Re-post: It's a Wonderful Life

In homage to the annual broadcasting of the excellent work of cinematic art, It's a Wonderful Life,  the philosophical argument It's a Wonderful Life is re-posted:

It's a Wonderful Life

The essays You Don't Need a Meaning of Life to Have a Meaningful Life and The Thoughtful Universe offer deductive arguments for the nexus of philosophy and neural correlates.

Like 'meaning' and 'thought', 'wonder' itself can be studied as a mental phenomenon.  To appreciate wonder, first consider the absence of 'wonder'; the well known.

The medulla oblongata neurologically participates in autonomic functions; like breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.  Autonomic functions are so 'well known' (i.e., the neural circuitry and activation response mechanism have been forged/hard-wired over eons by evolution) that unless one actively engages conscious effort they're 'automatic'.

More than likely, what we experience as conscious 'wonderment' will be localized to brain/mental processes in the neocortex, though recent research is revealing that "primitive brain structures" may also be involved in consciousness.

The research paper Neural Correlates of the Perception for Novel Objects details recent experiments using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI):

Perception of novel objects is of enormous importance in our lives. People have to perceive or understand novel objects when seeing an original painting, admiring an unconventional construction, and using an inventive device. However, very little is known about neural mechanisms underlying the perception for novel objects. Perception of novel objects relies on the integration of unusual features of novel objects in order to identify what such objects are. In the present study, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was employed to investigate neural correlates of perception of novel objects. The neuroimaging data on participants engaged in novel object viewing versus ordinary object viewing revealed that perception of novel objects involves significant activation in the left precuneus (Brodmann area 7) and the right visual cortex. The results suggest that the left precuneus is associated with the integration of unusual features of novel objects, while the right visual cortex is sensitive to the detection of such features. Our findings highlight the left precuneus as a crucial component of the neural circuitry underlying perception of novel objects...

Autonomic and wonderment phenomena are responses to neurological stimuli.  As complex as the brain is, it has limitations in its ability to handle stimuli.  Though limited, the brain engages the evolutionary evolved dynamic of neuroplasticity of the synaptic connectome as an adaptive mechanism to process novel stimuli ('I've never seen such a beautiful sunset...isn't it wonderful?') that can't be handled by autonomic functions.  Counter-intuitively, sometimes neuroplasticity invokes a 'less synaptic connections is more' dynamic.  Sudden insight is another adaptive mechanism.

Novelty (the not well known/unfamiliar/new stimuli) is a necessary component of  the 'wonder' dynamic and with neuroplasticity contribute to the neurological dynamic of wisdom which may have cultural components.   All part-and-parcel of our 'Wonderful Life'; full of wonder indeed.

Theory of Wisdom

Having looked at wonder, thought, meaning and the dynamic of inquiry through the lens of neural science, it's worth considering the elusive psychological dynamic of wisdom.

Stephen Hall's book, Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience, is replete with anecdotes, but just scratches the surface in offering a reductionist explanation for the phenomena of wisdom.

Scientists are studying the process of decision making in the brain and in particular wisdom itself.  At its essence, wisdom (like all other brain functions) is the time-measurable response to neural stimuli quantifiable in neural correlates of the brain's neural network.

In 2000, Dr. Eric Kandel shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the molecular dynamics involved in learning and memory; providing fundamental insight into the brain's neuroplasticity (video).

More recently, Dr. Giulio Tononi and Dr. Chiara Cirelli have argued that sleep is a critical part of memory making; suggesting that it implements a pruning mechanism of the neural network in memory formation.  Tononi and Cirelli are making major contributions to research started in the early 1960's.

These fundamental discoveries on how memories are made in the brain are important to understanding the physical and neurological dynamics of wisdom.  The sleep research in particular points to the important factor dedicated time 'invested' in sleep has on memory formation:

...Scientists first proposed the idea that sleep is important to memory nearly a century ago, and plenty of experiments since then have shown that after a night of sleep, and sometimes just a nap, newly formed memories “stick” better than they would if one had spent the same amount of time awake...

Sleep forges wisdom.

The proper perspective for developing a Theory of Wisdom is achieved when the following question is asked:

What makes one neural correlate response wiser than another neural response?

Here game theory, cited by Stephen Hall in his book, comes into play (pun intended). (Also see: Game Theory Intro.)

Fundamental to game theory is the quantifiable concept of utility:

In any game, utility represents the motivations of players.  A utility function for a given player assigns a number for every possible outcome of the game with the property that a higher number implies that the outcome is more preferred...

John Nash won a Nobel Prize in 1994 for offering a systematic way of identifying the utilities in non-cooperative games and quantifying the Nash equilibrium.  Since then, Steven Brams has made a major contribution to game theory providing insight into the complex strategies used for maximizing utility with Theory of Moves (TOM):

Another approach to inducing cooperation in PD [prisoner's dilemma] and other variable-sum games is the theory of moves (TOM). Proposed by the American political scientist Steven J. Brams, TOM allows players, starting at any outcome in a payoff matrix, to move and countermove within the matrix, thereby capturing the changing strategic nature of games as they evolve over time. In particular, TOM assumes that players think ahead about the consequences of all of the participants’ moves and countermoves when formulating plans...

The implementation of the 'think ahead' strategies quantified in TOM  are manifested on a neural network that has been molded by the memory making dynamics detailed by Eric Kandel and the memory pruning mechanism argued by doctors Tononi and Cirelli.

Building on:

• the well established concepts offered by game theory to quantify maximum utilities,
• the fundamentals of the time-dependent neural responses and
• the time-dependent formation of the neural network (where wisdom is ultimately manifested) through sleep 

the following is offered as a Theory of Wisdom (TOW):

Assuming,

• U is a quantifiable maximum game theoretic utility, 
• t is the amount of time required to affect a neural correlate that results in U, 
• and W is the neurological dynamic of wisdom to be quantified

the following relationship mathematically represents a way to quantify and measure wisdom:

W = U/t 

With this simple ratio, an individual's wisdom can be assessed.

The following dynamics can also be put into perspective:

• When it's qualitatively observed that someone is wise there is an implied comparative to the observation. The implication is that the wise individual is wiser than an unwise (or naïve) individual.  Both individuals will process the same neurological stimuli, but the wise individual's response/decision will have greater quantifiable utility (U) than that of the unwise individual within a comparable unit of time (t).  Having a larger utility to the same stimuli (question/problem/challenge/etc.) in the same unit of time is one way to result in a larger amount of wisdom.
  
  
• As humans we have acquired a foundation of wisdom (built-in skills, genetically hard-wired into the brain's neural network); which is the study of evolutionary psychology.  As discussed above, the other way that wisdom is acquired by our brain's neural network  is through neural stimuli (experience) that 'rewires' the brain through the memory making mechanism fundamental to neuroplasticity.  
  
  A wise(r) individual has more experience and thus a potentially more optimally developed brain. The potential qualifier is stressed because, like the evolutionary utility being mathematically quantified with evolutionary game theory, any given utility (U) is not known until it is put to a test and measured in an 'error then trial' (not trial and error) dynamic.
  
  
• An individual may respond to stimuli that results in maximum utility (U).  But if it takes that individual a very long time (t) to do so, then the quantifiable wisdom (W) would be very small; relative to stimuli that 'started the clock' to quantify/evaluate the wisdom.  This is because the divisor in the wisdom ratio above would result in a large time value (t); possibly as long as a lifetime for an individual to 'wise up'.
  
  The longer the time (t) to maximum utility (U), the smaller the resulting wisdom (W).  Small comparable wisdom is the definition of being unwise/naïve; whether that value was derived by a small utility (U) or large (t) in the wisdom (W = U/t) ratio.
  
  
• Given comparable neural stimuli (experience) that results in a neuroplasticly transformed brain that responds with the same utility (U) in time (t) as that of a wise individual, an unwise/naive individual's neural network could be transformed into one that will respond wisely (large W); with age (time) comes wisdom.  Age is rich in wisdom but poor in time; a corollary to the adage 'Youth is wasted on the young'.

As an aside, insight (and wisdom) would have been appropriate in Stephen Hall's discussion of Socrates' "wisdom tour" in his book.   He rightfully observes on page 255:

...in a world of ongoing social interactions, as in the serial repetitions of games in game theory, people who insist on winning at all costs, whose self-interest trumps sociality, and whose greed (financial or emotional) exceeds the bounds of fairness end up playing solitaire. A famous Sicilian proverb holds that "the man who plays alone never loses," but in social reality most of us experience, it also means he never wins...

It's ironic that Hall misses this very lesson while advocating that Socrates was a paragon of wisdom.  On page 21 he notes:

...Socrates managed to alienate, humiliate, illuminate, and educate his countrymen about the paradoxes of Socratic wisdom...  

It escapes Hall that Socrates was less than wise with respect to his social skills; a major contribution to his trial and death.  Socrates would have benefited from the wisdom of a fictional Sicilian and game theory practitioner extraordinaire, The Godfather's Don Vito Corleone, famous for counseling: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer".  Sage advice that even the Dalai Lama should have used.

It's a Wonderful Life

The essays You Don't Need a Meaning of Life to Have a Meaningful Life and The Thoughtful Universe offer deductive arguments for the nexus of philosophy and neural correlates.

Like 'meaning' and 'thought', 'wonder' itself can be studied as a mental phenomenon.  To appreciate wonder, first consider the absence of 'wonder'; the well known.

The medulla oblongata neurologically participates in autonomic functions; like breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.  Autonomic functions are so 'well known' (i.e., the neural circuitry and activation response mechanism have been forged/hard-wired over eons by evolution) that unless one actively engages conscious effort they're 'automatic'.

More than likely, what we experience as conscious 'wonderment' will be localized to brain/mental processes in the neocortex, though recent research is revealing that "primitive brain structures" may also be involved in consciousness.

The research paper Neural Correlates of the Perception for Novel Objects details recent experiments using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI):

Perception of novel objects is of enormous importance in our lives. People have to perceive or understand novel objects when seeing an original painting, admiring an unconventional construction, and using an inventive device. However, very little is known about neural mechanisms underlying the perception for novel objects. Perception of novel objects relies on the integration of unusual features of novel objects in order to identify what such objects are. In the present study, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was employed to investigate neural correlates of perception of novel objects. The neuroimaging data on participants engaged in novel object viewing versus ordinary object viewing revealed that perception of novel objects involves significant activation in the left precuneus (Brodmann area 7) and the right visual cortex. The results suggest that the left precuneus is associated with the integration of unusual features of novel objects, while the right visual cortex is sensitive to the detection of such features. Our findings highlight the left precuneus as a crucial component of the neural circuitry underlying perception of novel objects...

Autonomic and wonderment phenomena are responses to neurological stimuli.  As complex as the brain is, it has limitations in its ability to handle stimuli.  Though limited, the brain engages the evolutionary evolved dynamic of neuroplasticity of the synaptic connectome as an adaptive mechanism to process novel stimuli ('I've never seen such a beautiful sunset...isn't it wonderful?') that can't be handled by autonomic functions.  Counter-intuitively, sometimes neuroplasticity invokes a 'less synaptic connections is more' dynamic.  Sudden insight is another adaptive mechanism.

Novelty (the not well known/unfamiliar/new stimuli) is a necessary component of  the 'wonder' dynamic and with neuroplasticity contribute to the neurological dynamic of wisdom which may have cultural components.   All part-and-parcel of our 'Wonderful Life'; full of wonder indeed.

The Thoughtful Universe

Continuing with the theme of 'You Don't Need a Meaning of Life to Have a Meaningful Life', consider the following:

Assertion:  The Universe is thinking.

Proof:

• The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of existence.
• Within the Universe you will find at least one structure known as the human brain.
• In 1644 Rene Descartes used his brain to formulate the now famous cogito ergo sum ("I am thinking, therefore I exist") statement.
• Descartes was a part of the Universe. Ergo, the Universe has had at least 1 thought.

This observation lays the foundation for the following 'Universal' stream of thought; pun intended:

• The process of thinking emerges from the brain's neural activity.
• Neuroscientists are working towards quantifying the actual neural activation patterns that represent thought(s). The synaptic speed limit will probably be found to be at around 2 milliseconds.
  
  
   


• Once that pattern/signature has been identified, we will be able to look at other phenomena in the Universe to determine if they also represent a 'thinking pattern'.
• Candidate phenomenon include (and contrary to popular notions that the brain is 'the most complex object in the Universe'): 




• Quantum particle dynamics  on on the uber-fast end of the speed scale; bound by the speed of light: 
  
  
  (source: Visualizations of Quantum Chromodynamics)
  
   In 'empty' space no less!  Let's see the purported  'most complex object in the Universe' do that!:
  
  

And the evolution of galaxies on the slower-end:

 

The Universe may turn out to be full of thought; very thoughtful indeed.

Related:

• Synapses, neural connections, stars, and atoms in the universe 
• TED Video: Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?
• TED: Alex Wissner-Gross: A New Equation for Intelligence

Update: 

• New hypothesis argues the universe simulates itself into existence

• Past Brain Activation Revealed in Scans: Brain Activity Patterns Preserve Traces of Previous Cognitive Activity
• Problem-Solving Governs How We Process Sensory Stimuli
• Big Brains Are All in the Genes
• A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
• Consciousness occurs in 'time slices' lasting only milliseconds, study suggests
• Brain study suggests neural networks related to mathematics are different from those used for language
• New tool offers unprecedented insight into brain electrical activity
• Scientists Find the Brain's Missing 'pipes'
• Sebastian Seung: I am my connectome
• What is so special about the human brain?

You Don't Need a Meaning of Life to Have a Meaningful Life

Like fairness, perception of meaning has neural correlates.  It would be a logical fallacy to conclude that there's a 'Meaning of Life' just because we have evolved the capacity to perceive meaning.

Therefore, you don't need a 'Meaning of Life' to have a meaningful life; a life full of meaning.  Reflecting, another skill/dynamic of the mind, on the probability of life in the universe is sufficient to conclude that the life we do have is 'special'; or at least rare.  All the more special with the knowledge that death terminates one's possible, but low probability life.

The same mental dynamics that result in 'meaning' are also making great strides in revealing the origin's of life:

• Scientists Discover New Clue to Chemical Origins of Life 
• Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step
• Scientists Take First Step Towards Creating 'Inorganic Life' 
• Peptides May Hold 'Missing Link' to Life
• Simple membranes could have allowed nutrients to pass into primitive cells
• Structure of 450 million year old protein reveals evolution's steps
• Discover Magazine (Nov. 1995): First Cell
• 'Lifeless' Prions Capable of Evolutionary Change and Adaptation
• Evolution Can Occur In Less Than 10 Years, Guppy Study Finds
• Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
• Two New Discoveries Answer Big Questions in Evolution Theory
• Evolution in Action
• New Evidence Emerges on the Origin of Life