"Ray Scanlon" <rscanlon at wsg.net> wrote:
>The homunculus is the little man (green?) who sits in the middle of the
>head, watching a TV set, and punching buttons.
Replace it with some setors tuning and you might get close enough.
> We are too sophisticated to believe in such a little man, instead we have the soul
Which we are you talking about?
Guess no one sophisticated. About the first ones into believing into
souls popping up in my mind are sense censored Christians going to
churches to heear about angels and some god and souls and hell and
rosaries and saints and sol on.
Next are people believing that last life they were some ant and
earlier on a tape worm and hope that next life they might make it to
be a badger.
>(mind, intellect, self, that which stands behind the brain, that which is other).
???
At some point you could reference to the areas you mean so that here
in bionet.neuroscience at least some idea is there which ones you are
referring to.
As one of the self areas is not intellectual and the own ones I guess
could be counted to be so, I wonder if with self after intellect you
are trying to make sort of a double reference or if you are explicitly
excluding the own I areas from self and mean you are referring to
non-intellectual I areas.
All in all it might be easier if you were to say which other you are
meaning exactly, and give area references.
I do not expect Westie namings, as I met enough MBD folks who just
pointed at their heads and told me roughly how many centimeters inside
is the areas they mean.
Maybe you could get up to that MBD level and do the same, or use some
other area references that are beyond doubt making it clear to others
what you are talking about.
>The soul (mind)
The mind for me is of certain areas and I do not have a soul.
Some of those areas are just selecting from certain data proffered
within the brain, wether non-mind or mind areas of the brain.
If you wish to discuss souls, go to some religious place, and I am
sure that there are many religions where they believe into such stuff.
If you wish to talk in bionet.neuroscience, get specific to which
areas you are referring to or describe the functions so well, that
from there it is easy to know which areas you are going on about for
those having enough areas knowledge.
Else you just sound like some religious maniac trying to get others to
follow his religious fantasies.
I guess you were raised with some religion or something like that, and
now feel the urge to propagate it to others.
Maybe you could get far enough to understand that there are others who
stopped religious stuff at the age where they stopped believing into
the Easter Rabbit and the Christmasman, and maybe you could adapt to
that unless you want to sound like some five year old who is still
into that, you are taking regards of people who are not even getting
what religion you are referring to, nor what you are meaning there
exactly.
You are certainly not talking about areas of the brain in any form I
ever heard of people understanding a lot about different areas and
relations between them.
Maybe you could update yourself on those first, and then state sector
for sector what you are meaning, so that non-religious people do not
confuse you with some relgious freak babbler who is far en0ough off
the rocker to confuse all on the planet by going "we"ing about his
relgious belief stuff that he needs as a psyche-crutch.
As we have an alien abduction fun discussion running here
your posts tempts me to go on about alien invasions in your brain
after you were abducted and forgot about it.
;-)
>Do we really need such an entity?
An alien controlling your systems?
Look at what it all "helps" you to believe into.
>It seems that many, who profess materialism but are actually dualists, need
>one.
Well, the alien of course would get what material is of a bit better,
and with dual might get this 2ish impression, and might not care what
people believe into, as long as they do not notice that they had been
abducted and that it is controlling them.
>They need something or someone to do the "thinking".
That's what aliens are good for.
> The notion of a brain composed of neurons, each doing its own little thing, being a
>structure that can remember, associate, think, and decide is unsettling.
For the alien probably it would be, already when comparaing the number
of neurons to that of glia, but then again a human not noticing which
areas in the own head have to do with what, nor what they are of,
likely would not notice an alien playing around in the energies there,
tuning itself into different brain energies and altering them, either.
>All those who ask, "Can the machine think?" are in need of a soul (mind) to
>be associated with the machine.
All those who ask "Can the machine think" and then generalize the term
mind with their belief stuff as if it was not bad enough that they did
not even say which machine they were referring to before,
might be good victims of aliens controlling them, as obviously they
are not very specific in their thinking in the first place, so that
there is a lot of room for specific alterations that the erratic brain
might fail to notice in the general vagueness and belief generalizing.
>All those who claim that emotion is necessary for an advance in AI are
>invoking an homunculus.
Which emotion and what is that to do with some central controlling
other functions around it?
I suggest you find yourself some religous room of your faith or found
one to rant on about your soul stuff. To me this sounds about as
rediculous as if you were going on about the Easter Rabbit and that
the mind is the Easter Rabbit, and that soeone believes that all with
DNA have an Easter Rabbit in them, and what the Easter Rabbit all is
doing in us and so on.
If you feel the need to believe in Easter Rabbits, souls, gods, or
stuff like that, do others the favour and do not generalize your
belief into "we" while you go on about it in bionet.neuroscience.
As I gave my opinion about some of the areas that I count as mind and
some that I do not count as mind within different places and in
bionet.neuroscience at some point, too, (I believe that was when when
someone asked about physical equivalents to "mind"), to me attempts to
generalize them into something sounding alike religious wank-off to me
are short of intellectually insulting.
If you disagree with the areas I stated there that for my perception
are (non-) mind areas, I'd appreciate the listing of the area(s) and
your different opinions.
And if you wish to go for other definitions, do not write "we" as if
you were of some religious congregation for which lots of the world
does not exist but instead other stuff.
