From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sat 28 Jun 2003 - 19:29:39 GMT
From: "Van oost Kenneth"
<kennethvanoost@belgacom.net>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Precision of replication
Date sent: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 20:22:47 +0200
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> > When a decision is made, before one acts upon it, the p300 neuronal
> > cluster fires in the cortex. Simple, Pet-scan-verifiable fact.
>
> < I don 't doubt this, but and here I go again, Benjamin Libet found
> out that it only took 20 milliseconds before a signal reaches the
> brain, but it took half a second ( 500 milliseconds) before the person
> rapported that he actually felt somehing.
>
> Half a second is a lot within a world where actionpotenials can disap-
> pear in less than 2 milliseconds. It means hat most of wha we do and
> what we consider as competent, well- considered and well- thought of,
> happens so fast that we ain 't aware.
>
> So who is in control !? You or your brain !?
> What comes first, the conscient decision to move or the unconscient
> motoric handling !? Libet found that the decision to move comes 1 full
> second AFTER the motoric aeras were beginning to prepare themselves
> for action. Your brain already made ' a decision ' to move even before
> you relaize you were actually moving at all.......... The implication
> of such tests is that, that our behavior is not control- led by free
> will, but by unconscient handling.
>
My original point stands, however, that it the decision to act is a
cognitive and internal process, not an environmental and external one
(although the decision to act is often, though not always, prompted by
and in response to the reception of external stimuli).
>
> After all, if free will and consciousness are just illusions, a neuro-
> fysiological scam, what do you verify on the PET !?
>
You verify that the mind itself functions in a bottom-up Darwinian
fashion, as Dennett proposed in CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED; in
other words, that there is a constant competition between candidate
thoughts and ideas to enter the presence of self-conscious awareness.
It would certainly be of safety benefit if the decision to run (perhaps as
a result of the subliminal perception of a threat) provoked the body to
get ready to do so not when the decision makes its way to conscious
self-awareness, but the moment that it is selected to proceed there.
Nevertheless, as Sperry discovered, there is also top-down control,
which can consciously a priori select the range within the spectrum of
possible alternatives that it will find acceptable. The unacceptable
alternatives may thus not even be chosen to appear to self-conscious
awareness.
>
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===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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