For all my friends who study brain & mind functions, do you take a thing or a process approach? Object recognition is very thing-like. Memory of the type “remember X” is too. Adaptation, continual learning, & meta-learning are all processes. I you took one step toward process, what might it be? - ThreadSky

nicolecrust.bsky.social • 88 days ago

For all my friends who study brain & mind functions, do you take a thing or a process approach?

Object recognition is very thing-like. Memory of the type “remember X” is too. Adaptation, continual learning, & meta-learning are all processes.

I you took one step toward process, what might it be?

Reposted from Nicole Rust

Things vs processes: What do we mischaracterize?

"Things" focus on static natures ("that cat"); process focus on dynamics ("it's raining"). Cats too are impermanent, but we don't say "catting".

We have a strong things bias. What do we mischaracterize by thinking about things not processes?

Comments

jbrendanritchie.bsky.social•88 days ago

For me that's a timely example. Arguably our opinion piece (preprint) is a defense of a more process-oriented view of ventral stream function focused on the interaction between what we see and what we are trying to do.https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.08251

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

Excellent point!

roald-arboel.com•86 days ago

Really great question! I think a lot about a related problem, but related to descriptions of behaviour. We talk about distinct behaviours as things, a reaching movement, mating behaviour, navigation, etc.; but very rarely, do we talk about how those behaviours are delineated...

roald-arboel.com•86 days ago

When is something object recognition and when is it not? What are the features that enable our "thing"-like descriptions? Can we pin down an event, or does it take longer time? Isn't object recognition a process on a fine enough timescale?

roald-arboel.com•86 days ago

Lots of work involving behaviour, both neuroscientific ("identifying neural correlates of X") and ecological ("how does environment affect X behaviour") rely on behaviour being solved - obsessed with the inputs that generated it, we forget to question whether it really is what we think it is.

nicolecrust.bsky.social•86 days ago

Such crucial insights. I’d never quite connected the thing/process distinction to the tricky business of defining brain functions. Thank you!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166223622002132

nicofoley.bsky.social•88 days ago

I’d like to point out that the brain’s ability to understand a thing is pretty remarkable.. view-invariant object recognition and trans-saccaddic integration and field remapping under cortical magnification geometry are complex processes

haesemeyerlab.bsky.social•88 days ago

Mhh, I study thermoregulation and my true interest is in the process. But to work out the process, outside of behavior, we often focus on things (neurons encoding XYZ) in our work, or static descriptions of the process (say receptive fields) which are also things.

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

This is a crucial point: Thing-descriptions can be an important stepping stone, even if they aren't the end goal. Thanks for making it.

seeingwithsound.bsky.social•88 days ago

Neither, why the dichotomy? An object may be a thing, but if it gets closer there's in vision an optic flow like process that may hint at collision threat. All sorts of static and dynamic cues add together to hint at what's out there, in vision including shadows, textures, reflections, ...

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

Why? To illuminate the distinction and ferret out hidden, underlying assumptions that not everyone agrees they are adopting. I agree: the same problems can be tackled in different ways!

awaisaftab.bsky.social•88 days ago

Thinking of life and mind as processes was a vital step for me, especially in recognizing where vitalism and substance dualism go wrong... both are looking at processes unfolding over time and trying to distill them to static entities.

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•88 days ago

I've been very sceptical of the "process ontology" stuff. Mainly, I guess, because I've found it unclear & full of empty promises. But maybe this is worth thinking. One basic thing is that maths is static. But that doesn't mean we can't represent/study dynamics with it. So, what do "processes" add?

mzach.bsky.social•88 days ago

I am one of those who has no clue what process ontology ultimatrly is despite reading about it and talking to process ontologists. No problem with processes and ptocessual thinking, but with "process ontology". 🤷‍♂️

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•88 days ago

Precisely. I haven't read much about this, but I've been trying to squeeze things out of people who go on about processes online (social media). I've always been left empty handed. But.. maybe it's me? I'm willing to listen. I stated my main question above.

remisramos.bsky.social•88 days ago

Can you recommend readings re: cognitive ontology and its metaphysics? I've been reading Burnston and Khalidi recently and I wonder who else is doing work on this subject that might not be on my radar.

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•88 days ago

Can't really recommend anything at the moment. But the replies to Nicole's original tweet (?!) seem to include a number of references worth having a look at:

https://bsky.app/profile/nicolecrust.bsky.social/post/3lc6xa2boak2b

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

Great Q! Not sure. Thinking about brain stability vs. epilepsy; mood stability vs. depression, & sanity vs. psychosis as "things" seems wrong from the outset. These are all continuous, dynamical processes where adaptability +s happen w/ fragility -s. Is that process philosophy?

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•88 days ago

I guess we should separate the issue of whether processes and things are *fundamentally different from the issue of when we should view (model) some either as one or the other. Maybe your question is more of the latter type? (NB I'd say we need to rely on something static to make sense of dynamics.)

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

I think that's right? We can let the bathwater can go & still keep the baby?

tuomaspernu.bsky.social•88 days ago

So.. to be clear: what's the bathwater and what's the baby here? You mean: letting go of the fundamental ontological issue (at least in this context), and focus only on the pragmatic issue of modeling things the right (useful) way (by relying on conventional ontoloy & maths)?

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

Yes!

jccust.bsky.social•88 days ago

I think the process approach is more compatible with contemporary biology. For consciousness, I like the Global Workspace Theory (GWT), where consciousness is a dynamic hub of information available for other biological systems.

tolchinsky.bsky.social•88 days ago

Is both a possible answer? Once we have a Markov Blanket, there is a "thing" conditionally independent from "the environment" while all the communications across the blanket are processes.

pessoabrain.bsky.social•88 days ago

Processes, processes, processes!

justfineneuro.bsky.social•88 days ago

Things help contextualize processes?!? Kinda like latent generative processes emit things (measures, including memorial processes).

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

Thing-thinking is easier. It’s where We’ve made our biggest advances. There’s thus a lot of room for innovation and opportunity even by taking one step toward process. But thing thinking is also hard to shake. (This is part of why I’ve gone all in on a function that won’t be thing’d: mood!)

sifu.tweety.fish•88 days ago

In grad school I used to try and argue that there was so such thing as objects, which I think was me trying to blunder towards this in my smartass way. It feels a little Gibsonian.

nicolecrust.bsky.social•88 days ago

The philosophy can get a bit “out there”. I fear that scares people away - the core idea of noun vs verb is not rocket science. Gibson’s ideas are definitely relevant!

adw.bsky.social•88 days ago

@andrewhinton.bsky.social one for you :) 👆

andrewhinton.bsky.social•88 days ago

I dig the question/frame!
So objects vs events in a sense — and of course they’re interdependent … though yeah I think culturally we are object-centered for sure. It makes us think things like “I made all this money myself” and whatnot.

adw.bsky.social•88 days ago

As an ecological psychologist, it’s all about process over things

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply