Talk:Binding problem

message: What about brain areas that are implicated in binding (e.g. parietal lobe and attention, the role of acetylcholene in feature binding)? Also, there are hypotheses about mechanisms of binding such as synchronous activity. what's the role of the hippocampus in binding? what about computational modeling of the binding problem. what about hebb rules (things that fire together wire together). etc etc etc. all of this should be added to the definition somewhere. Josh Susskind 21:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older comments 

message: This article needs a lot of expansion and explanation. For example, the current paragraph which deals with a homunculus being required for the TV viewing, and the alternative to the ghost in the machine answer with infinite regress. These things are not explained at all. 172.202.186.87 (talk) 07:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanations 

message: The following paragraph was added today by  -- I am moving it here because it has several problems that I don't think can be fixed by simple copy-editing; let's discuss, please.
:However, Dennett's view is by no means universally accepted. As Sutherland pointed out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/homuphob.html, "One's own experience, which is perhaps the only starting point, seems to be centred around a phenomenal experiencer. But if you look inside the brain you can't find any little green men and this has given rise to a fear of homunculi, agents and Cartesian theatres. All this has resulted in some desperate and flawed attempts to build a bottom-up theory."  Sutherland denotes the fear of the Homunculus as 'homuphobia'. He also slates Thomas Metzinger for attempting to ignore the inner experience, as he lamely agues against the homunculus: "Sorry Thomas, the cat's out of the bag -- the magician has pulled the rabbit out of his hat. Just like the behaviourists with their "fractional antedating goal responses" (article Rosch, 1994), the agent has crept back into the system just like he always will."  Another philosopher, Colin McGinn, describes clearly how our experience of the "outside world" is in fact nothing more than experience of an inner virtual reality of subjective dimensions http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0465014232.
Here are the main problems that I see:
#The paragraph seems basically to be arguing for straight-up dualism, but does so obscurely.  It seems pretty obvious that there is no binding problem if you start by presupposing dualism.
#Everything after "Sutherland denotes..." looks like mere provocation as opposed to rational argument.
Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah!  If your problem is with the preceding paragraph, I completely agree with you.  It says a bunch of things that I think are wrong, and doesn't give any sources -- if you feel that getting rid of that paragraph would help, I would be happy to go along with that.  We might then be able to have a better discussion of whether the material you added is still necessary. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Been too busy to come back on this. When I have a bit of time round Xmas I will attempt a complete re-write of this section, incorporating elements of the present POV biased to eliminativism as it now stands and my proposed alteration above. --hughey (talk) 17:54, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a need to split the article into one dealing with the neuroscience problem and a separate one for the philosophical one. It is a little odd that the article is called Binding problem but the lead opens by discussing the existence of two problems (practical and fundamental) -- and there are two sections related to them (practical and combinational). Though the neuroscience may clarify the philosophical one, it is independent of it. Moreover it seems a major issue for the latter (and above hence this comment) is how far progress in the former might or might be relevant to it.--LittleHow (talk) 17:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay Looie - that sounds fair. I also thought it too top-heavy with neuroscience findings, which are only a small part of the story. The philosophical aspect should be given proper treatment and is far, far more important in my view. And by serious I mean as well reducing the attention given to Dennett as if he was the sole arbiter. In fact, he is is a die-hard behaviourist and of limited interest in any real, balanced discussion of this issue. --hughey (talk) 18:15, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

text: I have to admit that I am puzzled by all of this from beginning to end.  I couldn't understand what you wrote back in 2008, and I don't understand what you wrote above.  I also don't understand what Dennett's views about homunculi (which I do understand, I think) have to do with the binding problem.  One issue is that the material you wrote in 2008 didn't cite any sources except Crick, so I couldn't tell whether you were trying to convey the views of notable philosophers, or expressing your own opinion. Looie496 (talk) 19:44, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

text: Hello, and let me step in with a few comments. First of all, I want to say welcome to Wikipedia! It's always especially good to have editors here who are also experts in the subject matter. Perhaps you may also be interested in WP:WikiProject Neuroscience, in which both Looie and I are very active. I'd also like to draw your attention to some things about Wikipedia that occur to me after reading your comment above. There are some aspects of how the project works, with respect to subject matter experts, that can be counterintuitive at first. When you have a few minutes, please take a look at WP:NOR. I think that will give you some sense of the right ways and wrong ways to make use of one's expertise here. If you have any questions, I'd be delighted to answer them. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:57, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New paragraph, moved from article for discussion 

message: In The Practical Segregation Problem section above, binding the coherence of neural processes to conscious awareness is considered to occur at one moment of coherence.  When we consider how wireless information tranfer works, it is much more likely that the coherenece is an act of clairity and that the information is transmitted from the brain to conscious awareness over a period of time, just as wireless communication is.
The major difference between considering the rbain as an antenna and present day wireless communication technology is that the brain is a 3D antenna that interfaces with a field of conscious awareness, rather than an electromagnetic field.  
Evidence of a field of conscious awareness or to put more simply consciousness is found in studies of energy healing, meditation, the human aura and its chakras and acupuncture meridians.
I will provide these references from a book I have written upon request.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.64.72.249 (talk) 16:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:NOR, WP:COI, WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Considering the Brain as a 3D Antenna 

message: The recent research of Singer, Melloni etc should be covered and referenced. Datafile28 (talk) 20:15, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent research

message: Dear Wiki team,
Last week we had an international workshop at the Institute of Philosophy in London held by the interdisciplinary Censes group, which in reality is more of a neuropsychological research collaboration than a philosophical one. Delegates included Semir Zeki and Colin Blakemore from neurophysiology, Uta Noppeney and Michael Morgan from neuropsychology and Barry Smith and Casey O'Callaghan from philosophy. It prompted me to look again at this wiki entry that is largely what I had written in about 2008, with some minor editing by others. 
At the time I wrote the piece it seemed well received, in that I got a 'star' I think and some thanks. I wondered whether it would stand the test of time. It seems to have done but there still seems to be unease about the content. I had not had another attempt at trying to improve the text because I was unsure it would survive. However, I am now thinking that it might be worthwhile to try to resolve some of the issues people may have and also to deal with technical issues like citations. It also struck me that it would be useful to have an extra section on cross-modal or multimodal binding, since this is a very active field at present (whether taste and smell or sight and sound are bound in experience). It may be possible to draw on the expertise of the Censes team here and get a much more solid citation base and consensus.
From what I can see from the talk in 2013 the main concern of others is whether or not the focus on the existence of two types of problem is appropriate. There is a request for giving a clear definition first, with the variations being left for later. I think it might be possible to do this. However, the workshop we have just had again emphasised to me that the most important thing for anyone new to the field to know about this term is that there is no agreement as to what is meant by it. Question time was largely taken up by both neuroscientists and philosophers complaining that presenters' conclusions were hard to assess because the presenters had not indicated exactly what they were meaning by binding. In fact throughout the entire workshop nobody attempted to give any sort of biophysical account of what binding might be. This is of interest to me because I am a biologists and although interested in what philosophers have to say am primarily interested in generating a biophysical account.
The situation really is very difficult, even in terms of recognition of two different meanings of binding problem. Thus amongst the neuroscientists Blakemore has indicated to me that he sees feature binding (BP1) and phenomenal binding (BP2) as different levels of the same problem. On the other hand Zeki has indicated to me that he sees them as unrelated (referring to feature binding as Triesman's 'unbinding problem'). While I understand that encyclopedia writers want things cut and dried, as a scientist my instinct is to be very up front about the fact that they are not. 'Binding' is a metaphorical term and the reality is that nobody is quite sure what sort of physical process they think it is a metaphor for. I have recently considered that there may be a useful way to clarify this in terms of how we understand logic. The feature binding problem addresses the way the brain derives higher level propositional information from lower level information, as in: there is yellow here + there is a square here leads to there is a yellow square (here). So the biophysics will be an account of how an output is generated from an input. The phenomenal binding problem ('combination' problem) is simply the problem of what biophysical substrate allows information with several degrees of freedom, or several propositions, or at least a very complex proposition, to be available 'together' as a Gestalt in experience. A number of people doubt that it is necessary to even raise this second problem but most of the neuropsychologists are convinced that it is a real problem. (It is the philosophers and the some of the cellular neurophysiologists who are less keen, but for different reasons.) BP2 is purely an issue of input. Thus if we have 'Socrates is a man' and 'All men are mortal', BP1 is how 'Socrates is mortal' is derived in biophysical terms. BP2 is simply how the two premises come to be available together in biophysical terms regardless of what is to be deduced. That might seem like a narrow distinction but in reality the range of model levels you can apply to the two are quite different. Moreover, we have no idea what sort of output information perceived as a Gestalt leads to. It might just be 'signal for that pattern to be stored in memory/or not'. 
I agree that it would be easy if we could discard the combination problem and focus purely on Triesman's unbinding problem. However, having this in mind after checking the wiki entry before the workshop started I tried to apply this to what the speakers were saying and could not. All of them were wanting to address both problems, some indicating that they distinguished them and some skating over that. So my feeling is that the distinctions made by Smythies and Revonsuo deserve introducing right at the start. There is no single meaning from which to divide. My primary field of research during my paid working life was immunology and I was all too familiar with terms like this that people thought they knew the meaning of but which had various different meanings that were conflated during a single presentation or article (like lymphocyte subset or autoimmunity or dendritic cell - the list is endless). 
What was perhaps the most amusing part of the workshop was that some of the speakers had obviously checked Wikipedia before talking at a binding problem workshop! 
Would you like me to try to tidy things up and clarify? And who should I correspond with in the Wiki team? 
Lady Cairns
( Jonathan Edwards, 
Professor Emeritus
University College London Department of Medicine)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lady Cairns (talk • contribs) 12:52, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly agree that it is essential to start by pointing out that "binding problem" means completely different things to different people, but I think perhaps it can be done in a way that is easier for readers to grasp.  For reference let me point to the way I handled this in response to a question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-binding-problem-in-neuroscience.  Anyway, I encourage you to work on the article as much as you feel like, and I don't think you need to worry too much about people interfering with you as long as you don't use the article as a vehicle to express your personal opinions.  (Note by the way that you can automatically sign your talk page comments by typing ~~~~ at the end.) Best regards, Looie496 (talk) 14:36, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

text: Dear Looie496,
Thanks for the reply. It is useful to see your take on this. I will try to find a way of introducing the problem that is easy for newcomers to grasp. What worries, me however, is that one needs to make sure they grasp the reality of the situation. 
I don’t actually think philosophers use the term one way and neuroscientists another. That was not what was going on for either group last week. Some philosophers are only interested in unity of consciousness but most with a serious interest in the matter (e.g. Barry Smith, O’Callaghan, Bayne) are very interested in both questions. Neuroscientists are also interested in both. The problem is that in both camps some recognize the distinction between BP1 and BP2 and some gloss over it. If you take people interested in synchrony, like Von der Malsburg, Singer, Freeman, Crick, Buzsaki etc. they almost invariably imply that the two problems can be solved by the same mechanism. But since one is a triage problem and the other a combining problem it cannot be so. Put bluntly, the current neuroscience literature on ‘binding’ is a mess.
A quote from Ophelia Deroy’s (neuropsychologist) abstract last Friday is relevant: …these cases invite us to revise the concept of binding, or to find another conceptual framework altogether. 
I also worry about explaining Treisman’s problem in terms of ‘how is red bound to square’. It is very unclear what ‘bound’ means here, or what is being bound – is it ‘qualia’ or is it the informational content? The difficulty with Treisman’s analysis is that it all relates to phenomena like ‘sensed red’ but the attempt at analysis is really a computational/logical/behavioural one. As a number of speakers indicated last week the problem could be solved preconsciously in V1-V4 etc. and the results dumped into conscious awareness further forward. 
So I guess my major concern is giving an account that is ‘grasped’ but which does not do justice to the current rather turbulent academic field.
I note that someone above has mentioned neural binding and that took me to the neural binding entry, which I have not seen before. With all due respect to the author of this I have never heard or read the term ‘neural binding’ as far as I can remember. It seems misleading since whatever is being bound is definitely not neural – it is either qualia or propositional information. (I agree that binding in Chomskian etc. linguistics can be kept out of this since nobody talks of a binding problem there even if there is one and even if there is a deep relation in terms of syntactic/logical binding with the Triesman problem.)
To be a neural binding I guess one would have to suggest that action potentials were somehow bound and we know that they are not. Synchrony of firing has no functional effect per se. As Von der Malsburg indicates in his exposition but then conveniently seems to forget, synchrony only operates at the point of co-arrival of neurotransmitter at a downstream dendrite. So ‘binding’ is really cotemporal arrival such that, presumably because of a non-refractory state, the signal can co-contribute to some logical computation during post synaptic integration. In the great majority of the literature on synchrony this seems to get forgotten and we end up with models that have no real neuroscientific basis – like Crick. Like you, I have always been skeptical of synchrony models but in fact new work by people like Buszaki, Hausser and Tiesinga makes me think that it might solve Treisman’s problem (but does not address phenomenal binding).
I also note that in the neural binding entry there seems to be the sort of conflation of BP1 and BP2 I worry about – or at least a suggestion that these are of the same ilk. There are some senses in which that is OK but in terms of synchrony, as indicated above, it is a major problem. 
I will have another look at the text and see if I can address some of the issues flagged up.~~~~
Lady Cairns (talk) 13:12, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

text: I think to some degree you're going about this suboptimally and making things too hard for yourself.  In a Wikipedia article the goal is not so much to get it right as to neutrally report what the most authoritative sources say about the topic.  This applies even if you personally think those sources are off the mark.  So the best approach is to (a) figure out which are the most authoritative sources, and then (b) figure out how to explain to readers what they say.  So for example you can't in the Wikipedia article divide the problem into BP1 and BP2 in a particular way unless you can cite at least one authoritative source that divides it in the same way.  That constraint ought to simplify the problem. Looie496 (talk) 14:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  2015 update 

message: Note added April 2016 by random neuroscientist reading this: nobody I have met talks about BP1 and BP2. This is not useful or memorable or common and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. It smells like someone's pet...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:691:B309:7081:49E5:1D63:8945 (talk) 14:46, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  This article reads like a bunch of pseudoscientific woo written by a fanboy.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 18:54, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: BP1/2 concept nonconcept

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I understand that this is a complex topic about a field that we have incomplete information, but some sections are hardly readable when compared to well written articles about other equally complex subjects. Take the section about cognitive science. It's very convoluted with an excess of parentheses that add little information and too much formality. Reads like a scientific literally review and seems to have been copied from somewhere, given the author didn't even bother to remove the references like (1) 2804:30C:B22:FC00:346E:E1C9:9FB5:2011 (talk) 03:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unnecessary complexity