Re: First Causes

From: JPL Verhey (matterDELminds_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/15/04 

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:04:11 +0200

"Peter F" <fell_trapforspambot_in@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:EWV1d.153$FI5.5872@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
>
> "JPL Verhey" <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4146f327$0$62373$5fc3050@dreader2.news.tiscali.nl...
>
>> I agree that social cohesion and communication is a big player, als
>> in
>> our emotions, thoughts and behavior. We wouldn't be, and as we are,
>> without it. But that is also and even more so true in an ants nest.
>
> There are some differences between ants and humans, too; differencers
> that
> ought not be
> ignored IMHO. ;-)
>
>> But it's a hard guess what "ants consciousness" would be. In my next
>> life
>> I'll try being an ant.:)
>
> Me think its better if you try being a "single individual ant-colony"
> rather
> than a single ant, since the former is an organism that operates
> closer to
> the level and degree of complex functionality and mass of coordinated
> cellular componentry (respectively so to speak) that a brain (or
> nervous
> system or
> brain-body system) of a fully developed and functionally intact adult
> human
> individual operates at. :-)
>
>
> A have spotted (and been more or less willing to swallow) different
> hypotheses and theories about what consciousness is. Some of these I
> feel
> are worthy of being patched together as legitimate partial
> descriptions of what consciousness is, or ought to be thought to be.
> (Ought
> be most
> Encompassingly Philosophically Thought, that is :).

Always re-assuring that despite all the ought-and-thought efforts "to
know what it [C] is" in terms of X, and/or Y and/or Z.. the real-thang
is just what it is. How wonderful that without science most things still
are the way they are.

>
> One unusually meaty (and tasty) interpretation I have come across is
> O'Regan's and Noë's "Sensorimotor
> Contingencies" (theory).

Sounds like a good omelet :-)

>
> Another, complementary, view of 'the big and slippery C' is so simple
> and
> basic
> that it has no name. However, it has nevertheless indirectly been
> given
> pride of theoretical place by some of the world's most prominent brain
> scientists/authors -- not the least by Alexandr R. Luria in chapter 2
> of
> his book "The Working Brain, An Introduction to Neuropsychology".
>
> It is merely to do with the well-known "neuropsychophysiological"
> reality
> of "reticular activating type" (or "RAT") neurons.
>
> ------------------------------
> [RAT is a S_EPT_IC humored attribute, advocated by the acronym-adoring
> author of EPT.
>
> The signature attached at the end of this post reflects an attempt to
> cram
> into a tight digital space (word-count limit imposed by Microsoft) as
> much
> of an account for what EPT is as that space allows, or more. This is
> why I
> now warn you that when I wrote that signature I had to be *even more
> cruel*
> to the English language than I normally am.%-}]
> ---------------------------------
>
> RAT neurons is a legacy of the first to have evolved type of
> "neuroelectrically" active cellls.
>
> They evolved during the comparatively sedately life-styled early phase
> in
> the phylogeny of fauna. And
> so, there is not much of a coincidence that the main location of the
> somas
> of RAT neurons are located at the basal and core regions of the brain.
>
> Only when the era of predation had started, and began to hot up, did
> the
> phylogeny of
> fauna 'feel' the evolutionary (selective) pressure that made it
> 'respond' by
> emerging and accumulating an increasingly greater proportion of
> rapidly
> responding/signal-transmitting, phasically activated and relatively
> specifically projecting, neurons. [For want of a suitably silly - RAT
> matching - name, "specific neuron(s)" might suffice for any roughly
> RAT
> neuron contrasting neuron.]
>
> RAT neurons provide (by their firing) the _essential "energizing" (or
> tonic)
> ingredient_
> of (most generally considered) the 'brainspacetime patterns" that are
> (of)
> *WHAT*
> the three gross levels (or sequentially ontogenetically expressed
> functionally specialized neuroanatomical "layers"), motivational
> modes,
> specific sensory feature-detecting contents, and intensities, of (the)
> Consciousness (of hence differently conscious animals of differnet and
> same
> species) *IS*.
>
> I hope I have provided at least a small reminder about that we
> (perhaps even
> I ;) normally use the 'Consciousness-concept' very sloppily and
> sweepingly.

Well, maybe its a key feature of brainfunction and structure anyways..it
just messes around.

Relevant Pages

  • Signature omitted from previous post. Please append.
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