I have a question

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Redd, Apr 17, 2012.

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  1. Redd Registered Member

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    hi all, can someone maybe agree, or, set me straight, please!


    ive been listening to philosophy lectures and its getting on my nerves that the lecturer keeps asking, "But what is the mind, - is it ...... "

    I feel like shouting at him through the laptop. It seems logical to me, that
    our "mind" ie, "conscience" , "awareness" is just a product of the electrical signals in our head?

    thats where im at the mo, until someone tells me otherwise.
    in which case theres no afterlife, cos theres no electrical signals anymore.

    id welcome opinions, im no expert. it seems logical though?

    kind regards,
    redd .
     
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  3. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Is your anger also just electrical signals in your head?
     
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  5. Redd Registered Member

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    not 100% sure what you mean by that.


    i suppose if taken literally then yes. it certainly doesnt originate in your toes?
     
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  7. Redd Registered Member

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    does this make me really clever, cos it doesnt seem clever, it just seems really obvious. i put this loads of places and no-ones saying jack to me.

    lastly can i lay claim to this idea. did i just figure something out.

    or am i an idiot.
     
  8. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, I would agree with you that consciousness arises from something like electrical activity. No one can say with certainty how that works. All we can say with certainty is that life and death of the mind is accompanied by life and death of the synapses.

    You are neither an idiot nor are you the first to think of this. I just recently was discussing this on another thread, it's a fairly common topic. Here's a video you may be interested in for more information:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2925429&postcount=14
     
  9. Redd Registered Member

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    thank you so much. you've set my mind (lol) at ease.

    if you could point me towards discussions on the subject id love to read them.
     
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. Primitive hallucinatory experiences are additional properties of electrochemical activity, electromagnetic fields, etc -- which get organized into the complex visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory phenomena that biologists correlate to brain processes. You can find these elementary qualitative manifestations listed on any physics or science website where electromagnetism is covered. Oh, shucks, maybe that's science fiction websites, instead. Sorry.

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  11. jyaky125 Registered Member

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    Hi,
    salutation to one of the the majority forum site
    Here we get much awareness in it from some
    Experts,
     
  12. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    I'm trying to determine whether you believe you have free will.

    If everything you think or feel is electrical activity...what controls all this activity?

    If its entirely structural and genetic then you have no free will at all.

    And therefore can never claim to make any choices or decisions.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No. Like many emotional responses it also has a huge hormonal vector. Testosterone in particular (which both male and female mammals produce in varying proportions although males typically have much more of it) greatly affects the strength of this feeling, It can make the difference between acting on it, shrugging it off, or letting it fester until one day you shoot a kid because his hoodie looks kinda scary.
    Wow, you don't mess around with lightweight issues, do you?

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    Doesn't it all come down to what the Uncertainty Principle really means? We're just one tiny part of the universe. Was everything in the universe predetermined at the moment of the Big Bang?
     
  14. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Sure, but chemical reactions are just another form of mechanism...like electrical activity.
     
  15. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Predetermined by what?
     
  16. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    That's a good point. It's easy to forget that the brain triggers hormone secretion, and also secretes some of its own hormones. Hormones can trigger other nerve responses, or they can trigger other hormone secretions, or they can trigger responses in organs and tissues, such as you mention. It's all part of a complex regulatory system which also embues us with this other quality, that we can physically feel our emotional responses, returning to the brain from our efferent tactile pathways.
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Yes there is commonality between chemical and electrical activity. The transmission of a pulse down the axon is actually a "flipping" of the polarity of ions. (Think of falling dominoes, but instead of falling, each domino flips upside down, then flips back as soon as it transmits the pulse to the next domino). Since the ions are polarized, there is an electric field induced. So we measure it as an electrical pulse, but the "device" is chemical.

    Similarly, when synapse occurs, it is by the chemical release of ions across the gap that the pulse enters a second neuron. When enough ions build up at the second neuron, a threshold is crossed and that cell's nucleus sets up a pulse which it issues down its axon. All of this is chemical, with the electric field being induced by the motion of ions. The individual pulses travel neuron to neuron, but only propagating when the threshold is crossed (as by summing the many inputs received from the countless connections "wired in"). There can also be a feedback loop, so neurons can "oscillate". The totality of these phenomena is carried out over an incomprehensibly tangled network of point to point connections.

    On the other hand, hormonal chemical communication is broadcast, through the blood supply, to all the cells that are prepped to "listen" for a message by virtue of cell gates and receptors that allow specific molecules to activate specific functions within a cell.

    I can't help but think how the hormonal nervous mechanisms - and the hormone vs nerve allocation of functions - evolved from primordial sources, with the "purely chemical" hormonal mechanism appearing long before he first neuron mutated from another tissue, probably muscle or cartilage. The peculiar conditions that caused these evolutionary phases to proceed are still embedded in us, so the two systems have come into our formation with these particular features, and thus those primordial conditions ultimately led to the evolution of consciousness. It became favored in our lineage, and we emerged, sentient and sapient.
     
  18. Redd Registered Member

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    Aqueous Id, i wish i had your mentals. but i dont. nevermind.

    onto your last point, in simple terms, do you think brains evolved until one day, lol, somewhere, it reached critical mass and a consciousness was born?


    regarding free will, yes i have free will. i can go outside right now and run my head down a pebbledash wall if i feel like it.

    regarding being a vehicle for my genes, im 34 and childless, by choice. so no my actions arent subservient to my genetic lineage.



    i quite like the idea of us all as standalone machines and then we die. rather like the particles popping into existence in the void and then dissappearing
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2012
  19. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    If you truly have free will there must be something of yourself that is NOT mechanical.

    In other words, you are not entirely a standalone machine.
     
  20. Redd Registered Member

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    yeah its electrical, - our consciousness. your pushing a god slant here arent you.

    i suspect my nice thread will degrade from this point forth
     
  21. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not religious...and if what you call your consciousness or mind is entirely mechanical then you cannot claim to make any choice or decision.

    In other words, you have no free will.
     
  22. Redd Registered Member

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    i was using mechanical as a neat way of describing what i meant. we are biological machines. we run around the place for 70 odd years, the lighbulb metaphor fitting very well for our heads, then we fall over and die.

    cool this isnt religious.

    what on earth are you talking about so . what do you define as free will. do you mean the opposite of predetermined? i cant answer that question, niether can you. or maybe you can? that id like to see.
     
  23. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    If you are a biological machine why do you believe you have free will?
     
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