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I'm afraid there's actually a fairly firm line. The neural masses around the gut (and to a much lesser extent heart) are entirely different in structure from th

I'm afraid there's actually a fairly firm line. The neural masses around the gut (and to a much lesser extent heart) are entirely different in structure from the cerebral grey matter we know we think with. It is however consistent with the rest of the peripheral nervous system, because that's what it's a part of. Many of the neurons in the gut are simply sensory neurons doing no processing, and the rest aren't far from what you'd expect to coordinate the various systems. That's why even though every area of the brain has a cognitive deficit associated with its removal, there is nothing similar for the gut or heart (besides the obvious issues). Mere neurons do not a brain make.

lawrenceyan 4y ago
Objects are not characterized by unchanging material substance. Objects are instead the holding together of causes and conditions, meaning that they’re characterized by duration / time.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Assuming I understand what you're saying here, granted. But that doesn't make lead gold, and it doesn't make the large amount of neural mass in the gut a brain.
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    I actually agree with you mostly. You probably don't need the neurons in your gut to be your whole self. But the point was more to explore what "whole self" really even means. Technically your brain is composed of many modular components. What decides the line for things that have to be included to be you and things that can be excluded? Is it just the close proximity?
mharig 4y ago
IIRC, the neural tissue around the gut is near identical to the brain tissue.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Which bits? I don't have my old notes on hand (I've since switched to less useful and more fun fields), but as I recall the particular structure characteristic of the cortex (really the telencephalon overall) isn't found anywhere else. The gut isn't just sensory stuff, but neither is the eye. There's nontrivial processing done pre-brain in a number of places, but there's no reason to think that cognition is happening elsewhere. I'm not knocking the gut, and I totally get why some neuroscientists talk about its complexity. I actually did some in depth research on it a while back (my advisor had done some related work and I was considering writing a survey paper), and there's a lot of neat stuff going on. It reminded me a lot of early cybernetics peoples' dreams of future factories run by vats of bacteria or something. If you imagine all the various steps of the digestive process, and the production of various chemicals in carefully controlled amounts, you can see why you'd want some serious hardware. Not to mention that there are a large number of muscles which aren't consciously controlled and need to respond quickly to changing circumstances.
  - mharig 4y ago
    I do not think cognition is sufficiently understood, to locate it solely in the cortex. The word is even not precisely defined.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can pick anything to fall under the umbrella that you want and one of two things will be true; it will happen almost entirely in the brain, or it will also apply to a thermostat/ChatGPT, which means it certainly can't be used to agree with the article above. If we're making specific and unqualified claims about the possibility of "intellegence" without a "body", which is what this thread is about, then there is some working definition at play. I think that under the working definition the article implicitly uses, their argument is extremely dumb. You can pick any definition you want- I certainly can't stop you! But as long as we're arguing about what is and isn't possible without being "embodied", it really doesn't matter. If your definition of cognition is even broader than mine, you should be even less confident that the random researchers the NYT interviewed have correctly identified the exact conditions under which it is possible.

lawrenceyan 4y ago

Objects are not characterized by unchanging material substance. Objects are instead the holding together of causes and conditions, meaning that they’re characterized by duration / time.

ravi-delia 4y ago
Assuming I understand what you're saying here, granted. But that doesn't make lead gold, and it doesn't make the large amount of neural mass in the gut a brain.
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  I actually agree with you mostly. You probably don't need the neurons in your gut to be your whole self. But the point was more to explore what "whole self" really even means. Technically your brain is composed of many modular components. What decides the line for things that have to be included to be you and things that can be excluded? Is it just the close proximity?

mharig 4y ago

IIRC, the neural tissue around the gut is near identical to the brain tissue.

ravi-delia 4y ago
Which bits? I don't have my old notes on hand (I've since switched to less useful and more fun fields), but as I recall the particular structure characteristic of the cortex (really the telencephalon overall) isn't found anywhere else. The gut isn't just sensory stuff, but neither is the eye. There's nontrivial processing done pre-brain in a number of places, but there's no reason to think that cognition is happening elsewhere. I'm not knocking the gut, and I totally get why some neuroscientists talk about its complexity. I actually did some in depth research on it a while back (my advisor had done some related work and I was considering writing a survey paper), and there's a lot of neat stuff going on. It reminded me a lot of early cybernetics peoples' dreams of future factories run by vats of bacteria or something. If you imagine all the various steps of the digestive process, and the production of various chemicals in carefully controlled amounts, you can see why you'd want some serious hardware. Not to mention that there are a large number of muscles which aren't consciously controlled and need to respond quickly to changing circumstances.
- mharig 4y ago
  I do not think cognition is sufficiently understood, to locate it solely in the cortex. The word is even not precisely defined.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can pick anything to fall under the umbrella that you want and one of two things will be true; it will happen almost entirely in the brain, or it will also apply to a thermostat/ChatGPT, which means it certainly can't be used to agree with the article above. If we're making specific and unqualified claims about the possibility of "intellegence" without a "body", which is what this thread is about, then there is some working definition at play. I think that under the working definition the article implicitly uses, their argument is extremely dumb. You can pick any definition you want- I certainly can't stop you! But as long as we're arguing about what is and isn't possible without being "embodied", it really doesn't matter. If your definition of cognition is even broader than mine, you should be even less confident that the random researchers the NYT interviewed have correctly identified the exact conditions under which it is possible.