Mind's Eye Re: potted science on self and free will

On Friday, March 8, 2019 at 2:24:53 PM UTC+5:30, archytas wrote:
> Neuroscience has already begun to tell us that we are not the
> kind of creatures we thought we were; that some of our best-loved everyday
> assumptions about our selves are misplaced. 
> Many of our social interactions are based on two such cherished concepts.  The first is solidity: the idea that we have
> diamond minds, that our personalities and memories, once formed, change slowly,
> if at all.  The second is free will: the
> idea that we control, and can therefore be responsible for, at least some of
> our actions …
>
>
> With respect to brains, however, the assumption of solidity
> is simply incorrect, Brains change all the time: everything you perceive, every
> stimulus received by your senses changes your brain, (Turner 2017: 155 – 156)
>
>
>  
>
>
> Brains are organised so that any given neuron is activated (fires
> off signals) in response to the inputs it receives.  However, those inputs do not carry
> information about entire objects, but about aspects of things in the world: colour,
> sound, movement; physical feel.  In other
> words, an individual neuron does not respond to, and thereby in the brain's
> language represent, an 'object', but one or more features … Representing an
> entire object, such as a tiger, requires the simultaneous activation of a group
> of neurons, often in different areas of the cortex: some will respond to the
> animal's colour, some to stripes. Some to roaring noises, and some to the signals
> from subcortical areas of the brain which indicate that the body is now going
> into a high state of alert. (Turner 2017: 183)
>
>
> The above is from Kathleen Turner's book 'Brain Washing' - a standard for lay people.  

No matter how much we understand our bondage, the truth remains that we are doing everything and thus our will makes us accountable for all our acts.

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Mind's Eye Re: modern cynicism

I agree your last line Vam and that technology as a saviour is beyond believing.  Earth is doomed in scientific scripture though.  The sun will go red giant, there will be a collision with Andromeda and global climate changes will continue naturally with whatever we can do to shape these, though the arguments are not about the carbon dioxide clamour of the media.  For me, society is cynical in the worst sense - ignorant, grasping and selfish.  A modern cynic might start recognising a different Timespace to the old Greeks, pushing both further back to more eastern originality and including more spiritually critical science.  All individual-subjective quests lead to a problem as we come back to group and population levels, not least those of gross greed and material selfishness as you say.  Well-being needs none of the crapification, yet I still want something that socialises beyond the idiot leadership we have had to date.

Models we use across science now do allow some complex system thinking that works in ways the old dogs could not deny as specious intellectualism now.  We have almost the precise opposite of nurseries of needed renunciation in the western propaganda mess of advertising and superiority (now hidden in bureaucratic political correctness).  Cynicism could change as a result of changing its starting conditions.

On Monday, 18 March 2019 19:24:13 UTC, Vam wrote:

"...we know the earth is finitely doomed."

I am not so sure. And I find such speculations irrelevant to alround well being, starting with my own, in my lifetime.

It is also beyond me to rely on technology, as some kind of a saviour. I would still put my hope on man, who would use technology, not to save the earth or humanity, but to make certain solutions and services possible.

A society without nurseries to inculcate renunciation, of gross greed and material selfishness, is doomed to end up where we are today.

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Mind's Eye modern cynicism

"...we know the earth is finitely doomed."

I am not so sure. And I find such speculations irrelevant to alround well being, starting with my own, in my lifetime.

It is also beyond me to rely on technology, as some kind of a saviour. I would still put my hope on man, who would use technology, not to save the earth or humanity, but to make certain solutions and services possible.

A society without nurseries to inculcate renunciation, of gross greed and material selfishness, is doomed to end up where we are today.

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