On 27 Oct 1995 00:41:10 GMT,
Bert Gold <bgold at itsa.ucsf.edu > wrote:
>For those deeply interested and committed to getting a higher plane
>of knowlege about brain function, especially those interested in vision
>modeling, I would highly reccommend Crick's book: Astonishing
>Hypothesis. Although I did not find the hypothesis, that consciousness
>emanates from neuronal activity, that astonishing, I did find Crick's
>summary of brain science cogent and illuminating: This is the only
>place I know of where a serious effort to unify the disparate studies
>of Artificial Intelligence simulating neural networks and current
>understandings of brain anatomy have been integrated into a meaningful
>whole.
>>My two quarrels with the book are that Crick did not give the centrality
>of linguistic development adequate focus and that he makes too much
>of the 'old fashioned' concepts of God as an omniscient, omnipresent
>and omnipotent diety. Instead, Crick might have chosen to quarrel with the
>assertion that the real God of Einstein and Spinoza is the neuron: I don't
>think this is true, but Crick apparently does; yet, I'm certain that our
>disagreement on this minor point did not keep me from getting a great
>deal out of Astonishing Hypothesis.
>
Bert:
At a surface level Crick's book is a good popular introduction to
some of the recent research and thinking into brain function. But
it is very much Crick's own opinion as to how certain very deep
philosophical and metaphysical questions should be resolved. Many
of these questions have been well known since the time of the
Ancient Greeks, but just in the last few years there has been a
tremendous upswing of interest in the scientific and philosophical
questions surrounding brain function. These are being debated
with much fervor right now (and ad nauseum) in many places on the
Internet.
Crick's book was poorly reviewed (at least in Science), and its
failure to acknowledge much of the recent research or other scientists
work makes one wonder if there was some sort of hidden agenda - like
those children's stories which are quite entertaining, but contain a
hidden message which only adults can understand <g>. Who is he trying
to convince?
At a technical level, Crick has come out strongly AGAINST artificial
neural networks, as having little or no relevance to understanding or
emulating brain function. However, there are quite a few other
scientists who have come up with at least partial models of what
groups of more than a single neuron are trying to do, which is
presumably some sort of information processing and storage.
Crick's emphasis on the visual aspects of consciousness reflects
both his own reserach interests, and the fact that vision is now
the most researched and the best understood of brain functions
(which isn't saying all that much at this stage of the game.)
Off the top of my head, I would say that what Crick has tried to do
for the second time in his life is to show that many of the most
profound questions about life are reduceable to and understandable as
fairly straightforward biochemistry. In a way he has proclaimed
himself the winner without having crossed the finishing line, or even
run the race<g>.
Alan J. Robinson
Golden Hind International - Digital Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence
robin073 at maroon.tc.umn.edu
