IUBio

On 'Hunger'

David Longley David at longley.demon.co.uk
Tue Dec 21 22:50:20 EST 2004


In article 
<nIRxd.1133850$Gx4.123946 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, kenneth 
collins <kenneth.p.collins at worldnet.att.net> writes
>"kenneth collins" <kenneth.p.collins at worldnet.att.net> wrote in
>message
>news:xJNxd.15273$uM5.8712 at bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>| "[...]
>| "Food"?
>|
>| If you're "hungry", 'move toward' it
>| by 'moving' your legs and torso, 'move'
>| your arms, hands and fingers to 'move'
>| it to your mouth. 'move' the muscules
>| that animate your jaw. "Taste and eat."
>|
>| Anything you can consider is Same-Old,
>| Same-Old stuff -- all Knowledge with
>| respect to 'movememt', and such "Know-
>| ledge" exists, as above, within the neur-
>| al Topology of your nervous aystem
>| =AND= TD E/I-minimization.
>| [...]
>
>What about "humger"?
>
>It's the internal experience of 'moving
>away from' energy-sufficiency.
>
>All "hunger"-correlated behavioral
>dynamics, and all of the =myriad=
>sub-dynamics that comprise it are
>'just' so much 'moving toward' en-
>ergy-sufficiency.
>
>'moving away from' that 'moving
>away from' Being-Alive.
>
>Which is 'just' more "climbing" of
>WDB2T.
>
>Why I'm getting into all of this is
>to give folks a handle on the way
>that all of the =myriad= sub-dyn-
>amics that comprise "hunger" are
>=all= rigorously-correlated to the
>=one= overall =Directionality=
>that is WDB2T.
>
>Get it?

Yes Ken, many of us do get it - but do you know where *you* got it from? 
(cf. Herrick and Sherrington, personally, I got it from my supervisor 
Crow). It appears to me that sometime in your past you have, perhaps 
unknown to yourself, just "discovered" some of the basics of behavioural 
science. You are talking about the reinforcement of rates of emitted 
classes of behaviours, but you still haven't grasped that there's over 
seven decades of empirical research work on what the contingencies are 
which shape "approach" and "withdrawal" behaviours (i.e. both 
phylogenetically selected operant behaviours and ontogenetically 
shaped/conditioned operant behaviours), not to mention the extensive 
work which continues to be done to explicate the molecular and 
quantitative genetics/physiology.

This spans nearly all of the life sciences, and believe it or not, you 
are skating over all of that with vague generalities.

You're not entirely* on the wrong track (which is the problem), but you 
are missing the perspective which you need in order to say anything 
that's useful or tangible. The devil is, as usual, in the fine 
*details*, so my best advice to you (again) is that you try to look into 
some of the detailed work on the monoamines and the direction of 
behaviour (DA 5-HT and NA) and how, over the past 30 years or so, this 
has finally started to pay useful dividends (largely as a result of work 
in behaviour genetics).

As it is, you're not saying anything new or useful (and I mean to be 
helpfully provocative/critical). You're expressing the basics (which go 
back decades even before even I was born - see website ;-) and in a 
rather "florid" manner too (perhaps out of frustration and just a little 
psychosis <g> (which shouldn't worry you too much as there's a lot more 
about than most folk appreciate!). The risk here is that you will, 
despite your good intentions, just deter others who don't know much 
about any of this, from looking more carefully into the work which 
*does* go into the details, and which *is* useful (e.g. dopamine 
receptors, ADHD, expanded triplet repeats etc...).

There is considerable variation within behaviour.....and what matters 
*is* the details (and the discipline).

Kind regards,
-- 
David Longley
http://www.longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm



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