normal on planets that orbit stars, and
|
||
the dependence of evolution on them would not make the stages any
|
||
less inevitable. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Furthermore,
|
||
to assume that the overall course of evolution depends on occasional
|
||
catastrophes is not to suppose that natural selection is caused,
|
||
after all, by externally originating changes in the environment. What
|
||
makes it seem that evolution is merely tracking externally caused
|
||
changes in the environment is thinking of evolution as if only a
|
||
single species were involved. But when evolution is explained by its
|
||
ontological causes, we see that many species evolve during each stage
|
||
of evolution, and from that broader perspective, we can see that the
|
||
main effect of catastrophic changes in the overall course of
|
||
evolution is to shake things up so that inherently more powerful
|
||
organisms are not stymied by the accumulation of accidents. It makes
|
||
evolutionary stages inevitable. Catastrophes cause mass extinction of
|
||
species, and the “adaptations” that do take place are the
|
||
increasing power by which the gradual evolution of inherently
|
||
superior organisms taps usable energy in all parts of the
|
||
environment, such as the radiation of mammals after the extinction of
|
||
the dinosaurs.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
mammals’ higher level of neurological organization does, therefore,
|
||
account for their gradual evolution, both before and after the
|
||
catastrophe with which the Age of Mammals began some 65 million years
|
||
ago. They could occupy more demanding ecological niches alongside
|
||
dinosaurs before the catastrophic change, and then, once they could
|
||
compete on a more equal footing, there was a bush-like radiations of
|
||
mammals. After overcoming the dinosaur's advantage as incumbents in
|
||
ecological niches, reproductive causation would adapt mammals to
|
||
acquire free energy from all possible sources in all possible
|
||
habitats, from jungles and forests to meadows and deserts, and from
|
||
oceans and rivers to caves and polar ice caps. In short, from our
|
||
ontological foundation, we can predict not only the revolutionary
|
||
change with which the age of mammals began, but also the radiation of
|
||
mammals. It eventually occurs on any planet where life evolves at
|
||
all.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
is, however, a puzzle. If mammals are inherently more powerful, why
|
||
didn’t they also displace the birds? Mammals can evolve the
|
||
capacity to fly. Bats are proof of that. But bird continue to occupy
|
||
almost all the other high-energy ecological niches open to flying
|
||
animals. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Are birds
|
||
incumbents in ecological niches that require a more severe
|
||
environmental catastrophe before they can be displaced? </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Or do
|
||
ecological niches that depend on flying require only a
|
||
one-dimensional visual memory for chains of stimulus-response
|
||
connections that are imbedded in instinctive routines? Since bats fly
|
||
at night and in caves, where birds usually cannot fly, are they
|
||
merely taking advantage of their subjective animal system of
|
||
representation to occupy an ecological niche that is not open to
|
||
birds? That is, does a vision-based memory without spatial
|
||
imagination make telesensory animals so powerful in ecological niches
|
||
that require locomotion by flying that animals with a multi-modal
|
||
<i>memory</i> and spatial imagination have no advantage — at least,
|
||
none great enough to compensate for the greater costs of developing a
|
||
nervous system with a higher level of part-whole complexity? </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><b>T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS06_10" align="right" hspace="5" width="275" height="35" border="0">he
|
||
unity of consciousness. </b></span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">In
|
||
</span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/LoOthP.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Properties</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">,
|
||
the nature of consciousness, that is, the existence of phenomenal
|
||
properties, was explained by showing that material substances must
|
||
have an intrinsic aspect to their essential natures.
|
||
Spatiomaterialism implies that </span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><i>elementary
|
||
</i></span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">bits
|
||
of matter have intrinsic natures. That is enough to explain simple
|
||
sensory qualia. But that is not a full explanation of the nature of
|
||
consciousness, because it does not show that intrinsic natures can
|
||
explain the </span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><i>kinds
|
||
</i></span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">of
|
||
phenomenal properties we have (as we noted when explaining the nature
|
||
of the necessary connection that solves the contemporary naturalists
|
||
problem of mind in </span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/L/LoOthP32.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Properties:
|
||
Ontological explanation of the necessary connection between physical
|
||
and phenomenal properties</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">).
|
||
</span></font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
|
||
reflection (or introspection) reveals are complex phenomenal
|
||
properties with qualia of many different kinds all appearing to the
|
||
subject at once. But spatiomaterialism entails a kind of panpsychism,
|
||
in which only the most elementary bits of matter must have intrinsic
|
||
natures. Since the intrinsic natures of elemental bits of matter are
|
||
presumably only proto-phenomenal properties, it remains to explain
|
||
what Nagel calls the “unity of consciousness.” </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">But
|
||
how can the intrinsic natures of the most elementary physical objects
|
||
account for complex phenomenal properties? It cannot come from how
|
||
simpler physical objects are related spatially as parts of more
|
||
complex physical objects, for there is no reason to believe that a
|
||
composite physical object, like the brain, will have an intrinsic
|
||
nature as a whole. The parts of the brain are outside one another in
|
||
space, and the unity of the whole brain depends on the extrinsic
|
||
natures of the parts, since what holds the parts together and enables
|
||
them to interact are the forces that they exert on one another. Thus,
|
||
it may seem that spatiomaterialism cannot explain why the subject as
|
||
a whole has phenomenal properties in which qualia are combined in
|
||
such rich appearances as those that occur in perception.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">The
|
||
nature of complex phenomenal properties.</font> There is one way that
|
||
spatiomaterialism can explain phenomenal properties (and only one
|
||
way, as far as I can see). In order to see how it works, we must take
|
||
into account both the basic nature of matter and the structure of the
|
||
mammalian brain. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>The
|
||
nature of matter.</b></i> Spatiomaterialism takes “matter” to
|
||
refer to all the forms of mass and energy whose quantities are
|
||
counted in the principle of the conservation of mass and energy,
|
||
including all the kinds of particular entities to which the basic
|
||
laws of physics refer. Quantum field theory distinguishes two
|
||
different kinds of basic particles, fermions and bosons. They have
|
||
opposite natures in a relevant way. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Fermions
|
||
and bosons have opposite relationships to other particles of the same
|
||
kind. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Particles
|
||
such as electrons, quarks, and nucleons are fermions. With “½
|
||
spin” (or a multiple of it), they exclude other objects of the same
|
||
kind from occupying the same location or quantum state (except for
|
||
one other particle with the opposite orientation of spin). </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Photons,
|
||
with a spin of 1, are the prime example of bosons (though bosons can
|
||
also have spins of 0 or 2). Bosons do not exclude one another from
|
||
occupying the same quantum states, and so there is no limit to the
|
||
number of bosons of any kind that can have the same location. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Fermions
|
||
and bosons have opposite relationships to space. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Fermions
|
||
(with mass) are most like ordinary physical objects, for they are
|
||
point-like particles (or spatial complexes of them) which are able to
|
||
be at rest is space. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Photons are
|
||
interacting electric and magnetic forces, and by contrast to
|
||
fermions, they seem to be spread out in space, for even though they
|
||
exist only as whole (quantum) units, they move through space at the
|
||
velocity of light. (A boson-like nature is also found in the electric
|
||
forces by which fermions interact with one another, but as we have
|
||
seen this form of matter is spread out as a field and the way it
|
||
coincides with space means that its quantity is included in the total
|
||
rest masses of the objects exerting the forces.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">According
|
||
to spatiomaterialism, all the simplest bits of matter mentioned by
|
||
physics must have intrinsic natures. But since bits of matter can
|
||
occupy more than just a single point in space, there is no reason to
|
||
deny that their intrinsic natures can have spatial structures. That
|
||
suggests that, since photons seem to be units spread out in space,
|
||
they could have intrinsic natures with complex spatial structures,
|
||
even if fermions do not. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The basic
|
||
nature of photons opens up, therefore, the possibility of an
|
||
explanation of complex phenomenal properties by intrinsic natures.
|
||
But we are still far from seeing how it works. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To be sure,
|
||
the photon-like nature of the electromagnetic forces binding
|
||
electrons to nuclei in atoms and atoms to one another in molecules
|
||
may also give each of them an intrinsic nature as a composite whole.
|
||
But their intrinsic natures extend only as far as the objects they
|
||
bind, and since that is not far enough to include whole brains, their
|
||
intrinsic natures can hardly account for phenomenal properties. To
|
||
see how it is possible, we must consider the structure of the brain. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>The
|
||
structure of the mammalian brain</b></i><i>.</i> The basic structure
|
||
of the mammalian forebrain involves a massive projection of neurons
|
||
from the thalamus to all parts of the neocortex (and back), and as we
|
||
have seen, the brain’s main functions are all served by its
|
||
massively parallel information processing. Different nuclei in the
|
||
thalamus project to distinct regions of neocortex, and there are
|
||
three complete circuits from the neocortex through other structures
|
||
back to the thalamus and neocortex. Information is being processed
|
||
within those circuits in two-dimensional arrays of neurons (as shown
|
||
by association fibers that connect them topographically). Many such
|
||
2-D arrays in the posterior neocortex are clearly processing sensory
|
||
information about the same objects in space at the same time, and
|
||
many other 2-D arrays in the anterior neocortex are processing both
|
||
sensory input from and motor output to the body at the same time.
|
||
Finally, a 40-75 hertz pattern of firing set up by the thalamus
|
||
apparently synchronizes activity in all areas of the neocortex,
|
||
integrating the three complete circuits.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Crick
|
||
and Koch (1990) defend the hypothesis that the 40-75 hertz
|
||
synchronization of the firing of thalamic neurons to the neocortex is
|
||
the foundation of consciousness. But they do not explain how it gives
|
||
rise to phenomenal properties. Given the spatiomaterialist
|
||
explanation of intrinsic natures, however, phenomenal properties
|
||
could be explained as the intrinsic natures of the electromagnetic
|
||
waves set up by the synchronized firing of neurons throughout the
|
||
thalamic projection to the neocortex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Electromagnetic
|
||
waves are, of course, photons, one of the basic forms of matter
|
||
contained by space, and since they are generated by the acceleration
|
||
of charged particles, they are clearly being generated by brain
|
||
activity. A neuron carries signals from one place to another by an
|
||
“action potential” which propagates along its axon as ions of one
|
||
kind at each successive point rush into the neuron and then ions of
|
||
another kind flow back out. The acceleration of such ions makes the
|
||
synchronized firing of thalamic neurons act like an antenna,
|
||
generating a complex electromagnetic wave. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since
|
||
electromagnetic waves, being composed of elemental photons, are a
|
||
form of matter whose spread-out nature could give their intrinsic
|
||
nature a spatial structure, there is an elemental bit of matter
|
||
generated by active brains whose intrinsic nature could have enough
|
||
spatial structure to account for complex phenomenal properties. It is
|
||
the electromagnetic energy being given off as a series of complex
|
||
photons by a human brain that is not asleep. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is all
|
||
the more plausible when we consider that the brain, despite making up
|
||
only a few percent of body weight, accounts for nearly 20% of the
|
||
body’s total energy consumption.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
order to be sure that the intrinsic nature of the energy being given
|
||
off by the brain accounts for phenomenal properties, more would have
|
||
to be known about the complex geometrical structure of the photons
|
||
generated by the synchronized firing of neurons in the thalamic
|
||
projection to the neocortex. Indeed, it is likely that much more
|
||
remains to be discovered about the basic nature of light than
|
||
physicists suppose. But that is beyond the scope of this argument.
|
||
But for our purposes, it is enough to see how this ontological
|
||
explanation of the nature of properties, this ontological explanation
|
||
of the truth of physics, and this ontological explanation of the
|
||
structure of the subjective animal system of representation combine
|
||
to provide an explanation of the kinds of phenomenal properties that
|
||
beings like us have. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Complex
|
||
phenomenal properties.</b></i> To make it plausible that what is
|
||
relevant is the energy being given off by the thalamic projection to
|
||
the neocortex, let me suggest how it would explain what Nagel called
|
||
the “unity of consciousness.” </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
unity of consciousness can be seen in perception, for at any moment,
|
||
many particular qualia from several sensory modalities all appear to
|
||
be located in and around one’s body in what can only be called
|
||
phenomenal space. Objects with colored surfaces appear to have
|
||
locations around the body, and they often make noises that seem to
|
||
come from their locations. Color and tactile qualia also seem to be
|
||
located in the body, and as it moves, one can feel objects at certain
|
||
locations in space outside the body. The spatial coherence of the
|
||
perceptual appearance is so complete that many philosophers who are
|
||
otherwise critical realists still assume that the space in which
|
||
sensory qualia appear to be located is the same space in which the
|
||
objects (and body) they represent actually exist, that is, the the
|
||
qualia are somehow projected outside the brain. But since spatial
|
||
aspects of perception are just as much part of phenomenal properties
|
||
as the sensory qualia themselves, we must distinguish phenomenal from
|
||
real space.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
are at least three reasons to believe that complex phenomenal
|
||
properties like these can be explained by the intrinsic natures of
|
||
the photons generated by the thalamic projection to the cortex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
as the anatomy of the brain suggests, all the information processing
|
||
of sensory input leading to motor output that is going on in the
|
||
brain is registered in the firing of neurons in the thalamic
|
||
projection to the neocortex and, thus, in the electromagnetic waves
|
||
it generates. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There are
|
||
three way in which the projection from the thalamus to the neocortex
|
||
projects back to the thalamus, completing a circuit. All areas of
|
||
neocortex have association fibers that project to the temporal lobe
|
||
near the hippocampus and thereby connect (via the fornix) with the
|
||
anterior nucleus, which projects back to the cingulate gyrus of the
|
||
neocortex. All areas of the neocortex also project to the corpus
|
||
striatum and thereby connect through the ventral anterior and ventral
|
||
lateral thalamic nuclei back to the frontal neocortex. Also located
|
||
in the temporal lobe is the amygdala which connects by way of the
|
||
dorsomedian nucleus of the thalamus back to the frontal regions of
|
||
the neocortex. The first circuit clearly mediates the formation of
|
||
long term memory; the second generates behavior in relation to
|
||
objects in space; and the third attaches desires to objects by
|
||
arousing disposition to behave toward them in certain ways. Thus, the
|
||
thalamo-cortical projection seems to mediate all the main brain
|
||
functions.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But since
|
||
the neocortex is one of the mechanisms involved in all three complete
|
||
circuits which realize the subsystems of the subjective animal
|
||
behavior guidance system in mammals, its neurons (including
|
||
association fibers between 2-D regions of neocortex) may also
|
||
contribute to the photons whose intrinsic nature constitutes
|
||
phenomenal properties.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Second,
|
||
it seems possible to explain the spatial coherence of complex
|
||
phenomenal properties, at least, in principle. It is likely that
|
||
simple sensory qualia are parts of the electromagnetic wave generated
|
||
by thalamic neurons projecting sensory input to primary sensory areas
|
||
of neocortex, for when they fire, they fire at an unusually high
|
||
rate. The appearance of green at a certain location in the visual
|
||
field, for example, is presumably due to the rapid firing of certain
|
||
neurons in the 2-D array projecting from the lateral geniculate body
|
||
of the thalamus to the visual (striate) cortex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Given how
|
||
colors vary with different combinations of the intensity of opponent
|
||
colors (red-green, blue-yellow, and black-white), the relevant wave
|
||
patterns presumably depend on the combination of neurons projecting
|
||
to each region of the visual cortex that originate at different
|
||
lamina of the lateral geniculate body and fire at different
|
||
synchronized rates.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since all
|
||
the 2-D arrays processing visual input in the neocortex are connected
|
||
to one another topographically by association fibers, the neurons in
|
||
each that represent the same parts of an object’s visual appearance
|
||
are presumably synchronized throughout the neocortex. That ties
|
||
higher-level processing to the corresponding neurons responsible for
|
||
sensory qualia and integrates <i>all </i>their effects on the
|
||
electromagnetic wave, so that its spatial structure could contain all
|
||
the information the brain uses for guiding behavior.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The same is
|
||
true of the various 2-D arrays representing the body, and given how
|
||
those body representations are connected with visual and other
|
||
sensory 2-D arrays, it is not implausible to suppose that the result
|
||
is a series of photons generated by the entire thalamo-cortical
|
||
projection whose intrinsic natures are spatially coherent. That could
|
||
be why sensory qualia seem to have locations in phenomenal space. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The fainter
|
||
qualia of all sensory modalities that occur in memory and imagination
|
||
could likewise be explained as due to centrally-generated firings of
|
||
neurons that otherwise occur only in later stages of the process of
|
||
sensory analysis. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Finally,
|
||
locating the phenomenal property in nature as the intrinsic nature of
|
||
the electromagnetic wave generated by the thalamic projection to the
|
||
neocortex would explain the phenomenon of blindsight. When the
|
||
projection from the thalamus to the visual cortex is damaged and
|
||
subjects claim not to have any visual experience, they are still able
|
||
to answer questions about the locations and shapes of objects and to
|
||
take them into account in their behavior. The lack of visual qualia
|
||
is what would be expected on this theory, since what is missing is
|
||
the relevant thalamo-cortical projection. And the residual visual
|
||
discrimination could be explained by the visual processing still
|
||
going on outside the forebrain in the superior colliculus (the
|
||
midbrain nucleus that was responsible for using visual input to guide
|
||
behavior in reptiles) and its limited projection to a region of the
|
||
thalamus (the pulvinar) that projects to secondary areas of the
|
||
visual neocortex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ontological
|
||
philosophy offers, therefore, a plausible explanation of the unity of
|
||
consciousness. The physical properties of the photons generated by
|
||
the brain suggest that they are a form of matter whose intrinsic
|
||
natures could be the complex phenomenal properties we have. What
|
||
makes it possible to solve the explanatory problem that Nagel finds
|
||
in panpsychism is the recognition that space is a substance.
|
||
Coinciding with space explains not only why bits of matter have
|
||
spatial relations to one another, but also how they can coincide with
|
||
whole regions of space. Thus, it shows how their intrinsic natures
|
||
could have complex spatial structures, and that makes it possible to
|
||
see how photons can have a spatial structure that depends on activity
|
||
throughout the brain, accounting for the complex structure of the
|
||
phenomenal properties that we are calling "consciousness."</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">An
|
||
attractive feature of this explanation is that it suggests a research
|
||
project. Complex phenomenal properties might be explained in detail
|
||
by working out precisely the geometry of the electromagnetic waves
|
||
generated by ions being accelerated in and out of cylindrical axons
|
||
of certain neurons in each of many 2-D arrays of the massive,
|
||
basically parallel projection from the thalamus to the neocortex as
|
||
they fire simultaneously 40-75 time each second. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Furthermore,
|
||
if the synchronization of firing cycles throughout the thalamus is
|
||
required for the coherence of the complex phenomenal property, it can
|
||
settle a question about the unity of consciousness in split-brain
|
||
patients. In split-brain patients, the massive corpus callosum which
|
||
connects the two hemispheres of the brain is cut (usually in order to
|
||
prevent epileptic seizures). Whether they have one or two minds, that
|
||
is, one or two unified appearances made of sensory qualia in
|
||
phenomena space, would depend on whether their thalamic nuclei are
|
||
still synchronizing the firings of neurons in both hemispheres. That
|
||
is something that could be determined empirically.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Implications.
|
||
</font>Even without carrying out those research projects, however,
|
||
this explanation of phenomenal properties, if true, has consequences
|
||
that are relevant to the positions mentioned in the discussion of
|
||
consciousness in <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Properties</font>. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Epiphenomenalism.
|
||
</b></i>Thomas Huxley likened epiphenomenal properties to the whistle
|
||
or steam giving off by a steam locomotive, because they have no
|
||
causal role in propelling the train. If we take “epiphenomenal”
|
||
to mean being an effect of physical properties without having any
|
||
effects in turn on physical properties, the spatiomaterialist
|
||
explanation implies that phenomenal properties are epiphenomenal in
|
||
two different ways. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
as we have seen, phenomenal properties are epiphenomenal relative to
|
||
physical properties as such, because they are kinds of intrinsic
|
||
natures that are caused to exist as a result of extrinsic natures of
|
||
the bits of matter involved. That is, the spatial structures of the
|
||
photons that account for the complexity of the relevant phenomenal
|
||
properties are also aspects of the extrinsic natures of those bits of
|
||
matter, because those spatial structures can in principle, be
|
||
explained by physics.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Second,
|
||
since the relevant bits of matter are the electromagnetic waves, they
|
||
are just a form of energy being dissipated by the brain as a
|
||
by-product of its activity, and so those bits of matter themselves
|
||
are epiphenomenal relative to the physical properties of the brain
|
||
itself. Those photons are effects of the brain’s activity that do
|
||
not, in turn, affect its states. (What happens in the brain is caused
|
||
by the synapses made by the neurons that fire, not by the photons
|
||
generated by their action potentials.) </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Thus,
|
||
phenomenal properties depend on two “causal” connections, the
|
||
efficient cause by which the brain activity causes electromagnetic
|
||
waves, and the ontological cause linking the extrinsic natures of the
|
||
electromagnetic waves to their intrinsic natures. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Robot
|
||
consciousness. </b></i>Given that phenomenal properties are the
|
||
intrinsic natures of the brains’ electromagnetic waves, it is not
|
||
very likely that robots whose behavior is guided by computers made of
|
||
silicon chips will be conscious in the way we are. Though they will
|
||
also generate electromagnetic waves and will, therefore, have some
|
||
intrinsic nature or other, it is unlikely that their phenomenal
|
||
properties will be anything like our own. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Their
|
||
information processing is basically serial, rather than parallel, and
|
||
since silicon chips have, in any case, a completely different
|
||
geometry from brains, the rising and falling electric and magnetic
|
||
forces in the “wires” of silicon chips will generate photons with
|
||
a completely different geometry in space and time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Nor can
|
||
such robots experience sensory qualia as located in space, if what is
|
||
responsible for the unity of consciousness is, as suggested above,
|
||
the synchronized processing of representations of the same objects in
|
||
different, interconnected 2-D arrays of neurons projecting to the
|
||
neocortex. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">Ontological
|
||
philosophy also implies, therefore, that </span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Chalmers"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Chalmers</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
(1996, Chapter 7) was mistaken to believe that phenomenal properties
|
||
are caused by functional, rather than by physical properties. His
|
||
argument was the implausibility of qualia slowly “fading” out as
|
||
parts of the brain were replaced by functionally equivalent silicon
|
||
circuits, and the implausibility of color qualia “dancing” from
|
||
one kind to another (or to none at all) as the processing of part of
|
||
the visual array was switched between brain mechanisms and silicon
|
||
chips. Implausible though it may seem to Chalmers, that is what must
|
||
happen, if phenomenal properties are the intrinsic natures of
|
||
electromagnetic waves generated by the processing. But at this point,
|
||
his fading qualia and dancing qualia arguments show, not the
|
||
implausibility of phenomenal properties being caused by physical
|
||
properties, but rather the perils of giving up the empirical method
|
||
(as in empirical ontology) in favor of philosophical arguments from
|
||
plausibility (where functions and other properties seem more basic
|
||
than substances). </span></font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Knowledge
|
||
of phenomenal properties. </b></i>Ontological philosophy makes
|
||
consciousness a part of natural science without abandoning the
|
||
empirical method in favor of the traditional epistemological approach
|
||
to philosophy. But since it implies that phenomenal properties are
|
||
epiphenomenal, they have no effects on what happens in the natural
|
||
world, and thus it may seem that phenomenal properties cannot be
|
||
known even privately. How can subjects know about their phenomenal
|
||
properties, if those properties are never causes of what they say
|
||
about them? </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">That
|
||
phenomenological properties do cause beliefs about them is apparently
|
||
what Descartes assumed in arguing, "I think, therefore I am."
|
||
In order for thinking to show the subject that he exists, the subject
|
||
must know that he is thinking when he is thinking, and Descartes
|
||
seems to take it for granted that the subject knows that he is
|
||
thinking because the appearance of the ideas in the mind makes the
|
||
subject aware of what is happening in his mind. (That is the
|
||
"illusion involved in reflection" that Descartes still does
|
||
not see through after he sees through the "illusion involved in
|
||
perception" and becomes a critical realist.)</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Nor would
|
||
this problem arise if phenomenal properties played the kind of causal
|
||
role mediating between sensory input and behavioral output that
|
||
Searle (1992, 1995, and 1997) ascribes to pain, that is, being an
|
||
effect of, say, a pinch, which in turn causes one to say “Ouch!”
|
||
In that case, phenomenal properties would be effects of sensory
|
||
input, and they would be the causes of reports about them. But causal
|
||
emergentism of that sort is incompatible with spatiomaterialism. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Given
|
||
this explanation of the mammalian brain and consciousness, however,
|
||
it is not necessary for phenomenal properties to be efficient causes
|
||
of behavior in order for them to be private objects of knowledge. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
to see how we can <i>know that we have phenomenal properties</i>, we
|
||
need only recognize that such knowledge comes from (and arose
|
||
historically in modern philosophy from) accepting critical realism,
|
||
that is, distinguishing phenomenal properties from physical
|
||
properties. It is like something to be a human being, as we have
|
||
seen, because the functioning brain involves a bit of matter whose
|
||
intrinsic nature registers the activity of the entire brain. We
|
||
assume, as naive realists, that the world as it appears to us in
|
||
perception is the real world, with qualia located in objects that are
|
||
assumed to exist independently of us in space. But when we recognize
|
||
that perception is a physical process in which the objects stimulate
|
||
our sensory organs, thereby giving rise to brain states representing
|
||
them, we can come to see that our sensory qualia are parts of us, as
|
||
the subject who is perceiving, not parts of the independently
|
||
existing objects. And if we follow this argument to its conclusion,
|
||
we also come to recognize that the space in which sensory qualia seem
|
||
to be located is merely phenomenal and, thus, distinct from the space
|
||
in which the physical objects actually exist. Critical realism about
|
||
perception makes it clear that objects with physical properties in
|
||
real space exist somehow “beyond” the complex phenomenal
|
||
properties we have, so that we discover that we have phenomenal
|
||
properties by recognizing that physical properties do not appear to
|
||
us at all, except indirectly through phenomenal properties. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">These
|
||
spatial configurations of sensory qualia are not the only complex
|
||
phenomenal properties we have, but they are an important variety, and
|
||
the failure to give up naive realism <i>about space </i>in favor of
|
||
critical realism <i>about space </i>is the source of much confusion
|
||
about the nature of consciousness. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Thus,
|
||
second, there is no problem explaining how it is possible for
|
||
subjects to <i>pick out particular qualia </i>included in the
|
||
structures of their phenomenal properties. The phenomenal properties
|
||
involved in perception are configurations of sensory qualia in
|
||
phenomenal space, and particular qualia can be picked out in the same
|
||
way as the objects in real space that they represent, for once we
|
||
recognize the difference between physical and phenomenal properties,
|
||
it is one and the same brain capacity being understood in two
|
||
different ways. We can take our reference to the green apple on the
|
||
table to be a reference either to the physical object in real space
|
||
or to a part of the appearance that the world has to us as we
|
||
perceive the world.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Finally,
|
||
there is no problem explaining how we <i>know about the kinds of
|
||
particular sensory qualia that are picked out </i>that way, for once
|
||
again, it is just to make the same discrimination that we make in
|
||
describing the properties of physical objects in real space together
|
||
with the recognition that there is a difference between physical and
|
||
phenomenal properties. When I call the cup green, I am ordinarily
|
||
understood as referring to a physical property of the cup (its
|
||
disposition to cause a certain kind of experience in us). But when I
|
||
distinguish the phenomenal property from the physical property, I can
|
||
also identify the kind of qualia representing the physical property.
|
||
And there is a kind of incorrigibility to the belief about the kind
|
||
of particular sensory qualia that does not hold for the physical
|
||
property, for what is meant by the kind of sensory qualia is how it
|
||
appears to the subject and that is something that is known
|
||
ostensively in the phenomenal property. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ontological
|
||
philosophy, therefore, makes a natural science of consciousness
|
||
possible. Though we know about our own phenomenal properties in a
|
||
unique and private way, we can know that others have them. If other
|
||
brains generate the same kinds of electromagnetic waves as ours, we
|
||
can know from what experience is like for us, what it is like for
|
||
them. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">But
|
||
traditional epistemological philosophy will not survive this change,
|
||
for it makes even the starting point of modern philosophers, like
|
||
Descartes, part of the essential nature of a world that is explained
|
||
ontologically. That is, what will make a natural science of
|
||
consciousness possible is that there will no longer be any difference
|
||
between empirical science and philosophy when philosophy takes
|
||
empirical ontology as its foundation (and science recognizes ontology
|
||
as a more basic branch than physics). But this is to get ahead of
|
||
ourselves, for that is how ontological philosophy completes the tenth
|
||
stage of evolution. </font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="right" style="text-indent: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.42cm; line-height: 100%">
|
||
<br><br>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote1">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="#sdendnote1anc">i</a>
|
||
In the avian brain, the dorsal cortex contains a detailed visual
|
||
image called the "visual Wulst" which controls locomotion
|
||
by its own, direct motor output. It is part of a memory map that
|
||
uses visual input relayed by the thalamus directly from the retina
|
||
to the dorsal cortex. And as part of the dorsal cortex, the Wulst
|
||
connects through the medial cortex/hippocampus and fornix back to
|
||
the mammillary body in the hypothalamus. But instead of merely
|
||
influencing the midbrain and motor output, as in other non-mammals,
|
||
the mammillary body relays a signal, by way of the thalamus, back to
|
||
the Wulst in the telencephalon. This is a complete circuit,
|
||
resembling the mammalian memory mechanism, and it is apparently used
|
||
to construct a memory map for guiding locomotion. Assuming that it
|
||
works the same way as in mammals, the Wulst can use a
|
||
one-dimensional chain of stimulus-response connections as a map to
|
||
guide locomotion without involving the rest of the circuit
|
||
(hippocampus, fornix and mammillary body). But vision is the only
|
||
sensory modality involved, and judging by the neurological
|
||
mechanisms, it cannot use its memory map as a locomotor imagination.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote2">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="#sdendnote2anc">ii</a><span lang="en-US">
|
||
Although olfaction contributes to mammalian memory in the same way,
|
||
this telesensory input is still analyzed in the olfactory bulb,
|
||
rather than the neocortex, and thus, images of odors cannot be
|
||
called up in imagination in the same way as visual and auditory
|
||
images. </span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html> |