On 10/2/2011 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Oct 2, 9:28 am, Stathis Papaioannou<[email protected]> wrote:
So you do believe that ion channels will open without an observable
cause, since thoughts are not an observable cause. A neuroscientist
would see neurons firing apparently for no reason, violating physical
laws.
Thoughts are observable to the thinker. No physical laws are violated.
When a person thinks of gambling, the associated neurons fire for that
reason. The firings have a proximate cause - changes in voltage or
polarity, etc, but those phenomena also are activated because the
person who they are part of thinks of gambling. Both the thought and
the mechanism are part of the same thing, a thing which has it's only
existence as the dualistic relation between the two.
If they are part of the same thing, then it is presumptuous to say one causes the other.
One might at well say the neurons firing caused the thought of gambling - and in fact that
is what Stathis is saying and for the very good reason that a little electrical
stimulation, that has no "thought" or "sensorimotive" correlate, can cause both neurons
firing AND their correlated thoughts. But thoughts cannot cause the electrical stimulator
to fire. So it is *not* bidirectional.
Brent
If you stimulate the amygdala in a gambler directly with
electromagnetically charged instruments, then they will likely be
reminded of the feeling of gambling. If you stimulate the area in
someone who has never gambled, the would be reminded instead of the
feeling of jumping across a creek or lying to their teacher or
something. It is bi-directional. I don't understand why that would be
such a difficult concept to consider. I can put a magnet onto the
screen of a CRT and cause it to change colors, or rub my eyes with my
hands to see colors and patterns but that doesn't mean that they have
to be manually manipulated that way to function.
Craig
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