[EnviroEngr]

16-JUN-2004: I've expanded this thread to incorporate the "Humanities" as they were called at the University. Both speculative and formal metaphysics discussions can go here as well.
____________________________________________________________
I'm going to use this thread to start putting up discussion on the various faces of 'hominidae brain-stuff observably in action' aka 'psychology'.

I'm guessing there may be an interest, maybe.

I will start with Charles Hampden-Turner archives from Maps Of The Mind [ISBN 0-02-076870-2]

I can move on to Gödel, Escher, Bach [ISBN 0-46-502656-7] if the intensity picks up.

I prefer to start from a physical basis and move to other 'more tenuous' paradigms later as the ties can be made. Personality Theory and Classical Approaches including Pathology can be brought in any time.

[EnviroEngr]

To address the Islam thread.... {my apologies in advance to Aaron for the size of this. If I can find better ways of presenting these materials, I will use them.}

MAP 24

Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The theories of Julian Jaynes

Julian Jaynes, a professor of psychology at Princeton, is responsible for the most intriguing and extensive thesis yet to emerge from brain research. Did our ancestors have god-directed minds? Is consciousness little more than 3,000 years old? He starts by asking what consciousness is - that irradicable difference between what others see and our own sense of self. Consciousness is not the same as being awake. To be knocked 'unconscious' is to lose many automatic functions. It is not continuity since even 'stream of consciousness' is full of gaps. The Cartesian notion of 'the helpless spectator' asks us to believe that the intensification of consciousness during decisions has nothing at all to do with outcomes. We know that we can learn, judge, think abstractly and even generalize without consciousness (see Map 9). Many skills like oratory, music and skiing fail us when consciousness interferes. Einstein had so many creative ideas while shaving that he would cut himself with surprise.
Jaynes' solution is that consciousness is a metaphor, a relationship between two or more unlike experiences joined by likenesses. The countryside 'blanketed by snow' is more than a superficial connection. It teems with associations, contours, warmth, protection, slumber, and an awakening in spring. Consciousness is a lexical field, whose terms are metaphors or analogues of behaviour in the physical world. We project syntheses of associations into an imagined screen within our heads. Consciousness has thus the relationship of a map to a territory, as when in the 'pith' and 'kernel' of Jaynes' thesis he mounts metaphors on metaphors in levels of abstraction (see Maps 39-40). The origins of even our most basic verbs are metaphorical. 'To be' is from Sanskrit bhu 'to grow'. 'Am' and 'is' derive from amsi 'to breathe'. Thus the metaphor of our being is literally stretched like a screen between brain hemispheres and between referents like growing, breathing and standing out (ex-istere). Conscious being is the relationship between these, a 'between'.
Jaynes sees consciousness as right-left brain synthesis with five characteristics: 1. Spatialization, when we stretch out dimensions of time and space. 2. Excerption, by which maps record only selected parts of the territory. 3. The analogue 'I' and 'me', a projected personification of ourselves moving in space and time which anticipates doing and being done by. 4. Narratization, wherein events are selected for their congruence and sequential unfolding. 5. Conciliation, wherein experiences are consciously assimilated to each other.
With consciousness so defined we must recognize that in a book like the Iliad (shorn of its later accretions), human beings are not conscious at all! Words are not used metaphorically, but have only their original concrete referents from which consciousness later developed. Hence psyche in the Iliad means 'breath', not soul or conscious mind as it meant by the sixth century BC. Thumus means motion or agitation of limbs not emotional sensibility. Nous means simple perception not the imaginal mind, and so on. Jaynes believes that the world of the Iliad, indeed the whole known world of theocratic god-kings, prior to about 1500 BC was possessed of a bicameral mind, split in two, with a right hemisphere, executive part called a god, and a left hemisphere, follower part, called a man. Gods ordered men to act, directly or through priests and men obeyed. There was no argument, love or personal relationship with divine executors.
For the most part such minds would operate, learn, think, react and retain equilibrium as ours do, unconsciously. But when something unexpected happened and hence stressful, instead of a period of intense consciousness, with inner deliberation and argument, bicameral man would receive a god-like command from his right hemisphere instructing him to act, as Zeus ordered Agamemnon to attack before the walls of Troy. This is essentially similar to the reported auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, which are frequently accurate comments on events, and which Jaynes regards as partial relapses to an earlier state of ancestral bicamerality. Just as contemporary psychotics have a low stress tolerance, combined with an existing schizoid form of personality organization, so that breaks occur readily, so bicameral civilizations heard stress-precipitated commands at almost every crisis point. The remarkable unanimity of such mass action is a consequence of pre-structured collective beliefs, just as the patients of phrenologists oblige with behaviour appropriate to the bump being magnetized and research has found that hypnotized subjects confine themselves to actions which they considered 'possible' and 'permissible before hypnosis began.
Were whole peoples once organized by a mixture of hallucinated voices and hypnotic suggestions? Incredible? Jaynes has amassed considerable circumstantial evidence to which this precis cannot do justice. Recall from Map 23 that speech areas are almost entirely confined to the left hemisphere (that is for the 95% of the population which is right handed). This high degree of hemisphere specialization is peculiarly human, and is generally attributed to language acquisition. There are three major language areas (see diagram), the supplementary motor area, Broca's areas, low down on the left frontal lobe, and Wernicke's area, mostly in the posterior part of the left temporal lobe. The latter seems the most crucial, since extensive damage involves permanent loss of language function, while equivalent damage to the right temporal lobe produces deficit, despite the near-identity of neural structures. However, persons with left temporal lobe damage at birth utilize their right hemispheres to acquire language, so what is this vast underutilized area for?
Jaynes believes that during a crucial period in our evolution, at the very time that language was being acquired by the left hemisphere, the right temporal lobe was pre-empted for the issuance of god-like commandments, across the thin anterior commissure that joins the two temporal lobes like a private corpus callosum. Auditory commands would have been the most economical code for getting elaborate information processing through so small a channel.
When this hallucinatory area was stimulated by an electric current in recent experiments by Wilder Penfield, subjects would hear voices (and sometimes have visions) addressing them. One typical subject exclaimed, 'That man's voice again! My father's ... and it frightens me!' Others heard voices to the accompaniment of music, chanting or singing, which would criticize, advise, command, but they were consistently other than the hearer, often a dead relative or friend. We also know that while the right hemisphere cannot speak, or barely so, it can comprehend and interpret quite complicated instructions. Patients with strokes in their left hemisphere can obey their doctors or researchers in detail.
Recall also that when the corpus callosum between the hemispheres is severed or communication anaesthetized, one hemisphere can try and 'help' the other in the manner of two, independent persons. The left hemisphere feeling a frown on the face, produced by the right hemisphere, whose left hand knows the answer, will be prompted to change its verbal answer. It is like Athena taking Achilles in hand. For in many respects the right hemisphere acts in god-like ways. It is timeless, immediate, visionary, coherent, with recognizable forms and faces. It responds to over-arching purposes and grand designs and has an affinity for music, rhythm, cadence and patterns in general. It binds people together (religion is from religare 'to bind') and its intuitive style is given to inspiration and seeming miracle.
How could bicamerality have evolved? There was no one to cut the corpus callosum. Jaynes argues from studies that reveal the great plasticity of the brain to changes in environment. Persons with their brains damaged have developed additional areas to overcome injuries. The principle of natural selection could well have given an advantage over several millenia to persons bicamerally organized. They may have evolved from small groups of hunter-gatherers into whole communities remotely controlled by the internalized voices of god-kings, a form of social control far more sophisticated than the signs and calls of earlier primates, and one that allowed for the development of language.
Jaynes dates bicameral man from the Natufian settlement at Eynan just north of the Sea of Galilee, discovered in 1959. Those parts of it which date from 9000 BC show town settlements theocratically organized around the burial mounds of god-kings. Thenceforward theocratic organization spread rapidly with dead kings as living gods and their tombs as temples. We find them propped up on thrones of stone, surrounded by food and gifts. Later, some bicameral theocracies became literate, the Babylon of Mesopotamia, the Kings of Ur and Isin, the Memphite theology, and the Dead King's Voice of Osiris. These were not 'authoritarian' regimes, for there was no subjectivity or private ambition to crush, only an innocent obedience to voices reverberating in the brain.
The end of bicameral civilizations may have come from the strains produced by their initial success. Controlling more than a thousand people must have posed difficulties, but nothing compared with the conflicts resulting from collisions between god-programmed peoples each marching to a different drummer. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel may well refer to this. The spread of writing must also have weakened auditory commands. But the most proximate cause was surely the cataclysmic events in the second millenia BC, when volcanic eruptions on the island of Thera, estimated to have been 350 times greater than an H-bomb, turned half the world's known population into refugees and drowned the lost continent of Atlantis beneath a tidal wave 700 feet high. The once stable hierarchies crumbled in mass migrations, wiping out the great empires of the Hittites and Mycenae, as primal hordes turned on god-kings ... Assyria having fallen into two centuries of anarchy emerged as a monster of sadistic ferocity, terror replacing the sudden loss of authority.
Yet there was no turning back to lost Edens. The languages, cities and foreigners were there and only consciousness could survive in the confusion. The Odyssey, which probably followed the Iliad by at least a century, is a myth marking the transformation. The heroes who battle before Troy 'were the will-less gigolos of divinities' whose Olympian rivalry was in bloody impasse. It took 'wily Odysseus' and his Trojan Horse to break free, conquer Troy, and defying gods wander homelessly abroad using the serpentine wits of an exiled Adam. In the Odyssey we suddenly encounter conscious actors, moral judgements and psyche, nous and thumus used as metaphors for consciousness. We find a similar transition between Amos and Ecclesiastes, from 'Thus Spake the Lord . . .' to 'For all things there is a season . . .'The Lord who walks in the Garden and closes the ark, yields to a Yaweh who appears only to Moses in disguise and condemns bicameral idolators.
Jaynes' thesis thus adds to Maps 1 to 5. The Greek epic poets in their tales of mythic heroes were surely celebrating a novel orchestration of hemispheric functions. Tragic drama stressed the price of consciousness, that the hubris of the analogue 'I' on the screen of consciousness could find itself in agonizing contradiction with real events. The psychic heroism of Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, Socrates, and eventually Christ, was that all remained defiantly conscious in crucifying circumstances which threatened relapse into bicamerality and oblivion of mind.

[Sidebar]
Achilles directed by the goddess Athena, before the walls of Troy, to attack Hector. Throughout the 'Iliad' and in the surviving
fragments of writing before the first millennia BC, there is little evidence that people were conscious. Jaynes argues that human brains from about 9000 to 1000 BC were bicameral, ie that the known halucinatory area in the right temporal lobe processed information intuitively and issued auditory, god-like commands through the anterior commissure to Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere, where the message was relayed or enacted.
In short, the brain was split in a manner similar to schizophrenic functioning, save that sociologically schizophrenics today are withdrawn, stigmatized and relapsed, while in bicameral ages collective cognitive imperatives sanctioned divine commands. Even contemporary schizophrenics have capacities reminiscent of archaic man. A majority of those not on Thorazine report matter-of-fact auditory hallucinations. Schizophrenics surpass normals on sensory perception, allowing themselves to be flooded. Many show the kind of endurance needed to build pyramids, with greater attentiveness in their right hemispheres than normals. Their somewhat thicker corpus callosi may produce greater reciprocal inhibition by one hemisphere of the other, in any event they switch between hemispheres less frequently, and when their left hemispheres become confused or deprived of stimulation, they switch more readily to the right. Theatrical hypnotism, with audiences reinforcing suggestions, is another modern echo of bicameral antiquity.

[Graphic Inset]
1. Supplementary Motor Area
2. Broca's Area
3. Wernicke's Area

. . . all good poets, epic as well as lyric, composed their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. ... There is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses.'
'The Republic' Plato

'Why is it that when a person speaks to God it's prayer, but when God speaks to a person it's schizophrenia?'
Old joke

MAP REFERENCES
Consciousness: as conciliation, see synergy, 42; as language structure, 39-44; as metaphor, 40, 57-9; as myth, 1-4, 40, 57-9; as narrative, 1-2, 4; as spatialization, 25-6.

[EnviroEngr]

More Maps Of The Mind soon.

[EnviroEngr]

!!My all-time Favourite!!

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

MAP 22

Runaway in the Limbic System

The limbic system is concerned with attention, emotion, learning and resulting memories. It mediates messages received from the outer environment on their way to the neocortex, suffusing these with moods ranging from rose-coloured anticipation to dark disappointment, as when an anxious mother meeting a train sees her son's resemblance in every passing boy. Despite many problems in isolating functions within the limbic system there is general agreement upon its homeostatic and equilibriating principles of operation. Investigators have tentatively identified areas mediating between rage-fear, fight-flight, pleasure-pain, expectation-actuality, tension-relaxation, etc. For example, when the upper limbic ring is stimulated in monkeys, grooming, courtship, sexual and affectionate responses occur, while stimulating the lower limbic ring evokes revulsion and antagonism. But the chief concern here is with mounting evidence that the limbic system can 'oscillate' or 'run away'. These terms are borrowed from cybernetics and general systems theory, and refer to a mode of pathological feedback by which the system instead of regulating itself as through a thermostat progressively destabilizes and disintegrates itself instead (see Map 45).

If we take just two dimensions from Map 22 and draw a feedback loop thus:

Expectation --> Self-assertion --> Actuality --> Sociability --> Expectation

The expectation which I assert changes the social actualities which changes my expectations . . . Normally the poles of expectation-actuality, self-assertion-sociability are mutually restraining and in complementarity. But suppose I joined a gang in which my popularity (or sociability) depended on how mercilessly I clubbed old women who frustrated my expectations of snatching their purses. In this event sociability-self-assertion as a single dimension of my system goes into 'runaway'. Within the limbic system Karl Pribram found a capacity for 'rebound' or 'answering effect', while E. Gellhorn found that in disturbed states one division of the autonomic system could trigger responses in its opposite. This is essentially similar to the oscillations between 'true' and 'false' selves (see Map 14). We have only to consider the other dimensions of limbic equilibria described on the map opposite, and we could characterize most known forms of psychological and social pathology as oscillations which cause different dimensions to 'run away'.

Whence the origin of such disturbances? Is it the anatomical dissociation between the limbic system and the neocortex discussed in Map 21? Perhaps, but clearly the two brains operate on quite different principles, which are more than the differences between 'reason' and 'emotion'. By habit, not necessity, we think in linear terms of cause and effect, subjects-acting-on-objects, and the exclusive options of the computer's on/off switches. In contrast, the limbic system is in dialectical balance and operates on cybernetic principals which encompass all variables involved in a rational-emotional synthesis. The Triumph of the Will, Classless Millenias, Eternal Vigilance and being stronger-than-the-bottle are all symptoms of linear, neocortical excess that sends the limbic system into 'runaway'. 'The heart has its own reasons . . .' which Reason sends haywire.

[Sidebar]
The limbic system is equivalent to the old mammalian brain, bounded above by the cingulate gyrus (Map 21). Here seen in exploded view, the upper and lower rings of the limbic lobe clutch the thalamus like a claw. Across this 'cellar of the brain' has been superimposed eight of the dimensions which various investigators believe that the limbic system holds in balance, to maintain an equilibrium of mood and emotion. These include rage-fear, thought to be mediated by the amygdaloid bodies, fight-flight, which has been precipitated by stimulating the rear areas of the hypothalamus and pleasure (reward)-pain (punishment) located in the septum pelcidum and certain areas of the lower limbic ring respectively. The hippocampus has been found to mediate differences between expectation-actuality. So long as these differences remain minor the hippocampus inhibits the reticular activating system (Map 19), but no sooner do major differences emerge than the RAS is released to awaken the entire cortex to these discrepancies, thereby influencing tension-relaxation.

1. Septum Pelucidum
2. Mammillary Bodies
3. Fornix
4. Hippocampus
5. Parahippocampal Gyrus
6. Amygdaloid Bodies

MAP REFERENCES
Dialectics, 3, 22-3, 53-5, 57?60; Runaway, see: catastrophe theory, 56; 'infernal dialectics', 47; oscillation, 14, 22, 34, 43, 48-51, 56-8, 60; schismogenesis, 48-50, 57-60.

[Guest]

Hi EE-

I think I get it- sorta. You wouldn't mind taking your last post and applying the priciples to everyday would you? For example signs of limbic imbalance and ways of correcting it or avoiding it.

And can you hurry 'cause now that I've asserted myself I'd like you to actualize it for me before the discrepancy with my expectations grow too great and I loose it

[EnviroEngr]

Whew. That's a tall order and I'll strive to do my best. I need to take it to the pillow and start with a fresh mind in the morning, however. I appreciate your interest just the same.

Can you give me a nickname that I can use to address you in a more personal manner? Guest is rather... Distant?

[EnviroEngr]

Due to the busy-ness of the next couple of days, I need to demur on the timing issue.

But I will not disappoint. Hang in there and I'll be back shortly.

[EnviroEngr]

Quickly before I get to the Limbic System Apps --

The Four Rules of Esoteric Development:

1) Increase Both Your Common and Acute (extra-sensory) Awareness
2) Recognize the Nature of Your World
3) Dissolve Object/Subject Boundaries
4) Integrate Your New Experiences Into Everyday Living

[EnviroEngr]

{A reminder to myself; EE}

[Bud Dwyer]

Well I over stand the chemistry but here's a simple view.

"I and I"

I guess we are made up of two parts- The mind and body. You have a mind that can't be touched or seen, unless you see it as a motion like dancing or drawing or anything. Your mind is actually the same mind as your mother's and father's and theirs and theirs and everything before and after. Your brain is not your mind. It is part of your body. And the way your mind fits into the shape of your brain- your mind thinks that it or "I" is the "body". Your body is pretty much an automatic mathematical pattern of matter. It only exists to sustain it's "self". Some people's minds are more free and others are less free. A great example of a free mind would be a monk on fire and sitting there not struggling but content with the pain. An un-free mind might only serve themself, thinking they are actually a separate form. This is because their mind is so shaped by their body that it is actually the will of the body that controls their every action, and the will of the body is to serve its"self" first and foremost. Everything else comes after that- corruption, system of self-interest, wealth/poverty.
. Your mind only wants to "dance" or "play". It's like a fire. Your body is just the wood that fuels it. It will keep burning as long as you feed it. Think of how free flowing a fire is. If you've ever said anything that just comes out at the same time you think it- it's basically called a "free-style". If you think what to say and then say it- when you say it- your body says it.
. There's this musician called "Q-bert" who is a turntablist. Which means he makes music with sounds on records in real-time. You could say he is pro. Anyways I heard him say in a documentary something like, "At first there is me, and I'm the musician and I control "the instrument."" (when he gets really into it...) "Then I become "the instrument" (and this may sound kind of crazy, but) then "The Universe" is playing ME.
. I call good art- "flowing". When it almost feels like it drew/danced/spoke itself. The flow feels natural. That's when the "mind" draws it. The "I". The flow that has always existed and will never stop. The only infinite energy: creative energy. If you feel your acting entirely from the flow and feel what you are doing or saying is not coming from your own body- then you are practically a "prophet"... Oops that's a dangerous thing to say.
. How do you know if your mind is free or contained in your brain and body? It's really hard to tell. If you find yourself in habits and find your days and weeks are becoming "re-runs" you might be being controlled by your body.
. Here's something everyone should try:
Ask a friend that you know, trust, and respect to punch you in the face as hard as they can. Don't fear the pain or focus on getting pissed or worry about damaging your pretty face. Just feel the pain and be content with it. Works well if you both of you do it. It will help get the mind out of YOUR brain. Thats just a start. The body will always try to take back your will- remember "fights will go on as long as they have to."
. Since just about all the frustrations in the world are because of greed (the mind trapped in the body thinking it IS "the body") and the neglect of the reality that you and me are the same person (in different shapes) or neglect of "I and I", then I strongly advocate something, the first and second rule of which I'm not supposed to talk about.

1- stfu
2- stfu
3- don't let it amuse you
4- don't let it amuse you
5- don't let it amuse you
__________________________________________________________

"Art is more important than science." -A.E.

No matter how much you shape your thoughts to look like reality, their still just thoughts.
Fight your"self" extra hard if it "thinks" it knows.

-after a good content beating you should be able to deliver what you where saying like a poet, enviro. -Which reminds me, my flesh needs a good beating because it's talking to other carcases on the internet again.

This morning I got so out of my body I was ready to transition past death. Back to "sanity" now.

-peace

[EnviroEngr]

I can see there's going to be a fair amount of cross over. But, the practical side of this discussion is being hashed out at <<Anthropology>>

[entropyfails]

Let us take a quick step back for a moment and do some tie in for people who haven’t fully grasped what self-driven consciousness means. We have this Peak Oil phenomenon that really just serves as the final test of our larger sustainability problem. That sustainability problem comes from the fact that our decisions always move in the direction of self-interest. But why does this self-interest cause so many problems?

Humans spent many centuries arguing out the moral, ethical, and mathematical superiority of enlightened self interest among individuals and pretty much came the conclusion that it works best for all individuals, except in the case where the individual belongs to a community (i.e. they interact). In that case, if an individual can gain a reward that the community pays for, then individuals WILL and MUST rob the community of the resource that the reward comes from. You may have heard of this as the “tragedy of the commons.” Or you may have heard of it as “if I don’t, someone else will.” Regardless, it ends badly for the individuals and the group in the end.

That the current crop of humanity has a high degree of self interest doesn’t need further debate. Hopefully, this will help you realize that if that continues, we cannot avoid The Crash. Scientists agree that we have stressed our community, life on planet earth, to the breaking point. And whether Peak Oil will directly cause it or the return to crappy agriculture methods to get any scrap of food and the subsequent desertification of the planet causes it or anything else causes it, matters very little in the end.

So, any solution that purports to have anything to do with reality must address the question of human selfishness, by which I mean rational self-interest. As pointed out elsewhere, without reforming our economic systems, the way we trade, we will face something unimaginable, more so than we would otherwise have had to. But that economic system really just deals with the top half of the tragedy situation, namely the getting of the stuff. Now we must reckon with a very large, unpaid bill. And rational self interest will never deal with that bill until ALL HOPE of having some miracle save us has died within us.

Now we see the nuts and bolts of the situation. All of this comes down to a choice about self. When we constantly behave in a rationally self-interested behavior, we constantly degrade our environment (and that includes our bodies). And here we reach the true paradox, if all of your decisions align themselves with self interest, how can you ever stop? Any action you take furthers takes you into self interest.

The situation looks hopeless. But until that hopelessness burns through the “me”, we cannot stop this sort of crash any more than bacteria in the Petri dish. Until we come to understand the way in which this mental though pattern works inside of us, we can never truly see the hopelessness. Developing yourself and coming to understand true spirituality/ethics/whatever sits as the only thing you can do to even have the slightest shot of stopping this cycle.

Hence this thread.

---
EntropyFails

[BudDwyer]

Word. Spirituality is the core of our problems and frustrations.

So if we were to fully abandon our selfish selves that would be what we need to do to be free from this?

I disagree.

"If you knew what life was worth, you would find it here on Earth."
-Bob Marley

Our body and mind are separate things but not seperated (yet). The body alone wants to keep it self alive by its own nature. The mind wants to be free by its own nature. So one might think the solution is to bust a "burning monk" to be fully free. I think the purpose of your mind and body together is to experience it's freedom- ON EARTH. If you believe in "I and I" then you believe all is truly one, devided in its different shapes but still one. For the freedom of all to work you must treat other bodies as your own wich means you want "them" to survive. If you have contempt for any body, it must be for your own body first. (abandon what is conventional-) This makes much more sense to me when I let someone hit me as hard as they can in my face. It sounds crazy, but if you are a scientist of any sort, you must include this in your own scientific process. Other wise you are over looking a lot.

[entropyfails]

Thought exists for the same reasons that matter exists, it comes from the universe. Thought just allows us to make decisions that alter the environment in the favor of the organism. We can consider it a "weapon" of the organism like claws, or beaks, or any other sort of adaption.

However when though becomes powerful enough for self-reflection (thinking about thinking) it has the ability to loop back on itself and become a "time binder" in the General Semantics sense. From this point forward, it works not in the interests of the organism but in the interests of the inputs to the mind, namely sensations. And it will naturally choose pleasurable sensations over unpleasurable ones. So the decisions leave the domain of what the physical body needs and moves towards decisions where the thought organism (self) can continue in pleasure forever. Hence, the organism attached becomes destructive and causes problems with both the community and the organism as well.

So removing the cause of that will return the organism to a natural state and thus will restore the natural balance that most lifeforms exist in.

--
EntropyFails

[Chichis]

Is matter organized into a being which has consciousness more valuable than matter in a rock?

[RIPSmithianEconomics]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chichis', 'I')s matter organized into a being which has consciousness more valuable than matter in a rock?

[somethingtosay]

I agree, entropyfails:

Humans are the same but different from the amimal world in the fact that we can think, reason and modify our behavior through the ability to make a choice. Seems to me it is the only course available to us as when we do not reason beyond self-interest, or do not think of the consequence of our actions or do not make good choices, we live and suffer the same fate that the animals do: boom-bust cycles in population size that is solely determined by the carrying capacity of the environment that we live.

[Ludi]

Most philosophical discussions seem to me to be a way for people to preach their personal (or borrowed) worldview as The Truth, rather than simply as "a truth."