On 17 October 2013 10:52, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >> >> On 17 October 2013 09:56, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > >> > On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 6:23:33 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >> >> >> >> On 16 October 2013 23:33, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > http://neurosciencenews.com/human-thought-can-voluntarily-control-neurons-in-brain/ >> >> >> >> And what do you think this article shows, Craig? Something about >> >> "voluntary" meaning "neither determined nor random"? >> > >> > >> > I think that it means that neurons are subject to our direct intention, >> > rather than creating the illusion of intention on top of mechanistic >> > processes. It shows that our own brain, down to the individual neuron >> > level >> > can be controlled intuitively, as we would if we had found that we had >> > grown >> > a new arm. Just as the brain can cause changes in the body, our personal >> > motivation can cause changes in the brain. >> >> But everything that we think and feel follows from some physical >> activity in the neurons > > > Not at all. What we think and feel leads activity in the neurons also. Right > now, I can plan to take a walk tomorrow morning, and lo and behold, activity > in my body will follow activity in the neurons which follow my intention. > Neuron activity may have no more to do with what we think and feel than > traffic patterns have in determining the culture of a city. > > >> >> , just like every other biological function. >> Tachycardia is caused by the heart beating faster, the heart does not >> beat faster because of tachycardia. > > > Tachycardia is the heart beating faster. They mean the same thing. It's like > saying that drag racing is caused by driving cars fast, but cars are not > driven fast because they are in a race.
Whichever way you look at it with the heart, the cars or the brain, it is a sequence of physical events A->B->C etc. Event "B" may correspond to choosing coffee over tea or it may correspond to tachycardia, but it was *caused* by event "A". Sometimes, "B" may be random or uncaused, like radioactive decay. But you have a concept of "B" being "spontaneous", which means (as far as I can work out) neither caused by antecedent physical events nor uncaused by antecedent physical events. And that seems not only wrong, but meaningless. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
