BACH@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (01/18/84)
From: Rene Bach <BACH@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> What are the evidences that the brain is a parallel processor? My own introspection seem to indicate that mine is doing time-sharing. That is I can follow only one idea at a time, but with a lot of switching between reasoning paths (often more non directed than controlled switching). Have different people different processors ? Or is the brain able to function in more than one way (parallel, serial, time-sharing) ?? Rene (bach@sumex)
RTaylor.5581i27TK%RADC-MULTICS@sri-unix.UUCP (01/30/84)
I agree that based on my own observations, my brain appears to be
working more like a time-sharing unit...complete with slow downs,
crashes, etc., due to overloading the inputs by fatigue, poor maintenance,
and numerous inputs coming too fast to be covered by the
time-sharing/switching mechanism!
Rozhess@psuvax.UUCP (02/01/84)
I find, upon introspection, that I process in parallel.
(the introspection being done at the same time as the other
processing, of course :-) A useful question to ask, it seems, is the
place of the unconscious in a consideration of parallelism. Also
relevant are what cognitive psychologists call "dispositions," which are
tendancies of the mind to recognize coherence in its environment. Why
are they relevant, you ask? Well, a good question to ponder over is
whether dispositions operate at the conscious level, the subconscious
level, or both.
In addition, since imagination is the interface between conscious and
unconscious, almost any mental activity I can imagine engaging in
involves parallel processing. (That mental activity and the imagining
happening simultaneously, you understand :-) Probably the best example
I can come up with to make my point occurs during the reading of poetry.
Whenever I think back on my thoughts, feelings, and emotions while
reading any good poetry (or listening to good music, or enjoying any art
form, for that matter), I cannot conceive of any time-sharing or serial
processing scheme that would allow for the same subjective experiences.
--
(If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him)
Nathan Hess
uucp: {allegra, burdvax, ihnp4}!psuvax!hess
Bitnet: {allegra, burdvax, ihnp4}!psuvax!NRH@PSUVM.BITNETunbent@ecsvax.UUCP (02/02/84)
Please don't confuse *brain* processes with *conscious* processes. Your introspective evidence concerns the latter. Perhaps you couldn't even *have* such a faculty of introspection unless the former *were* parallel. It's neurophysiology that's going to tell us about brain processes, not introspection. Yours for clean concepts, --Jay Rosenberg (ecsvax!unbent)
gary@rochester.UUCP (Gary Cottrell) (02/02/84)
"it's neurophysiology that's going to tell us ..." Not to mention psychology. Current work in lexical access shows that at least two meanings of a word (even of the wrong syntactic class for its place in the sentence) are accessed in parallel. Attentional processes, on the other hand, seem serial in nature, but I don't know the data here. (Lexical access is automatic, i.e., non-attentional by Posner's definition.) Look for papers by Swinney (1979) Seidenberg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, and Bienkowski, 1982. (I can't remember the journals at the moment - sorry.) gary cottrell
alex@aecom.UUCP (02/03/84)
If the brain was a serial processor, the limiting processing speed
would be the speed that neurons conduct signals. Humans, however, do
very complex processing in real time! The other possibility is that the
data structures of the brain are HIGHLY optimized.
--
Alex S. Fuss
{philabs, esquire, cucard}!aecom!alexalan@allegra.UUCP (Alan S. Driscoll) (02/03/84)
I've been reading things like: My own introspection seem to indicate that ... ... I find, upon introspection, that ... ... I find that most of what my brain does is ... ... I also feel like ... ... I agree that based on my own observations, my brain appears to be ... Is this what passes for scientific method in AI these days? Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories -- Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories
mat@hou5d.UUCP (M Terribile) (02/06/84)
See the Feb. Scientific American for an article on typists and speed. There is indeed evidence for a high degree of parellelism even in SIMILAR tasks. Mark Terribile
israel@umcp-cs.UUCP (02/10/84)
From: alan@allegra.UUCP
I've been reading things like:
My own introspection seem to indicate that ...
...
I find, upon introspection, that ...
...
Is this what passes for scientific method in AI these days?
A) I do think that self-observation is important in AI, and B) I
don't think anyone has claimed (or even believes) that what comes
across net.ai is scientific research ( :-) ).
--
Bruce Israel
University of Maryland, Computer Science
{rlgvax,seismo}!umcp-cs!israel (Usenet) israel.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay (Arpanet)