Thought may not originate in the brain.

lucaspa · #31 30th August 2004, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by Motus

They don't bake themselves.

With natural selection, yes, evolution does "bake the cookies" by itself. Natural selection is a recipe for getting design. NS doesn't need an outside intelligence to make designs.

lucaspa · #32 30th August 2004, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by JohnR7

It is mostly circumstantial and it is NOT enough to get me to believe in it. I would need evidence that is beyond a reasonable doubt, and that kind of evidence is just not there.

Of course the evidence is there. It's just that your personal requirement for "reasonable doubt" is so unreasonable that it can't be met.

Mostly there are other explainations for the data that are more plausible than Darwin's theory.

The floor is all yours. Tell us those explanations (but first you should test them to see if you can falsify them before we take our shot; you will save yourself some embarrassment that way).

Jet Black · #33 30th August 2004, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by JohnR7

So, your cookie theory of evolution still requires an intelligent designer or baker as the case maybe.

err, why would evolution require an intelligent designer?

Motus · #34 30th August 2004, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by lucaspa

Non sequitor. Notto never said he ascribed emotions to protista, and neither did I. That would be anthropomorphizing: projecting our bias onto the protista. Notice we never got any data of the particular behavior that Custance thought was "emotions".

He more than likely didn't want to bog down the flow of the paper by listing a lot of tedious numbers. He did give a list of adjectives and explanation to describe what was observed, though. That is the best way considering the intended audience this was written for.

However, even in humans, emotions are reduced to chemistry. Chemistry in the brain. For instance, the happiness we feel is related to levels of serotonin in the brain.

Then according to you, we are only anthropomorphizing ourselves. If our source of emotion is chemical reactions just like theirs, then we don't really feel anything just like they don't. When a dog acts happy or angry, is the emotion real or are we anthropomorphizing the dog too? Since animals aren't self-conscious, they aren't able to feel emotion either. Is that an excuse to abuse a dog?

What we call emotion is not simply chemical interactions. The chemicals may be in the brain, but the emotion is an ethereal concept. We can say that so-and-so brain activity causes someone to think of a grey square, but the grey square doesn't materialize in the brain itself. So you can't say that the thought is housed in the brain, because it's not housed anywhere. We think it's in the brain because it's convient for us to comprehend it that way.

Motus · #35 30th August 2004, 04:39 PM

Originally Posted by Jet Black

err, why would evolution require an intelligent designer?

Do you suppose electrons just move themselves?

Arikay · #36 30th August 2004, 04:44 PM

Yeah, you wouldn't want to bog down a scientific paper with useless things like facts or numbers or anything like that.

ForeRunner · #37 30th August 2004, 04:45 PM

Originally Posted by Motus

Do you suppose electrons just move themselves?

In a manner of speaking, yes.

What does that have to do with it though?

Motus · #38 30th August 2004, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Arikay

Yeah, you wouldn't want to bog down a scientific paper with useless things like facts or numbers or anything like that.

It depend on who the intended audience is. If it's for the population at large, then no you wouldn't bog it down with statistics. If it's for other scientists, then you would probably include them.

Mad Arab · #39 30th August 2004, 08:46 PM

There's actually a lot going on in this discussion. Humans (or at least I do and it seems reasonable to guess that the rest of you do as well) have both emotions and, in addition, an extremely advanced capacity to model the emotional and mental states of others (usually humans but sometimes pet or random animals or what have you). Like all of the really powerful generalizations that our brain uses in its "natural logics", this kind of pattern recognition can be deceived. I think this is what we're seeing in both the source article and some of the discussion here. I think that it is pretty clear that protists are capable of responding to stimuli and making some very simple decisions. This is not the same thing as having emotional reponses.

Philosoft · #40 31st August 2004, 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by Motus

Then according to you, we are only anthropomorphizing ourselves. If our source of emotion is chemical reactions just like theirs, then we don't really feel anything just like they don't.

Well, no, not exactly. While emotions might be composed of a system of electro-chemical events, an emotion can't be understood or observed as a discrete series of said events.

When a dog acts happy or angry, is the emotion real or are we anthropomorphizing the dog too? Since animals aren't self-conscious, they aren't able to feel emotion either. Is that an excuse to abuse a dog?

I don't recall anyone claiming that self-consciousness is necessary to experience emotion. Dogs have a limbic system - the part of the brain that is widely thought to be the seat of emotions. In fact, I believe all mammals have a limbic system, albeit in differing degrees of complexity.

What we call emotion is not simply chemical interactions. The chemicals may be in the brain, but the emotion is an ethereal concept. We can say that so-and-so brain activity causes someone to think of a grey square, but the grey square doesn't materialize in the brain itself. So you can't say that the thought is housed in the brain, because it's not housed anywhere. We think it's in the brain because it's convient for us to comprehend it that way.

I don't see how either one of us is in a position to make authoritative claims about mental images. What we do know is that the human brain is staggeringly complex. And that complexity is perhaps emergently responsible for all kinds of mental phenomena that we can't comprehend at extreme levels of reduction.