Prelude

We perceive the world through vision, sensation, sound, smell, taste. Mechanistically, the receptor of the cells senses the environment and transduce the signals/molecules/electrical activities to the brain. A fundamental problem of defining existence in the world is: how do we define the existence that can not beb sensed. I find a less intimidating way to formulate the question: if the signal from cell receptor takes a certain period to reach our brain, can we tell if the stimuli occurs at the present time.

Before diving into the existence and sensation, we need to see the necessity of addressing them because thinking is metabolically costy. We human know what we can feel, but we can’t really tell if there is existence outside our senses. My friend P and I are holding different opinions on how should we perceive the world. And our views might be the two mainstream attitude towards this question. P likes to think like a naturalist, thinking nature exists before human has mind. So all human intelligence leads to the discovery of nature. I prefer to think nature exists only if we can perceive it. Tat being said, human knowledge is built on several key principles, and the accumulation of knowledge produce nature. People might wonder how we can be sure about human knowledge is true. In my point of view, we don’t know. Neither can we be sure ablut the existence of the truth. Therefore, human only correct their knowledge when they found contradiction, for xample, the difference betwwen prediction from theory and our senses, which is what is happinging now in the advancement of science.

As I look deeper into the mechanism of our nervous system, I become more prone to the idea that all the findings are based on our senses. If the nature intentially hides certain facts from our brain by biologically manipulate our senses, can we find out the truth? For example, the neuronal morphology is studied by looking at the imaging pictures. I keep asking myself can we prove the existence that can not be sensed even thought all our knowledge is verified by our senses. We human make many instruments as intermediate tools of research, electrodes, microscope for example. Can instrument increase the dimension of our sense? All is there a bug in the hiding system that can be a breakthrough if we cross validate our senses.

By addressing the relationship between human perception and existence, we would know how to communicate findings more efficiency as a researcher. More importantly, we might be able to justify the way our knowledge is gained. Eventually, we could find a way to describe an existence that is hidden from our senses.

Does instrument provide additional information?

An instrument is usually considered as a device that translates signals to sensible signals.

What is the sixth sense?

Deduction, thinking, prediction, memory are higher cognitive functions that guide our behavior befond the simple reflex from stimuli. New knowledge is formed through reasoning contemplating. Note that the rules of discovery, validation, or propagation of new knowledge have been taught since we had memory and interacted with the environment. The fundamental question is that: Is the principle of knowledge accumulation restricted by our senses?

The evolution and relationship between biological structure and abstract concept

For example, does the “impetus” exist before the evolution pf any biological structure? People are doing empirical science in neuroscience. we might need a methodologies/framework to go beyond the boundary of knowledge/experience/prior knowledge of the nervous system? I think this is one of the impetus related to curiosity in human beings. Multimodal measurement might be a way to expose the conflict and therefore propel to the emergence of a new framework. Readers are encouraged to read Chapter 17 of “Principles of Neural Science, 6e”

Neuroscience is killing the free will

Human has been pound to claim that we have free will. As people discovered most of our action can be predicted by the brain imaging techniques ahead of time, we are asking the question how much free will is left? This question points to a fundamental question about the existence of mind. I am bold to assume that existence in the universe is mutually affected. Note that I do not use the word causal. “Causal” means two activities are related by a delayed. But time is just a variable that human define to facilitate the understaning of our consciousness. For example, we call the emergent images in the find memory and tend to associate memory with past (t<0). It is highly debated if memory can be affected by the future. Therefore, the expression “mutually affected” describes the connection between existence in a comprehensive way.

In neuroscience, people trying to find out possible variables that explains our behavior. These variables could be neuronal activities from sensing technology. The free will is what left to discover, in an engineering word, unexplained variance. Human free will be reduced as we try to discover factors contributing to the behavior. Intuitively, people who are pro for ‘ free will’ will argue “we can not achieve 100% prediction accuracy”. This will be classified into a statistic problem. The most important question to ask is: does free will exist? If exist, how will it affect our path to find variables explaining human behavior. Once again, I tend to believe two existence no matter in what dimension, are able to communicate. A famous example would be the Butterfly effect. Let’s extend this theory: would the history/memory change after each action we will perform in the future? In a standpoint of human computation, it’s easy to set a rule that govern the communication between existence than to manipulate every existence to construct the emergent property.

Why do we dislike behaviorism?

In 21st century, scientists are kin of studying the latent construct, i.e., the abstract definition, for example, memory. Behavorism is a school in psychology, which focus on measurable behavior instead of mind as mind can not be assessed any way. Perhaps scientists want to have an overarching mechanism that governs measures. Where is the desire from? To understand a new concept, we have to link the new concept with prior knowledge or experience. During this process, the fail to fit the new concept into one’s own belief gives rise to cognitive dissonance. It could be a biological constraint that human needs to have a congruent theory. We know that science constitute human knowledge only if it can be understood and communicated. Does a congruent theory or an universal theory matter in scientific development? Not necessarily. Science can progress with just shared and understandable information.