On Aug 6, 10:04 pm, "Rod Speed" gmail.com> wrote:

Commonly accepted protocols of logic have nothing to do with whether I
am right or wrong. Entitlement in logic is a stipulated term used to
alert a debater that they ether can or cannot continue making
particular assertions. It is similar to how in a court of law, after
an objection has been sustained if the party objected to tries to use
the information again the judge orders the information stricken from
the record and threatens to call a mistrial if he/she attempts to use
the refuted information again. In debate class you just lose a few
points every time you re-introduce the information as evidence for
your thesis.

In logic and law there is a difference between a rights and
entitlements. After I succeeded in removing your entitlement you
continued to have a right to the failed assertion.

Unless you can refute, to some agreed upon degree, the evidence that
weakened your claims, your entitlement to those claims has been
removed.

In debate or rhetoric this is a common ploy easily caught by
participants and observers. You raise the issue of context, the burden
is upon you to be able, if asked, to not only define this context but
to give a criterion or amount of contest. And it would do well to give
simple examples of not enough context, just enough, and to much
context. Please do so, so that we can be informed about how much of
this context you would prefer here.

Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding
Impossible Perfection):

if your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he
must also address some further point. If you can make these points
more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent
must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that
your opponent isn't up on.

This is related to Argument By Question. Asking questions is easy:
it's answering them that's hard.

It is also possible to lower the bar, reducing the burden on an
argument. For example, a person who takes Vitamin C might claim that
it prevents colds. When they do get a cold, then they move the
goalposts, by saying that the cold would have been much worse if not
for the Vitamin C.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#goalposts

Actually Neural Darwinism is a well established theory. If you have
not heard of it, I am sorry about that, but not the responsible party.
If your ramblings have been an attempt to refute this internationally
renowned theory, they have failed. Here I will provide some evidence
that this theory exists and is well established in the international
research community.

But first, I suppose it is similar to how I used to make up songs with
a cassette recorder. I would just start playing anything for 5
minutes, play back the tape and pick out some cool sounding parts and
then rif on that for another 5 minutes and so on and out of this
randomness I would continue to select interesting sounding stuff till
I had a collection of near complete songs in one evening.

To model cognitive processing, language construction, and
"intelligence" at a neurophysiological level using darwinian
evolutionary mechanisms requires more than a survival-of-the-fittest
principle. Darwinism is all about the copying success of patterns
(typically DNA strings); here I outline a seconds-to-minutes
competition between different spatiotemporal firing patterns in a
multifunctional cortical workspace. The proposed mechanism for recall
from a passive distributed memory into an active working memory is
analogous to genotypes and phenotypes. The ephemeral working patterns
copy themselves in the manner of wallpaper pattern repeats; they
occupy flexible islands in the workspace (useful for multi-tasking and
analogical reasoning) that compete with one another for the limited
workspace, with a widespread pattern signaling object identification
or readiness to act. Pattern evolution is accelerated by cortical
equivalents of the roles played by climate change and lowered sea
level in island biogeography. Chimeric islands containing a pastiche
of patterns are judged against episodic memories in a way that bears
some correspondence to the known organization of human language
cortex.

http://cogprints.org/23/0/1991Seminars.htm

http://www.mindcreators.com/Images/ND_StagesOfSelection.gif

Variation and selection within neural populations play key roles in
the development and function of the brain. In this article, I review a
population theory of the nervous system aimed at understanding the
significance of these processes. Since its original formulation in
1978, considerable evidence has accumulated to support this theory of
neuronal group selection. Extensive neural modeling based on the
theory has provided useful insights into several outstanding
neurobiological problems including those concerned with integration of
cortical function, sensorimotor control, and perceptually based
behavior.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8094962

So what's Neural Darwinism? Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize in 1972
for his work on immunology. In short, his research showed how the
population of lymphocytes capable of binding to a foreign antigen is
increased by differential clonal multiplication following antigen
discovery, i.e. a lymphocyte finds an antigen and responds with
chemical messages which trigger a massive production of like-formed
lymphocytes to combat the attack. Taken up a level, that is to say
that the human body is capable of creating complex adaptive systems as
a result of local events with feedback.

Okay, so back to the question. Well, Edelman went much, much further
in his interest in selective systems by expanding his work into the
fields of neurobiology and neurophysiology. He put forth a theory
called "neuronal group selection", also known as Neural Darwinism. It
contains three major parts:

1. Anatomical connectivity in the brain occurs via selective
mechanochemical events that take place epigenetically during
development. This creates a diverse primary repetoire by differential
reproduction.

2. Once structural diversity is established anatomically, a second
selective process occurs during postnatal behavioral experience
through epigenetic modifications in the strength of synaptic
connections between neuronal groups. This creates a diverse secondary
repetoire by differential amplification.

3. Reentrant signalling between neuronal groups allow for
spatiotemporal continuity in response to real-world interactions.

Let's dig into these in turn. They are each fascinating in their own
right. For starters, it would be mathematically impossible for
something as complicated as the brain to be completely blueprinted
point-by-point in the genome (To give perspective, the human brain has
30 billion neurons with an estimated one million billion connections
between them). Nor would we expect the many processes that govern its
biogenesis to be carried out perfectly "to code". And this is in fact
what we see in identical twin studies -- their brains are not
structurally identical. Edelman says not only is that okay, but it is
essential. With neuronal heterogeneity (called degeneracy) it is
possible to test the many circuits with a diverse set of input, see
which neuronal groups respond "appropriately" statistically, and wire
up the brain based on the results.

The first miracle is how the brain creates such variety. The thinking
is that as cells grow, they do not develop in stasis. They are
surrounded by other cells which form collectives. On the cell surface,
adhesion molecules exist, known as CAMs and SAMs. When a CAM meets
another complementary CAM on a neighboring cell, they induce cell
binding. But in doing so, the CAMs "communicate" to their respective
cells that binding has occured. The magic is that the binding
properties of the linked cells are dynamically controlled by the cells
themselves. The result of binding may be each cell creating
dramatically more or less CAMs of the same type on the cell surface
dynamically in response (Other surface modulation mechanisms include
changes in CAM position, polarity, and chemical structure). This
effectively creates a type of signalling which permeates through the
collective cell group. Essentially CAMs act as sensitive dynamic
regulators of cell aggregation and even cell motion. And thus cell
surface modulation helps govern morphogenesis. So morphology depends
on CAM and SAM function. However, CAM and SAM function also depend on
developing morphology. Okay, I'm officially ratholing. For brevity,
let's just finish up by saying that cell proliferation, cell
migration, cell death, arbor distribution and neurite branching are
all governed by selective processes similar to that of aforementioned
cell aggregation.

So this describes the biological formation of these primary repetoires
which would quite naturally bring about variegated anatomical
structure in the brain. But once this wiring is laid down, it is more
or less fixed. But given this numerous and diverse collection of
circuitry, there is bound to be functionally equivalent albeit
anatomically non-isomorphic neuronal groups capable of responding to
certain sensory input. This creates a competitive environment where
groups proficient in their responses to certain input can be "chosen"
over others by altering synaptic efficacies of those portions of the
network corresponding to such groups. This leads to an increased
probability of their response to similar or identical signals at a
future time. This is done by altering synaptic strengths neuron-to-
neuron biochemically. And as we would expect, adjustments to
neurotransmitters allow for neural plasticity along a much quicker
timetable than by anatomical changes.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4846

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/System/8870/books/Edelman.html

It is a well established theory. Though it has far less evidential
support than the theory of gravity, it qualifies as worthy of debate
and research to test for falsifiability.

In science, a theory is an explanation. Evolution is a theory, just
like gravitation. Gravity is not a law of nature but an explaination
of observations. If you drop something, it's going to fall. That's an
observation: unsupported things fall. But you explain that observation
with the theory of gravity, which is that the mass of what whatever it
is you dropped, a pencil or a pen or something, is attracted by the
mass...it's really a theory of gravity? But remember, a theory is an
explanation.

If I make a claim and the burden of truth is upon me, I do not "shift
the burden upon you" merely by requesting more information about your
simple "no" rejection. There is no substance to it and it is to
general of a challenge to be met in any circumstances.

That is better than a simple "no" contention. Please refer to the
information about neural darwinism above to satisfy your case against
the theory.

This notion continues to be vague since you have not specified the
lie.

The comment was about you general rejection with no explaination or
supporting counter-argumentation.

When you claim I am wrong you are claiming that the proposition is
false, therefore you are using logic plain and simple. As you you are
also trapped with using grammar with subjects and predicates when you
explain your position, your position requires logic always. Please
give an example where you did not use logic and grammer without using
logic and grammar, its contradictory and illogical.

Arguments are always use logic else they are illogical arguments, your
trapped on this one.

The youtube video was about some aspects of arguments, and was
therefore not mindless wanking but was relevant to the conversation.
In debate class you lose points for all these infractions you know,
and you would probably get a bad grade.

Then your saying that thinking is "never" like evolutionary processes?

I am not wrong about what "seems" means to me as I use it. When I say
"seems" I mean "the way it appears to me". If you request that I
change my usage in this conversaton I may or may not agree.

Actually I seem to be doing fine and you are very easy to refute just
typing off the top of my head. But if you desire I would look forward
to many months of these kinds of conversations with you, good
practice.

When I say dishonest I mean that you appear to be defending a sinking
ship, trying to save face. Maybe it says something about the caliber
of the debating skills of the people you converse with in these
groups.

You don't really think this wanking business really accomplishes
anything do you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm_n76Dsl0c