I think the problem comes in because we are between paradigms. When
they come up with 'physical' explanations for subjective experiences,
all the old Newtonian notions of what matters is and how it behaves
are dragged in also. This means it sounds more upsetting than we need
to believe it is. It also means that sometimes in their assumptions
about what must be like and limited to are also false, because they
are guided by old notions of matter. QM has not really trickled down,
let alone more recent physics, where distinctions between matter and
energy, here and far away and so on are not clear and things do not
simply relate like billiard balls.
For example they assume that as they come to understand the nature of
consciousness in humans and other vertabrates they reassure themselves
that other things do not have consciousness because they do not have
these 'physical' attributes. My experience of finding subjectivity
outside this small realm contradicts this assumption. For me other
very complicated self-interacting systems also have consciousness.
They have confused a specific type with the whole set.
It was not that long ago when scientists did not consider animals
conscious or as having emotions. Rather, they, unlike us, were
machines. The ironic thing is that two trends have taken place. Some
see animals as like humans: conscious subjects and other scientists
see us both as complicated machines with the illusion of selfhood.
The off switch is to not buy it. Adn to not get sucked into a
satellite viewpoint on own's expereince as the real perspective. In
other words, what is life. It is not this map but a hazy changing
mysterious realm. Examine what a 'physical' object is IN REALITY.
Like a table. Examine this notion of SOLIDITY. It is not so solid.
The funny thing is scientists have needed particle accelerators, at
the extreme end, to explore these kinds of things.
If you don't buy their system as THE MOST REAL it is often stated or
implied that this is emotional and or determined by your physical
nature. What a mammal or a primate is willing to believe. But leaves
open the question in response. How do their beliefs about the non-
existance of the self, determinism, a primarily dead universe and so
on fit their emotional and physical needs. What need does it satisfy
to overvalue mental calculation vs. intuition, for example. Control
of emotions with occasional outbursts of anger vs. a flexible and
steadily expressive emotional response. Is it simply a cooincidence
that the new religion values certain psychological traits that are
held by believers?
Is fear the root here?
On 23 Jan, 04:13, "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote:> Your materialist viewpoint makes me want to say one thing...
> Where's the friggin 'off' switch. If we continue down this track, we must
> provide an 'off' switch for those who do not wish to make this decidely
> 'anti-human' journey.
>
> Otherwise, YOU [the scientific, super-rational, materialist] have become
> monsters. Just a simply off switch is all we'd ask...NO PAIN; and then you
> can have without obstacle, your world of 'neurons' and your throne upon
> which you sit as master of intelligencia.
>
> "Sir Frederick"
fuzzysys.com> wrote in messagenews:p94ar29ifm4gmqip1f0crppilsfgjp1men@4ax.com...
>
>
>>
>> What is the self? How does the activity of neurons give rise to the sense
>> of being a conscious human being? Even this most ancient
>> of philosophical problems, I believe, will yield to the methods of
>> empirical science. It now seems increasingly likely that the self
>> is not a holistic property of the entire brain; it arises from the
>> activity of specific sets of interlinked brain circuits. But we
>> need to know which circuits are critically involved and what their
>> functions might be. It is the "turning inward" aspect of the self
>> - its recursiveness - that gives it its peculiar paradoxical quality.
>
>> It has been suggested by Horace Barlow, Nick Humphrey, David Premack and
>> Marvin Minsky (among others) thatconsciousnessmay have
>> evolved primarily in a social context. Minsky speaks of a second parallel
>> mechanism that has evolved in humans to create
>> representations of earlier representations and Humphrey has argued that
>> our ability to introspect may have evolved specifically to
>> construct meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict
>> their behavior. "I feel jealous in order to understand what
>> jealousy feels like in someone else" - a short cut to predicting that
>> persons behavior.
>
>> Here I develop these arguments further. If I succeed in seeing any further
>> it is by "standing on the shoulders of these giants".
>> Specifically, I suggest that "other awareness" may have evolved first and
>> then counterintutively, as often happens in evolution, the
>> same ability was exploited to model ones own mind - what one calls self
>> awareness. I will also suggest that a specific system of
>> neurons called mirror neurons are involved in this ability. Finally I
>> discuss some clinical examples to illustrate these ideas and
>> make some testable predictions.
>
>> There are many aspects of self. It has a sense of unity despite the
>> multitude of sense impressions and beliefs. In addition it has a
>> sense of continuity in time, of being in control of its actions ("free
>> will"), of being anchored in a body, a sense of its worth,
>> dignity and mortality (or immortality). Each of these aspects of self may
>> be mediated by different centers in different parts of the
>> brain and its only for convenience that we lump them together in a single
>> word.
>
>> As noted earlier there is one aspect of self that seems stranger than all
>> the others - the fact that it is aware of itself. I would
>> like to suggest that groups of neurons called mirror neurons are
>> critically involved in this ability.
>
>> The discovery of mirror neurons was made G. Rizzolati, V Gallase and I
>> Iaccoboni while recording from the brains of monkeys
>> performed certain goal-directed voluntary actions. For instance when the
>> monkey reached for a peanut a certain neuron in its pre
>> motor cortex ( in the frontal lobes) would fire. Another neuron would fire
>> when the monkey pushed a button, a third neuron when he
>> pulled a lever. The existence of such Command neurons that control
>> voluntary movements has been known for decades. Amazingly, a
>> subset of these neurons had an additional peculiar property. The neuron
>> fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut
>> but also when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut!
>
>> These were dubbed "mirror neurons" or "monkey-see-monkey-do" neurons. This
>> was an extraordinary observation because it implies that
>> the neuron (or more accurately, the network which it is part of) was not
>> only generating a highly specific command ("reach for the
>> nut") but was capable of adopting another monkey's point of view. It was
>> doing a sort of internal virtual reality simulation of the
>> other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was "up to". It was,
>> in short, a "mind-reading" neuron.
>
>> Neurons in the anterior cingulate will respond to the patient being poked
>> with a needle; they are often referred to as sensory pain
>> neurons. Remarkably, researchers at the University of Toronto have found
>> that some of them will fire equally strongly when the
>> patient watches someone else is poked. I call these "empathy neurons" or
>> "Dalai Lama neurons" for they are, dissolving the barrier
>> between self and others. Notice that in saying this one isn't being
>> metaphorical; the neuron in question simply doesn't know the
>> difference between it and others.
>
>> Primates (including humans) are highly social creatures and knowing what
>> someone is "up to" - creating an internal simulation of
>> his/her mind - is crucial for survival, earning us the title "the
>> Machiavellian primate". In an essay for Edge (2001) entitled
>> "Mirror Neurons and the Great Leap Forward" I suggested that in addition
>> to providing a neural substrate for figuring out another
>> persons intentions (as noted by Rizzolati's group) the emergence and
>> subsequent sophistication of mirror neurons in hominids may
>> have played a crucial role in many quintessentially human abilities such
>> as empathy, learning through imitation (rather than trial
>> and error), and the rapid transmission of what we call "culture". (And the
>> "great leap forward" - the rapid Lamarckian transmission
>> of "accidental") one-of-a kind inventions.
>
>> I turn now to the main concern of this essay - the nature of self. When
>> you think of your own self, what comes into mind? You have
>> sense of "introspecting" on your own thoughts and feelings and of "
>> watching" yourself going about your business - as if you were
>> looking at yourself from another persons vantage point. How does this
>> happen ?
>
>> Evolution often takes advantage of pre-existing structures to evolve
>> completely novel abilities. I suggest that once the ability to
>> engage in cross modal abstraction emerged - e.g. between visual "vertical"
>> on the retina and photoreceptive "vertical" signaled by
>> muscles (for grasping trees) it set the stage for the emergence of mirror
>> neurons in hominids. Mirror neurons are also abundant in
>> the inferior parietal lobule - a structure that underwent an accelerated
>> expansion in the great apes and, later, in humans.. As the
>> brain evolved further the lobule split into two gyri - the supramarginal
>> gyrus that allowed you to "reflect" on your own anticipated
>> actions and the angular gyrus that allowed you to "reflect" on your body
>> (on the right) and perhaps on other more social and
>> linguistic aspects of your self (left hemisphere) I have argued elsewhere
>> that mirror neurons are fundamentally performing a kind of
>> abstraction across activity in visual maps and motor maps. This in turn
>> may have paved the way for more conceptual types of
>> abstraction; such as metaphor ("get a grip on yourself").
>
>> How does all this lead to self awareness? I suggest that self awareness is
>> simply using mirror neurons for "looking at myself as if
>> someone else is look at me" (the word "me" encompassing some of my brain
>> processes, as well). The mirror neuron mechanism - the same
>> algorithm - that originally evolved to help you adopt another's point of
>> view was turned inward to look at your own self. This, in
>> essence, is the basis of things like "introspection". It may not be
>> coincidental that we use phrases like "self conscious" when you
>> really mean that you are conscious of others being conscious of you. Or
>> say "I am reflecting" when you mean you are aware of
>> yourself thinking. In other words the ability to turn inward to introspect
>> or reflect may be a sort of metaphorical extension of the
>> mirror neurons ability to read others minds. It is often tacitly assumed
>> that the uniquely human ability to construct a "theory of
>> other minds" or "TOM" (seeing the world from the others point of view;
>> "mind reading", figuring out what someone is up to, etc.)
>> must come after an already pre- existing sense of self. I am arguing that
>> the exact opposite is true; the TOM evolved first in
>> response to social needs and then later, as an unexpected bonus, came the
>> ability to introspect on your own thoughts and intentions.
>> I claim no great originality for these ideas; they are part of the current
>> zeitgeist. Any novelty derives from the manner in which I
>> shall marshall the evidence from physiology and from our own work in
>> neurology. Note that I am not arguing that mirror neurons are
>> sufficient for the emergence of self; only that they must have played a
>> pivotal role. (Otherwise monkeys would have self awareness
>> and they don't). They may have to reach a certain critical level of
>> sophistication that allowed them to build on earlier functions
>> (TOM) and become linked to certain other brain circuits, especially the
>> Wernickes ("language comprehension") area and parts of the
>> frontal lobes.
>
>> Does the mirror neuron theory of self make other predictions? Given our
>> discovery that autistic children have deficient mirror
>> neurons and correspondingly deficient TOM, we would predict that they
>> would have a deficient sense of self (TMM) and difficulty with
>> introspection. The same might be true for other neurological disorders;
>> damage to the inferior parietal lobule/TPO junction (which
>> are known to contain mirror neurons) and parts of...
>
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