Does science require a soul?

[The Thinker]

No, you don't make any sense. Thanks all, I think I have had enough of TW for a while.

Another non-answer.

[The Thinker]

One element of the multiverse that I am inclined to challenge: The idea is that if there are infinitely many universes and finitely many possible states/events within any given universe, then there should be repeats, infinitely many in fact. But if the number of extant universes is countably infinite, but the number of possible starting states for a universe is uncountably infinite (even though the number of possible states for the resulting universe are finite) then not only is the idea of infinite replication challenged, it is then in fact quite likely not even one of those countably infinite universes is like another.


Jim

There could be a finite number of possible types of universes with a finite number of possible events in them and still be an infinite number of universes. There would be, as you said, repeats. An infinite number of repeats.

[The Thinker]

IF that is the case, as you have presented it, then it doesn't make much sense. But we don't know much about the soul, and I see no reason to assume my soul, if there are multiple me's all over the mulitiverse, is necessarily replicated.

The way I look at the possibility of the Multiverse in light of Christian faith is that IF it is a reality, it gives a possibility for resolving the age old question of fairness in terms of who hears the Gospel and who does not. You are concerned about replications. But to me, it means that there is the opportunity for every person who ever would have lived to have heard the Gospel and not only that, to have heard it under the best of circumstances. And so what it means to me is that, assuming the essence of who we are crosses all the universes simultaneously, it means it is quite likely no one goes to hell because they never heard the gospel. Everybody hears it in one universe or another. And who will chose to follow God and who will not is completely resolved.


Jim

Thank you for at least answering this question.

I see no reason to assume that only one version of you will have a soul and the infinite other versions of you won't - under the premise of Christianity.


And there will be an infinite number of people in the multiverse who will have never heard the gospel since there will be an infinite number of people who were born and died before the gospels were written. So your point makes no sense to me.

[oxmixmudd]

Thank you for at least answering this question.

I see no reason to assume that only one version of you will have a soul and the infinite other versions of you won't - under the premise of Christianity.

Since this is raw speculation, I see no need to hold to traditional assumptions.

I'm speculating that the soul is something which exists simultaneously in all versions of myself. That is, that the various universes where 'I' exist are material duplications only that allow who I am to play out in multiple scenarios.

Another option of course is that all souls are unique, even in perfect physical replications. An extension of the fact that we consider twins different individuals in spite of the fact they have identical DNA. So in fact, only I spend eternity in heaven or hell, and my physical doppelgangers each make their own choices as well with their own consequences. This option, of course, does not solve the afore mentioned 'fairness issue', but is essentially the same as that which exists for a single universe.

And there will be an infinite number of people in the multiverse who will have never heard the gospel since there will be an infinite number of people who were born and died before the gospels were written. So your point makes no sense to me.

Ah, but again, making my first assumption on which my original speculation was based (the essence/soul of each doppelganger is a singleton spanning all the doppelgangers), their ingle eternal fate is decided in the composite of who they were as demonstrated across all their possible unfolding lives, not a multitude of single instances.


I personally think the more interesting of my two posts on this however is that the initial potential state of a universe is represented by an uncountable continuum - uncountably many possible 'initial states'. But each universe formation occurs as an event, and hence there are only countably many universes. If the uncountably many initial states have an even probability distribution, then the probability of any one state forming is 0. Which means there is also 0 chance that any other universe which forms will be exactly like it.

It is an interesting sideline, in that events of probability 0 are still possible. Thus the infinitely many universes still form. But since there are only countably many of them forming from an uncountable source set, it is almost guaranteed no two of them are alike.

Jim

[Carrikature]

I think I could accept your two inserted assumptions. I do worry about the assumption 8. If I hit your head with a baseball bat, I have re-arranged the matter inside your skull! lol Barring that, the atoms are influenced by blood flow, nourishment etc. but if we keep the memory circuits out of the way of this and baseball bats, it would seem to work.

I still want to come back to this even though you've said you're leaving tweb again for a while.

I think there are two things that come out of these inserted assumptions.

1) The insertion of 2a brings to light the fact that the failure is not necessarily with the laws of the universe, but whether or not the tools we use to discover those laws are 100% reliable. If they aren't, and they may not be, then it's perfectly reasonable to question the hard determinism outcome that seems implied by current science. I think it's reasonable anyway given the difference between what we 'know' and what we don't. Frankly, I don't accept that hard determinism is the only interpretation of current findings.

2) The insertion of 8, as you note yourself, renders the entire chain problematic. You recognize, though don't go so far as to say, that Assumption #8 is wrong. Our senses are atomic interactions with our environment. Experience is sensory data interacting with the matter arrangements of the brain. Those matter arrangements can and are altered by such interaction. New memories are imprinted, old memories are recalled, and the two are intertwined by common links. And what is evidence but additional experience? We test our theories, and the results (evidence) interact with our brain states. Beliefs can be portrayed as specific chains of evidence, and they form the framework of interactions with new experience.


Where does that leave us? Conclusion 6-1 is false since it relies 100% on Assumption #8. Conclusion 6-2 fails, too, for the same reason. If logic is efficacious, it will be give rise to specific arrangements of atoms in the brain. Conclusion 6-3 incorrectly differentiates between the arrangement of atoms and the belief itself. The arrangement is the belief. As stated above, evidence definitely enters into the equation. Conclusion 6-4 is correct, but not for the reasons presented. It's correct because the veracity of Assumption #2a is unknown. It's a reasonable assumption to hold, but not an incontrovertible one. Conclusion 6-5 fails on the basis of Assumption #8, but it has ties to 6-3 as well. The arrangement of atoms are the memories, in the same way that a specific arrangement of letters is a word. Finally, Conclusion 6-6 is partially correct. Knowledge is impossible, for many reasons, but the others are not. We may not be able to declare any of them 'true', but it's incorrect to say the data doesn't come into play.

It's been a pretty interesting line of thought, though. Thanks for bringing it up.

[Carrikature]

I'm speculating that the soul is something which exists simultaneously in all versions of myself. That is, that the various universes where 'I' exist are material duplications only that allow who I am to play out in multiple scenarios.

Ah, but again, making my first assumption on which my original speculation was based (the essence/soul of each doppelganger is a singleton spanning all the doppelgangers), their [s]ingle eternal fate is decided in the composite of who they were as demonstrated across all their possible unfolding lives, not a multitude of single instances.

This is probably the most coherent handling of multiverses I've encountered. Well done.

An extension of the fact that we consider twins different individuals in spite of the fact they have identical DNA.

Minor quibble here, but twins don't actually have identical DNA.

[The Thinker]

Since this is raw speculation, I see no need to hold to traditional assumptions.

I'm speculating that the soul is something which exists simultaneously in all versions of myself. That is, that the various universes where 'I' exist are material duplications only that allow who I am to play out in multiple scenarios.

Another option of course is that all souls are unique, even in perfect physical replications. An extension of the fact that we consider twins different individuals in spite of the fact they have identical DNA. So in fact, only I spend eternity in heaven or hell, and my physical doppelgangers each make their own choices as well with their own consequences. This option, of course, does not solve the afore mentioned 'fairness issue', but is essentially the same as that which exists for a single universe.

This is all speculation of course since there is no evidence for souls. So on your first point, are you saying you have one soul but an infinite number of physical copies of your body?

And on your second point, that's what I originally was envisioning. An infinite number of yous all with unique souls, where an infinite number go to heaven and hell. That makes no sense to me under Christianity.

Ah, but again, making my first assumption on which my original speculation was based (the essence/soul of each doppelganger is a singleton spanning all the doppelgangers), their ingle eternal fate is decided in the composite of who they were as demonstrated across all their possible unfolding lives, not a multitude of single instances.

That makes no sense, because everything that is physically possible will happen in the multiverse. How does one soul get judged by an infinite number of physical yous doing everything possible.

I personally think the more interesting of my two posts on this however is that the initial potential state of a universe is represented by an uncountable continuum - uncountably many possible 'initial states'. But each universe formation occurs as an event, and hence there are only countably many universes. If the uncountably many initial states have an even probability distribution, then the probability of any one state forming is 0. Which means there is also 0 chance that any other universe which forms will be exactly like it.

That makes no sense to me.

It is an interesting sideline, in that events of probability 0 are still possible. Thus the infinitely many universes still form. But since there are only countably many of them forming from an uncountable source set, it is almost guaranteed no two of them are alike.

I don't see how that makes a difference. It can still result in finitely large numbers of you going to heaven and hell.

[oxmixmudd]

I don't see how that makes a difference. It can still result in finitely large numbers of you going to heaven and hell.

Mathematically, no it doesn't. IF we accept the number of possible universe starting states is uncountable and infinite and that any given starting state is just as likely as any other (big IF), then there is no reason to assume any two universes will ever be alike. Nothing is guaranteed to repeat, in fact the probability is zero that it will. Hence in that scenario the most likely outcome is that there is in fact just one of me across the entire multiverse.

But that may be to strong a precondition. I wonder what the minimum preconditions are that effectively guarantee all universes in a multiverse are unique.

Jim

[shunyadragon]

There could be a finite number of possible types of universes with a finite number of possible events in them and still be an infinite number of universes. There would be, as you said, repeats. An infinite number of repeats.

Actually no, it is theoretical that there is the 'possibility' that there is variability in the constants and the possible types of universe based on the uncertainty principle, but the range of this variability is unknown. The range of variability may be small and all universes would be similar to ours, or it is possible that the variation can be infinite and there are very few or no universes like ours, or of course, somewhere in between.

[logical question]

Hi Mr Morton, I am a hopeful afterlife-ist and listen to Skeptico and read pro-NDE literature. I agree there is an intender with intentions. And that consciousness and rational thinking exist.

But I wonder (strictly in terms of philosophical argumentation and its limitations) if determinism is self-refuting? A determinist can fall back on recursion and feedback loops taking place both internally and in the brain-mind system, and externally via the sensory-nervous system. I'm not saying a supernatural entity like a personal spirit or soul does not exist, I am just saying that strictly philosophically speaking naturalism does not seem self-refuting if only because philosophical evidence and proofs, and language itself, has inherent limitations when it comes to arguing over such questions.

Here is how I would argue the naturalist's position, strictly philosophically. Consider that individual atoms are not the same as molecules. And the ways that molecules interact with one another involve dragging around the individual atoms of which they are a part, based on the overall dynamics of those interacting molecules. And the same idea, of higher level dynamics moving around individual molecules in a larger cellular organelle or dynamic system remains true as you move up from the level of individual molecules and how they interact. Therefore, how individual molecules interact is not the same as how cells interact with each other, or how tissues, organs interact with one another, and at each point the individual atom is being moved by far wider and larger dynamics, right up to the electro-chemistry dynamics taking place inside sensory and nervous systems that takes in the world via a panoramic view, sights, sounds and memories, increasingly overlapping from birth (especially among large-brained vertebrates, or even large-brained cephalopods, etc.) Each organism takes in the panoramic view of colors and contacts with nature and with other organisms in its vicinity and has feelings of hunger, fear, anger, attraction. In other words, organisms are driven not by individual atoms but by the experiences, wants, needs of the entire organism and its overall dynamics, including social dynamics with others of its kind.

Even a human separated in a closet from the sights and sounds of all other humans at birth will not speak any language. And a human put into a sensory deprivation tank for lengthy periods will start to hallucinate and could mentally deteriorate if denied input from the outside world for weeks or months. And philosophers know little about what goes on immediately before each thought appears, or word is chosen to type, or why sometimes wild thoughts seem to appear out of nowhere.

As for the "C" word, "consciousness," philosophy uses it like an easily defined static noun, but it appears to be an active process and that process lay along a spectrum from different types of wakefulness to restfulness to sleep, even dreaming. So consciousness appears to be more like an active verb than a static noun, which is not out of line with determinism. Even during dreamless sleep, which takes up the majority of sleep each night, the brain remains quite active. And sleepwalkers are unconscious also, walking, driving, eating, all without dreaming. A study published in August 2014 by "an international team of researchers compared the brain activity of patients who were awake, asleep, drugged with anesthetics, in comas or suffering from 'locked-in syndrome,' in which the body appears trapped in a coma-like state but the brain is active and aware. The researchers stimulated these subjects’ brains with a magnetic field and used EEG to trace the pulse’s path. The brains we might think of as conscious and those we think of as unconscious reacted to the stimulus in distinct ways. 'If the patient is awake, the electrical "ping" can travel all around the brain, but if they’re unconscious, the "ping" tends to stay localized and just fades away like a sonar blip.' This bolsters an existing theory of how consciousness works. Mashour, who also studies neural correlates of consciousness, has repeatedly found evidence that — contrary to conventional* wisdom — sensory networks in the brains of unconscious people remain locally functional, but intrabrain communication has broken down. The neighborhood’s lights are on, in other words, but the Internet and phone lines have all been cut."

As to what memories are, neuroscientists once thought there was no way to even begin to answer such a question, but today neurologists have at least a bit of early data concerning the natural correlates to memory found in the brains of animals.

Such research does not disprove the existence of a supernatural spirit of soul, but neither does it disprove naturalistic expectations. As I said, this is a very broad question that tests the limits of both philosophical argumentation and scientific investigation. For if the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
_______________________

Nor is any of what I said new. See this restatement of what was already said, with quotations added from Robert Sperry and Marvin Minsky:

What if mental processes are not determined "wholly" by the motion of "individual atoms" in our brains? Would that leave supernaturalism as the only alternative? What if the brain's overall dynamics naturally "took control" of the motions of individual "atoms" within a larger dynamic flow? Or consider the way all the atoms in our bodies are configured very differently than those same atoms in rocks or air and water, and hence, the body's overall dynamic functioning is very different from that of inanimate matter. But that doesn't mean our livers, kidneys and hearts function "supernaturally."

According to Roger Sperry, psychobiologist and well known philosopher of brain science, "Recall that a molecule in many respects is the master of its inner atoms and electrons. The latter are hauled and forced about in chemical interactions by the over-all configurational properties of the whole molecule. At the same time, if our given molecule is itself part of a single-celled organism such as a paramecium, it in turn is obliged, with all its parts and its partners, to follow along a trail of events in time and space determined largely by the extrinsic over-all dynamics of that paramecium. When it comes to brains, remember that the simpler electric,atomic, molecular, and cellular forces and laws, though still present and operating, have been superseded by the configurational forces of higher-level mechanisms. At the top, in the human brain, these include the powers of perception, cognition, reason, judgment, and the like, the operational, causal effects and forces of which are equally or more potent in brain dynamics than are the outclassed inner chemical forces...

"We deal instead with a sequence of conscious or subconscious processes that have their own higher laws and dynamics...that move their neuronal details in much the way different program images on a TV receiver determine the pattern of electron flow on the screen...

"And the molecules of higher living things are... flown... galloped... swung... propelled... mostly by specific holistic, and also mental properties--aims, wants, needs--possessed by the organisms in question. Once evolved, the higher laws and forces exert a downward control over the lower. This does not mean these (higher forces) are supernatural. Those who conceived of vital forces in supernatural terms were just as wrong as those who denied the existence of such forces. In any living of nonliving thing, the spacing and timing of the material elements of which it is composed make all the difference in determining what a thing is.

"As an example, take a population of copper molecules. You can shape them into a sphere, a pyramid, a long wire, a statue, whatever. All these very different things still reduce to the same material elements, the same identical population of copper molecules. Science has specific laws for the molecules by no such laws for all the differential spacing and timing factors, the nonmaterial pattern or form factors that are crucial in determining what things are and what laws they obey. These nonmaterial space-time components tend to be thrown out and lost in the reduction process as science aims toward ever more elementary levels of explanation."

One might add that taking simple elements found in rocks and arranging them into just the right configurations can lead to the production of not just another rock, but a computer (perhaps even a "quantum computer" one day).

Hence, Sperry's naturalism does not appear to pose any "cardinal difficulties" for itself.

Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers of computer science, notes in a similar vein, "Even if we understood how each of our billions of brain cells work separately, this would not tell us how the brain works as an agency. The 'laws of thought' depend not only upon the properties of those brain cells, but also on how they are connected. And these connections are established not by the basic, 'general' laws of physics, but by the particular arrangements of the millions of bits of information in our inherited genes. To be sure, 'general' laws apply to everything. But, for that very reason, they can rarely explain anything in particular...

"It is not a matter of different laws, but of additional kinds of theories and principles that operate at higher levels of organization... Each higher level of description must add to our knowledge about lower levels, rather than replace it."

And contrary to Lewis' claim that "[Naturalism] leaves no room for the acts of knowing or insight on which the whole value of our thinking depends," cognitive scientists have clearly demonstrated the validity of positing a level of mental representation. They study "perceptual apparatus, mechanisms of learning, problem solving, classification, memory, and rationality... The conjecture about the various vehicles of knowledge: what is a form, an image, a concept, a word; and how do these 'modes of representation' relate to one another... They reflect on language, noting the power and traps entailed in the use of words... Proceeding well beyond armchair speculation, cognitive scientists are fully wedded to the use of empirical methods for testing their theories and hypotheses... Their guiding questions are not just a rehash of the Greek philosophical agenda: new disciplines have arisen; and new questions, like the potential of man-made devices to think, stimulate research.

"Given the most optimistic scenario for the future of cognitive science, we still cannot reasonably expect an explanation of mind which lays to rest all extant scientific and epistemological problems. Still, I believe that distinct progress has been made on the age-old issues that exercised... Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Darwin." After all, "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.

So it's true that atoms do not appear to be able to think logically nor rationally. Individually and on a purely atomic level, atoms show no evidence of doing so. But a naturalist might add that this need not apply to the arrangement of atoms found in the human brain-mind dynamic system. Those atoms are arranged in an order and working in unison based on higher dynamics and input that is itself indebted to an evolutionary progression of species over time, and developing a socially conscious organism like human beings requires a process of cerebral development and sensory input that a baby processes on its way toward adulthood, a baby raised by other humans.

And as another naturalist (I think he is, but he could have been a brain-mind monist Christian theist) summed up the question:

"My own (unoriginal) view is that 'consciousness' is an emergent property of a large network of interacting neurons. The network observes itself, because each part of the network interacts with other parts of the network, so the various parts of the network create a 'virtual reality' for each other. It is not a big leap to then see how the experience that we call 'consciousness' is one and the same as this 'virtual reality.' Also, the network is coupled to its external sensors (e.g. eyes, ears, etc)."


Some favorite quotations I have pondered when thinking further about the mystery of how brain-mind dynamics function...


Self Analysis

Aren't they odd, the thoughts that float through one's mind for no reason? But why not be frank? I suppose the best of us are shocked at times by the things we find ourselves thinking.


Microbes

But how is one to keep free from those mental microbes that worm-eat people's brains--those Theories and Diets and Enthusiasms and infectious Doctrines that we catch from what seem the most innocuous contacts? People go about laden with germs; they breath creeds and convictions on you as soon as they open their mouths. Books and newspapers are simply creeping with them--the monthly Reviews seem to have room for little else. Wherewithal then shall a young man cleanse his way; how shall he keep his mind immune to Theosophical speculations, and novel schemes of Salvation? Can he ever be sure that he won't be suddenly struck down by the fever of Funeral or of Spelling Reform, or take to his bed with a new Sex Theory?


Edification

'I must really improve my mind,' I tell myself, and once more begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.

Smith's remarks on Edification remind me of this quotation from a young and up and coming philosopher:
I will begin with two ordinary cases of weakness of will. First, a case of akrasia (the state of acting against one's better judgment) at bedtime. I am watching television and I realize that it is 2 a.m. I am tired, and I know that I really should go to bed. Tomorrow morning the Formal Epistemology Workshop begins, and I would like to attend as much of it as possible so I can learn something about formal epistemology. But the witty dialogue of the Buffy rerun and the winsome smile of the redheaded supporting actress have their grip, and even as I tell myself that I really should go to sleep, I stay where I am and keep watching television for another hour. (Neil Sinhababu, "The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended," Philosophical Review 118.4 (2009), pp. 498-99)

The Goat

In the midst of my anecdote a sudden misgiving chilled me--had I told about this Goat before? And then as I talked there gaped upon me--abyss opening beneath abyss--a darker speculation: when goats are mentioned, do I automatically and always tell this story about the Goat at Portsmouth?


Desires

These exquisite and absurd fancies of mine--little curiosities, and greedinesses, and impulses to kiss and touch and snatch, and all the vanities and artless desires that nest and sing in my heart like birds in a bush--all these, we are now told, are an inheritance from our prehuman past, and were hatched long ago in very ancient swamps and forests. But what of that? I like to share in the dumb delights of birds and animals, to feel my life drawing its sap from roots deep in the soil of Nature. I am proud of those bright-eyed, furry, four-footed or scaly progenitors, and not at all ashamed of my cousins, the Apes and Peacocks and streaked Tigers.

[logical question]

Quantifying Consciousness, Koch and Tononi

According to Christof Koch, "There are no qualitative differences between mice, monkeys, or people at the genomic, synaptic, cellular, or connectional levels. The differences are quantitative -- the human brain has about 86 billion neurons, a thousand times more than the brain of a mouse." Koch adds that in his opinion "any network possesses integrated information," and, "any organized matter has conscious experience" of some sort, perhaps of a very low quantifiable sort, but none the less, some sort. Though the philosopher John Searle disagrees with Koch, and sees consciousness as something "new" that arises only in certain circumstances like the way a new reaction takes place when a glowing splint is exposed to ever increasing levels of oxygen. At some point a new type of much more violent reaction takes place, and the glowing splint bursts into flames. So the views are either that consciousness is part of a continuum or spectrum from atoms to brains such that everything with some form of order to it has some low level of consciousness, or, consciousness is something new that arises only after a certain level of organization is reached.

Tononi's idea, that Koch supports, is that we experience consciousness when we integrate different sensory inputs, i.e., when you eat ice cream you cannot separate the taste of the sugar on your tongue from the sensation of the melting liquid coating the inside your mouth. Tononi says it may be possible to measure the extent to which a given system—anything from computer systems to biological brain circuits—is capable of fusing these distinctive bits of information. The more distinctive the information, and the more specialized and integrated a system is, the higher its consciousness rating, which Tononi labels as "phi."

However, phi is ridiculously hard to compute... The only way to quantify it precisely is to consider the exponentially large number of ways a neural system might be arranged, and to compare every possible whole with every conceivable configuration of its parts; the more complicated the system, the harder it is to evaluate. The upshot is that, even though phi promises in principle to be precise, it can’t actually be used in any workable sense. What is the phi value of the average human brain, with its eighty-six billion neurons? What about a cat’s brain? Tononi and Koch have no idea. There is currently no practical way to calculate those numbers, because an unthinkably large number of possibilities would have to be evaluated. (It is a safe bet that the average person has a higher phi than the average cat, but without doing the insanely demanding calculations, it is hard to say exactly how much higher.)

But even if phi could be accurately assessed, a correlation with consciousness would not in itself provide proof of causation. For one thing, a phi value (or any other measure of the way information is integrated and distributed across the mind) could be merely a prerequisite for consciousness, and not necessarily a signal of its presence. It might also be simply correlated with consciousness rather than a measure of it.

To fully understand what defines consciousness, we need more than a single measure. We may need to better understand how organisms’ input matter, how those organisms ground their experiences in the world, and how intelligence relates, causally, to consciousness itself.

The final question of course is how does one measure the effect the environment has on the development of an individual's conscious brain-mind system? Colon-Ramos points out, “Put a crocodile in a fish tank and he knows his job is to eat the fish, he does not have to go to school to learn this behavior. But, take a baby or very young child and put it in a cell with no human input at all, it will eventually show symptoms of mental retardation and its development is not normal, unlike the crocodile's. This means genetic predisposition and environment together act on the brain to make a different person. Our brains need other brains to develop properly.” How can one measure in a simple equation that kind of input?

SOURCES: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christ...b_1784047.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-ckn110413.php
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...hone-have.html

[logical question]

Neurons naturally hook up & learn new behaviors based on feedback. They learn to drive robot car around and avoid hitting walls.

Scientists took brain cells from rats, cultured them on a 128-electrode array, and allowed the cells to control a simple robot consisting of two wheels with a sonar sensor. The little toy car has no microprocessor of its own--it depends entirely on a rat embryo's brain cells to direct its movements toward and away from objects in its path. Electrical impulses from the bot enter the batch of neurons, and responses from the rat brain cells are turned into commands for the device. The cells can form new connections, making the system a true learning machine. The ability of the car to avoid obstacles often shows clear improvement over time, demonstrating how networks of neurons can grant simple learning to the machines.

To start off a rat brain robot, embryonic neurons are separated out and allowed to grow on an electrode array. Within minutes the neurons start to push out tentacles and link up to each other, becoming interconnected dendrites and axons. A dense mesh of about 100,000 neurons can grow within several days. After about a week, Warwick and his collaborators can start to pulse the electrodes under the neural mesh in search of a pathway -- that is, when neurons near an active electrode fire, another group of neurons on a different side of the array shows an inclination to fire as well.

Once they have a pathway -- the groups fire in tandem at least a third of the time -- the University of Reading researchers can use that connection to get the robot to roam around and learn to avoid crashing into walls. They connect the electrode array to the robot using Bluetooth. When the sonar senses it's nearing a wall, it stimulates the electrode at one end of the neural pathway, and at first the brain sends back a coherent response only every once in awhile. The robot interprets the response as an instruction to turn its wheels. With time and repetition, the neural pathways become stronger, and the robot runs into the walls less frequently. In effect, the robot works out for itself how to not bash into obstacles.

Amazing Robot Controlled By Rat Brain Continues Progress by Aaron Saenzon, Oct 06, 2010