Argent

Can you rephrase this sentence please. In its present form it does not appear to make sense. The best I can make of it is that you meant to say "It is neuroscience parlance that shows that beliefs construe delusions". Did you mean "construe"? I don't see how a belief can interpret a delusion. Perhaps you meant "beliefs constitute delusions", which is clumsy, but almost makes sense.

Then there is no free will involved. Everything is deterministic. Did you define free will anywhere? If so, point me to the post, if not please tell me your definition. At the moment it appears to be "free will is what you exercise when compelled to make a specific decision as a consequence of prior events and conditions".

Food is necessary. Excessive food causes obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Tainted food causes nausea, vomiting and sometimes death. An obsession with food disrupts a balanced life-style. I believe food and beliefs are similar.

I have seen comments to this effect by members on other science forums about belief in science: no serious scientist, or person well trained in the sciences "believes in the Big Bang, or evolution. They accept those theories as being the best explanation of what has been observed. In the case of BBT and evolution the match between the evidence and the theories is so overwhelming that one would need to seriously misguided to doubt their authenticity. Nevertheless the serious scientist (etc.) is ready to abandon acceptance if a superior theory is developed. On the matter of evolution, ArchimedesBoy, how would you explain the diversity of life on the planet and the nested hierarchies of genotype and phenotype?

How do you know that your decision to do that was not made in response to subconscious drives arising from "a bunch of chemical reactions"?

As an old fart I would just like to observe that not all grandparents blame modern technology for the ills of the world. I venture to suggest that those who do were ignorant fools when they were teenagers, thirty somethings and middle aged. You do have to admire their consistency. I "blame" human nature applied in an artificial environment for such ills as exist. Since the artificial environment changes from generation to generation it is not surprising that the less perceptive members of society misread the cause as being related to those changes.

None of which sounds close to perfection.

Yes, I completely misunderstood what you were trying to do. I think the answer you are looking for is above my pay grade. I shall wait with interest to see what others have to say.

1. Don't move them. (Probably defeats the purpose.) 2. Operate them in a vacuum. (There will still be sound within the elements of the joint.) I think you can mitigate, but not eliminate.

I do not wish to ignore the rest of your reply, but to respond properly requires more time than I currently have. However, I do want to address the point above. No! If I hear a loud bang I envisage the possible causes of the bang as mental images. I "see" a large metal sheet fall to the ground, or picture a shotgun going off. Words do not enter into my thoughts until and unless someone says to me, "What was that?" Just now I heard a bird outside my bedroom window. In trying to identify the bird I called to mind images of the birds it might possibly have been. I did not think of the words used to describe the birds. Indeed, because we are having this discussion I attempted to assign the appropriate word to it, but all I came up with was variations of the mental picture of the bird. I only succeeded in producing the word "blackbird" when I imagined saying it to you. I have discussed this with a handful of acquaintances since you first posted and they all think the same way. I know that my sample was in no way scientific, but it contradicts and falsifies your claim of universality for the human thought process.

I think there are two answers to this. The simple answer is that the Earth would just sit there in a boring, fixed position in the sky. Since the moon keeps the same face towards the Earth at all times the Earth won't appear to do anything. The more complicated answer is that the Earth will move slowly from left to right and up and down like a Spirograph plot. This is because the moon does not keep precisely the same face towards the Earth all the time, but "wobbles" in a consistent way. I have seen some great animations of this online and will try to find one to post here for you. Here is a link showing how the moon's appearance changes as seen from the Earth. You can imagine how that would impact the view of the Earth seen from any point on the Earth facing side.

Do you believe what you have written?

OK. You still haven't made it clear whom you consider to be "our most recent evolutionary ancestors". Cro-magnon, early homo sapiens, homo erectus, homo ergaster, homo habilis, other? Without that defined it is impossible for me to understand what you are saying here. You argue that man is unique in being "his own worst enemy". If that is the case why are pandas so reluctant to mate? Why, in contrast to the pandas, do so many species overbreed, outstrip their resources and thereby make Thomas Malthus appear correct? Part of the problem I am finding her is that the phrase "own worst enemy" completely lack any quantitative element and as a qualitative statement is much more metaphor than descriptive scientific observation. Could you tighten up on your definition of "own worst enemy". No. I have done a very poor job of saying what I meant. I should have made it clear that at times I very definitely do think with words and a practically total lack of visual images. However, when I thinking "visually" the words are simply not there. It is not a case of focusing on the visual associations generated by the words. It is a case of thinking entirely through imagery. Once I have completed the thought process visually, if I need to communicate it to others, I have no difficulty at that point putting it into words. If I do not intend to communicate it to others I do not bother putting it into words since its meaning it already clear to me through the imagery. I have noted several other points in your posts that simply seem wrong to me, but until we have addressed these first three I think we should defer those discussions.

There is a great deal to consider in the foregoing. I have not read all of it yet, nor thought deeply about most segments I have read. These are preliminary thoughts. You made this remark. "Our most recent evolutionary ancestors were bipedal, nomadic, omnivorous, self-aware, capable of simple problem solving, referential gestures and vocalizations, lived in communities, etc. As our ancestors became further evolved they also became more reliant on their community to provide insulation via food, child rearing, protection, etc. As they become further evolved they also became more and more resistant to external selection pressures; due to both their relative dominance over other species/nature and the fact that the greatest threat to the survival of their genes would be the destruction of their community itself. In other words there was a tipping point at which, evolutionarily speaking, humans became their own worst enemies." I've underlined a phrase. You say this "further evolution" occurred after we were already "bipedal, nomadic, omnivorous, self-aware, capable of simple problem solving, referential gestures and vocalizations, lived in communities, etc". I don't believe that, once we had reached that stage,there was much in the way of significant evolution, apart from such things as the ability to process lactose or, for Tibetans, live comfortably at high altitude. What stage in evolution does your characterisation apply to and what further evolution occurred later? Secondly, aren't most species arguably in situations where they could be described as their own worst enemies? I don't doubt that this may be true for many people much of the time, but I do a lot of my thinking visually without reference - other than the initial trigger - to words. I am going to lunch later today with friends. Thinking about that brought forward visualisation of the restaurant, portions of the route, what I might eat, the individuals who would be there and only with great effort could I associate a word with any of this. And I made that effort only because of this topic. I would be surprised if I was unique in this regard.

Try this one: The member who's called paragaster. said natural fabric would last her much longer than those artificial type clothes But the rest said "that's a disaster".

I am in agreement with the rest of your post, but not with your suggestion that "primordial soup" is a derogatory term. Perhaps you meant that Emmawhat was using it as such, but the term itself has a fine pedigree. Once religious explanations were cast aside by science the origin of life seems to have been largely ignored by scientists, with good reason: insufficient data. Darwin made his famous reference to "a warm little pond" in a private letter and Pasteur put to rest the idea of spontaneous generation that had been popular for several centuries and Huxley, Darwin's bulldog introduced the term abiogenesis, but supplied no real details. It was J.B.S. Haldane and Alexander Oparin who independently conceived a more detailed version of Darwin's warm pond in the 1920s. Haldane, or one of his supporters, called this rich sea of chemicals the primordial soup. The term was definitely not derogatory, but a rather nice description of a complex concept.

Appreciated. I look forward to your further comments.

Thank you for your detailed post. I asked my question largely on a whim. It has often proved useful to me, in seeking to solutions to problems, to consider the silly options. Hence my query. Having now read and considered the points you make I realise there may be something in the notion that our motivations are simply conscious rationalisations of the actions imposed on us by our subcomscious or unconscious systems. I appreciate this is the exact opposite of what you were seeking to demonstrate, but thank you nonetheless. I take a single example to illustrate my thinking. You talk of "direct reactions on some state you are conscious of, e.g drink water while you are thirsty, or go to the bar you know is a few streets away for the same reason". You note that "I also do not see how this can happen unconscious. And I am not bothered at all if some neurologist can predict that I will decide to go to the bar before I even know I am thirsty. It is still my action, i.e. according to my motivations: it is my thirst, and my choice to go to the bar, nobody else's. This already shows that neurologists' findings are not relevant for free will at all." Your statement "I also do not see....." appears to be the logical fallacy called Argument from Ignorance. If I am mistaken I hope someone properly versed in formal logic will correct me. Simply stating that it is your action and therefore according to your motivations appears to be another logical fallacy. I think this one is called Begging the Question, but again I may be mistaken in detail, though not in the main point. Simply asserting that your actions must follow your motivations does not make it so. The sequence of events could just as readily be Action==>Motivation as Motivation==>Action. The stumbling block appears to be that we have observed a mental position, called it motivation and defined it as the initiator of action without considering the alternative. I need to ask again, what evidence or logical train of thought do we have that demonstrates that actions arise out of motivation rather than the other way around? Largely as an aside, your opening comment, "At least you rare reading my posts" seemed to include a dismissive attitude to what I had written. If someone I knew said it I would have understood it as a veiled insult. Just a sort of head's up from me for you. I'm probably too sensitive to spend time on forums.

This is generally considered to be the case and appears superficially to be true. When reflecting on Eise's statement of what appears obvious it occurred to me that this may be an assumption. As inow has pointed out there is apparently research showing that some actions are "decided" in the subconscious before we make a conscious "decision" about them. It therefore seems plausible that we may use motivations to rationalise actions we have taken. This could be countered by providing contrary evidence, hence my question to Eise. I don't believe simply asserting that it is not so constitutes proper evidence.

On what basis do you claim this is not more accurately expressed as "we recognise that our motivations agree with our actions"?

For some people it is convenient to blame others for ones troubles

Daecon did not suggest they were a mental illness. He mused that they were "something akin to" a mental illness. If as you say, in the most extreme cases, they can be considered a mental illness then their presence on the same spectrum suggests that Daecon is correct in his supposition: they are "something akin to" a mental illness.

Both would seem to involve an irrational interpretation of some aspect of reality.

I have little knowledge of psychiatry. What do you feel it principle problems are at present? If you choose to answer please indicate which country or countries you are speaking of. My participation in this thread was to point out the fallacy in a statement by tkadm30. It's in post #27. Do you feel my post was an example of the "shooting fish in a barrel" approach you condemn?

Freudian slip? Amusing either way.