Ierrellus

I would like to hear comment about the human mind's ability to translate physical phenomena into systems of belief.

The story of the fall of man {with Adam as Everyman} as written in the book of Genesis, corresponds directly with Freud's trinity of the psyche and MacLean's triune brain. The brain base contains somatic data as signals of basic human drives and needs. This area of the brain is the reptillian brain or the id. This is translated into mind as serpent.

The limbic system contains emotive data. This is the mammalian brain or the ego in which the unmodifed signals from the brain base are qualified with pain/pleasure realizations. This is Eve.

The cortexial portion of the brain is the superego or the definitely human brain. This is Adam, who can name the things external to the self, can pause between signal and response in order to rationalize about possibilities or about the best method to achieve the goal of a need with the least possible harm to the organism.

In this story the rapid growth of the cortex produced a mind aware of its own mortality, the eating of the forbidden tree, the Faustian gain of knowledge at the expense of sacred innocence in the bliss of ignorance. Eden, the Golden Age, Gaia disappeared in the struggle for existence.

The trinity has been used to illustrate everything from the nature of God to the constituency of the human psyche. The concept is constantly used in the sciences {states of matter, types of genetically motivated chemistry, etc., etc.}

The purpose of the human brain appears to be to modify empirical data (ranges or fields of intensity of matter} and somatic drives or impulses in order for the human organism to achieve adaptational survival. The mind has access to all such physical modifications, included its own genetic evolution.

Please comment, deny, argue, whatever; but be careful that your need for self-identification in the teeth of death's oblivion does not render your
debate solypsistic.

Thanks for your time and honesty,
Ierrellus

Amos

Hello Ierrellus, I disagree with many parts of your post and maybe that is because I never read past the second page of Freud.

For example, the brain base has nothing to do with human needs but with the basic needs and drives of the animal man. It is is not the id and the least affected by the serpent. In my opinion the reptillian brain is Eden without the Tree of Life or beneath the mammalian brain.

The lymbic system is not the mammalian brain but supplies data to the mammalian brain and represents both Adam and Eve who left Eden as a pair from Eden (reptillian brain).

I do have an opinion on this and could present it on its own.

Amos

Ps I like your idea that "Adam is Everyman" if females are included. This makes Genesis the beginning of the world in each persons life including the fall of man.

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

I think you are neglecting the contextual interpretation of the corpora quadrigemina. Remember that in existentialist neo-Freudianism one has to go beyond that which is beyond the thing before. As Nietzsche said, "God is Dead", but only because the cortical input to the limbic system via the amygdaloid complex has re-routed via the hippocampal hod as it were.

In the ultimate synthesis of this otherwise Hegelian notion is the antithesis of the solipsistic world-view of classical Husserlian doctrine. By positing such a dispensation is merely to deny the totality (zusammengeit) of the empirical notion to which we are all passive alibis. That is the id would come into direct union with the uber-superego of the collectivity known as mankind. Womankind as exemplified by Eve-like characterology demonstrates the reversibility of the foregoing process in that the heretofore passive superego becomes and in the process destroys the punitive ego-substitute, the Electra complex.

I think that the Weltanschaung of the classical Jungian puppets is the result of an over-exagerrated interrelationship with the narcissistic llama-being within.

Just some thoughts.

Ierrellus

Thanks for the good posts in response to mine. I really should have edited out the last paragraph. It reflects only my witness to much mud-slinging in other posts. That is not apparent in these fine responses.

What I have been trying to do is to find correspondences between the rapid growth of the cortex in the human brain and stories of human origins that persist. Sometimes I am not clear; and anytime I could be wrong. All I can work on here is an attempt to achieve clarity.

Adam as Everyman includes Eve. There are some psychologists who see the right hemisphere of the cortex as feminine. For me the human being and the human animal are the same thing. Because I have an enlarged cortex, I do not need to divorce myself from the animal kingdom. We animals perceive with what brain equipment we have.

MacLean's theory of the truine brain which I use as a metaphor for trinity of the psyche literally implies three in one. So, Dr. MacLean, if you are still at NIMH and stumble across this post, forgive my tresspasses!

Ierrellus

mturner

**
Hello people;

It's obvious from the posts made so far that this discussion is way out of my league, but I can ask a question where I cannot make a statement. Perhaps you would be kind enough to consider it.

I have a problem with the Materialist/Physicalist/Mechanist view of Mind and its attribute, Intelligence. As I understand this view, there can be no physical gaps between what is 'mental' and what is 'physical', because the mental is merely an aspect of the physical, by definition.
Hence all mental phenomena are produced mechanically from one physical cause directly to a physical effect, which in turn directly causes another physical effect, and so on, to a final cognitive or affective physical state. It's all a mechanical mass/energy process, involving neurons and electricity. Am I correct in my description of this point of view?

If it is, after allowing for the necessity to vastly oversimplify the physics and chemistry, then I cannot see how this explains "Meaning". By "Meaning" I mean the cognitive/affective event that arises out of interpretation of sensory input and it's implications and representations, apart from directly obtained, mechanically acting, sensory data. That is, I do not see a direct, physico-chemical mechanical connection between sense data and the meaning abstracted from that sense data. This could be as basic as a fox smelling a rabbit, or a man. The sense data, pheromones, acts on the nervous system/brain. But where is the physical mechanism that produces the different meanings and implications? There seems to be a physical gap that casts doubt on a strictly mechanical process. IMHO. Could you resolve this for me?

Thanks,

mturner

tronvillain

Thanks you for the good posts in response to mine? Thomas McPhee was obviously joking!

Theophage

"Meaning" is simply symbolic encoding. If you are asking specifically how the brain encodes things, then I'm afraid my answer is "I don't know"; we simply don't understand the brain well enough yet.

But from what I've read over on the evo/cre board (though for the life of me I cannot find the thread now), mturner, my answer to your question won't help you at all, since you seem to have an odd notion about what is or is not symbolic.

*** Edited to add:

I found the thread; it wasn't in evo/cre after all, but in the philosophy forum:

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000091" target="_blank">Meaning and Information</a>

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Theophage ]</p>

mturner

**
Hi Theophage;

If by "simply" you mean "merely", then I think that you are bit quick to dismiss. My point was and is, "How can a strictly mechanical bio-physical process abstract meaning from data". Simply saying that it's just some process that we don't understand doesn't take us very far towards answering that question.

**
I can't imagine what you're referring to, since I haven't posted anything to evo/cre in some 9 months.

**
I see you edited as I was responding. Now, instead of merely dissing my post, would you like to tell me what you find "odd" about it? I'll look for your answer on that thread.

pax,

mturner

edit typo

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: mturner ]</p>

Principia

Theopage,

Here's the other link on the Evo/Cre forum:

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000396" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000396</a>

Scientiae

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Scientiae ]</p>

Ierrellus

mturner--"I have a problem with the Materialistic/Physicalist/Mechanistic view of mind and its attribute, Intellegence. As I understand this view, there can be no gaps between what is "mental" and what is "physical", because the mental is merely an aspect of the physical, by definition."

mt, too many adjectives, not enough nouns. Bifurcation of mind and matter persists because of inadequate comprehension of matter. This has been a problem since the beginning of philosophy. Restrictions placed on properties of matter imply prejudices of those who opt for some neat dualistic system that can deify humans.

"Mental" is not an aspect of "physical"; it is part of an evolutionary continuum of the physical and material. In equivalency of energy and mass one finds a new frontier of the possibility that data equals "meaning." When the human genome project is completed, we may be able to construct a thinking, emotional computer. As for now, AI is based on our current information about the brain.

tronvillian (sp?)--"Thomas McPhee was obviously joking!"

Ah, sarcasm as humor is whistling in the dark.

Ierrellus