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Pattee explains there is a basic and extremely important distinction between laws and rules in nature.11 Laws are inexorable, meaning they are unchan… - Michael S. Gazzaniga
" "Pattee explains there is a basic and extremely important distinction between laws and rules in nature.11 Laws are inexorable, meaning they are unchangeable, inescapable, and inevitable. We can never alter or evade laws of nature. The laws of nature dictate that a car will stay in motion either until an equal and opposite force stops it or it runs out of energy. That is not something we can change. Laws are incorporeal, meaning they do not need embodiments or structures to execute them: there is not a physics policeman enforcing the car’s halt when it runs out of energy. Laws are also universal: they hold at all times in all places. The laws of motion apply whether you are in Scotland or in Spain. On the other hand, rules are arbitrary and can be changed. In the British Isles, the driving rule is to drive on the left side of the road. Continental Europe’s driving rule is to drive on the right side of the road. Rules are dependent on some sort of structure or constraint to execute them. In this case that structure is a police force that fines those who break the rules by driving on the wrong side. Rules are local, meaning that they can exist only when and where there are physical structures to enforce them. If you live out in the middle of the Australian outback, you are in charge. Drive on either side. There is no structure in place to restrain you! Rules are local and changeable and breakable. A rule-governed symbol is selected from a range of competitors for doing a better job constraining the function of the system it belongs to, leading to the production of a more successful phenotype. Selection is flexible; Newton’s laws are not. In their informational role, symbols aren’t dependent on the physical laws that govern energy, time, and rates of change. They follow none of Newton’s laws. They are lawless rule-followers! What this is telling us is that symbols are not locked to their meanings.
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About Michael S. Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is an American neuroscientist, author and professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Michael Steven Gazzaniga
Alternative Names:
Gazzaniga, M.S.
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M. S. Gazzaniga
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Michael S Gazzaniga
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Gazzaniga, Michael S.
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Additional quotes by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Hume concluded that many of the questions that philosophers asked were pseudo questions — that is, questions that cannot be answered with the likes of logic, mathematics, and pure reason because their answers will always be founded at some level on an unprovable belief, on an axiom. He thought that philosophers should stop wasting everyone’s time writing copiously about pseudo questions, dump their a priori assumptions, and rein in their speculations, as the scientists had. They had to reject everything that was not founded on fact or observation, and that included eliminating any appeal to the supernatural.
Mother Nature has figured out a way to get rid of the extra neurons through a process called “pruning.” With appropriate input from the environment, the unnecessary neurons die off, and an acceptable number connect the two structures at the end of the developmental period. But, of course, here comes the fragility. Frequently the pruning is overdone. Indeed, evidence has accumulated that developmental mistakes in pruning lead to autism11 and schizophrenia.12 “Robust yet fragile” is everywhere, and the concept is central to realizing how the brain is organized.
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