[tips] RE: Are you hardwired?

[Marc Carter]

Hmm.   I would disagree with the characterization of Armstrong's abilities as being the result of his being "hard-wired" and instead refer to him as a physiologic freak -- but in a very, very good way.  His ability to metabolize oxygen is well outside the range of normal and almost surely contributed to his success as a cyclist, but it has little or nothing to do with hard-wiring in his brain.   Is there evidence of hard-wiring in the brain?  Hmm.  I'm hard-wired to seek food when I'm hungry, to seek rest when tired, to categorize objects, to perceive spectral differences as colors.  I'm hard-wired to want to have sex, to infer causality from the repeated conjunction of two events, and things like that.  There're tons of instances of hard-wired-ness in human brains.   But just because we're hard-wired in some respects doesn't take anything away from our plasticity in other respects.   Your last question refers to an "explanation," but I don't see the referent in the rest of your post.   m ------- "Mauchly's Test of Sphericity: Tests the null hypothesis that the error covariance matrix of the orthonormalized transformed dependent variables is proportional to an identity matrix." --- SPSS   From: Michael Sylvester [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 7:48 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Are you hardwired? The _expression_ hardwired seems to be going around as a possible explanation for motivation and some behavior.For example cycling legend Lance Armstrong  and others who excel despite of their infirmities are said to be hardwired for their specific accomplishes. Is there any evidence for hiredwiredness in the brain? or is this just another psychobabble? And to the religious tipsters,could this explanation be construed as a form of teleogical predestination?   Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english