Ned Beauman at Bullets has made a post on my comments about the research I’m doing at Cambridge. I agree with what he’s saying, in that it’s really only the information that matters when you’re talking about cognition or consciousness, but many other people wouldn’t; all of this is based on the assumption that the brain is working via a set of algorithms.
I happen to think that it is, but I don’t really want to get bogged down in this because I’m in the sticky situation of knowing enough to talk about the subject, but not enough to prevent myself from saying something stupid. Clearly more Dennett is in order for me.
On the research: I’m reading through a long report that forms the underpinnings of what I’m doing, and it’s quite amazing to see how the author of the report dismisses all of the current ‘important questions’ in neuroscience, stating that they are immaterial, and proposes instead a completely new set, all based around information theory (I’m going to write a proper ‘massive’ article on this eventually). I’m beginning to think that the research I’m doing here in Cambridge could be equally if not more important than the synaesthesia research I worked on in San Diego.
mssv 