> . But be prepared, you'll see these same words
> thrown back at you next time you poist that religious fundamentalists hold
> their beliefs for different reason than the ones you have for holding
> your's.
> :-) You can't have it both ways, after all.
>
Um, but I think I do, i think that there are many differeing reasons for holding
different beliefs. I think I can have it just about any way I want!
> The point about synethesia was not that it is common, but that reveals
> something about the our way brains work. Most of our present knowledge of
> brain function comes from observing what happens differently in the rare
> unusual cases. (Split brain theory, for instance.)
>
you are certainly correct here, I do think that it has been shown many times
that finding aberations helps to understand the non-aberations.
> As Cytowic concludes of synethesia, "[A]fter studying this marvelous
> phenomenon for over a decade, I have come to the opinion that synesthesia is
> a very fundamental mammalian attribute. _I believe that synesthesia is
> actually a normal brain function in every one of us, but its workings reach
> conscious awareness in only a handful._ This has nothing to do with the
> intensity or degree of synesthesia in some people. Rather, it is that most
> brain processes operate at a level below consciousness. In synesthesia, a
> brain process that is normally unconscious becomes bared to consciousness so
> that synethetes know they are synesthetic while the rest of us do not."
>
> And he goes on to say, "Synesthesia is a conscious peek at a neural process
> that happens all the time in everyone. What converges in the limbic,
> especially the hippocampus, is the highly processed information from sensory
> receptors about the world, a /multisensory evaluation of it./"
> [...] "We know more than we think we know. The multisensory, synesthetic
> view of reality is only one thing that we are sure has been lost from
> consciousness. There could be a lot more. If you want to try to reclaim
> some of this deeper knowledge, I suggest that you start with emotion, which
> to me seems to reside at the interface between that part of our self which
> is accessible to awareness and that part which is not."
> [...] "Dispite evolutionary changes in itself and other brain conponents,
> the limbic brain remains the terminal stage of information processing, that
> stage for suppressing automatic, habitual responses in favor of new
> alternatives when the unexpected happens. The limbic system gives salience
> to events so that we either ignore them as mundane and unimportant, or take
> notice and act. It is also the place where value, purpose, and desire are
> evaluated, a process referred to as assigning negative or positive
> "valence."
> " The function of calculating valence could have had one of two
> evolutionary fates. It could have been assumed by the cortex so that
> questions of meaning and purpose are evaluated by a more analytic and
> presumably detached organ (what people call "objective"). The other way the
> function for valence could have evolved is the way it did, which is often
> misunderstood. The limbic brain has retained its function as the decider of
> valence. What the cortex does is provide more detailed analysis about what
> is going on in the world so that the limbic brain can decide what is
> important and what to do. The choices boil down to fundamental ones about
> what it means to be a living organism.
> " I am not suggesting that individuals who make their choices "emotionally"
> are more human than those who claim to be rational. Since we happen to have
> the best integration between the motivating force of the limbic brain and
> the analyitical one of the cortex, it makes sense to say that persons who
> balance reason and emotion are the most human, since they are using /both/
> systems which define human neurology the fullest."
> " For most people, I suspect that the best advice is to permit the
> intellect to only inform your choices, not override your fundamentally
> emotional ones. My claim is that we have grossly neglected the importance
> of emotion in our lives. Through reason, you may deduce that there is a
> logic of emotion and accept the conclusion that it is the major force that
> guides your thinking and action.
> " For those who demand "objective" proof of the illusive nature of analytic
> awareness and my assertion that something other than that entity we call out
> "self" is in charge of our minds, I point to the work of Kornhuber."
> " It may be difficult to bring yourself to believe that you are more
> emotional than logical, let alone accept the assertion that the entity you
> know of as your self is not really in charge of your mind and the direction
> of your life."
> --Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.
>
> -Prof. Tim
I Like what you put above, but glad i didnt have to type it myself. I dont see a
relation to the original subject, but the material is interesting, and brings up
other ideas, such as: If the limbic system is indeed determining "valence" and
effectivly a good part of the decision making process, then a whole load of
filters goes between sense input and recognition - much more that I origianlly
anticipated. It sounds like you could almost build a model of where in the
process memes becoming a filtering unit.
Bill Roh
Sodom