Friday, 25 May 2018

An update on seeing red rectangles

Figure 1
Just presently, I have five blogs: two retired, one active and two yet to come, these last only existing so as to reserve the names. The first three blogs, of which this is the third, are large and miscellaneous collections of material, most of it nothing to do with consciousness. They are to be found at:
  1. http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/. 1,800 posts. October 2006 to October 2012
  2. http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/. 2,000 posts. October 2012 to February 2016
  3. http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/. 2,100 posts. February 2016 to May 2018 (active)
  4. http://psmv4.blogspot.co.uk/. Not yet active
  5. http://psmv5.blogspot.co.uk/. Not yet active
But about 150 of these posts are about consciousness or something close, with one in pumpkinstrokemarrow, with just about 25 of them in psmv2 and with the rest in psmv3. We posted a summary of what seemed to be the more significant posts in March 2017 at reference 1, with the title of this last post being a nod at the book noticed at reference 2 and with this present post being an update.

The blue and grey tree structure, organised by month within year, displayed on the right on the two more recent blogs is helpful. By clicking to expand and contract, one can often find what one is looking for by post title. But this does not always work, my custom being to use short titles which seem neat at the time, but which may not be very informative later. While in the oldest blog, history is displayed by month on the left, with no expansion to post, which is not so helpful.

Fortunately, the blogs include a search feature. I have not dug very deep into this feature, but it does seem, by default, to do a Boolean ‘AND’ on the search terms you type into the box near the top left of the screen, illustrated at Figure 1 above. For example, give me posts containing the words ‘fox’ and ‘trap’. I think that the rule is whole word matches only, so that ‘trap’ would not find any of ‘entrap’, ‘traps’ and ‘trapped’, but there may well be subtleties in the rule which I have missed. In any event, I often know what I am looking for, and this sort of search often works for me.

Figure 2
However, to be on the safe side, I have also marked those posts which I think important or significant with group search keys, keys which are not otherwise used and which, to coin a phrase, return the whole group and nothing but the group. The key is to be found at the end of the post as snapped above in Figure 2. In which, some of the blue and grey structure just mentioned is also visible right, with grey possibly marking those links which have been clicked on at some point.
So far there have been four of these search keys, moving from one to the next when there has been some important shift, development or change of direction.

The four groups

Sometimes referred to as the four series, thus accounting for the form of the keys used below.

Figure 3
With Figure 3 showing the top right hand corner and an Excel worksheet and including a sketch of how such an array of cells might be used to capture geometry, coloured for comprehension. although these colours would not be part of the data, at least not in the way shown here. Strong on horizontal and vertical lines, in this echoing some of the behaviour of our eyes.

Sra
  • 10 posts
  • 20161231 to 20170317
  • Early thoughts about organising what came to be called the local or layered workspace (LWS, in contrast to Baars’ well known global workspace theory, GWS). A structure made up of a small number of layers, each consisting of a large array of cells, after the fashion of an Excel worksheet, illustrated at Figure 3. Soft centred patterns. Layers, layer objects and column objects. Seeing rectangles. Seeing red.
Srb
  • 6 posts
  • 20170328 to 20170428
  • A regrouping, having bumped into various technical problems. Exploring various ways of coding data on our two-dimensional arrays of real valued cells. The use of layers to code up complex scenes – like a second world war battleship at sea. Parts of objects and their labels.
Src
  • 9 posts
  • 20170521 to 20170802
  • Layers with velocity, to accommodate a steady movement across or of the visual field. Scenes, takes and frames. Background, foreground and other objects. Using high and low valued cells to define parts and their shapes instead of soft centred patterns. Column objects, composite objects and sequence objects. Sinks and sources. Statements of rules.
Srd
  • 11 posts (including this one)
  • 20170904 to 20180524
  • The move from the Excel workbook flavoured LWS-W to the neuron flavoured LWS-N. Triangulations of surfaces and shapes. Texture nets and shape nets. Coding music.
Figure 4
With Figure 4 illustrating LWS-N and providing a bit of contrast with Figure 3. The nodes are tightly clustered groups of neurons, so not actually neurons, but a good deal closer than the cells of Figure 3.

Some key points

One part of this work is about trying to draw meaning out of the void, to update the first words of the book of Genesis, where the Lord was just starting work on an earth which was at that point just welter and waste and when there was darkness over the deep. In the sense that our LWS is self contained and by definition, it cannot draw its meaning from elsewhere, from anywhere else, it has to have meaning of itself. How do we do that, starting from an empty data store? Thinking of LWS-N in particular, how do we organise the linkages of neurons to code up for ‘War and Peace’, the elephant in the room – or even something as apparently straightforward as a patch of red?

Another part is thinking about how that content, that meaning might be projected from the active, physical matter of the brain into the metaphysical matter of our subject experience.

Yet another part is putting LWS in context. How it fits into the brain and body. Into the evolution and development of same. Into all the work on consciousness and unconsciousness done elsewhere, by others.

Listings

The eleven posts of the ‘srd’ series

http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/sensing-spheroids.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/coding-for-colour.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/geometry-and-activation-in-world-of.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/scoring-for-music.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/on-taxonomy-of-consciousness.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/a-dogs-life-reprised.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/an-introduction-to-lws-n.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/more-animal-game.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/descriptors.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/a-modest-change-to-layer-objects-of-lws.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/an-update-on-seeing-red-rectangles.html

The nine posts of the ‘src’ series

http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/recap-on-our-data-structure.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/in-praise-of-homunculus.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/on-scenes.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/on-elements.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/binding.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/rules-episode-one.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/rules-episode-two.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/rules-supplemental.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/occlusion.html

The six posts of the ‘srb’ series

http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/a-new-start.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/shapes-not-numbers.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/its-chips-life.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/more-on-modes.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-ship-of-line.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/on-parts-and-properties.html

The ten posts of the ‘sra’ series

http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/from-grids-to-objects.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/expressions-and-their-orders.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/lines.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/layers-and-columns.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/restatement-of-hypothesis.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/on-seeing-rectangles.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/soft-centred-patterns.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/activation-revisited.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/seeing-red-rectangles.html
http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/coding-for-red-and-other-stuff.html

References

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/seeing-red-rectangles.html.

Reference 2: Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness - Nicholas Humphrey - 2009.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/an-introduction-to-lws-n.html. Perhaps as good place as any to start. The seventh post in the ‘srd’ series.

Group search key: srd.

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