Consciousness is a Biological Problem

... ah, but Russell didn't have access to computers in order to discover the unexpected mathematical (and self-organizing) properties of nonlinear dynamical systems ... it has long been experimentally demonstrated that simple thermal gradients can induce spontaneous order () ... it has been modeled in computer simulation that the likelihood of autocatalytic sets (proto-life) spontaneously self-organizing in chemical gradients is significant (Autocatalytic set - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) ... the fossil record here on earth indicates that intelligence evolved from non-intelligence, and possibly even from non-sentience (was the first life form on earth sentient? the first proto-life form?) ... yes, this is all scientific speculation - but that's a far cry from an "assumption", no?

Yes, I agree, a far cry from assumption. And the discovery of principles such as emergence were not anticipated by Russell and his ilk, either. But again, the original argument I put forward is that intelligence does not evolve, our capacity for intelligence evolves. And come to think of it, why is matter 'unexpectedly self-organising?' And again, is this attributable to some characteristic of matter itself? And if it is, why does it have it? Is it an attribute of quarks, along with their charm and colour?

(In fact since starting out on this thread, the thought has occurred to me that perhaps a major insight the Augustine and the scholastics actually lacked was the idea of evolution, which was potentially there in Origen, who was ostracised...picked up again by Tielhard de Chardin....but I digress...)



One of the reasons the idea of 'an immaterial reality' is problematical is mainly because of the idea of a 'spiritual substance' or 'immaterial thing'. This has bedevilled Western philosophy, in my view, for a very long time, and was prominent in the thought of Augustine who I think came up with the idea of a 'spiritual substance', subsequently propagated again by Descartes in his idea of 'extentionless substance'. It understands 'the transcendent' as another kind of object, alongside, but of a different category, to natural phenomena.

But my understanding is that the 'the immaterial' (or preferably the 'causal level of reality') is beyond existence; it neither exists, nor does not exist, and cannot be conceived of as a thing or substance of any kind. Hence the term 'transcendent'. It appears manifest to the human intelligence as lawfulness and order, in both mathematical and scientific sense, among other things (including, perchance, the tendency of matter to self-organise!)

The question you are then entitled to ask is how would I, or anyone, know something that was 'beyond existence'? Well, that is the whole point of the various species of traditional theology, theosophy, yoga, metaphysics, the philosophia perennis, and what have you. All of them indicate a 'transcendent reality' which is not however available to the senses or to reason. In Plotinus, for example, this is the One, understandable only by Nous (which has, amusingly, slipped into the vernacular as 'nouse'). And again, this is very much the aim of philosophy as traditionally understood, to prepare the mind, indeed the whole human being, by the process of metanoia to apprehend the transcendent reality through the activation of nous, gnosis, jnana, prajna, call it what you will. This is experential, not intellectual. It is a truth that must be sought out, lived, practised. This is philosophy as a way of life and practise, and through this it starts to become clear. And a marvellous thing it is too.

Now generally this thinking is taboo in the Western mainstream and Betrand Russell certainly openly rejected it. I am only into it because I was once a member of the counter-culture (and thank heavens for that). You will note that earlier in this thread, the advocates of the neuro-scientific view have already concluded it can be safely ignored. From a pragmatic perspective, they're probably right, but more's the pity.

it was what she was before the flash that is said to be unchanging-and still exists behind the scenes of this marvelous spectacle you call the universe. that which existed before the flash of creation is the absolute or in theological terms god or in worldy terms energy. but i see no evidence of it having willed, chosen or decided to create the universe or that it directs it now. i feel it was impotent in the sense that the universe 'happened' in spite of it, from it, and could not have been avoided. at least that is my understanding about the matter today.

in fact, that 'absolute' factor or 'nous' is what i am thinking consciousness is. with a capital 'C' in place of the old capital 'G'. so it is looking through our eyes, each of us, but because of the ego portion of the physical brain has become accustomed to imagining itself to be a person. i feel this satisfies both views, the opposing main views in this thread. but the physicalists would have to settle for believing that when the brain is dead there is not a spirit personality of who used to live there roaming around or merging with anything-lights out and nobody home. and the theists would have to settle for believing that Consciousness is eternal experiencing this life through all the many individual perspectives. isnt that enough?

I am certainly comfortable with that view, although I think all but the most radical or ecumenical of Christians would not be. It is not so much 'theist' as 'vedantist'.

---------- Post added 07-11-2009 at 05:31 PM ----------

I recommend 'The Supreme Identity' by Alan Watts. It covers this ground very beautifully.

of course, a favorite of the countercultue (me included). i still remember the first time i read The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Really Are.
and Ram Dass' Be Here Now...great stuff! and i did it without drugs!

---------- Post added 07-11-2009 at 05:29 PM ----------

the mainstream christians would have to become gnostics i guess...
isnt a vedantist just someone who follows the vedic texts? i see hinduism as actually a culture, not a religion that came from the corrupted leaders distorting the teachings of the vedas. they are in synch with all the mystic schools i would say...every faith has them. what sufism is to islam, what the kaballah is to judaism, gnosticism is to christianity, etc etc. what is most interesting is that they all agree on their conception of reality-unity.

... actually, I would say it's not a characteristic of matter ... nor is it a characteristic of energy ... nor of space ... nor of time ... it is a characteristic of the whole matter-energy-space-time nexus ...



... I would tend to disagree that it can be safely ignored, as it's part of the phenomena that neuroscience is trying to explain! ... that being said, it would probably not become part of a neuroscientific explanation (it's just not scientific) ... but scientific explanations, for all their predictive power, are dry, lifeless, incomplete things ... it is human being that breathes life and meaning into them, and makes science worthwhile ... and as you say, human being is a truth that must be sought out, lived, and practised!

---------- Post added 07-11-2009 at 11:11 AM ----------



... ah, but seeing past the singularity is a completely imaginative exercise, for we have absolutely no clue (and may not even be able to imagine) what existed prior to space, time, and energy coming into existence ... it could be as you propose ... or it could be we are in an infinitely long circular chain of universes ... or it could be we are a speck of dust on a giant centaur's nose ... or ... ... ... anything at all!



... sounds to me like a classic case of glass-half-empty/glass-half-full



... what delicious irony - in trying to establish a compromise position between two ways of thinking that are on opposite sides of a fence, you and I have managed to come up with two such compromise positions that are on opposites sides of a fence! :perplexed:

This is in process of responding towards posts related to my opening post answer (my #116) towards jeepers' number 98.

I appreciate and am pleased, salima, meri baheen, with your politeness and word choice (#132), and also can understand how confusion can occur when new word senses are being used. I will do my best to explain.


As I take it to be, paulhanke, you are good with detail, and that is one thing that I can always appreciate. Also, along with the detail, being able to keep it focused while yet being able to pull back from that--all the while never forgetting the detail--and see the big picture, is a good trait to have, indeed. I am not perfect with that, but make an effort.

Now, I shouldn't try to say any more than what I can see, or formulate from what I see, so I'm not sure, however, if it is the case that you responded (your #131) to my #130 (pg 13) as you read (since the flow and content appear to be such), rather than having read the whole, then responding after that, it could be that that may possibly have led to some confusion as well. Please do allow me, here, to point out what I mean, and explain my position.

First of all the word usage. Without going into English grammer, suffice it to say that quasi forms are not so uncommon to English at all--which is why, for example, we can enjoy partying, or have a ball, or (at least when I was in college) xerox a form. For this reason, it would be impeding to overly emphasize the grammatical form, if by doing so the sense of the usage of the word becomes muddled.

The word conscious, actually, is already considered a noun as well as an adjective, but has (as far as I have seen) only a single sense--the 'entity' of the state of consciousness. Chamber's 21st Century Dictionary, Revised Ed. (1999) gives us the following entry for the noun [most dictionaries that give the noun entry (some don't) simply refer to one entry under the adjective list] :

[indent]"n. the part of the human mind which is responsible for such awareness, and is concerned with percieving and reacting to external objects and events."[/indent]

This is why I actually didn't need to identify my noun usage of the word conscious, yet did so anyway, so as to help bear out that I am using it in a new, and different sense from the given sense of the word as a noun, as well as that my adjective usage, depending on context is from the sense of the noun as I use it. But just what is that sense, and just how is that your concern can be relieved?


I hope to make it clearer, so will first ask that a review of paragraphs 3~6 from my # 116, and ponder it carefully as it works in here. We can go back to pre-Cambrian time and find life forms in the realm of bacteria and archaea organisms--especially the anaerobic ones--and while these are organisims which are on the 'tree of life,' there is no need to consider that they had anything like ganglion. During this period called the Phanerozoic eon (from about 540 million years ago, to present) there have been a number of extinction crisis, with varying degrees of extinction intensity--the most famous being that at the end of the Paleozoic era(Permian/Triassic boundry) which is thought to have wiped out somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%~85% of living species.

We can stand here, on this point which is the present age, and get a pretty good sense of just how many ganglion/brain based life forms (species) there are, and have been. We have learned, and are learning, of and about this variety and procession of ganglion/brain build that has progressed up to the point of H. sapien. Therefore, whenever we talk about brain, we must do so on the data and understanding of the entire playing field. What is it that is different in the ganglion/brain cells, as opposed to bone, muscle, skin, or hair cells? (* from here on out, I'm just gonna use the word 'brain' for the whole type)

One thing that we can see, without having to do too much studying or searching, is that the 'major-player' brain cells signal to each other in groups, or maps, and that they have, over the course of evolutionary development, come to form groups, or structures, to perform rather specific things. It is specifically this trait which distinguishes (especially) the neuron from other cell types. What this entails, in turn, is that we will have degree of activity tied in with cell count--the fruitfly's brain is on a much lower activity scale (level) than that of a dolphin.

Now, we can see that while each species has a normal brain build for that same, particular species, we can also determine that there is a general continuum of species similarity--a line from one extreme, say, the H. sapien, and the other extreme, say, an extinct amphibian of some sorts. Also, as Homo genus slowly 'branched out' on its own, we can be pretty sure that brain build, and thus activity scales were not always the same--and yet all these creatures were of course breathing, moving, making noise, thinking, and planning (to whatever degree).

We must then add to that, the particular instances of a newly prenatally formed brain that builds according to genetical 'blueprint,' across all species, and that same brain's overall activity level as it matures to the fullest--for each specific 'blueprint.' Then, we'll have to consider all differences of brain build determined activity levels; and stepping back, and looking at the big picture, we have an organ which maintains various degrees, or levels, or involvement, of activity for which there is no word.

'Consciousness,' from which one sense of the word conscious (as an adjective) comes, has a rather specific working definition which we should adhere to. Even if one would stubbornly tend not to agree that all brains are sentient organs (used in the sense of mere awareness), that same one could in no way deny that all brains are consious--in the sense of having degrees, or levels, or involvement of activity. In this way, there is neither error nor awkwardness in saying that a particular brain being investigated will have a state of conscious, but not a state of consciousness.① Also, by using conscious in this sense, we can avoid the obsolete negative--but it is most important to keep things in context (as is true with many words, clauses, and phrases !!), and to understand sense from the context that it is in.

A brain is a conscious organ, the spleen not so. A brain at a resting state is of a certain degree of activity--conscious--which is less involved than that degree of that same brain's being in a fight-or-flight state, but both states are those of having conscious (and this in an uncountable noun, so no article is needed). The state of a brain in slow wave sleep is quite different from the state that it would be in when fully awake and alert, yet both states, regardless of degree of activity, are states of conscious.


I will admit, paulhanke, that it was going a bit out of the way to say that each neuron has a state of conscious---although in this sense, it is true. We have to keep in mind also that in the same way that the specific neurons in the motor cortext will process for that function (and not, for example, visual input, auditory, etc.), and the specific neurons of the substantia nigra will process for dopamine to the striatum, neurons are 'designated.' Also, since when we talk of brain, or the brain, we automatically assume the understanding that we are talking about the living, active neurons and their respective clusters, gryi, and so on, we don't really need to make mention of that fact.

The term conscious, therefore, is a (quasi-)noun, and as a noun, in the sense of being a condition, or state, of a biological entity which is generally called a brain (made up of, largely, brain [as the uncountable noun, as in tissue]), it best describes the fact of activity of the entire span of brain builds over evolutionary time, individual species builds or traits, and the particular build and/or state of the individual creature's specific brain, as well as brain as a tissue type. While the sense being employed is new, language is a fluid thing, and new words and senses both gradually form decay over time, all the time. In that the word's function best fits what is known today, as opposed to the lack of understanding of several hundred years ago, I encourage all to take careful note of, not be afraid to use it--but am not demanding it. Please do take care with context as I use the word so as to distinguish between noun and adjective, and senses. Thank you. KJ

This IS long, I know, and am guilty. I just felt I had to lay it out more fully to better ascertain proper take. I apologize.



① Of course here, we could use that other definition of sentient, "1. a sentient state or quality; capacity for feeling or perceiving; consciousness" (Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition (1976)) and then get into some kind of loop argument...only brains with consciousness have consciousness . . . ? But the second definition is actually about the same as saying all brains have states of conscious, because it is, "2. mere awareness or sensation that does not involve thought or perception."

Hi KJ - Hey I wouldn't feel guilty on account of the post being long, only because it doesn't really say anything.:bigsmile: I assume you're a brain scientist, or studying brain science, on account of the kinds of information you present, all of which I am sure is perfectly sound. As regards philosophy, however, I don't really think you have said anything at all beyond your original premise, which you simply find various ways to re-explain. I have put a philosophical argument about the nature of consciousness which so far has not been rebutted. You might say, well the original topic was about study of consciousness from a biological perspective, therefore a philosophical analysis is not relevant (certainly some of the comments in the original post in this thread hint at this but then that is also a tactic to define the subject in such a way that it automatically precludes opposing views) or you might present a counter-argument or demonstrate what was wrong with the premisses or conclusions in my argument. But continually re-defining consciousness as an attribute of ganglions, or something similar, simply re-affirms the original premise and really reduces the whole debate to one of semantics. (I would have let it go if you hadn't made me promise to stay with it till the bitter end, etc etc.)

This is kind of like a discussion between a piano maker and a pianist in my view. We're talking about the same subject, but from completely different perspectives. And it will probably always be thus. Peace to you. Let's move on.

I would have otherwise pointed out, jeeprs, that we must be patient; that seemingly appears to be causing some difficulty which possibly can be seen to be beginning to leak through in your above post. Please rest assured--if you were to have missed it in my long post, or the posts dealing with objections by paulhanke--that I have only opened my answer to your post (again, to confirm, your post number 98 is what you have alluded to above, correct? [and if I am mistaken, please cite the post number for me])

Then, you will surely notice (in my #116), taking a little extra time to let it soak in, that I have presently only given a little background, and had expressed my intent to proceed with the first section of your #98. I do hope that you would be willing to verify this.

Now, in the time that had passed since my #116, I felt a need to further clarify my points which had come up for testing (I trust you will have noticed that much from the exchange, having read it over). That, in turn, led to my long post. Therefore while your wording above can be said to reflect a somewhat more overt emotional coloring, your point is of course true. The bulk of that post was to demonstrate the usage of a word which had been questioned, and to explain its efficiency; but also to further highlight the inherent fallacy in 'H. sapienocentricizing' (anthropocentricizing) .

Philosophy, or not philosophy; that is not the question. The question is the demonstrable evidence of a logical and practical nature, for assertions made--although that is not a thing that philosophy or religious belief-systems tend to do. Therefore while any one is free to make claims and assertions, and any one is free to deny any need for testing them against all that is known of nature (including the passage of time and human experience/history), to refute the evidences against such claims and assertions, one will have to work in the same manner of data collecting and handling.

I am a bit surprized; maybe. Is it true that I 'made you promise,' or would it be more correct to say that I had asked for a declaration of intent? Please recall that I had said the following (#102):

[indent]I'd like you to answer my one question first. Are you, or are you not, actually willing to go through the 'all that it takes' to look at this, and to do so most carefully and logically? (rather than give up mid-stream with a 'you go back to your lab, and I'll go back to my meditation chair'-like line?) Please let me know your stance.[/indent]

Jeeprs, I don't really think we could say that I made (as in forced, or strongly caused) you to promise, to do anything other than answer in either an affirmative or a negative. You did answer in the affirmative on your own will, but I will think no less of you, if you were to change your mind at any point, for any reason. . . no one is perfect. Therefore, please do not feel yourself constrained to actively (or whatever) participating here--although I will continue in showing the error in that post in question.

You forgot to insert what the subject was. . . it would be more alikened to a piano builder and a pianist discussing how pianos are built to make the sound that they do. I will continue, as time and life allow, in my presentation.

If i could throw the proverbial spanner,have you read Alans thread on adopted memory by recipients of transplanted organs.It does question our whole view of how we store and gather our information and exactly where we exist as an individual.If memory and the "I" is so easily moved by bits of our body we in reality have not the slightest idea of who or what we are.I did notice it was ignored for some strange reason.

... thanks for taking the time to bring me up to speed



... would it work here to substitute the word "cognitive" for "conscious"? (as it seems to me that "cognitive" is significantly closer in meaning to "having degrees, or levels, of involvement of activity" than is "conscious") ...



... I have to admit, I do not yet see any reason to allow such a use ... you later make the analogy to tissue ... tissue is indeed something you can cut in two and end up with two pieces of tissue ... what is the basis for the claim that "conscious" has this same/similar property?

Says who? I think it is the question, particularly in connection with the nature of this specific topic. In fact whether this is a philosophical or scientific question is the whole point of the debate. The remainder of this paragraph more or less asserts that not only is the question a scientific one, but also that the only acceptable approach to any kind of proposition is one which can be 'tested against nature' (as distinct from 'philosophy' which you classify with 'religious belief' as something which can't be tested at all.)

So essentially you are saying that philosophy ought be replaced with science. Of course, this has generally what has happened in modern culture. Reduction of consciousness to a biological phenomenon is one consequence. There are many others.

Xris - re the inherited memory issue - very interesting article I have re-discovered called Aquisition of Donor Traits by Heart Transplant Recipients, here.

... you got a link for that? (I tried searching on "adopted memory", but nothing that looks like what you're describing came up) ...

---------- Post added 07-12-2009 at 09:21 PM ----------



... thanks, jeeprs!

For whatever degree of help became of it, you are most welcome, paulhanke.

The word cognitive would surely be best left for projections to what the brain becomes aware of in the way of having cognizance. Those people who had no memory formation laid down at all, nor any cognizance of having seen, the guy in the gorilla suit suddenly come dancing out on the basket ball court during the game, did take it in on levels of brain activity which didn't project to consciousness. In cases like this, it would not be nearly as efficient to say the structures of brain that took up the visual input that was seen (eyes were of course working normally), and processed it and fed it forward, were cognitive--because the sense that adjective form of cognition heavily implies 'faculty of knowing, percieving.'

I think here, instead of trying to appeal for other terms in any real, or unreal, effort to (shall we say) protect the single sense which has come down to us today of that word, as a noun, 'conscious,' it is best to see it as it describes what brain is and does, straight across the counter.

Tissue was used so as to help get across the concept inherent in the word brain, as a collective, uncountable noun, and the term the (or a) brain, as a concrete, countable noun; there is a difference. It is the fine tuned difference between these that allows for statment differences in the like of : the mind is brain, but the brain is not the mind. That embedded explanation had no further intent beyond this application--to show that most of the brain is tissue as opposed to 'juices' [but in a general sense here].

Well, as I have hinted at, it is not that I am trying to force anyone to use the term conscious in this sense, even though it fits what is known in the neurosciences better than the old negative terms, but I do wish to make folks aware of it--especially since I use that sense (in the proper context). It just describes better what is known.

But to check it out, are you cognizant of events happening between areas V1~5 (Brodmann's areas 17~19) in your striate cortex? or the exchanges between layers of cortex or projections towards the parvocellular versus magnocellular visual systems? Can you give report of exchanges of communication between the loops of the basal ganglion, or the somotosensory cortical area to the supplimentary, cingulate, premotor, and/or primary motor cortical regions? No, no one can, really.

Brain, however is doing this communicating, this recieving, processing, and feed-forwarding all along (as long as the cellular stucture is in alive, properly working condition). We cannot describe this state as being a state of consciousness, because, again, our working definition is quite fixed, and we simply are not aware of these events as they happen; only the resultant projected to consciousness cognized (acknowledged) data is what makes the content and state of consciousness.

And this kind of stuff is happening all along the way, from the bottom up. A person is suddenly raised out of slow wave sleep, and in most cases they are not going to be fully awake and alert in that first number of seconds passed. Even this state, is a state of conscious, but not that state of conscious which is full consciousness for that particular brain. (and we will find different degrees of consciousness among brains, of course) The whole thing being, that since what we have is a continuum, it is less correct to put it in black and white, 'be' or 'un,' terms--the whole shebang is one long stretch of a spectrum.


Jeeprs, I had explained that to you before, yet you chose not to give it consideration. We know, due to scientific method, that the pinal gland is not some structure which has to do with mediating between some imagined non-material 'mind' and the person (which, I might add, non-human animals were considered to not have). We can also see that any serious philosophy who wishes to argue in the area of the brain/mind problem, or consciousness, will have to keep up with what the neurosciences are doing. AND, we do have those who have arrived (as I think I have pointed out to you before, elsewhere) at the conclusion that the humanities (including philosophy) ought to settle with the major findings of neuroscience in order to relieve the mess that they have caused by earlier on not paying much attention to the connecting biological sciences and the neurosciences.

Philosophy is philosophy, a discipline in its own right. It is very much a humanity field such as art or religion. Philosophy is by nature, not a science. But, if one wants to know why a certain person looses all emotional tags, or why one person can no longer recognize him or herself, or why it can be extremely certain that the children of certain people will develop Huntington's Disease, they have to go the sciences. If one wants to learn more about how brain projects contents of autobiological episodic memory, they'll have to go to the sciences.

Galileo is said to primarily be the father of scientific method, not Agustine, nor Descartes, nor earlier religious belief-system founders. Therefore what I am saying, is when we are discussing things about the brain, we have to take into account the findings of scientific method; that's it, not saying we have to replace anything with anything, actually!

I'll check out the adopted memory thing, but it does sound a bit 'off the wall.'

Sorry KJ, I just find your whole attitude totally and irretrievably condescending. Whether you want to call it scientific imperialism, materialism, whatever, I simply refuse to kneel to this view.

[/ends]

---------- Post added 07-13-2009 at 03:57 PM ----------

No doubt you will be very effective at running the Empire. I will be out in the forest with the Wookies.

"Philosophy is philosophy, a discipline in its own right. It is very much a humanity field such as art or religion. Philosophy is by nature, not a science. But, if one wants to know why a certain person looses all emotional tags, or why one person can no longer recognize him or herself, or why it can be extremely certain that the children of certain people will develop Huntington's Disease, they have to go the sciences. If one wants to learn more about how brain projects contents of autobiological episodic memory, they'll have to go to the sciences.
Galileo is said to primarily be the father of scientific method, not Agustine, nor Descartes, nor earlier religious belief-system founders. Therefore what I am saying, is when we are discussing things about the brain, we have to take into account the findings of scientific method; that's it, not saying we have to replace anything with anything, actually!".............................KJ


your statement in bold above is certainly true, KJ. but i offer the counterstatement that "when we are discussing things about humanity, we have to take into account the findings of art, religion, philosophy and such disciplines that deal with the higher level functions of a human being which are beyond biology." my point all along has been that both are necessary and either side alone only presents a partial explanation.

you may offer the objection that anything that cant be explained by neuroscience is nothing more than behavior, either learned, adapted, selected, and can be looked at from a behavioral science point of view. could you reduce the paintings and poetry of humanity to behaviors? we should take credit for the accomplishments human beings have reached, while we are so willing to point out the miserable failures and defects in the character of human beings that cause us to go to war and commit atrocities against our own countrymen.

galileo was also passionate about art and music-but i doubt if he ever tried to explain them with science. nevertheless it proves that human beings are capable of resolving the issues between humanity and science without having to compromise the importance of either one.

The point is however much Kj insists that consciousness is understood by science, it is not.The structure of the brain and its component parts are well mapped but consciousness does not abide in any one part.Now we are accepting that memory can be stored in other parts of the body makes the question of our real us even more confusing and confirms science is only scratching the surface.Intuitive reasoning comes to the fore when we have such a bewildering array of information and ignoring the facts of experience is in my opinion naive.
An understanding of the possibilities that the brain is only a medium for external thoughts can not be discounted by any scientific facts as the thoughts we see might be only the physical incarnations of that process.

We are talking about consciousness:



And I was concerned about my statements being too offensive.



Wow, not just philosophy but also the "humanities" need to step aside. I am sure there are many others that would like to see this a science only forum. Really, what good is all that introspective stuff?

The point im making, it has not been concluded by anyone, except the individual who blinkers himself to further examination.

I'll touch base with you first, here, salima chan, since I do owe you some (and will get to those in time) responses from further back.

In the first instance of inspection, I am pretty sure we will find that we would be looking at two catagories, therefore cross-comparing them may methodologically faulty. Art is usually not something that we think of as having 'findings' (unless somehow I'm reading you incorrectly here), in that the visual, auditory, and performing arts (to kind of clump the groups in a general manner) do not do experiments so as to test an hypothesis, conclude a premise, and exercise that so as to reach understandings. The arts do experiment with expression, medium, form and audience reaction to maintain (or express) creativeness.

Religious belief-system dogma and tenets are a rather different matter, once again. We could take the view that the claims of any specific system amount to claims to know, and thus by extension, to 'have found,' but those claims are open for testing to the degree that they make claims about the natural world. If a certain religious belief system claims to have found something to be a natural fact of external reality, they are fully obligated to demonstrate exactly how, and by what means that said claim has been found. In all reasonableness, honesty, and fairness, they ought to oblige us with valid evidence for the claims that they make towards things of nature; nothing wrong with testing those points against what has been learned through careful, logical thought and testing for correctness (as is the scientific method).

It appears to me that philosophy, ever so slightly more than anything else, has become the effort to refine knowledge in more subtle, and specific terms; more than trying to reach final conclusions on any specific matter (and an element of scientific method overlaps a bit here, with this tendency) although positions are reached and argued for. Philosophy, nevetheless, does not proceed to do real tests on things, but to explain through thought experiments (such as the Chinese Room, or Mary, the scientists who understands but does not know red [I think it was Mary]) and observations.

However, there are some questions that would best be looked into. What could we pin down to being a higher level function which would be beyond (that is [if I read you correctly] beyond biological makeup)? Also, could we not be too far off target to feel it a shame that we don't share the earth with other Homo species, so as to more clearly see human brain is not really that so special an event? Chimpanzees can paint, and they too do not go off the edges of the paper or canvas, are choosy with their mediums, throw temper tantrums when they don't get to have the colors they want, and so on, but it is most obvious that they lack objective targeted creativity; how would the Cro-Magnon have been, or the H. erectus? Unfortunately, we'll never really know.

It appears that the key links in your passage there would be as follow, in bold underline:

[indent]when we are discussing things about humanity, we have to take into account the findings of art, religion, philosophy and such disciplines that deal with the higher level functions of a human being which are beyond biology.[/indent]

But I can't tell whether 'that deal with' is modifies 'such disciplines,' or 'findings.' For that reason I have to stop here until I can get more information on the intended concern.


To do art, however, is a behavior; just as any tendencies to act in any randomly fixed (directly or indirectly) manner, by any (especially) animate life form, are behaviors. The works themselves are the result of the activity of doing art, and there is of course no need to really do much else than appreciate them as such; although I have seen some geometrical breakdowns of how certain illusions and techniques were used in some works. (but that's a totally different thing)


Yes, I too, am passionate about art and music, and I never try to explain the works which result due to these activities by science--mostly because science does not ask that question, so to speak. Yet we can understand, by application of scientific method and observation (not with science, exactly) how these behaviors might well have arisen. (However that will not deal so much with the matter of the connection between brain, and what it has come to project in the H. sapien.)



You are very mistaken, xris, on a number of claims you have made.

Jay, I'm not sure if you have carefully read the whole thread or not, and I do appreciate your joinning in, yet would suggest that you not lose track of the title of the thread which does pop up, actually, with every single post. Can you catch my drift?