My Family and other Animals

[Mikal]

Your intellect is your mental power to think, understand and draw conclusions logically. Mental power aside from thought is your capacity to focus, concentrate, observe and decipher. It takes effort to focus and concentrate which enhances the skill to observe and decipher. Effort is exertion of determination which is firmness of purpose to calculate. Mental power would seem to be enhanced by the tendency to be meticulous and discerning with information and retentiveness with memory and patience.

Nothing I am describing here is physical and tangible and seems to be more about the content or what is going on inside a person. There is still no conclusive evidence that would tell any of us these things are in the brain or even why all these things give rise to an experience of consciousness.

Austin why would the brain need a designer?? It is part of the physical system created in the womb and I would think nature is endowed with the intelligence to build these structures and has been doing that forever. However who or what endowed that intelligence or for that matter who or what put the information in the DNA system??

BTW...this is not a religiously inspired post...I am not religious.




Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

Your intellect is your mental power to think, understand and draw conclusions logically. Mental power aside from thought is your capacity to focus, concentrate, observe and decipher. It takes effort to focus and concentrate which enhances the skill to observe and decipher. Effort is exertion of determination which is firmness of purpose to calculate. Mental power would seem to be enhanced by the tendency to be meticulous and discerning with information and retentiveness with memory and patience.

Nothing I am describing here is physical and tangible and seems to be more about the content or what is going on inside a person. There is still no conclusive evidence that would tell any of us these things are in the brain or even why all these things give rise to an experience of consciousness.

Austin why would the brain need a designer?? It is part of the physical system created in the womb and I would think nature is endowed with the intelligence to build these structures and has been doing that forever. However who or what endowed that intelligence or for that matter who or what put the information in the DNA system??

BTW...this is not a religiously inspired post...I am not religious.
Regards Mikal

There is very much evidence of what is in the brain, such as memory, a million billion connections, their correlations, etc., and much more. Best to read up on this.

The brain would not at all need a designer or a 'who' or an Intelligence or a blueprint long ago. I look at it as having whatever form came out of nature and materials through evolution via natural selection. It looks as it should, as kind of a Rube Goldberg invention with new systems formed atop the older and more primitive ones.

The womb was not forever; it all began with a bacterium and whatever preceded it that bridged from non alive to alive. From then that which was fittest survived and evolved on up to us over billions of years. We can trace our ancestry all the way back. Best to read up on this, for it has withstood 150 years of inquiry.

(Theists and Deists may not always follow an religious rituals and, so, are not 'religious' in that sense, but they would still see God (stop!) as the source of brains and beings.)

[Mikal]

As David Chalmers said much is derived as brain theories which when carefully examined is nothing more than assumptions and speculations because they all leave out the content of experience....that absolutely must be explained...


Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

No, he said that the easy problems are solved or well on their way to be, such the DNA 'blueprint' and the brains' doings and its neural correlates to that of the states of consciousness, etc., but that the hard problem yet to be solved is the mechanism of how 'what it is like to be conscious' is transformed from those correlating states beneath. He has some suggestions about 'information' in his writings. He's great and I love all his stuff.

[Mikal]

Austin I have literally torn David Chalmers book down to pure statements with all extraneous repititions and needless information removed. David Chalmers zeroed in on words like "correlates" and "binds" and pointed out that most brain theories reveal mental processes but fail to explain what is going on inside or how this is giving rise to conscious experience. His book is one of such impeccable clarity as Stephen Pinker noted, that studying it is to derive what everyone is failing to recognize in their seach for an understanding of consciousness. As he well noted he thought and pointed out that this is the failure of the materialist viewpoint...

BTW Chalmers is not the only work I have studied, I first gave an ernest examination to the materialist theory...


Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

pointed out that most brain theories reveal mental processes but fail to explain what is going on inside or how this is giving rise to conscious experience. Regards Mikal

Exactly, and so I see no point of contention whatsoever with my post, so I am at a loss to understand yours (so I only referenced a relevant portion). Please reread my post about the 'hard problem'.

Chalmers, if I remember correctly, proposes that, pending further insight, fundamentally, certain neurological information is always accompanied by its conscious information, a dual method of nature (or something like that—I didn’t look it up).

Again, as for brain theories, per sey, that is not his contention. Consciousness theories are his contention, and everyone's, that is, the mechanism for consciousness, such as the global binding being proposed by some. There are many differing versions of these on the table. See ‘The Journal of Consciousness Studies’ for a sampling.

Obviously, consciousness requires and needs a brain, for 1) altered states of the brain are reflected in consciousness. 2) Molecules of anesthesia delivered to the brain can totally prevent consciousness. 3) We can observe more and more directly in experiments what brain areas are involved in thinking.

‘Mystery’, or unsolved problems, does not mean non-science or magic or God, for science continues to unravel ‘mysteries’ all the time, even way back, that were once thought to be magic, and still will. Don't let that inclination cloud your thinking (if it does).

[Mikal]

Austin we simply have different viewpoints so when I search and study it is for different information than you. As Chalmers pointed out the hard problem is with qualia, phenomenal or notional experience which is basically subjective experience which is getting into the turf of the mind. Chalmers did discuss the brain, I just restudied this part of his work yesterday.

Yes it is quite obvious the brain is involved here but an understanding of how involved is not fixed in cement. Everything is still under tremendous study as hits on internet searches are over-whelming and books are endless. The brain is physical, thought is intangible and brain research may show evidence of mental processes and areas of mental activity but it does not reveal the content of experience and what is going on inside a person to give rise to consciousenss. That as Chalmers pointed out is the problem.

Not much can cloud your thinking Austin when instead of studying mysterious states you are the one in those states and experiencing them. I have a long expanse of experience to broaden my understanding of statements made in studies....


Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

Yep, that describes the 'hard problem'. It is not cemented.

So, for now, waiting on science about the mechanism of consciousness, back to the origins of the brain?

[Mikal]

If you insist Austin but as I pointed out your intellect is the power to think....etc. That power is not a physical, tangible thing nor would I see it as the brain. Now you could say it is the chemicals in the brain and I would say it is "something" that more than likely gives rise to the chemicals...

I guess it shall come out in the wash eventually...

Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

We already know where chemicals come from.