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Fri 14 Nov, 2008 04:15 pm
Hello everyone. I have a little challenge/inquiry for anyone who is interested. Basically, I want to present an idea or a question, and have people present their ideas or evidence for explaining the phenomena. Here is the question or idea:
I sit here in my chair, alone in a quiet room. I pick up my right hand, look at it and examine it for what it is. Then in my head, I think to myself, "Make a fist". Low and behold, after making that decision my hand makes a fist. What this is, is mind over matter. Mind, over matter.
Now, I know this sounds trivial and even stupid. Let me explain what I mean a little more. First off, humans aren't the only creatures with the ability to make a fist. It would be quite an easy task to 'train' a chimp or some other animal to make a fist, and you could even teach them to make a fist based off a command (conditioning). However, it becomes more complicated when you consider this with humans. The first step in the process is the mind or mental aspect. For instance I can think about making a fist in my head, picture what it would look and fell like to make a fist, all without physically making the fist. This is what I mean by the 'mind' aspect. Now, this mental processing can be used to manipulate matter, (our hand) and we can make a fist (manipulating matter), if we choose to go through with the behavior. Thus, the act of making the fist is not random or impulsive, it is a deliberate and intentional manipulation of the material substance making up our physical bodies.
The resulting question is how can one explain the phenomena of mind over matter, in a very simple example like this. Just to show how this question could be made more difficult is throw in a task other than clenching your fist, for instance painting the Sistine Chapel, or carving the Pieta. The curious question is how our minds or consciousness, can overcome matter.
The Challenge:
Write a short paragraph explaining this phenomena and how it actually occurs (only the fist clenching, lets keep it simple). How is it that I can think to myself, "make a fist", and all of a sudden I make a fist. The answer can be explained philosophically, biologically/physiologically, or any other way you wish to address this question.
Also, you can ask me to explain anything you don't understand. Thank you for anyone that is willing to lend their time!
@Blazenarrow,
Having a mental concept of a fist before you actually make one with your hand is not necessarily "mind over matter." It's funny how often we talk about mind as though it was a thing. And yet, nobody has ever actually detected such a thing.
I suggest that my "mind" is my subjective experience of my brain's activity. It is the result of all the electrochemical neural reactions in my cortex. It is this neural activity which causes my experience of mind. Mind itself is an end product, not a causal agent.
So in picturing a fist, the mental concept I experience is caused by neural activity. And of course actually making a fist is also caused by neural activity (acting through muscular responses).
So what you are describing is a situation where electrochemical neural activity is experienced as a mental concept and also as a physical result. But both experiences are consequences of neural activity. Neither one causes the other.
@Blazenarrow,
I'm not sure the answer I could give would be a philosophical one, but I reckon most biologists would stress in this sense that mind and matter are not such distinct entities.
Your brain is a control centre for your nervous system, which sends messages to your organs and muscles to regulate their operation. Once you make a concious decision to move a part of your body, providing that your nervous system is not damaged in some way, the muscles will respond having received an electrical message via the nervous system.
So really there is nothing more to the process than the electrical and chemical actions that make up having an idea, transmitting the nervous signal and moving muscles.
That would be the explanation i would be most happy with.
I am sure that there is a lot of interesting things to say about how unconscious or subconscious thought might result in muscular movement (for example I notice that I am flicking my left hand fingers with my thumb as I think about what to write here) which may be of interest to those with a phychoanalystic bent.
I also wonder if the process might seem very different to someone who was interested in the concept of Will and Idea as explored by Schopenhauer and those he influenced.
@Blazenarrow,
Blazenarrow wrote:Mind, over matter.
"Life, over matter" is one way you could go about explaining it ... life processes flow through the material world ... "I" no longer contain any molecule of the matter that "I" occupied when I was born ... I can rub my hand on a rough surface and remove some of the matter; I can eat a burger and replace that matter ... "mind" is but an evolved property of higher forms of life ... it may affect the particulars of how a life process flows through the world of matter, but not the fact that that's simply what all life processes do
But then, this is a reductive perspective relative to the perspective you're asking your question from ... and in effect, mine is a perspective that makes "mind" more or less disappear ... so I'm not playing fair
@Blazenarrow,
Blazenarrow, you might be interested in
Benjamin Libet's famous experiment.
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