On 28 February 2014 15:22, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 27, 2014 8:03:15 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > >> On 28 February 2014 03:02, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> In other words, why, in a functionalist/materialist world would we need >>> a breakable program to keep telling us that our hand is not Alien? >>> >>> Or contrariwise, why do you need a breakable programme to tell you that >> it's your hand? >> > > Sure, that too. It doesn't make sense functionally. What difference does > it make 'who' the hand 'belongs' to, as long as it performs as a hand. > It's important for an animal to be able to distinguish self from non-self, as can be seen if two animals are locked in combat - one that can't tell its own limb from its opponent's is just as likely to bite itself as its prey. Repeat that often enough and you have a strong evolutionary pressure to distinguish self from non-self. I would imagine alien hand syndrome is a breakdown of this system. -- 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.
