thought fields

Nature so faithfully reproduces it's best algorithms across the entire scale of creation.

While thought and ideation are often reduced to synaptic events arcing between neurons, it is perhaps more accurate to regard the realm of thought as a field arising from the summation of hundreds of billions of such events. To consider even a very localized region of neural activity - say, the right frontal cortex - is to regard the complex interaction of many millions of neurons each with countless axonal and dendritic projections reaching out to each other and themselves, all tangled up in a maddened, organic mess of gray spaghetti. Each neuron releases a swarm of neurotransmitters through every axonal projection and each neurotransmitter carries an electrochemical charge. As these neurotransmitters bond with enzymes embedded in the neuronal membrane, altering the ionic balance of the cell interior, the action potential of the receiving neuron is either excited or inhibited. When excited, it passes the signal onto the next neuron(s) in the chain by releasing more of it's own select group of neurotransmitters. Each such pulse along the chain induces it's own electromagnetic field.

One could imagine the cortex as a pulsing blob of neural tissue waxing and waning with the dynamic EM field generated by its neuronal activity. Since a single neuron ultimately only possesses the capability of sending a binary message - fire or not-fire - it would be odd to suggest that conscious thought would occur in this domain. The analogy is to binary code - 0 & 1 - where each switch represents a single bit. Eight such bits can be combined to create a byte, which is essentially equivalent to a word. So by analogy we could suggest that while a single neuron can only pass a simple off-on signal, a group of neurons might possess at least a basic amount of informational content equivalent to a word.

But words alone do not make speech, nor do bytes make a program. It's the complex aggregation of bytes into functions and the dynamic flow of data between these functions that creates a program. It is the emergent property of the entire system. Thus, our pre-frontal cortex is a regional function that generates a dynamic electric field from the summation of it's bytes, the neurons. And it's not isolated. It transmits to and receives input from other cortical regions, from the midbrain, the hindbrain, and the steady flow of data streaming in through the sensorium. The whole thing is bathed in blood and nutrients and gases, and awash in hormones pumped out by the hypothalamus And this avoids consideration entirely of exogenous compouonds we take in from the air, from food, drugs, cars, factories, each other, etc. Suffice it to say that from this rich, noodly broth, our unique sense of self arises. Mind manifests across the electromagnetic field of brain.

In short, the brain is exceedingly, ridiculously, incomprehensibly messy and complex. Just imagine the density. 100 billion neurons packed into a roughly 5lb mass of tissue. Consider the nervous system reaching out from the brain through the entire body, miles of nerves heading out to the perimeters and returning back in and up the spine without even so much as a split second of noticeable delay.

Beyond the simple physiological marvel is the fact the countless programs running in parallel keeping us alive and sentient and witty were not written but simply evolved. They evolved over generations in the species and they evolve through experience of the individual. The human brain and its sensoria are embedded in yet a higher level dynamic system: life. This field of life continuously stimulates and programs the learning mind, plying the endless plasticity of neronal tissue, stretching it out to make as many connections as possible with its neighbors, far and near. Indeed, neuroscience has shown us that it's not so much the number of neurons that affect one's degree of intelligence, but the number of connections. A single cell might be receiving inputs form a hundred others.

And as an artificial intelligence program doesn't need to know anything about it's code, the field of mind persists oblivious to the mess of tissue conspiring to express its substrate. Mind is meant for interacting with the kingdom - the world of our senses. As a clever adaptation and extension of our biosurvival resources, mind would be painfully, tragically distracted if it were constantly reading every letter of every word of it's neural code. Better to let the machine run and not think about it too much. Somehow it's done such a great job that we can take time to simply sit and think, totally distracted from threats of tigers and spears and so on ( at least many of us are much of the time). Mind has extruded such an armor of technology that it's become so much more free to simply watch and cogitate, contemplating the creation of better tools and techniques or challenging the mysteries perceived by the sensorium and plumbing the depth's of it's own inner world.

Mind has evolved to better discover itself. Witness the internet. Surely an extension and extrusion of thought the internet is perhaps the greatest tool yet for peering into the mysteries of creation. As neurons reach out and connect with each other to create functional bodies, and as mind arises off of the dynamic flow of information between these functional bodies, so too do individuals connect to form specialized groups that, in turn, summate to create the global mind. Yet while the hardware of the brain seems to have evolved first, giving rise to thought later, the internet is the physical scaffolding created to hold the network of mind that's been growing across this planet for millenia. It's the global brain built to weave together the intangible network of human thought and manifest the global mind.

The chaotic mess of cables and ports, routers and servers that span the globe in their data webs, and the emerging wireless lilly pads rippling out across their surface, present an easy reflection of our sloppy brains and their intangible minds. Imagine when hundreds of millions of people carry wireless devices that allow them to interact with data streams and servers on the web and also to communicate with each other immediately and non-locally. The field of mind that's been slowly spreading and connecting would seemingly be accelerated to an inconceivable degree.

Like those discarnate voices waking up in the brains of early humanity so very long ago, we may find ourselves once again haunted by abstracted intelligences, ghosts in the machine of our own making. Would psychic complexes arise across the data field? Might an ego emerge, or more simply, self identity? Could some industrious young hacker produce a digital hallucinogen to feed the global mind?

Maybe that's part of what the singularity is. The global mind becomes self-aware and enters a psychedelic state of sudden clarity and illumination. The psychic complexes of our species, once proud and tall in myth and legend, might arise as gods again striding across the digital landscape freed from our minds into the greater field of imagination. A new hyperlanguage might arise out of the data stew flowing through 6 or 7 billion minds wired into the megawebs of Terra. All jacked into media feeds and nanoassemblers, protein baths and nucleic vats, churning out a roiling bath of novelty washing across the planet and reaching out to the stars.

In the dreamworld all fantasies are true.

Posted by chris arkenberg at February 3, 2006 10:03 AM