On Aug 31, 10:06 pm, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 2:52 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> The subject feels he initiates and has control over the voluntary > >> movement but not the involuntary movement. That's the difference > >> between them. > > > Ok, now you could understand what I'm talking about if you wanted to. > > All you have to do is realize that it is not possible for us to feel > > that there is a difference between them if there is not a difference > > between them. Doesn't mean that the difference is what we think it is > > - it could very well be only a feeling - but so what? What possible > > purpose could such a feeling have, and how could it possibly arise > > from particle mechanics? Where is the feeling located? Why is it > > there? Why don't we have the same feeling about our stomach digesting? > > We have different feelings about different things and this means there > are different brain processes underlying them. Our neurology is not > set up to control our digestion, but I suppose it is possible for a > mutant to be born who has motor and sensory connections from the gut > to the cortex. I don't see how you will help your case if you claim > that there is some fundamental cellular difference between voluntary > and involuntary actions, since in broad terms all the cells in the > body follow the same basic plan.
Whether or not afferent and efferent nerves are fundamentally different kinds of cells or just playing different roles in the nervous system isn't important. If they are the same that only makes a stronger case for me, since there would then be no biochemical determination of that role. You're not answering my questions though. I know we have different feelings about different things, I'm asking you why anything has any feelings at all, and is a feeling a physical thing or not? > >> Both types of movement, however, are completely > >> determined by the low level behaviour of the matter in the brain, > > > You can say that if you want to, but it just means that the low level > > behavior of matter is magic, and that even though it's only a large > > molecule, it wants to drive a Bugatti. > > If a movement is *not* determined by the low level behaviour of matter > in the brain that means that some part of the brain will do something > magical. Begging the question. What you're not seeing is that low level behavior is sometimes determined by high level motives (and vice versa). That's not debatable, it's a fact. If your view does not allow for that, then it's your view that is conjuring magic to explain it away. Substance monism is pathalogically superstitious against meaning and teleology, even to the point of denying it's own functionalist fetish. >An ion channel will open not because the appropriate ligand > has bound, but all by itself. If I get mad, then the ion channels involved in anger-related neural pathways open. They are not forced to by an exterior gravity, they are compelled to from the interior. When we feel something, they feel something. Not the same exact feeling - just as a single cone cell does not see the full color image that we see, indeed it may not see anything at all, but what it senses is part of what we see. It's a real thing. I doubt that you are ever going to understand that, but it's hard for me to accept that, since it seems to me a pretty straightforward concept. You just have to imagine that experience like the one you are having now, is literally real, it's just not shaped like blobs or particles in space, rather it is in the form of holistic sensorimotive perceptions over time, and everything has them in some form or another. Just as every one of the trillions of cells in your body has billions of atoms, each one of those atoms has a private sensorimotive (limited I imagine) capacity which attracts it to other atoms and repels it from others. Viewed from the 3-p outside, we call that electromagnetism. Cells have the same thing, only just as a cell has a level of solitary organization beyond the molecules and atoms it's made of, it also has it's own solitary level of experience - it's own sense of what to allow into it's membrane and what to keep out. Our bodies are made of cells and tissues, but 'we' are made of the experiential correlate of those cells and tissues - the histories, the sense and motives, all rolled up onto (more or less) one human experience. > > >> which can in theory be modeled by a computer. > >> No particle moves unless > >> it is pushed by another particle or force, > > > Force is metaphysical. It's just our way of understanding processes > > which are occurring outside of us rather than inside. My view is that > > it's all sense and that force is in the eye of the beholder. > > Even if you believe there is no basic physical reality, there are > certain consistencies in the behaviour of objects in the apparent > reality, and that is the subject of science. The subject of science is not the behavior of objects. Science is about knowledge and systematic methods of testing that knowledge. There is no limit on what science can seek to examine. > >> otherwise it's magic, like > >> a table levitating. > > > Tables do levitate if they aren't stuck to a large planet. What's > > magic is that we think it's a table and not a cloud of atoms flying > > around a volume of empty space. > > Tables only do what the forces on them make them do. Same with > everything else in the universe, whether it's particles inside cells > or inside stars. What makes the forces do that? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
