tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9650614.post2214531318005162433..comments2024-01-10T18:34:38.739-08:00Comments on Modern Mythology: Carts and Horses: The Deification of the BrainAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04721839742206290258noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9650614.post-90377279727525034352011-10-04T15:22:47.843-07:002011-10-04T15:22:47.843-07:00I wonder what the scientists who originated the in...I wonder what the scientists who originated the information dealt with in this article really have to say about it, but 1) their opinion is mostly irrelevant to their discovery and 2) once again I think the exaggeration is probably due to the media format, namely an issue of accurate representation.<br /><br />Through heavy use of catch phrases, suggestions passed off as common knowledge and fully-fledge misconceptions, journalists can turn an interesting scientific fact into a slogan to sell more paper to avid readers disappointed in a not so sci-fi future and hope that a revolutionary discovery will be made in their lifetime…<br /><br />But the case of consciousness is decidedly very complicated to deal with.<br /><br />Asking what causes it and dumbing it down to “simple” brain activity (although there is nothing simple about it, really) is a bit like watching as the Sun casts a stick’s shadow on the ground, then assessing the situation and deciding that one of the three following assertions has to be true, considering all the elements in presence have to be rendering all other option false, and significantly reducing the options to only the elements perceived as key to the event.<br /><br />A) the shadow exists because of the action of the Sun on the stick<br /><br />B) the Sun exists because the stick’s shadow was meant to be there at that time<br /><br />C) the stick is the pivotal force between its own shadow and the Sun<br /><br />I realize the comparison is rather crude, and I’m certainly not saying that we should give up the search of what makes the mind tick, but by delimiting the choices to “it’s either this (look if I pull the wings out of the fly it stops moving, so the body is key) or that (the fly and its wings are so complex, so God must thereby exists), I think we might be getting completely out of the subject at hand here… notwithstanding that what we are trying to analyze is our “analytic tool”. Right now I have in mind the image of typing Google in a Google search bar and see what happens… Some results might be somewhat relevant, most might not, but seeing as the framework is holey by nature (science) there’s still a long way to go!<br /><br />(my advice to searchers, as usual, would be to delve deeper into alternate states of consciousness, whether natural or induced, and mirror neurons. call it a layman’s intuition)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16531483676762325896noreply@blogger.com