The Matter Of Mind

[Arjun Deepak Shriram]

To the mainstream materialist way of thinking, only the physical is real. Anything nonphysical is at best an artifact, at worst an illusion. In this school of philosophy, at least among those who dont dismiss the reality of mind entirely, the mind is the software running on the brains hardware. Just as, if you got right down to the level of logic gates and speeding electrons, you could trace out how a computer told to calculate 7 x 7 can spit out 49, so you could, in principle

Excerpt From: Jeffrey M. Schwartz & Sharon Begley. The Mind and the Brain. HarperCollins, 2002. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: (commercial link removed by moderator)

“principle, determine in advance the physical, neural correlates in the brain of any action the mind will ever carry out. In the process, every nuance of every mental event would be explained, with not even the smallest subtlety left as a possibly spontaneous (from the Latin sponte, meaning “of one’s free will, voluntarily”) occurrence.”

Excerpt From: Jeffrey M. Schwartz & Sharon Begley. “The Mind and the Brain.” HarperCollins, 2002. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: (commercial link removed by moderator)

page 78 of 1277. long way to go for people reading this, I believe.

Edited May 2, 2013 by CaptainPanic

[Ophiolite]

I feel compelled to say "And your point?"

[Arjun Deepak Shriram]

I feel compelled to say "And your point?"

My point is that we should implement such knowledge to improve the quality of our daily lives by harnessing the Power of Mental Force and thereby rewiring our brains for the better through our minds to get over our daily problems which is essentially the whole definition of Neurplasticity in short. We achieve that by a very simple Four Step method that is outlined in three seperate books by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. You could search his name on Amazon or on Barnes and purchase the books if you want the whole cake and the bakery to go with it.

[Ringer]

My point is that we should implement such knowledge to improve the quality of our daily lives by harnessing the Power of Mental Force and thereby rewiring our brains for the better through our minds to get over our daily problems which is essentially the whole definition of Neurplasticity in short. We achieve that by a very simple Four Step method that is outlined in three seperate books by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. You could search his name on Amazon or on Barnes and purchase the books if you want the whole cake and the bakery to go with it.

I could tell you how to rewire your brain for free. Here it is: do stuff. Your brain automatically creates and destroys connects as they are used, there's no secret method to it.

[Ophiolite]

My point is that we should implement such knowledge to improve the quality of our daily lives by harnessing the Power of Mental Force and thereby rewiring our brains for the better through our minds to get over our daily problems which is essentially the whole definition of Neurplasticity in short. We achieve that by a very simple Four Step method that is outlined in three seperate books by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. You could search his name on Amazon or on Barnes and purchase the books if you want the whole cake and the bakery to go with it.

Thank you for your response. However, your OP appears - strongly - to take a deterministic position that does not allow for free will. In that case we would only move to advocate the improvements you speak of if we were 'destined' to do so by the theoretically predictable behaviour of the atoms composing our brains.

[Arjun Deepak Shriram]

I could tell you how to rewire your brain for free. Here it is: do stuff. Your brain automatically creates and destroys connects as they are used, there's no secret method to it.

You are absolutely one hundred percent right. But please also tell me how people are being cured of major strokes and seizures throughout the world without using any medications at all and if a person has had a major stroke or a person has had a major seizure then pray tell me that how is he or she expected to "do stuff" when he or she is completely paralyzed?

 

Thank you for your response. However, your OP appears - strongly - to take a deterministic position that does not allow for free will. In that case we would only move to advocate the improvements you speak of if we were 'destined' to do so by the theoretically predictable behaviour of the atoms composing our brains.

If anything at all, strongly, I am on exactly the other end of the deterministic spectrum you are talking about. I am a Very Hard core believer in non-materialistic reductionism which the author of the aforementioned book also is. The whole essence of the whole book of the aforementioned author is the strongest case ever that I have yet to see anyone coming even remotely close to in proving the existence of volition, causal efficacy, the existence of free will, focus, attention, intention, etc. It would be better if someone could easily and simply just search for the author and his book and purchase it and read it instead of trying to proselytisatize me. And before anyone does that I would like to clarify for the record that i AM absolutely and totally pointing in the direction of a particular book and a particular author. You don't have to believe the author. You don't have to believe the book. Just try facing the facts for once. Just try beleving in something new for once. And if you can get past that point then I am already totally and completely convinced and satisfied that all of my very hard work on this public forum had finally paid off at long last. I have NO desire to SEDUCE or CONVERT anyone at all to any belief or to any doctrine. It is the absolute and fundamental right of every individual to build his own sand castle and on his own private beach and then watch and then listen to it float away from the land into the water just because he "didn't know better."

 

“What disturbed me was the idea that free will died with Freud—or even earlier, with the materialism of the triumphant scientific revolution. Freud elevated unconscious processes to the throne of the mind, imbuing them with the power to guide our every thought and deed, and to a significant extent writing free will out of the picture. Decades later, neuroscience has linked genetic mechanisms to neuronal circuits coursing with a multiplicity of neurotransmitters to argue that the brain is a machine whose behavior is predestined, or at least determined, in such a way as seemingly to leave no room for the will. It is not merely that the will is not free, in the modern scientific view; not merely that it is constrained, a captive of material forces. It is, more radically, that the will, a manifestation of mind, does not even exist, because a mind independent of brain does not exist”

 

Excerpt From: Jeffrey M. Schwartz & Sharon Begley. “The Mind and the Brain.” HarperCollins, 2002. iBooks.

This material may be protected by copyright.

 

Check out this book on the iBookstore: url deleted by mod

[Ringer]

You are absolutely one hundred percent right. But please also tell me how people are being cured of major strokes and seizures throughout the world without using any medications at all and if a person has had a major stroke or a person has had a major seizure then pray tell me that how is he or she expected to "do stuff" when he or she is completely paralyzed?

Because many areas of the brain can be used for more than one purpose. For example, my mother had a stroke about 6 months ago that left her entire left side paralyzed. Since the neurons that connect from her arm to her spine to her brain were not severely damaged they could still send and receive signals, even though the areas of her brain that usually control those functions were effectively dead. By continuously attempting to move that arm, and moving it with her other arm, while concentrating still sends signals, axonal and dendritic extensions then migrate to the areas the signals are originating from. This creates new connections that are functionally identical to the connections that are no longer there. It's part of the nervous system's redundancy that allows for the recovery, not anything mystical or mysterious. Not to say it's not amazing, but it's not magic.

[Arjun Deepak Shriram]

That is called "cortical remapping" and "network remodeling".

 

The case which you speak of is exactly the very same and exactly the very same type that is written down in that favorite book of mine by that favorite author of mine.

 

Several people who had entire halves of their brain removed (hemispherectomy) and now leading completely normal lives. Gifted artists, gifted musicians, etc.

 

Look up someone called V. S. Ramachandran and you will understand better what both you and he are talking about.

 

Thank you very much for accepting the reality of it all. I hereby admire and congratulate you for being the first person on this public forum who is speaking in the same language as me.

[krash661]

Several people who had entire halves of their brain removed (hemispherectomy) and now leading completely normal lives. Gifted artists, gifted musicians, etc.

hmm.

Edited May 3, 2013 by krash661