From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2002 - 17:27:49 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Just to be really pedantic, a circle in your mind does not occupy some
> abstract mathematical space; it occupies a retinotopic pixel map in your
> visual cortex. The actual visual map in the brain is stretched near the
> center and shrunk near the edges, so if the imagined circle were visualized
> off-center, it wouldn't actually *be* a circle in the physical substrate.
>
I hate to get into a pedantic matching contest here, but I will make a couple of comments.
Most people blind from birth can be taught to manipulate geometric concepts like circles, although the pattern of neural activity you describe above has never happened. Some people with normal vision, may be very strong in symbolic thinking over visual thinking, so when you ask them to visualize a circle, they think about the equidistant point properties and other qualities, over the picture.
A circle is a meme in the memeplex of mathematics. It infects the mind. Its representation as activity in the brain is highly context dependent.
-Ken
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