In Mind

I was recently asked, "[How is it] that physical states give rise to mental states?" in reference to an earlier article.

This is addressed to my position that the physical and mental states of the brain are identical. This is a simplification and probably misapplies the word 'identical'. It would be more accurate to say that the whole of what makes up what we call a mental state is encoded by some of the characteristics of the physical state of our brain. However, because this relation of mental state to brain state crosses knowledge domain boundaries it can be difficult or impossible to compare.

I say 'some of the characteristics' here because I think that not all of the functions of the brain are relevant to mental processes. For example, it would be a stretch to consider the hormonal regulation functions of the pituitary from a mental point of view. Other functions, such as the motor cortex or sense of touch, more clearly cross the boundaries between physical and mental.

I use 'brain' here loosely; in actual fact it would be difficult to draw a hard dividing line between what is brain and what is body and whether, e.g., touch receptors and motor neurons are part of 'the brain' and yet are not contained within the skull, as is the common definition of the brain. This detail is not important to understanding the general idea at hand, but is in itself an interesting topic.

While I believe that the most illuminating analogy has to do with the details of the internal workings of the modern digital computer, but because it is such a rich system it can add confusion. Instead I'll use a simpler model, a chalkboard.

We shall imagine a chalkboard upon which is written in chalk the words "Ron Brachman.". There are a number of ways one might think of this state of affairs. In answer to the question "What is on the chalkboard" a number of valid answers may be given: chalk, lines, letters, words, a sentence, a name.

What is the relationship between these ways of thinking about what is on the board? One of the most literal, or physical, answers is 'chalk'. In this area of interest or knowledge domain one finds upon the board only variously placed patches of chalk dust. A discussion of the various constituents of the chalk might take place in this knowledge domain (or perhaps one level lower, depending on your particular ontology).

Upon the consideration of the placement of the patches of chalk one is no longer directly interested in the particles of chalk but instead in the spatial placement of the particles. Such an examination would leave the area of interest or knowledge domain of the chalk and move on to a new knowledge domain in which a discussion of lines and the vagaries of their occurrence is the topic of interest.

Once again, after consideration of the lines of chalk upon the board, one might eventually form a classification system, or ontology, within the relevant knowledge domain into which particular distinct configurations of lines would be grouped, and again the study of these groupings enters a new knowledge level, that of letters.

So goes the consideration of different knowledge domains, through words, sentence structure and meaning (a name, in this example). In each domain the concepts within it, while related, do not depend upon the particulars of the related levels. The concept of, e.g., a given letter is not dependent upon the particulars of the classification within the 'lines' knowledge domain' which considers the intersections, lengths, curves, bounded areas and etc. that define a particular letter. Any letter might also be represented by raised bumps arranged on a surface in a spatial configuration, or by tones in a temporal configuration.

So, how is it that chalk particle states give rise to word states?

In this example, the word-state is identical to the chalk-state. The whole of what makes up what we call a word-state is encoded by some of the characteristics of the physical state of the chalk. However, because this relation of chalk-state to word-state crosses knowledge domain boundaries it can be difficult or impossible to compare. This is why the choice of 'identical' in this context is questionable.

Also, saying that 'the whole' of the state is encoded may be misleading. This again is a problem of working across knowledge domain boundaries. There exists within the domain of word-state concepts that do not exist in the domain of chalk-state. But I did not say that the word-state knowledge domain is represented within the knowledge domain of chalk-state. It is that insofar as the word-state is embodied by the chalk, it is valid to say that the word-state is encoded by or identical to the chalk-state.

Conceivably, if one cared to do so, it should be possible to transpose all relevant word knowledge domain statements into chalk knowledge domain statements, provided that the statements were translated through all of the intervening domains. A discussion about grammar in such an environment would be considerably more interminable than usual and would still contain valid word knowledge domain statements, they would just be so hopelessly verbose, containing such minutia of whether a given chalk particle ought be considered as part of a line.

A Response to "Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable"

On Culture Change I recently read an article by Peter Salonius in which he takes the position that the human population is too large and plans must be made for the entire wold to adopt a strict One Child Per Family (OCPF) policy in order to reduce the human population to a sustainable level.

While I tend to agree with much of what Mr. Salonius identifies as problems, and I do agree with his summary that we must learn to control our population, I am largely unimpressed by this article. The second article in the series provides a somewhat more detailed historical and technical view of the problem, but for what it is it is very brief and I do not think that it is a strong enough base for his solution of OCPF policies. Even if it was, I find it highly unlikely that mandating such a policy world-wide could possibly work without pervasive world-wide authoritarian control. I think that there are better solutions.

If awareness of the importance of resource conservation and sustainable development are to be spread widely and influence the population, they will need to be far more convincing and inspiring than this one.

Below I've included excerpts from the full article (linked above) along with my comments.

Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable
Written by Peter Salonius
[...]
Humanity has been in overshoot of the Earth's carrying capacity since it abandoned hunting and gathering in favor of crop cultivation (~ 8,000 BC) and it has been running up its ecological debt since then.

I tend to agree that the methods of industrial farming in wide use today are unsustainable because they cause soil depletion and are heavily dependent on fossil fuel for both the machinery and fertilizers.

However, I think it is a bit of a stretch to claim that all cultivation is unsustainable and that the idea that human population has been in overshoot conditions for 10,000 years borders on the absurd. I'm not arguing that we are not in overshoot now, but I think the author is going to have to work much harder than this if it is his intention to show that it is the case.

Besides that, a 10,000 year history of overshoot isn't going to instill a sense of urgency in many readers.

I am convinced that we begin unsustainable resource depletion (overshoot)

Perhaps my disagreement with the author turns upon this parenthetical equation of resource depletion with overshoot. It seems to me that while these two ideas are related, they are not directly interchangeable.

Overpopulation is a condition where a given population level is not sustainable (generally speaking, over a short term) because the population's natural resource consumption and population growth rates exceeds the rates of resource regeneration. The idea comes from the observation of animal populations in the wild where occasionally conditions will lead to an overshoot of sustainable levels followed by a collapse.

For animals that do not make decisions about their level of resource consumption based on knowledge of related conditions, collapse is a nearly inevitable result of overpopulation, so the tight relationship between overpopulation and resource depletion is may be somewhat justified. However, humanity has, in principle, a degree of control over it's consumption levels. This loosens the connection between the two and is an important consideration in how we respond to both.

This is regardless of whether we actually could or will make the changes necessary to relieve the condition. The ability to do so means that overshoot and unsustainable resource consumption, in reference to many human populations, are not interchangeable as they might be in animal populations.

It is probably the case that the more primitive or resource-efficient a human population is the less able it would be to determine and effect change in it's resource consumption patterns. In terms of the whole population I think it is the case that we have the ability to both determine the extent of our over-consumption and to reduce it.

All agriculture depends on the replacement of complex, species diverse, self-managing, nutrient conservative, natural grassland/prairie and forest ecosystems with monocultures or "near monocultures" of food crop plants that rely on intensive management. The simple shallow rooting habit of food crops and the requirement for bare soil cultivation produces soil erosion and plant nutrient loss far above the levels that can be replaced by microbial nitrogen fixation, accumulation of volcanic dust, and the weathering of minerals (rocks and course fragments) into active soils and plant-available soluble nutrients such as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium.

Initially human agriculture involved nomads simply leaving the seeds for useful plants where the plants would do well and then returning later when the crop was ready. It would be a stretch to call this 'farming' and some would probably prefer not to call it agriculture. Whatever label you apply, it is an early form of agriculture that is not monoculture or bare soil, nor is it dependent on intensive management or characterized by soil depletion. Likewise, permaculture styles of crop management are designed to be highly productive and to avoid soil damage or to build soil. These are proper forms of agriculture and also do not fit in the umbrella spread in the authors paragraph above.

If the authors intention is to demonstrate that the only possible ways to produce sufficient food for a human population are necessarily environmentally destructive and by this to justify that the human population must be greatly reduced in number, then I believe the author will have to provide a very much stronger argument. This one fails to address a great many possible alternatives to western industrial monoculture that would avoid voluntary decimation of the human population.

Our ultimate goal, as we attempt to achieve a sustainable human culture on Earth, must be to move toward the sustainable exploitation of complex, species-diverse, self-managing, nutrient-conservative, natural grassland/prairie and forest ecosystems at rates that do not cause the loss of physical soil mass or plant nutrient capital any faster than they can be replaced by biological and weathering processes.

No argument there. I'd like to hear more about this authors vision of such a system. It sounds as if it does not involve a large degree of mechanization. It makes me think much more of the south western American Indian cultivation of oak forests as a food crop. I think there is much merit in such a system, although I remain unconvinced that it would necessitate great reductions in population.

Obviously, as we move back toward a solar-energy dependent natural economy, we will no longer be able to run the massive ecological deficits that temporary fossil and nuclear fuel availability have allowed.

I'm sure I do not agree here, this fact is far from obvious. If we have our technological act together there is no reason we cannot harvest quantities of solar energy far in excess of what is available from fossil and nuclear fuels. If the infrastructure required for this is inexpensive enough, as some predict it will be, it will become profitable to synthesis liquid fuels from renewable sources, allowing us to continue to build upon the state of the art in transportation technology. Or not, if we choose to transition to other technologies for various reasons.

The upshot of such energy availability is that we may in the not-so-distant future have the choice to use that energy to continue on a path of intensive resource destruction in the name of continuous growth, or we may choose a more moderate path where energy is directed toward sustainable production and environmental conservation rather than growth.

Just as obviously the "solar-energy dependent economy" will not support the human numbers that have been able to exponentially increase slowly[...]

Again, this is not an obvious point. There is no technical reason why we should not be able to replace our entire energy infrastructure with solar solutions with similar or greater capacity. In fact, given the widespread disregard to efficiency displayed by the cultures that use the most of it, it seems possible that a population size similar to what we have could use significantly less energy than we do now.

If the author sees social or political conditions that absolutely and obviously preclude such a solution, he should present them so that those of us to whom the roadblocks are not as clear might learn from his wisdom.

In order to lower the human population to levels supportable by sustainable exploitation

I don't think the author has yet made a compelling argument that lower human population is necessary. Given the social and political difficulties associated with implementing wide-scale population reduction, I think he'll need a very much stronger argument for it.

The best suggestion so far to produce Rapid population Decline (RPD) is for the collective global human family to adopt a One Child Per Family (OCPF) "modus operandi/philosophy."

As an example of the difficulty faced by this sort of solution and the problems that go with it, one only needs look to the few areas that have tried to implement it, China being one of the most visible.

Changing the reproductive strategy and traditions of the entire world is, IMO, going to be a much more difficult goal than something smaller in scale and more technical, re-engineering our entire energy infrastructure, for example.