Evolution of Morality & Ethics
Immortalist
unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality
evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be in a
position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values, from
which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.
Philosophers themselves, most of whom lack an evolutionary perspective, have
not devoted much time to the problem. They examine the precepts of ethical
systems with reference to their consequences and not their origins. Like
everyone else, philosophers measure their personal emotional responses to
various alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle.
That oracle resides in the deep emotional centers of the brain, most
probably within the limbic system, a complex array of neurons and
hormone-secreting cells located just beneath the "thinking" portion of the
cerebral cortex. Human emotional responses and the more general ethical
practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by
natural selection over thousands of generations...
...Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might
be better curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of
humanity...To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic
control based on our biological properties to precise steering based on
biological knowledge.
Edward O. Wilson: from On Human Nature.
...A society that chooses to ignore the existence of the innate epigenetic
rules will nevertheless continue to navigate by them and at each moment of
decision yield to their dictates by default. Economic policy, moral tenets,
the practices of child rearing, and alomost every other social activity will
be guided by inner feelings whose origins are beyond comprehension. Such a
society cannot effectively challenge the ancient hereditary oracle dwelling
within the epigenetic rules. It will continue to live by the "conscience" of
its members and by "God's will." Such an archaic procedure just might, by,
fantastic good fortune, lead in the most direct and untroubled manner to a
stable and wholly benevolent world. More likely, it will perpetuate
conflict, and continue to drag humanity relentlessly along what is at best a
tortuous and agonizing path.
On the other hand, the deep scientific study of the innate epigenetic rules
will call the oracle to account and translate its commands into precise
language that can be understood and debated. People who know human nature in
this way are more likely to agree on universal goals within the constraints
of that nature and recognize absolute ethical truths, if such can be shown
to exist.
E.O. Wilson - Promethean Fire
Edgar Svendsen
quotes.
Many posts here discuss "consciousness". One could take the position that
Humans will not be fully conscious until they know how these innate censors
and motivators are affecting their thoughts; how can you describe youself as
conscious when a large portion of "you" is, in fact, unconscious? We are
probably on the threshold of that knowledge.
Ed
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ujua4vh...@corp.supernews.com...
Leonardo Dasso
"Edgar Svendsen" <solo...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:tMI%8.1791$Ky3.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> I've not read Mr. Wilson but I heartily agree with the ideas in these
> quotes.
>
> Many posts here discuss "consciousness". One could take the position
that
> Humans will not be fully conscious until they know how these innate
censors
> and motivators are affecting their thoughts; how can you describe
youself as
> conscious when a large portion of "you" is, in fact, unconscious? We
are
> probably on the threshold of that knowledge.
>
> Ed
>
>
Well, we describe ourselves as "alive", while a lot of our skin cells
are dead. No contradiction there. The fact that a portion of us may be
unconscious is completely unrelated to the knowledge we may have about
the workings of our brain. Knowledge about your physiology will not
change your physiology. The portion of you that is "unconscious" will
happily remain unconscious after you know everything there is to know
about neural pathways, neurotransmitters et al.
regards
leo
Immortalist
"Leonardo Dasso" <Lda...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:ahnmhi$uca4r$1...@ID-102497.news.dfncis.de...
recent theorist are suggesting that much of the experience of what it is
like to be you or qualia depends upon everything happening in the brain at
once. They claim there isn't much left for the unconsciouss since
consciousness is simply everything that is happening in the brain.
>
>
Mike Dubbeld
> unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality
> evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be in
a
> position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values, from
> which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.
Good dream. Chase those neurotransmitter chemicals far enough
and you can rationalize anything.
>
> Philosophers themselves, most of whom lack an evolutionary perspective,
Like brain-dead Darwinians that think the physical body and brain
are them lack spiritual evolutionary understanding? I don't deny
the evolution of the physical body. I deny that is all there is and
making complete sense of everything from that perspective is
not only the wrong approach. It is the wrong project.
have
> not devoted much time to the problem. They examine the precepts of ethical
> systems with reference to their consequences and not their origins.
Animal story time.
Like
> everyone else, philosophers measure their personal emotional responses to
> various alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle.
>
> That oracle resides in the deep emotional centers of the brain, most
> probably within the limbic system, a complex array of neurons and
> hormone-secreting cells located just beneath the "thinking" portion of the
> cerebral cortex. Human emotional responses and the more general ethical
> practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by
> natural selection over thousands of generations...
Point. Go for point.
>
> ...Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones
might
> be better curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of
> humanity
"humanity" - oh you mean the physical body. Lump it all together
and play guessing games.
...To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic
> control based on our biological properties to precise steering based on
> biological knowledge.
Wrong.
>
> Edward O. Wilson: from On Human Nature.
>
> ...A society that chooses to ignore the existence of the innate epigenetic
> rules
Just who are these big ignorers anyway. Maybe we need a posse.
Perceived/perceiver. Nothing new - ohhhhh - neurologists are
just now getting it. That makes sense.
will nevertheless continue to navigate by them and at each moment of
> decision yield to their dictates by default. Economic policy, moral
tenets,
> the practices of child rearing, and alomost every other social activity
will
> be guided by inner feelings whose origins are beyond comprehension. Such a
> society cannot effectively challenge the ancient hereditary oracle
dwelling
> within the epigenetic rules. It will continue to live by the "conscience"
of
> its members and by "God's will." Such an archaic procedure just might, by,
> fantastic good fortune, lead in the most direct and untroubled manner to a
> stable and wholly benevolent world. More likely, it will perpetuate
> conflict, and continue to drag humanity relentlessly along what is at best
a
> tortuous and agonizing path.
My guess is - like me, he definitely is NOT a Skinnarian/Empricist/
Behaviorist. But certainly not a Rationalist (I doubt if he knows this
word) so that leaves ------- Clinical Psycholgist. So God is a
Clinical Psycholgist no doubt. Where is George Hammond and
his gravity god? We need a Clinical Psycholgist to SAVE us from
ignoring our innate tendencies. I like the way he emphasizes
how Behaviorists are idots without comming right out and saying
so.
>
> On the other hand, the deep scientific study of the innate epigenetic
rules
> will call the oracle to account and translate its commands into precise
> language that can be understood and debated. People who know human nature
in
> this way are more likely to agree on universal goals within the
constraints
> of that nature and recognize absolute ethical truths, if such can be shown
> to exist.
>
> E.O. Wilson - Promethean Fire
Likely glad I passed that one up. I wonder how "The Genetic Inferno"
and "Genome" stack up?
My Garbage truck science story I have not told in a long time. No
amount of observation of the activities of Garbage trucks by someone that
does not know their purpose will ever lead them to understand
the purpose of the activities of garbage trucks. At the Battle of
Waterloo Napoleon got his butt kicked. But to someone that had
no clue as to the purpose of a war, hooking up an EEG to every
soldier on the battlefield and monitoring the event and recording
all physical events that take place on camera along with the blood
pressure of the soldiers at times stabbing and shooting is going on
will provide a single clue as to the purpose of the war.
Not only a misguided effort. Wrong project. Activities on the
physical are effects of the causes that generated them.
Is there value found in such activities? Of course. Be all end all.
Belly laugh.
We may need to be bombarded with this new god for awhile before
he catches on however (epigenetic rules). People are funny that way
about changing gods. I can see where a Clinical Psychologist just
may be appointed to a Cabinet Level Position for the President
as a matter of National Security. (The MASTER epigenetic rule
determiner - no one would mess with him except maybe the
head of NSA)
Mike Dubbeld
>
>
Daniel T.
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
If Mr. Wilson is correct, then an understanding of our "ancient
hereditary oracle" is irrelevant. We will continue to live by it
regardless. Also, wherever it leads (whether wholly benevolent or
tortuous) will be the best possible path for the conditions under which
we live.
--
Improve your company's understanding of objects...
Hire me. <http://home1.gte.net/danielt3/resume.html>
Edgar Svendsen
"Leonardo Dasso" <Lda...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:ahnmhi$uca4r$1...@ID-102497.news.dfncis.de...
>
one would be 'more' conscious if we were aware of, at least, some aspects of
mind that are now unconscious. For, example, if we were aware of how our
memories were stored, i.e. what 'triggers' were being tagged as the
appropriate ones to evoke that memory. Or, if we were consciously aware of
what changing hormone and chemical balances in the brain (caused by meeting
an attractive member of the opposite sex, for example) were doing to our
motivational priorities. Barring neurochemical changes in the brain, the
way to become more conscious of these things is to become more knowledgable
about how these things actually function.
Knowledge of my physiology has impelled me to wear a hat in the sun,
exercise and brush my teeth, I believe that has changed the course of my
physiology through time, thus knowledge of my physiology has indeed changed
my physiology. Knowledge of the functioning of the unconsious portion of
the brain/mind might have an analogous effect. Further, such knowledge
might enable us to make genetic changes in ourselves or our progeny that
would enhance (or suppress) our consciousness of now unconscious brain/mind
functions.
Ed
Immortalist
"Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:aho4m4$n3k$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ujua4vh...@corp.supernews.com...
> > Innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and
> > unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality
> > evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be
in
> a
> > position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values,
from
> > which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.
>
> Good dream. Chase those neurotransmitter chemicals far enough
> and you can rationalize anything.
>
Guidance similar to religeous guidance but much more relevant to what is
happening not some gut feelings.
> >
> > Philosophers themselves, most of whom lack an evolutionary perspective,
>
> Like brain-dead Darwinians that think the physical body and brain
> are them lack spiritual evolutionary understanding? I don't deny
> the evolution of the physical body. I deny that is all there is and
> making complete sense of everything from that perspective is
> not only the wrong approach. It is the wrong project.
>
How could it be wrong if it's wrongness is based on something you cannot
show, this "more to it" belief you have. What is your denial based upon,
some personal experience?
> have
> > not devoted much time to the problem. They examine the precepts of
ethical
> > systems with reference to their consequences and not their origins.
>
> Animal story time.
>
Animal stories provide much more evidence that personal experiences and
myths passed on by people from past times.
> Like
> > everyone else, philosophers measure their personal emotional responses
to
> > various alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle.
> >
> > That oracle resides in the deep emotional centers of the brain, most
> > probably within the limbic system, a complex array of neurons and
> > hormone-secreting cells located just beneath the "thinking" portion of
the
> > cerebral cortex. Human emotional responses and the more general ethical
> > practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by
> > natural selection over thousands of generations...
>
> Point. Go for point.
>
I brake for favored concetps like "limbic systems?"
> >
> > ...Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones
> might
> > be better curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of
> > humanity
>
> "humanity" - oh you mean the physical body. Lump it all together
> and play guessing games.
>
More precisely add the knowledge we gain with the knowledge we have and grow
further towards better guides to life and away from hunches and emotional
distortions.
>
> ...To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic
> > control based on our biological properties to precise steering based on
> > biological knowledge.
>
> Wrong.
>
This seems like a good description of basic laws that will throw one in jail
for harming others, sometimes rationalized by automatic control following
intuitions and gut feelings.
> >
> > Edward O. Wilson: from On Human Nature.
> >
> > ...A society that chooses to ignore the existence of the innate
epigenetic
> > rules
>
> Just who are these big ignorers anyway. Maybe we need a posse.
> Perceived/perceiver. Nothing new - ohhhhh - neurologists are
> just now getting it. That makes sense.
>
Who had it before? And what did they have.
He is one of the current leaders of the bio-diverity sciences. Evolutionary
sciences.
The books I quoted from is getting very old and have for decades drawn
similar responses from other religious bigots. The evidence stands and your
gut aches cause you have none to offer against it.
>
> >
> >
>
>
Immortalist
"Daniel T." <notda...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:notdanielt3-2157...@news.bellatlantic.net...
Why do many of our laws put people in jail for following it. This same
author states that certain impulses if not resisted will lead to abuse and
domination. One example he uses is that if women don't fight back they will
by default become dominated. This is they way we should leave it?
Daniel T.
>"Daniel T." <notda...@gte.net> wrote:
>> If Mr. Wilson is correct, then an understanding of our "ancient
>> hereditary oracle" is irrelevant. We will continue to live by it
>> regardless. Also, wherever it leads (whether wholly benevolent or
>> tortuous) will be the best possible path for the conditions under which
>> we live.
>>
>
>Why do many of our laws put people in jail for following it. This same
>author states that certain impulses if not resisted will lead to abuse and
>domination. One example he uses is that if women don't fight back they will
>by default become dominated. This is they way we should leave it?
But if Mr. Wilson is correct, then the ability to "resist" a particular
tendency is itself an aspect of that "ancient hereditary oracle". In
other words a gene that can counter another gene.
There are two ways for natural selection to work, (1) animals possessing
a particular gene die before having progeny, which therefor removes the
gene from the species and (2) a second gene arises which mitigates the
harmful effects of the first gene. In this case, the "bad" gene is still
there, it's just being blocked. This also can explain those "junk genes"
you mentioned in another thread.
Immortalist
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >"Daniel T." <notda...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> >> If Mr. Wilson is correct, then an understanding of our "ancient
> >> hereditary oracle" is irrelevant. We will continue to live by it
> >> regardless. Also, wherever it leads (whether wholly benevolent or
> >> tortuous) will be the best possible path for the conditions under which
> >> we live.
> >>
> >
> >Why do many of our laws put people in jail for following it. This same
> >author states that certain impulses if not resisted will lead to abuse
and
> >domination. One example he uses is that if women don't fight back they
will
> >by default become dominated. This is they way we should leave it?
>
> But if Mr. Wilson is correct, then the ability to "resist" a particular
> tendency is itself an aspect of that "ancient hereditary oracle". In
> other words a gene that can counter another gene.
>
True, that is the assertion that we are evolving to the point that we can
"choose" which motivators to enhance and which to deny. His main contention
was that we should move beyond our gut feelings and raw philosophy and
choose scientific evidence about what produces that capacities instead of
just being led around by them. This sounds like the old religious message
about the spirit and the flesh, but in this case one of them is under the
microscope and turning out numbers instead of feelings.
Ben Hoff
> unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality
> evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be in
a
> position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values, from
> which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.
I agree with the idea of human values in the most general sense coming
from something that could be called instinct but I don't think science can
explain very much about instinct, even in homing pigeons. Isn't it that when
science doesn't understand something or even have a reasonable hypothesis
they call it instinct?
Understanding the brain doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me. The
brain without the nervous system is not very interesting. No senses, no
voluntary or involuntary actions, no pain, no pleasure. Without the hormones
no emotion... Each system in the body is really miraculous. What would
happen if we didn't have the lymphic system to fight diseaze?
Is this concentration on the brain some way to try to diaprove the
existence of the soul? And if so to disprove the existence of God and then
the complete abolitiion of a moral code with no "God given rights". Are
people fighting against all forms of conscience so that they can let their
impulses take over? If they do, and every one else does then they will have
to establish a moral code and an absolute upon which to justify it, because
they will become the hunted and the victims and not free dominant alphas.
Maternal instinct will provide for the protection of children and men who
wish to dominate will always be subject to the strongest force in mankind,
women's instinct for the protection of their children. Men have this
instinct too but it seems weaker and more easily overriden and perverted. I
don't have any ideas about that.
Ben Hoff
is, you would be invited.
"Leonardo Dasso" <Lda...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:ahnmhi$uca4r$1...@ID-102497.news.dfncis.de...
>
Daniel T.
The problem here is that in order to choose which motivators to enhance
or deny, we must let the individuals "who know better" determine who
should, and should not, have progeny. That in itself would not be a very
good survival trait for those who are denied progeny. As such, we can
expect them to refuse to accept the direction the decision makers want
to take the race. Also, the decision makers will have to *not* be
subject to the decisions made, or else they will have a naturally biased
view on what exactly are the best genes...
Ben Hoff
> consciousness is simply everything that is happening in the brain.
That is redefining unconscious. To me subconscious, preconscious and
unconscious are not clear in their meaning. Preconscious is interesting
because it might mean that you can have an emotional response to something
that is on its way to consciousness. wow! Someone could get heartburn over
something they are about to think, or guilt feelings or panic attacks. There
seems to be a big difference between "unconscious" and "unconscious mind".
Whether things that are unconscious have a will of their own, and the
qualities of that will and whether it is accessible to change and to what
degree is a big question. It was stated here that the interplay between
parts of what we call mind is a compromise between the Id Ego and Superego.
Compromise has a negative import but what I have found is that a lot of time
I compromise up instead of down, that the thing I am fighting is coming from
a better self, not a worse one.
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ujunokp...@corp.supernews.com...
Leonardo Dasso
I find this idea exceedingly strange. Why would we be more conscious
through the acquisition of knowledge?You'd certainly be more
knowledgeable, but not more conscious. I've studied for years physiology
and cell biology, including neurochemistry and neurobiology, and
certainly this has not altered my level of consciousness in the least.
Studyng about renal physiology does not make anybody conscious about the
process going on in their renal tubules. In the same way knowing about
neural pathways doesnt alter their level of consciousness.
> For, example, if we were aware of how our
> memories were stored, i.e. what 'triggers' were being tagged as the
> appropriate ones to evoke that memory. Or, if we were consciously
aware of
> what changing hormone and chemical balances in the brain (caused by
meeting
> an attractive member of the opposite sex, for example) were doing to
our
> motivational priorities. Barring neurochemical changes in the brain,
the
> way to become more conscious of these things is to become more
knowledgable
> about how these things actually function.
To become knowledgeable is not to become conscious. Unless you are here
using the term conscious with a completely different meaning as taht
used before.
> Knowledge of my physiology has impelled me to wear a hat in the sun,
> exercise and brush my teeth, I believe that has changed the course of
my
> physiology through time, thus knowledge of my physiology has indeed
changed
> my physiology.
These have all been voluntary changes based on your knowledge. Whatever
is conscious in your brain wont change a bit due to your knowledge of
the brain's workings.
> Knowledge of the functioning of the unconsious portion of
> the brain/mind might have an analogous effect. Further, such
knowledge
> might enable us to make genetic changes in ourselves or our progeny
that
> would enhance (or suppress) our consciousness of now unconscious
brain/mind
> functions.
Whatever changes we might be able to engineer based on our knowledge is
not related in any way to our degree of consciousness.
regards
leo
> Ed
>
>
>
Leonardo Dasso
is regulated; this comprises the control of blood pressure, etc etc. We
are not conscious of these processes. It involves the control of
movement by the nigrostriatal system, over which we have no voluntary
control. Etc, etc. To say that consciousness is everything tht goes on
in the brain would entail a complete redifinition of what we understand
consciousness to be.
regards
leo
Immortalist
"Ben Hoff" <goodid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:axX%8.20357$Fq6.2...@news2.west.cox.net...
> > They claim there isn't much left for the unconsciouss since
> > consciousness is simply everything that is happening in the brain.
>
> That is redefining unconscious. To me subconscious, preconscious and
> unconscious are not clear in their meaning. Preconscious is interesting
> because it might mean that you can have an emotional response to something
> that is on its way to consciousness. wow! Someone could get heartburn over
> something they are about to think, or guilt feelings or panic attacks.
There
> seems to be a big difference between "unconscious" and "unconscious mind".
> Whether things that are unconscious have a will of their own, and the
> qualities of that will and whether it is accessible to change and to what
> degree is a big question. It was stated here that the interplay between
> parts of what we call mind is a compromise between the Id Ego and
Superego.
> Compromise has a negative import but what I have found is that a lot of
time
> I compromise up instead of down, that the thing I am fighting is coming
from
> a better self, not a worse one.
>
as some would say choose your version. recent theories are about scanning
technologies and they see a bunch of active parts of the brain. someone made
up all this pre un stuff to fit some theory.
Immortalist
so your saying everything you are conscious of you can control? i feel my
heart trob when i have a headache and i can make it speed up or slow down. i
have not seen any evidence that we are not consciouss in some way of these
processes and maybe the definition of conscioussnes should come as a gift
out of a cracker jacks box of old psychologists theory making.
> regards
> leo
>
>
Immortalist
progeny? where do you get that? maybe psycho-surgery, i doubt it or how
about lobotomy, not in the near future. I think the author was talking about
lawmaking and reason for ethical beliefs etc...
Immortalist
>
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ujua4vh...@corp.supernews.com...
> > Innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and
> > unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality
> > evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct, science may soon be
in
> a
> > position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values,
from
> > which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow.
>
> I agree with the idea of human values in the most general sense coming
> from something that could be called instinct but I don't think science can
> explain very much about instinct, even in homing pigeons. Isn't it that
when
> science doesn't understand something or even have a reasonable hypothesis
> they call it instinct?
if science cant explan much now how long will this condition hold? should
they stop learning about the brain because of faith those kind of statements
can kindle?
> Understanding the brain doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me.
The
> brain without the nervous system is not very interesting. No senses, no
> voluntary or involuntary actions, no pain, no pleasure. Without the
hormones
> no emotion... Each system in the body is really miraculous. What would
> happen if we didn't have the lymphic system to fight diseaze?
i dont think the author was in any way excluding the nervous system or the
body. the guy is an evolutionary biologist and studies all parts of the body
and their origin. In those paragraphs he was just talking about the limbic
system and the origin of morals in evolutionary history, not a lecture on
the overall complexity of the body. But in other parts of the book he does
just that though.
> Is this concentration on the brain some way to try to diaprove the
> existence of the soul? And if so to disprove the existence of God and then
> the complete abolitiion of a moral code with no "God given rights". Are
> people fighting against all forms of conscience so that they can let their
> impulses take over? If they do, and every one else does then they will
have
> to establish a moral code and an absolute upon which to justify it,
because
> they will become the hunted and the victims and not free dominant alphas.
> Maternal instinct will provide for the protection of children and men who
> wish to dominate will always be subject to the strongest force in mankind,
> women's instinct for the protection of their children. Men have this
> instinct too but it seems weaker and more easily overriden and perverted.
I
> don't have any ideas about that.
>
you might deflate like a baloon if you pulled imaginary gods out yo asshole
bud
Daniel T.
Because the only way we can effect a favorable change in the "ancient
hereditary oracle" is through selection (either natural or artificial.)
I would discount psycho-surgery and labotomies simply becaus they would
have to be carried out on a massive scale. As far as what you think the
author was talking about... If Mr. Wilson is correct, then we cannot
write laws that are counter to our "ancient hereditary oracles" or at
the very least, we cannot expect anyone to *follow* such laws, preciesly
because they are counter to our "ancient hereditary oracles".
Immortalist
|| <> To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic
|| <> control based on our biological properties to precise steering based
on
|| <> biological knowledge.
He is talking about ethics and lawmaking. He is complaining actually about
how we make laws and justify our beliefs by stuff we more or less just make
up. Murder and rape are in our hereditary oracle and somehow we fantasized
reasons for punishing people for committing these acts.
> I would discount psycho-surgery and labotomies simply becaus they would
> have to be carried out on a massive scale. As far as what you think the
> author was talking about... If Mr. Wilson is correct, then we cannot
> write laws that are counter to our "ancient hereditary oracles" or at
> the very least, we cannot expect anyone to *follow* such laws, preciesly
> because they are counter to our "ancient hereditary oracles".
>
Ha he he, i was saying psycho surgery and labotomies as a joke to further
what you were saying. Wilson supports neither. Culture already cages and
punishes many animalistic and brutish parts of the oracle. We can write laws
to steer the beastly parts of us, as in fact we already do. But the
foundations for these laws, the justifications of supporting beliefs are now
based upon automatic fears and necessary impulses.
I remember when they used to attack socio-biology as if it was a Spencerian
(social-darwinism) where he rationalised corporation and interests as if it
was a cultural jungle and the same laws of the jungle applied to our social
world. Wilson didn't mean none of that. Wilson is not promoting a Huxlian
brave new world, he just wants biological knowledge to have it's proper
place in the social sciences.
http://www.defenders.org/bio-ee04.html
Ben Hoff
own meaning on a well known word instead of earning attention by the value
of original ideas.
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uk0oh5...@corp.supernews.com...
Edgar Svendsen
conscious OF something. I am conscious of the feeling of the keys on my
fingers, I'm conscious of seeing the computer monitor. I'm not conscious of
how I remember the way to spell consciousness, it just pops up. I'm
conscious of all kinds of feelings thoughts and sensations; it is this state
that I call consciousness, but I call it that because it is the state of
being conscious OF all those things. If I were conscious of more things,
like how my memory fetched just the right bit of knowledge or the state my
liver, I would be more conscious. If I could deliberately sense the
condition of every cell in my body (which I certainly cannot do now) I
would, in my parlance, be more conscious. So for me, if we could engineer
changes that increased what I was conscious of, then that knowledge based
change would certainly be related to the degree of consciousness.
As to whether my knowledge of the brains workings would change my
consciousness, it depends on how adaptable the brain is. If I knew that
doing a certain exercise stimulated certain neural paths and caused me to be
more aware of, more sensitive to, my bodily need for fluids and I did the
exercises and noticed that I was indeed more aware of the need for fluids,
a sensation I had previously ignored or not been able to recognize, then it
seems to me that I would have achieved a small increase in what I call
consciousness.
This has taken us somewhat far afield, but I enjoy the interchange!
Ed
Immortalist
> Sound like they are trying to steal Freud's term. It is easy to hang your
> own meaning on a well known word instead of earning attention by the value
> of original ideas.
>
Well I dont know what your working definition of the unconscious is. It
seems important to you. Excuse the wordyness but this is something from the
author who writes about recent research results from the brain scan
sciences, about why he believes Freud was wron about the unconscious. I
think he calls the unconscious "the myth of irrationality" but I havn't read
this book since 1993. The author now focuses on the mountain of data coming
from brain scans. A new territory to be developed.
http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_articles.html
Chapter Begins...
If the myth of irrationality is so wrong, it is fair to ask why science has
not done more to shake people's belief in it. Surely under the unblinking
eye of science, even the most seductive of fictions should have crumbled to
dust by now?
One problem with the myth of irrationality is that attacking it is like
battering your fists against jelly. The myth is not an explanation of how
the mind works but rather an anti- explanation. If the good Captain Kirk
ever had been pressed to explain his reckless bravery, his sudden bursts of
inspiration, or his deep sense of compassion, all he would have been able to
say was: "Hey, the thing that makes us human beings so special is that we
are these crazy irrational creatures who do crazy inspired things. There are
no reasons, that's just the way we are." It is not as if the myth is a
clear-cut theory waiting to be demolished with a few well-aimed blows.
Instead, the myth tells us not to worry if things do not make sense because,
well, they are not supposed to make sense - otherwise, by definition, they
would not be irrational!
A second reason why science has made so little headway against popular
acceptance of the myth is that scientists are themselves only human and have
been as caught up in the myth of human irrationality as everyone else.
Psychology is still a young science, barely a hundred years old, and the
Romantic movement was in full swing for a century before psychology got
going. Christianity and Platonic philosophy had been around considerably
longer. To many of psychology's pioneers, the ancient tripartite division of
the mind seemed no more than common-sense. Indeed, they were so at home with
this model that they took it as the starting point of their theorising and
made the mistake of trying to turn it into science.
****
The most famous of the many scientists to champion the myth of irrationality
was Sigmund Freud. The story of Freud is worth lingering over because of the
immense influence he has had on 20th Century thought. No matter how
discredited Freud's work has become, his theories continue to seduce Western
intellectuals and the vocabulary he created has come to be the standard one
with which we talk about the mind.
Born in 1856, Freud was the bright first-born son of a Jewish cloth
merchant. A star pupil at school, Freud sailed into Vienna University's
world-leading medical academy. Until his 30s, Freud followed a quite
conventional career in neurology. He studied animal nervous systems and
human brain diseases under such renowned professors as Ernst Brucke and
Theodor Meynert. It seemed Freud was set to make a modest name for himself
in research and eventually achieve a dull but worthy position as a
professor. Privately, however, Freud had little appetite for such an
orthodox career. He had a yearning to make his name with a really dramatic
scientific breakthrough. As he wrote to his fiancée in 1884, he was on the
look-out for "a lucky hit" that would set them both up for life.
Freud's first go at striking lucky turned into a tremendous embarrassment.
In the 1880s, samples of the newly discovered stimulant, cocaine, had just
been refined by German chemists from a batch of coca leaves gathered on a
recent expedition to South America. Freud heard tales about how Andean
Indians chewed the leaves to help them till their fields and thinking that
the drug could have a huge potential, decided to test some on himself.
Freud's experiences with cocaine made a terrific impression on him and he
became an ardent champion of the drug. In an extravagantly worded paper,
"Uber Coca", published in 1884, Freud claimed cocaine to be a drug of
near-magical powers.
Freud soon was promoting the drug as a cure for ailments ranging from
seasickness to diabetes. Freud began to take cocaine regularly himself:
"...against depression and against indigestion." He also prescribed it to
his future wife and friends. Freud's championing of cocaine brought him the
attention he had been seeking. However the affair ended badly once the
drug's addictive and poisonous side-effects became apparent. Freud was
forced to back away from his association with cocaine in rather a hurry.
Freud's second attempt to strike lucky came when he was offered a six month
research grant giving him the freedom to go and study whatever he wanted.
Demonstrating his nose for the spectacular, Freud abandoned the pickled
brains and specimen slides of his neurology laboratory in Vienna to travel
to Paris to study hysteria under Jean-Martin Charcot.
Charcot was the famed professor of brain disease at the Salpetriere, Paris's
asylum, who had in his care a collection of "hysterics": patients given to
all manner of alarming convulsions, contortions, trances and paralyses. With
the benefit of medical hindsight, Charcot's hysterics now are believed to
have been sufferers of epilepsy - the electrical "brainstorms" which in
severe form can result in a loss of consciousness, but in milder forms, can
lead to symptoms such as those exhibited by Charcot's patients. Charcot
believed, however, that the fits were too extraordinary to be caused by
anything else but some mad disturbance taking place in the deeper levels of
the psyche - possibly as a result of sexual frustration or "menstrual
congestion".
Freud was dazzled by the convulsive displays of Charcot's hysterics. To
Freud, the fits were his first glimpse of the hidden power of the
unconscious mind. He returned to Vienna in 1886 full of excitement and gave
a lively account of Charcot's work to the city's Society of Physicians.
However his talk was poorly received. The Viennese doctors already were
familiar with Charcot's patients and had realised that their hysteria was
likely to have an organic rather than a psychological cause. Freud came away
from the meeting feeling that he had been snubbed by "the high authorities"
of the city because his ideas were too revolutionary. Later he was to see
this talk as marking the beginning of a lifelong feud with the narrow minded
members of Vienna's medical establishment.
Despite this second set-back, Freud was undaunted. Almost immediately he
plunged into yet a third enthusiasm. Josef Breuer, a respected doctor and
friend of Freud's, had been attempting to cure an oddly behaving patient
through the use of hypnosis. Breuer believed that the 21-year-old girl,
Bertha Pappenheim (known to psychoanalytic literature as Anna O.), was
suffering a hysteric collapse brought about by having to nurse her dying
father. Pappenheim had been looking after her father for some months when
she took to her bed with a strange assortment of symptoms that included
paralysis, hallucinations, fits and loss of speech. Breuer was convinced
that Pappenheim was feigning illness to conceal her traumatic feelings. But
again with the benefit of hindsight, modern medical writers like Henri
Ellenberger tell quite a different story.
Bertha Pappenheim's father had been dying of tuberculosis and it appears
that she too had caught the disease. But instead of contracting tuberculosis
of the lung, she had developed a much rarer form of the infection - one that
affected the brain. This would have caused all the symptoms Breuer
described, but for physical, not psychic, reasons. As revealed in his notes
on the case, Breuer in fact did consider himself the possibility that his
patient might be suffering from tuberculous meningitis. But he dismissed
this diagnosis, saying that her symptoms were just too bizarre (the
strangest of these being that Pappenheim lost the ability to speak German
when she lay down in the evening and could talk only in English). Pressing
on in the belief that he was dealing with a hysteric, Breuer hypnotised
Pappenheim and tried to get her to "talk out" the repressed memories that he
thought must be troubling her.
Freud was fascinated by Breuer's treatment and followed the case closely. He
adopted the idea of the talking cure for himself and eventually persuaded a
somewhat reluctant Breuer to jointly publish a book on the great discovery.
In Freud and Breuer's Studies in Hysteria‚ the case of Bertha Pappenheim was
celebrated as the first psychoanalytic cure. It was claimed that the patient
had been cured the instant certain painful childhood memories were brought
back to the light of consciousness. However, in reality, the truth was very
different. As Ellenberger and others have discovered by tracking down the
original medical records, Pappenheim's condition actually worsened during
Breuer's treatment. His therapy had to be cut short when Pappenheim became
so ill that she was taken away to a Swiss sanatorium. It took four further
months for her illness to abate and the worst of her symptoms to disappear.
Even years after Breuer's supposed cure, Pappenheim still suffered from
excruciating neuralgia pains.
Freud knew the full details of Pappenheim's case yet still chose to
represent it as an instant cure and use it as a springboard to launch
himself into his psychoanalytic career. As quickly as he could afford to,
Freud divorced himself from his conventional work at a children's
out-patient clinic and set up a private practice in which he could treat
other hysterics and neurotics using the talking cure.
Perhaps feeling guilty about the way the Pappenheim case had turned out,
Breuer lost interest in the treatment he had invented and eventually broke
with Freud. Breuer later commented grimly: "Freud is a man given to absolute
and exclusive formulations: this is a psychical need which, in my opinion,
leads to excessive generalisation." Freud pressed on regardless. He
abandoned hypnotism as a means of regressing patients, saying he found it
too unreliable, and instead developed his own technique of analysis based on
free association and the interpretation of dreams. For the next decade,
Freud sat at the head of the psychoanalytic couch, gradually developing a
model of the mind from the revelations he was gaining from his patients.
****
In considering Freud's model of the mind, it is important to realise that
Freud was not quite the revolutionary that many of his biographers make him
out to be. In fact the vision of the mind underlying his theories was
thoroughly rooted in the Romantic movement that had got under way a hundred
years earlier. At a time when his Vienna colleagues were making great
strides in understanding the neural structure of the brain and the organic
nature of many mental diseases, it was Freud whose thinking harked back to
medicine's unscientific past.
It was rare for Freud to acknowledge the debt his work owed to the romantic
tradition - even if he admitted it was Goethe's essay, An Ode to Nature,
which inspired him to take up medicine in the first place. However others,
such as Lancelot Whyte and Ernest Gellner, have shown how heavily Freud was
influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The two
philosophers' conception of a seething, irrational will had many
similarities with Freud's vision of a sex-obsessed unconscious. The general
hydraulic flavour of Freud's view of human nature - where the urgings of a
dark unconscious well up in the mind and if dammed in their expression,
cause the psyche to spring leaks elsewhere - also came directly from the
romantic tradition. The idea of the mind as a fluid energy dated back to the
Naturphilosophie movement, a romantic science founded by Friedrich Schelling
in the 1800s, and before that, all the way back to Aristotle.
As has been seen, Aristotle developed a physiology of the mind based on the
four humours - blood, mucous, and yellow and black bile. Different balances
of these humours gave rise to different states of mind. Aristotle also saw
the soul as an organic life-force which in "dilute" form gave the simple
awareness of lower animals, and in concentrated or elevated form, gave the
self-conscious and rational awareness of humans.
Aristotle's theories about vital fluids became part of Western thought
through the medical writings of Galen, the Second Century Greek physician.
While Plato's model of the mind became entwined with Christian belief to
become the West's dominant theory of the mind, Aristotle's ideas became a
vaguely related sub-theme of the myth that expressed itself mostly in the
thinking of Medieval and Renaissance doctors. Aristotle's idea of a surging
life-force and four bodily humours gave a physical explanation of the mind
that complemented Plato's metaphysical idea of mankind poised halfway
between the animal and the divine.
Influenced by Aristotle's hydraulic view of the mind, Renaissance anatomists
came to believe that the networks of nerves that laced the body were, in
fact, pipes down which vital animal spirits flowed. The ventricles of the
brain - a system of fluid-filled chambers at the centre of the cerebral
hemispheres - were seen as the seat of consciousness. Such plumbing
analogies took on a renewed popularity with the rise of the Naturphilosophie
movement, a school of medicine linked to Romanticism that flourished in
Germany during the first half of the 1800s. The movement attempted to found
a new science based on the belief that there was a common world soul
(weltseele) connecting all forms of life. In its purest form, this world
soul welled up within the human body to give rise to rational consciousness.
Naturphilosophie caught the public's imagination with its religious
overtones and promotion of intriguing phenomena such as animal magnetism.
But as a science, the movement soon became discredited. Certainly, by the
time Freud started his medical studies in the 1870s, enough was known about
the nervous system to make the hydraulic metaphors of Naturphilosophie
outdated. Indeed, Freud was studying under the very physiologists who
finally had laid romantic medicine to rest. Yet the image of a psychic
pressure cooker still was to become the foundation of Freud's theories.
The picture of the man who sat down in the 1890s to formulate the
psychoanalytic model of the mind is not a particularly flattering one. Freud
had shown himself to be an able student and had had the good fortune to be
working in Vienna at a time when it was the centre of modern medicine. But
Freud also had shown a gullibility, a reckless ambition, and a dishonesty in
the reporting of cures that put a question-mark over his suitability for his
lone venture.
There is good evidence that one further problem for Freud was that he had
become addicted to the cocaine he earlier had experimented with. Freud's
personality during this period showed the classic symptoms of cocaine abuse.
He worked in great bursts of activity which were followed by bouts of black
depression. He had the intense preoccupation with sex which cocaine excites,
but judging from comments in his letters, he also had the impotence that is
a side-effect of heavy use of the drug. In addition, Freud appeared to
suffer from the paranoia that is another common symptom of cocaine abuse -
Freud was famous for the way he suddenly broke with many close friends and
his conviction that the world was against him and his theories. Finally,
Freud suffered from a variety of cocaine-related physical ailments such as
heart irregularities, fainting fits and ulcers of the nose.
It is not disputed that Freud took cocaine while working on his
psychoanalytic theory - even his official biographer, Ernest Jones, made
reference to the fact. The question is how much influence the habit might
have had on Freud's character and on the ideas he was developing. Some have
suggested that a cocaine habit would explain why the idea of sexual energy
played such a prominent part in his theories and also the messianic
conviction with which he tended to argue his case.
****
Freud's model of the mind was complex and was to undergo several revisions.
But boiled down to its basics, his argument was this: the mind can be
divided into three parts, the id, the ego and the superego. The most basic
part, the id, is the primal unconscious; the energy source that drives the
whole personality. In terms of the myth of irrationality, the id is the pit
of bestial desires; the deeply buried part of the mind that is illogical and
amoral.
While the id bubbles away in its unseen depths, the ego is the self-aware
and rational part of the mind. The ego is equipped with defence mechanisms
to keep the dark forces of the id in check. However such is the seething
energy of the id that occasionally it will breach these defences and break
through into awareness, expressing itself in irrational and neurotic
behaviour. The way Freud portrayed the ego was almost as if it were a polite
but nervous parent trying hard not to notice the noisy tantrums being thrown
by an unruly child at its feet. The third component of the mind was the
superego - Freud's name for a person's moral conscience. Freud believed the
superego was formed by a child absorbing the customs and standards of its
parents and peers. This moral code then sank down into the unconscious where
it lay in wait, ready to nip the heels of the ego when it got out of line.
In some respects, this division of the mind into primal instincts, the
self-aware ego and a social conscience could have been a reasonable starting
point for a modern view of the mind. Unlike traditional versions of the myth
of irrationality, Freud was not claiming that any aspect of the mind was
divine or supernatural. In the superego, Freud also had reserved a small
place for the moulding influence that society has on the human mind. However
Freud fleshed out this simple model with a complicated demonology of sexual
urges, complexes and repressions and gave the whole system a false hydraulic
energy. For Freud, sex - or what he called the libido - was the primary
source of all mental energy; a driving obsession that lay behind every
action. Even more controversially, Freud claimed that the full force of
sexual desire was experienced not just in adulthood but from the moment a
person is born.
This belief that sexual energy exerts a constant pressure on consciousness
from the moment of birth led Freud to his particular view of childhood
development. Freud claimed that every child has to pass through a series of
erotic stages. To begin with, the focus of sexuality is the mouth and the
act of breast-feeding. It then shifts to the anus and bowel control, before
finally settling on the correct adult zone of the genitals. Mental problems
were thought to be caused by a child's progress becoming stuck at one of
these early stages.
In addition, Freud claimed that, at the age of four or five, every child
experiences what he called the Oedipal crisis. Boys were said to feel a
universal urge to make love to their mothers and girls to possess their
fathers. Worried that their parental rival knew about these incestuous
feelings, children were supposed to fear castration (or in the case of
girls, assume that castration had already taken place, thus leading to their
special complex of penis envy in which they wanted to reclaim their lost
member). It was not until children had managed to resolve this crisis by
erecting a brick wall of repression around their fears and desires that they
could go on to develop a proper superego and become normal adults.
Freud felt his discovery of the Oedipus complex, and its female counterpart,
the Electra complex, was his crowning achievement - "a discovery fit to rank
besides that of electricity and the wheel," as one critic put it. However
the evidence that Freud gathered to back up his ideas about childhood sexual
complexes was weak in the extreme. Too much depended on Freud being able
correctly to divine the secret meaning behind the dreams, word associations
and slips of the tongue of his patients.
Freud, himself, never seemed to doubt his ability to uncover the sexual
fantasies that lay beneath the surface of ordinary thought. He could see a
penis in every protruding object and a vagina in every receptacle. As he
wrote, there was no doubt that in dreams: "...all weapons or tools are used
as symbols for the male organ: Eg, ploughs, hammers, rifles, revolvers,
daggers, sabres, etc. In the same way, many landscapes in dreams, especially
any containing bridges or wooded hills, may clearly be recognised as
descriptions of the [female] genitals."
Freud was prepared to make the most tenuous connections in interpreting his
patients' thoughts. One woman's tale about being afraid of stepping near a
window for fear of falling was analysed by Freud as the repression of an
unconscious desire to lean out an open window and beckon men like a
prostitute. There was no point the poor woman protesting against Freud's
interpretation because Freud would see this merely as added proof of her
need to repress such a shameful urges.
Two further patients show the quality of the evidence that Freud gathered to
support his theories and the ease with which he seemed able to satisfy
himself of the correctness of his analyses.
One of Freud's most famous cases was that of the Wolf Man, a patient who had
a dream about seeing six or seven white wolves sitting in a walnut tree
outside his bedroom window. After several years of analysis, Freud decided
that the patient's dream was a transformed childhood memory of witnessing
his parents making love three times one afternoon while he was aged only
one-and-a-half years old.
Breaking down the symbolism of the dream, Freud said the whiteness of the
wolves obviously stood for the parent's underclothes. Their extra-bushy
tails were an oblique reference to an old children's story about a tailless
wolf - which, in turn, was a disguised reference to the patient's fear of
castration by his "wolf" father. The fact that there were six or seven
wolves rather than only two was another attempt by his ego defence
mechanisms to disguise the knowledge that the dream was about his parents
having intercourse. By several more such twists of logic, Freud eventually
arrived at the idea that the secret which was so distressing the Wolf Man in
his adult life was a repressed wish to be sodomised by his father!
It was typical of Freud's methods that sometimes he read symbols directly -
the whiteness of the wolves signifying white underclothes - but at other
times he read them indirectly - the bushy tails of the wolves concealing the
idea of a tailless wolf and their number concealing the fact that just two
people were involved. If Freud had chosen, he could have decided that the
whiteness stood for something black - a funeral shroud perhaps - and that
the half-dozen bushy tails represented the genitals of twice as many naked
men. The eternal problem with Freud's method of interpretation was that the
evidence always could be twisted to fit just about any theory and no one
interpretation appeared to have any more justification than any other.
The rejoinder of the supporters of psychoanalysis is that the proof a
particular interpretation has hit the target comes when it produces a cure.
Like lancing a boil, bringing a repressed desire to the light of
consciousness should bring about a cathartic release from the neurotic
symptoms that were troubling the patient. However - as with Bertha
Pappenheim - the case of the Wolf Man was not the triumphant cure that
psychoanalytic literature made it out to be. In the 1970s, scholars checking
up on Freud's claims discovered the Wolf Man's real identity and approached
him. Over 80 years old, the Wolf Man was still seeking out psychoanalytic
help - saying that while the treatment did not seem to have done him much
good, at least he enjoyed his sessions on the couch.
The Wolf Man confessed that Freud's elaborate interpretation of his dream
never made much sense to him, saying it all seemed "terribly far fetched".
For a start, coming from an aristocratic Russian family where he was cared
for by a nanny, there was little chance he could have witnessed his parents
in bed together. However, while he did not accept Freud's interpretations
and he agreed that psychoanalysis did not appear to make much long-term
difference to the depression he suffered from, the Wolf Man clearly was
struck by Freud's magnetic personality. If nothing else, he said, the years
in analysis had been a fascinating experience.
A second patient (who appeared as no more than a footnote in The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life was even more revealing of Freud's
apparently unshakable faith in the correctness of his interpretations.
Freud's words speak for themselves: "M l was a 14-year-old girl, the most
remarkable case I had had in recent years, one which taught me a lesson I am
not likely ever to forget and whose outcome cost me moments of the greatest
distress. The child fell ill of an unmistakeable hysteria, which did in fact
clear up quickly and radically under my care. After this improvement, the
child was taken away from me by her parents. She still complained of
abdominal pains which had played the chief part in the clinical picture of
her hysteria. Two months later she died of [cancer] of the abdominal glands.
The hysteria, to which she was at the same time predisposed, used the tumour
as a provoking cause, and I, with my attention held by the noisy but
harmless manifestations of the hysteria, had perhaps overlooked the first
signs of the insidious and incurable disease." Clearly, Freud was troubled
by this incident, yet he did not seem to see that he might have been just
plain wrong in his diagnosis.
There is not room here to give more than a taste of the casework that Freud
drew on to support his psychoanalytic model of the mind. However, others
have examined the evidence exhaustively and despite the high public standing
of Freud's theories, nearly a century of careful investigation has failed to
provide any convincing proof in favour of them. Every interpretation could
have had been made half-a-dozen different ways and reviews of the success
rates of psychoanalytic treatments have shown that psychoanalysis is not a
reliable method for dealing even with minor mental complaints such as
phobias and depressions.
In cases where psychoanalysis does appear to help patients, it seems to be
the talking through of problems that brings the benefit rather than any
Freudian process of catharsis - a fact that has led many modern versions of
analysis, such as cognitive therapy, to drop the dead weight of Freudian
theory and to concentrate on allowing patients to "reprogram" themselves by
talking through their thoughts aloud. Certainly, the Freudian approach of
dream analysis and the uncovering of childhood sexual traumas has proved a
complete failure in curing true mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
If Freud's method of therapy has fared badly, his model of the mind has
gathered even less scientific support. His claim that humans are driven by
the constant pressure of sexual feelings, and that all children share the
same ripe fantasies about their parents, goes against the evidence of modern
psychology. When we come to look at emotions, dreams, creativity, humour and
thought, we will see how Freud's whole concept of a mind with a separate,
walled-off unconscious, filled with hydraulic energies - sexual or
otherwise - is false. It also will become obvious that children lack the
language to think the complex thoughts that Freud ascribed to them, let
alone arrive at identical possession and castration complexes.
Summing up the experimental evidence that Freud's followers have put forward
in support of psychoanalytic theory, the English psychologist, Hans Eysenck,
concluded: "...over 80 years after the original publication of Freudian
theories, there still is no sign that they can be supported by adequate
experimental evidence, or by clinical studies, statistical investigations or
observational methods...As another great scientist, Michael Faraday, once
said: 'They reason theoretically, without demonstration experimentally, and
errors are the result.' These words might well be carved on the grave of
psychoanalysis as a scientific doctrine."
****
Given that Freud's teachings have never had the support of objective
evidence, the puzzle is how psychoanalysis could have become so central to
modern culture and how Freud has come to be feted as one of the greatest of
all scientists. Even a harsh critic of Freud, such as E M Thornton (who
detailed Freud's abuse of cocaine), had to admit: "Probably no single
individual has had a more profound effect on 2Oth Century thought than
Sigmund Freud. His works have influenced psychiatry, anthropology, social
work, penology, and education and provided a seemingly limitless source of
material for novelists and dramatists. Freud has created `a whole new
climate of opinion'; for better or worse he has changed the face of society.
The vocabulary of psychoanalysis has passed into the language of everyday
life. Freud himself has been described as a genius of the stature of Newton,
Einstein, Darwin and Copernicus."
In an attempt to explain the enormous appeal of psychoanalysis, the
Cambridge professor of social anthropology, Ernest Gellner, says Freud's
theories have a compelling drama about them. As an explanation of human
nature, psychoanalysis simply is more exciting than the woolly answers
offered by academic psychology or even the ascetic, self-denying teachings
of Plato and the Christian church. Gellner says what gives psychoanalysis
this high drama is its mixing of the familiar and the shocking.
As has been argued, much of Freud's theories are nothing more than a
restatement of accepted romantic psychology - what Gellner calls the pays
reel of popular psychology: the traditional conception of: "...man as
half-angel, half- beast." Gellner says a "scientific" theory that openly
embraced the romantic view was bound to be warmly received. But what gave
psychoanalysis its dramatic tension was that it spiced this traditional view
with shocking new claims about the treacherous unconscious and repressed
incestuous desires.
Gellner comments: "A compelling, charismatic belief system...must engender a
tension in the neophyte or potential convert. It must tease and worry him,
and not leave him alone. It must be able to worry and tease him with both
its promise and its threat, and be able to invoke his inner anxiety as
evidence of its own authenticity. Thou wouldst not seek Me, if thou hadst
not already found Me in thy heart!...Demonstrable or obvious truths do not
distinguish the believer from the infidel, and they do not excite the
faithful. Only difficult belief can do that."
Ambiguity about the scientific standing of psychoanalysis only adds to this
dramatic tension. On the one hand, psychoanalysis is respectable. Its
founder was a doctor who frequently asserted the scientific nature of his
work. Its practitioners also are doctors and are members of analytic
societies that hold conferences and publish learned journals. Psychoanalysis
has all the oak-panelled prestige of an established branch of medicine. Yet
on the other hand, psychoanalysis deals in the poetic, the mysterious and
the sexual. It has set up its camp in areas that seem to be off- limits to
normal science and medicine.
The spicy tale told by psychoanalysis goes some way to explaining why it has
caught the popular imagination. But psychoanalysis is more than just a story
with good box office appeal. Gellner argues that Freud's theories would not
have had the same hold on Western culture unless the process of
psychoanalysis itself had produced a core of emotionally- committed
followers. Gellner says that to understand psychoanalysis's grip, it has to
be seen as a religious cult that comes complete with a charismatic leader, a
seductive liturgy and a well-oiled machinery of indoctrination. It is a
hardcore of passionate believers that drives psychoanalysis. To justify this
claim, Gellner points to the ways in which the process of analysis is like a
rite of initiation.
Undoubtedly, psychoanalytic treatment is emotionally demanding. A classical
course of analysis assumes that the patient will spend at least three or
four hours a week on the couch and that treatment will last months, or even
years. Gellner notes that when patients enter analysis, the first thing that
happens is that they are placed in a state of disorientation. They learn
that according to psychoanalytic theory, their most innocuous thoughts are
likely to conceal the vilest unconscious urges. Patients enter a no-man's
land where suddenly their own thoughts have become untrustworthy and if they
want to know what they really feel and desire, then they will have to await
the truths that will emerge out of analysis. Gellner argues that the
requirement that patients free associate - say whatever comes into their
heads - while the analyst listens in silence, is also an important
ingredient in fostering this state of initial disorientation: "The analyst's
silence does indeed constitute or engender, not so much sensory, as
conceptual deprivation. The patient is not allowed to erect and maintain
patterns of his own (that would not be free association), and he is
initially denied any patterns by the prestigious therapist." Softened-up by
a month or two of such treatment, Gellner says the patient becomes so hungry
for explanations that when finally one is offered by the analyst, it is
grabbed at uncritically.
Perhaps Gellner makes too much of the psychological pressure that
psychoanalysis brings to bear with its techniques. After all, many patients,
like the Wolf Man, take the interpretations of their analysts with a pinch
of salt. To liken psychoanalysis to a form of brain-washing seems too
strong. However Gellner says it is important to note that the
explicitly-stated aim of a course of analytic therapy is to achieve a
phenomenon known as transference.
Transference is the name psychoanalysts give to the strong emotional
attachment that patients form for their doctor. Analysts believe this
attachment to be an essential part of effecting a cure. According to Freud,
the neurotic symptoms that bring a patient to analysis are caused by a
repressed libido becoming entangled in a narrowing circle of unhealthy
fantasies. By getting patients temporarily to transfer the focus of their
libido to the figure of the analyst, their symptoms will be drained of their
sustaining energy and so will vanish. The price paid for this redirection of
the libido is the "transference illness" - an intense love/hate relationship
that the patient develops with the analyst. However, wrote Freud, once the
transference illness has works itself through, the libido will be released
once more and the patient restored to full mental health. Gellner dismisses
Freud's explanation, saying it is obvious that transference is nothing more
than the emotional bond that a vulnerable patient forms for the prestigious
authority figure of the analyst - the same kind of tie of respect that is
necessary in any ceremony of initiation.
Gellner argues: "Transference is the covenant, the bond, the social cement,
the social contract of the whole movement...Binding, loyalty- requiring
organisations normally possess...solemn rites de passage‚ oaths, initiation
ordeals, which ensure that the entrant henceforth has a psychic investment
in membership and does not easily or carelessly relinquish it. Transference
does this for the psychoanalytic system, and does it supremely well."
Gellner adds that it is not just patients who undergo the
emotionally-committing experience of transference. All psychoanalysts must
themselves have undergone a three year training analysis before being
allowed to practice.
Seeing psychoanalysis as a pseudo-religious cult which binds believers to it
through the process of analysis helps explain the hold Freud has taken on
the 20th Century imagination. Of course, the number of people who have come
into direct contact with psychoanalytic therapy is limited (although, it
numbers in the millions) and most people are aware of Freud's ideas only
through second-hand sources. However the existence of an
emotionally-committed core gives psychoanalysis a hot centre that an
ordinary body of scientific ideas lacks. Psychoanalysis radiates such an
intensity of belief in itself that even the casual observer cannot help but
feel there must be something in Freud's theories for people to be making
such a fuss.
****
Freud is important to our story because he took the myth of irrationality
and sanctified it. The romantics had given the myth its poetic voice. Freud
then threw the mantle of science over it, making it respectable. Having said
that, Freud's version of the myth did have its idiosyncrasies that made it
somewhat different from what had gone before. As has been said, in its most
traditional form, the myth of irrationality portrays the rational ego as
being suspended halfway between heaven and hell. At least Freud did not
argue for supernatural explanations of the mind and saw both aspects of
human nature as being firmly rooted in the physical reality of the brain.
With his concept of the superego, Freud also went a long way towards
acknowledging the importance of social upbringing. He understood that humans
have to learn such culturally-valued attitudes as mercy, charity and
loyalty, rather than them being discovered within like some divine gift. Yet
despite these minor revisions, Freud's model was still the romantic one. He
believed that a brutish, unreasoning animal beat within every breast. He
also was convinced that imagination, dreams and fantasies were irrational
processes with their roots buried in the unconscious.
When Freud's ideas started to emerge into public view in the 1920s and
1930s, they struck a chord with intellectuals. For writers, artists,
philosophers, political theorists, sociologists and other opinion-formers of
the day, it seemed as if finally a scientist had confirmed their age-old
poetic vision of humanity. Intellectuals seized upon psychoanalysis as a
fashionable prism through which they could take a fresh look at any subject
from history to architecture. They began to speculate about the Oedipal
tendencies that drove Napoleon on his trail of conquest or the hidden
phallic symbolism of the modern skyscraper. Freud's theories lent an aura of
profundity to the plots of dozens of novels and provided a rationale for new
art movements like Surrealism. More than anything else, Freud brought a
confidence-boosting sense of legitimacy to a generation of romantics at just
the moment when science was mounting its strongest challenge to the romantic
outlook.
The outbreak of the Second World War caused the break up of the close circle
of analysts that Freud had gathered around him in Vienna. Many were forced
to flee before the Nazis and seek refuge overseas. But this flight only
served to spark a second and even greater explosion of psychoanalytic
thinking once Freud's followers gained new footholds in academic
establishments in England and America. During the 1950s, Freud's ideas
became highly influential in areas such as psychiatry, education and social
work. Eventually, the very language of Freud started to become part of
everyday life. People began to speak about the mind in terms of egos,
defence mechanisms, Freudian slips, repressions, neuroses and complexes.
Rather than calling someone prissy, they would call them anal-retentive, or
instead of selfish, it would be egocentric. Psychoanalysis had worked its
way into Western culture at every level.
So far psychoanalysis has been talked about as if it were a single faith
with a single leader. While Freud and his theories still form the hub of
psychoanalysis, its very success has led to a broadening and splintering of
the movement. Most of the schisms have been led by members of Freud's circle
in Vienna who have fallen out with Freud over some article of faith, then
departed to set up their own analytic school.
The most famous of these wayward disciples was Carl Jung, a Swiss
psychiatrist who was being groomed as Freud's heir apparent until he broke
with the master in 1912. The son of a Protestant minister, Jung was
enthusiastic about Freud's analytic treatments but never had much sympathy
for Freud's insistence that sexuality was the sole driving force of the
human mind. After cutting himself free of Freud, Jung developed his own
psychoanalytic model which took analysis towards the realm of the mystical
and the occult.
In many ways, Jung brought back Platonism in all its pomp. Jung added a new
level to Freud's model of the mind, saying that beneath the irrational pit
of desires that made up the Freudian unconscious lay a still deeper level of
mind, the collective unconscious. Jung had been puzzled that the same
mythical stories and figures seemed to crop up repeatedly in the culture of
many different countries. To explain this, Jung suggested that every person
must share a "race memory" filled with the same collection of archetypal
images and symbols. These archetypes include the creation myth, the virgin
birth, the form of the snake, the Great Mother, the mandala, the eternal
feminine, Paradise, four-foldedness, and the number three.
The parallel between Jung's unconscious archetypes and Plato's pure forms is
obvious. The difference is that where Plato had seen this ultimate level of
the mind as a celestial realm filled with mathematical and moral essences,
Jung saw it as a genetic reservoir filled with arcane symbols. Somewhat of a
recluse, the impact of Jung's ideas were not felt immediately. But in the
1960s and 1970s, Jung became immensely popular - the overtones of Platonic
spirituality and occult folklore that he brought to Freud's psychoanalytic
model striking a resonant note with the times.
Jung was only the most prominent of Freud's followers to split off and form
his own psychoanalytic cult. Others to do so included Alfred Adler, Otto
Rank and Wilhelm Reich. Like Jung, Adler rejected Freud's sexual complexes,
arguing instead that a desire to dominate was the prime motivation of the
unconscious - a theory which was, in effect, a return to Nietzsche's idea of
the striving will. Otto Rank's twist on psychoanalysis was to go back beyond
childhood and the Oedipus complex to seek the primary trauma of life in the
moment of birth - a project that was to inspire therapeutic techniques such
as rebirthing and primal screaming therapy. The third of this trio, Reich,
was the most extreme. Reich believed that a magical force, orgone, was
released at the moment of orgasm and he became famous for the special boxes
(built of alternate layers of wood and metal) which people could sit inside
to trap this energy.
The splintering of psychoanalysis continued into the second and third
generation of analysts. People like Melanie Klein, Harry Stack Sullivan,
Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Jacques Lacan all developed their own distinct
brands of psychoanalytic theory. From this profusion of ideas sprang an even
greater variety of therapeutic practices. As a writer on psychoanalysis,
Steven Marcus, has remarked, therapies now span a spectrum that: "...ranges
from a variety of drug therapies, encounter groups, marathon and weekend
catharses to sensitivity training, touching courses and feeling games,
primal screaming, aggressiveness-raising, consciousness- lifting,
meditations, massages, and who knows what else. Most of these practices are
overtly hostile to psychoanalysis, though many of them consist of taking one
or two pieces of psychoanalytic discovery, procedure, or insight and
transforming it or them into an entire therapeutic regime."
Insiders to the psychoanalytic profession remain sharply aware of the
distinctions between their differing brands of theory. But to the wider
world, the Freudian legacy has become a blurred hotch-potch of ideas.
However, this has done little to harm Freud's high status within
intellectual circles. If anything, the way that fragments of the movement
have reconnected with past strands of irrational mythology - for example,
Jung forging a link with Plato and the occult, and Adler with Nietzsche -
has served only to weld psychoanalysis more firmly into place at the heart
of Western culture.
****
In the 1960s, this ever-broadening Freudian legacy played a large part in
inspiring the rise of a new psychological school, Humanism. At the time,
Humanism was thought to be a reaction against Freud and his black European
vision of the helpless ego, tossing upon the sea of a sex-obsessed
unconscious. The movement was started by American psychotherapists and
university academics who wanted to put forward a more positive view of the
human condition. Humanism also saw itself as a reaction against the
behaviourist school that dominated the academic psychology of the day -
people like John Watson and Burrhus Skinner whom the humanists felt paid too
much attention to rats in boxes and not enough to what being human and
conscious actually felt like. In 1962, a collection of like-minded
researchers set up the American Association for Humanistic Psychology to
encourage the study of neglected aspects of the mind such as love, humour,
peak experiences, personal growth and creativity.
The leading lights of the Humanist movement were Carl Rogers and Abraham
Maslow. In Rogers' theories, a consciously experienced urge for personal
growth replaced Freud's unconscious sex drive as the prime mover of the
mind. Like a seed planted in good soil, Rogers believed people born in a
loving environment would do their best to grow and express their generous
inner natures. He warned that rigid social stereotypes could cause mental
problems by cramping a person's development and so he urged people to get in
touch with their true feelings. Maslow, likewise, believed that humans have
an organic drive to grow. Maslow created an ascending ladder of needs,
ranging from basic physical needs like food and shelter to spiritual ones
like self-respect and self-expression. The driving goal felt by every human
was to climb as high up this ladder as they could and, according to Maslow,
those lucky enough to reach the top would emerge vibrant and whole.
While the humanists' rejection of Freud's subversive unconscious in favour
of a purposeful ego seems at first sight to be a step away from the myth of
irrationality, in fact the humanists had fallen into the same trap as Freud.
Instead of challenging the myth, once again, they merely were dressing it up
in respectable scientific clothes. The difference was that while Freud had
emphasised the animal half of the irrational equation, the humanists, in
their fresh-faced optimism, preferred the myth's divine aspects, focusing on
positive qualities such as creativity, love and tranquillity. Indeed,
humanist psychology can be seen as a belated reaction to the 20th Century
cult of individualism in just the same way that Freud's theories were a
century-late reaction to the original Romantic movement. By claiming
self-expression was not just a literary ideal invented by 19th Century
writers and philosophers but a fundamental drive wired into the psyche, the
humanists provided the ultimate justification for the cult of individuality.
What had started out as a poetic fancy now became a biological compulsion.
Maslow and Rogers had hoped the humanist approach would revolutionise
psychology. However, in basing their work on the romantic model, the
humanists soon proved to be building on sand. Humanism can be credited with
at least bringing some measure of scientific attention to important aspects
of the mind such as creativity and conscious experience, but it did not
produced the breakthroughs that its supporters had hoped for.
While failing to lead to strong science, the humanist movement has, of
course, still been a huge public success. Tapping into the myth of
irrationality as it does, Humanism could hardly fail to capture the popular
imagination and has washed down into everyday culture under the broad label
of New Age thinking.
The New Age movement is a patchwork quilt of fashionable ideas, embracing
everything from Eastern religion and meditation to paranormal powers and the
occult. But the glue holding this eclectic mix together is the humanists'
belief that the route to personal fulfillment lies in an exploration of the
self. The answers to life are seen as lying within the vast untapped
potential of the irrational human soul. The New Age movement caught the
media's attention in 1987 when 20,000 people met at sacred sites around the
world in a "harmonic convergence" aimed at saving the planet. A Time
magazine cover story later the same year sealed the comic stereotype of the
New Ager as an aging Californian hippie who had traded in hard rock and hard
drugs for soft music, exercise and meditation.
Yet while it is easy to poke fun at the wacky image of New Agers, what is
significant about the movement is that it shows how our theories about the
human mind are always much more than just neutral explanations of an
interesting phenomenon. The model of mind that we hold tends to become the
blueprint for the way we think we should live. The Neoplatonic division of
the mind into divine rationality and evil flesh led to the self-denying
ethic that became the hallmark of the early Christian life-style. The
Romantic movement's belief that the best in humans lies in irrational
feeling now justifies the self-centred and emotive approach to life of the
modern macho cult of individuality. The New Age movement is just the latest
example of how today's psychology has a tendency to become tomorrow's
life-style - something that gives us all the more reason to be concerned if
the theories we hold today happen to be flawed.
Ben Hoff
term. It doesn't seem honest to me to call everything that is happening in
the brain as consciousness. I guess this happens in every discipline. Brain
research seems to me to be a fad like behaviorism and psychoanalysis. They
both added very important views but are not the be all and end all to human
experience. I prefer psychoanalytic approach because it deals with people's
internal experience more than behaviorism and brain based psychology seems
to me to be dehumanizing.
The term unconscious is important to me.
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uk1al39...@corp.supernews.com...
> In Freud and Breuer's Studies in Hysteria, the case of Bertha Pappenheim
> organisations normally possess...solemn rites de passage, oaths,
Immortalist
> I'm just saying that the author could have used "nonconscious" or some
other
> term. It doesn't seem honest to me to call everything that is happening in
> the brain as consciousness.
Well they got this new science they got to deal with. I think that its over
50% of hospitals now have these scanners that can take a picture every 6
seconds. They put it into movies. Soon this unconscious should show, since
ALL active parts of the brain show in these scan movies. The race is on for
companies to create faster "complete" scans or snapshots.
Not much is written about this emerging mass of data, so it is hard to be
aroused and respond "it's a fad" because some dickwads wrote about how
euphoric they are about this great new thing. Hell in most of these
hospitals the info is creeping in and the Drs gotta be laughing because they
know it is all but certain that when so many frames per second is reached
this stupid brain game goin back centuries will soon be over. They dont care
about fads, and hell, science fads aint nothing like the fads you can get
when you turn on the TV.
Headline (we discovered exactly how the brain produces the entire self)
would be a one day story maybe on the front page. Next day gone.
> I guess this happens in every discipline. Brain
> research seems to me to be a fad like behaviorism and psychoanalysis. They
> both added very important views but are not the be all and end all to
human
> experience. I prefer psychoanalytic approach because it deals with
people's
> internal experience more than behaviorism and brain based psychology seems
> to me to be dehumanizing.
>
Carefull, many people were lucky with their beliefs about science and all,
since they could live most of their lives without new discoveries changing
everything. We definately dont live at such a time. These results that are
about to change everything, just by the sheer number of online scanners, can
be looked at it like it might be threatening or could be seen as an great
opportunity to prepare to be amoung the first to think and talk about what
is about to be revealed.
> The term unconscious is important to me.
>
Me too, but when I was a kid there a bunch of other terms that went along
with it that don't seem to accompany it anymore, like collective
consciousness and displacement etc... the entire psychodynamic lexicon.
those were so cool but that day has past, be prepared to adapt to what is
around the corner.
The big change has been a move towards a more dynamic view of the brain and
brain processing, one rooted in the new sciences of chaos and complexity.
The classical approach to science is reductionist. A system is understood
through its parts. For the psychologist, this meant it was natural to tackle
the mind faculty by faculty, dealing with perception, memory, cognition,
speech, motor output, and so on in turn until the complete list of mental
sub-systems was exhausted. The neurologist would do something very similar,
proceeding perhaps level by level-from synapses to neurons and then the
behaviour of whole networks-or else structure by structure, ticking off the
parts of the brain in turn. Such a methodical route seems sound. Indeed, it
appears the very essence of "being scientific". But as many a first year
student can vouch, it is also ploddingly dull. Worse still, it somehow does
not fit the character of what is being studied. The brain is above all an
organ that is lively, responsive and acts as a whole. A science of the brain
ought to be equally light on its feet.
What a dynamic account of the brain means in practice can have many
interpretations. But this book tries to tell the story by looking at what
the brain has to do in creating a single moment of consciousness. The
evidence is that it takes the brain about half a second to produce a fully
realised state of awareness. It follows an arc of activity that begins in
the establishing of plans and expectations, then passes through a
preconscious stage before eventually flowering as an organised,
tightly-focused, state of response. In other words, each moment of
consciousness has a hidden structure. To begin to understand what
consciousness is all about, you have to first get inside a single instant.
The 1990s were meant to be the decade of great discovery in neuroscience.
There were new brain scanning techniques like PET and f-MRI and a new
theoretical boldness from the likes of Francis Crick. At last, it seemed,
the secrets of consciousness would be laid bare. But it turned out that what
had to be unlearnt became as important as what was learnt. Researchers found
they were entering the hunt for the secrets of the mind with too many wrong
assumptions.
One of these key assumptions was that the brain was much like a computer.
The brain had a hierarchical design so that sensory input entered at the
bottom and was transformed by stages into conscious output. Cognitive
scientists went even further in believing that particular brain modules
would "do" specific functions such as memory recall, speech generation and
perhaps self-awareness itself. But as soon as researcher began using PET to
scan real brains it became obvious that their circuits reacted in a much
more globally coherent way. There was something structured about the brain -
it did have a hierarchical organisation of mapping areas. But equally, it
was dynamic and adaptive in its processing flows. Experiments by Harvard's
Stephen Kosslyn to discover how humans generate mental images illustrated
the problem. When his subjects were scanned, individual modules did not
light up. Instead, as he says, the brain's response was more like watching
pebbles tossed into a pond. Ripples spread across the brain spinning complex
feedback patterns.
The dynamism that Kosslyn and other neuro-imagers were seeing at the whole
brain level was just as troublesome at the level of individual brain cells.
Researchers had assumed that like a computer, the brain's circuitry would
deal in a stream of bits. Neurons would signal to one another to create an
accumulating pattern of processing. But it was being found that the output
of a cell could be wildly variable. A spike might or might not cross a
particular junction depending on whether the brain was interested in the
message. It was as if consciousness were controlling the spikes rather than
the spikes adding up to produce a state of consciousness! This sounded
spooky but the mystery was easily explained by a dynamical view of the
brain. If neural states of representation had to evolve, then the firing of
any cell needed to strike some sort of feedback-based balance with activity
in the rest of the brain. The spiking of a neuron did not have meaning until
it had developed to fit a context. The problem was that neuroscientists
found it hard to accept just how deeply this changed the traditional
conception of the brain.
http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_chapter_summary.html
Daniel T.
>He is talking about ethics and lawmaking. He is complaining actually about
>how we make laws and justify our beliefs by stuff we more or less just make
>up. Murder and rape are in our hereditary oracle and somehow we fantasized
>reasons for punishing people for committing these acts.
Murder and rape are in some peoples hereditary oracles but not in all of
us. For most of us, I would say it is in our oracles to punish those who
murder and rape. We haven't fantasized reasons for punishing those
people, we are simply following our hereditary oracles.
>Ha he he, i was saying psycho surgery and labotomies as a joke to further
>what you were saying. Wilson supports neither.
I realize Mr. Wilson supports neither, but I didn't get the fact that
you were making a joke. I thought you were serious so I figured I should
address it. :-)
>Culture already cages and
>punishes many animalistic and brutish parts of the oracle. We can write laws
>to steer the beastly parts of us, as in fact we already do. But the
>foundations for these laws, the justifications of supporting beliefs are now
>based upon automatic fears and necessary impulses.
You mean we should do all the things we already do, just for different
reasons? I don't really see the point.
Immortalist
Didn't mean that. Things like certain behaviors or chemicals we use, science
has already over-ruled what the oracle has decided on inadequate knowledge.
The oracle would have us punish mental illness and injest harmfull chemicals
if the science data and research had not revealed what this intuition could
not see or connect. As time rolls on science will show moore and more how
our laws and behaviors are based on harmful biases, but of course we can
celebrate those things the oracle has discovered by animalistic opportunity.
Daniel T.
>> reasons? I don't really see the point.
>>
>
>Didn't mean that. Things like certain behaviors or chemicals we use, science
>has already over-ruled what the oracle has decided on inadequate knowledge.
>The oracle would have us punish mental illness and injest harmfull chemicals
>if the science data and research had not revealed what this intuition could
>not see or connect. As time rolls on science will show moore and more how
>our laws and behaviors are based on harmful biases, but of course we can
>celebrate those things the oracle has discovered by animalistic opportunity.
We're starting to talk in circles. If Mr. Wilson is correct then the
scientists were operating within their oracles' parameters when they
established the knowledge (in fact creating the knowledge is what their
oracles wanted them to do.) The individuals that choose to follow the
scientists are operating within what their oracles decided. The
individuals that choose to force others to follow certain rules are
operating within the confines of their oracles. As time rolls on our
oracles will change. We will then look back on how we used to be and
say, "back then we were hurting ourselves, now we are doing things
right." Just like we do now.
Our oracles are established by our environment. Through us, those same
oracles can, at least to some extent, change the environment that
defines them. We are just tools.
Immortalist
Normal impulses may lead us in other directions than accumulated knowledge.
Normal impulses or gut feelings are different than learned skills. The
oracle can be brutish in the face of accumulated knowledge and thats why we
lock people up. There is a difference in which is followed, an emotional
impulse or a rationally learned skill.
He is speaking of the difference between emotions and learned skills based
accumulated knowledge not some big hippy ball of confusion that can prop up
some fake philosophy.
John Jones
unconsciously affect our ethical premises<
No, no, you can't say that, you can't mix matter and mind and hope for
another outcome. How can you equate censors with motivators? One is
chemistry, the other is ethics. Stopit.
JJ
John Jones
practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by
natural selection over thousands of generations...<<
JJ. What has been programmed? Morals, experience? - why on earth should
'Matter', the brain, need these? And did the brain construct them, and then
present them? There was no thing that a presentation could be made to. So
how can we regard of the brain that it can 'represent' morals and
experience, as biochemistry?
Its all mixed up in a bloody great stew. Thats how.
No, its a mythological creature you are representing as a dead ringer. My
bells dropped off.
Brain biochemistry is demarcated according to social convention.
So stuff it.
Immortalist
"John Jones" <burgerb...@supanet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aht3l8$397$3...@chilli.nntp.netline.net.uk...
Is it possible to seperate matter from mind. Is it possible to seperate
solidness from atoms? It seems These emergent properties depend upon matter
changing through time. The limbic system, which has alot to do with
emotions, has inputs and outputs, which in many cases influence our ethical
decisions.
> JJ
>
>
Immortalist
> >>Human emotional responses and the more general ethical
> practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by
> natural selection over thousands of generations...<<
>
> JJ. What has been programmed? Morals, experience? - why on earth should
> 'Matter', the brain, need these?
The areas of the brain that allow human emotional responses originated from
the genes that directed their assembly. These areas are influenced by
cultural experiences and develop within a range of connectivity determined
by the genes.
> And did the brain construct them, and then
> present them? There was no thing that a presentation could be made to. So
> how can we regard of the brain that it can 'represent' morals and
> experience, as biochemistry?
>
> Its all mixed up in a bloody great stew. Thats how.
> No, its a mythological creature you are representing as a dead ringer. My
> bells dropped off.
>
Of course it gets all mixed up in a stew after the genes direct the brains
assembly.
> Brain biochemistry is demarcated according to social convention.
> So stuff it.
>
The assembly of the brain biochemistry is directed by the genes and their
demarcation while influenced by the environment is constrained within a
range of plasiticity demarcated by limitation set by the genes.
>
Daniel T.
>"Daniel T." <notda...@gte.net> wrote:
>> We're starting to talk in circles. If Mr. Wilson is correct then the
>> scientists were operating within their oracles' parameters when they
>> established the knowledge (in fact creating the knowledge is what their
>> oracles wanted them to do.) The individuals that choose to follow the
>> scientists are operating within what their oracles decided. The
>> individuals that choose to force others to follow certain rules are
>> operating within the confines of their oracles. As time rolls on our
>> oracles will change. We will then look back on how we used to be and
>> say, "back then we were hurting ourselves, now we are doing things
>> right." Just like we do now.
>>
>> Our oracles are established by our environment. Through us, those same
>> oracles can, at least to some extent, change the environment that
>> defines them. We are just tools.
>>
>
>Normal impulses may lead us in other directions than accumulated
>knowledge.
Accumulating knowledge is in itself a normal impulse.
>Normal impulses or gut feelings are different than learned skills. The
>oracle can be brutish in the face of accumulated knowledge and thats why
>we lock people up. There is a difference in which is followed, an
>emotional impulse or a rationally learned skill.
The oracle helps determine the how much accumulated knowledge is
available.
>He is speaking of the difference between emotions and learned skills based
>accumulated knowledge not some big hippy ball of confusion that can prop
>up some fake philosophy.
But what he is failing to take into account, it seems, is that our
ability to accumulate knowledge, as well as our adaptibility to use that
knowledge is all part of the oracle he is talking about.
Immortalist
The oracle is mainly in the limbic system and accumulated knowledge is in
the basal ganglia and cerrebellum and resoned control of these from the
frontal and temporal lobes.
The oracle in the past reduces "the given" in an failed foundationalism
which finds it's ultimate origin in emotionalism. It is resorted to as
justification for ethics and morality, but it is just accepted as given
emotions do not necessarily corespond to truth as well as acumulated
knowledge, but reason though of an likewise given nature has stronger
contextual support based upon parts of the brain that evolved after the
emotional centers of the brain.
Daniel T.
>The oracle is mainly in the limbic system and accumulated knowledge is in
>the basal ganglia and cerrebellum and resoned control of these from the
>frontal and temporal lobes.
>
>The oracle in the past reduces "the given" in an failed foundationalism
>which finds it's ultimate origin in emotionalism. It is resorted to as
>justification for ethics and morality, but it is just accepted as given
>emotions do not necessarily corespond to truth as well as acumulated
>knowledge, but reason though of an likewise given nature has stronger
>contextual support based upon parts of the brain that evolved after the
>emotional centers of the brain.
My point still remains. We cannot operate in a way that our genes don't
allow, they are the ultimate arbitrator on determining what we are, and
are not, capable of.
Immortalist
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >The oracle is mainly in the limbic system and accumulated knowledge is in
> >the basal ganglia and cerrebellum and resoned control of these from the
> >frontal and temporal lobes.
> >
> >The oracle in the past reduces "the given" in an failed foundationalism
> >which finds it's ultimate origin in emotionalism. It is resorted to as
> >justification for ethics and morality, but it is just accepted as given
> >emotions do not necessarily corespond to truth as well as acumulated
> >knowledge, but reason though of an likewise given nature has stronger
> >contextual support based upon parts of the brain that evolved after the
> >emotional centers of the brain.
>
> My point still remains. We cannot operate in a way that our genes don't
> allow, they are the ultimate arbitrator on determining what we are, and
> are not, capable of.
>
True, Wilson claims that the genes hold culture on a leash like a dog, if it
gets to far out of line death or changes in gene frequencies will mute the
effect.
If ethics and morality originate in certain areas of the brain, in the near
future we come to completely understand, neuron for neuron, how those areas
produce this behavior, we possibly find a difference in our reasons for
doing some X but knowledge about the brain parts contradicts this belief, we
choose to follow the science over the irrational emotion; albiet you can say
they all originate from the genes, but Wilson is saying that we should still
choose the science over the genetic irrationality.
Daniel T.
It gets scarry though when you start talking about adjusting humans
genetic structure, which implies breeding programs...
Immortalist
Very true! And this has what has led to the supression of many aspects of
evolution. But eventually we must face these issues as we come to know more
about what makes things tick. Funny how Wilson was brave enough to take on
the very issues that Spencer exploited and others turned into Social
Darwinism. But we will have to face these issues down the line. I dont think
Wilson suggests any kind of tinkering with the actual genetics.
Non-biologists seem to be doing more tinkering in some countries. I hear
that technologies that allow people to know the gender of the child at and
early period of development has lead to more abortions because of this
knowledge. I suppose Wilson was addressing this also, about how to deal what
will not be suppressed, these technologies of genetics are with us now. We
must learn more about them to make the right decisions or we will end up
doing what you say.
The Dark Magus
wrote:
>My point still remains. We cannot operate in a way that our genes don't
>allow, they are the ultimate arbitrator on determining what we are, and
>are not, capable of.
This sounds like homosexual propaganda to me.
The Dark Magus
--
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for
their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of
these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history
of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
--The Declaration of Tyrannicide
Ben H.
over
> 50% of hospitals now have these scanners that can take a picture every 6
> seconds. They put it into movies.
> Soon this unconscious should show, since
> ALL active parts of the brain show in these scan movies. The race is on
for
> companies to create faster "complete" scans or snapshots.
The part of the brain where the unconscious is stored should show. Someone
told me once that I needed to get a subjective reality. Maybe that applies
to you.
> Not much is written about this emerging mass of data, so it is hard to be
> aroused and respond "it's a fad" because some dickwads wrote about how
> euphoric they are about this great new thing. Hell in most of these
> hospitals the info is creeping in and the Drs gotta be laughing because
they
> know it is all but certain that when so many frames per second is reached
> this stupid brain game goin back centuries will soon be over. They dont
care
> about fads, and hell, science fads aint nothing like the fads you can get
> when you turn on the TV.
>
> Headline (we discovered exactly how the brain produces the entire self)
> would be a one day story maybe on the front page. Next day gone.
It seems to me that the brain is the dumbest part of the body. It has no
sensory
receptors and therefor knows nothing directly about the world. It has no
muscles
so it can't do anything. It doesn't react with other people so it gets no
ideas. Just
a bunch of neurons programmed completely except for what it receives from
the
real geniuses of the body- the eyes, the sensory receptors and most
important,
other people.
It seems like you are placing the brain in a higher place than the entire
organism. I haven't read the books on the brain that you have but when I
read "The Way of Zen" I thought it was "the" answer and the same for "Walden
II". When the brain has been dissected to its smallest part and analyzed the
whole will still be greater the sum of the parts. Saying the brain is
intelligence is like saying that a tape recorder is music.
I am impressed with you knowledge on the anatomy of the brain and cutting
edge (no pun intended) thinking on its relationship in the mind/body
question
and the other things about which you have demonstrated superior knowledge
but I just don't think I'm going to wake up someday and begin my day with
a list of what I know about the brain to help me have a good day. And I
don't think brain research will change people's worldview very much. If it
will, how? I would like to know that very much and I will be silent and
start
my own limited study of the brain so I can keep up with the newest
revelations.
> http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_chapter_summary.html
>
>
Immortalist
"Ben H." <goodid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vPq19.42741$Fq6.3...@news2.west.cox.net...
> > Well they got this new science they got to deal with. I think that its
> over
> > 50% of hospitals now have these scanners that can take a picture every 6
> > seconds. They put it into movies.
>
> > Soon this unconscious should show, since
> > ALL active parts of the brain show in these scan movies. The race is on
> for
> > companies to create faster "complete" scans or snapshots.
>
> The part of the brain where the unconscious is stored should show. Someone
> told me once that I needed to get a subjective reality. Maybe that applies
> to you.
>
Then are you saying that there subjective states that don't corespond to
activity of nerves in the brain?
Well, it does seem true that we place more emphasis on the brain than the
entire body. Think of the immune system, it performs many activities that
could fit the criteria of cognition. When I say brain I automatically think
of the entire nervous system. Have you seen those images or drawing of
nothing but an entire nervous system? The entire shape of the body is there
because nerves (brain) reach into every part of the body. I have read the
thesis off and on that the eye is actually an extended part of the brain.
Not just nerve cells groen out like in other parts of the body but that the
eye is an entire portion of the brain that mutation progressively pulled out
front of the digestive tube.
Well, I am of the impression that emergent properties are very complex
activities, note the solidity of matter when atoms are together and all the
ways matter can be arranged and types of solidity. I believe that emergent
properties can have a temporary effect by downward causation, influencing
activities that would have been active in other ways had not the emergent
behavioe been present. Recentl this has been equated philosophically with
qualia and all those "juice theories."
If you get a brain tumer, or need a certain brain drug because of an
accident, I suppose you might wake up with the advantage of the accumulation
of knowledge about the brain. We have made many wonderful discoveries as an
species but we hardly need to wake up concerned about them. But they, at
times certainly come in handy. But every morning I wake up there is my body
with it's brain and nervous system.
There can be many reasons given for more or less attention to something and
it is up to the person what he would like to dwell on today.
>
>
>
> > http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_chapter_summary.html
> >
> >
>
>
John Jones
solidness from atoms? It seems These emergent properties depend upon matter
changing through time. The limbic system, which has alot to do with
emotions, has inputs and outputs, which in many cases influence our ethical
decisions.<<
Structures tell us nothing about consciousness, we cannot deduce
consciousness from structure. We can only make comparisons. A vague
description of 'matter', is no more helpful to us than a precise
description of matter.
JJ
Immortalist
Do you mean knowledge of structures is equal to other ideas about
consciousness? Neurosurgeons are legally bound by the accuracy of structures
and what is known about consciousness for they can be sued when removing
structures and not testing these structures with electrode stimulation
beforehand. Are you saying these neurosurgeons should throw away what they
know about structures and live with more risk?
I think you are confussing the search for answers to how the brain works and
it's structures with the pussyfied computer/mind/brain hogwash which
neurosurgions could give a fuck about.
Many times in the past people have been persuaded to take the wrong turn by
such propoganda. Whoever convinced you of this it is likely we could trace
their ideological origins to other liberal social scientists who wanted no
connection between science and human culture for other reason of continuing
entitlement and their ideas of human welfare. Or we might trace the origins
of this popycock to existentialism and idealism which rejected science at a
time different from now. We have much more evidence about structures and
these intuitive philosophies you talk about are dead and extinct or at least
dont hold an ounce of hidden political water my man.
I will not take to heart anyones message that asks us to throw away what
knowledge we have accumulated and trade it in for some old shit on a shingle
philosophy.
> JJ
>
>