Neurological facts/factoids that fascinate me

1. During anesthesia, the cortex is fully active, yet not conscious because the ascending signals are not forwarded by the reticular formation.

2. Only animals with neo-cortex have REM

3. It is possible that REM has to do with the consolidation of long term memory.

4. Posopagnosia: the condition of being unable to recognize faces that one sees.... even though one may be able to imagine the same faces.

5. The definition of consciousness: one prof gives that definition as follows: attention, self-reference, & awareness.... This sort of definition might require us to say that frogs catching flies are not conscious. Yet they are not zombies, robots. When we drive down a very, very familiar highway w/o paying attention to our driving, is our awareness of the road conditions "consciousness," is it like the frog catching the fly, or is it something different?

6. The binding problem: there is no one place in the brain where all cognition comes together, even though we experience being a one to whom everything happens.

7. (The claim that) we are able to grasp the experiences had by another as experiences had by another "I," thanks to mirror neurons.

8. That thalmic pain is an exception to the general rule that consciousness requires, consists of cortical activity.

9. That the ARAS (ascending reticular activation system) must stimulate the thalmus & cortex for it to be conscious; otherwise, a coma occurs.

10. That there are people who can see but are unaware that they can see. That is because area 17 in the back of the head is not functioning. Does information reach the cortex w/o having passed by area 17? How?

11. That some folks are color blind, not because of something wrong in the eye, but because of something gone wrong in the brain.

12. If one has motion agnosia, then one perceives what is moving as a series of still-frames...

13. (still re motion agnosia) The fact that motion agnosia is the result of a lesion to a particular part of the brain implies that the said part is responsible for perceiving the motion of things. And the latter fact shows that what is phenomenologically an aspect/moment of the given (i.e., the motion OF something) is cognized in virtue of a particular "piece" of the brain.

14. The normal path from seeing with the eye is retina, lateral geniculate, area 17 (back of the head), higher order visual cortex, higher level association area, pre-frontal cortex to PLAN the movement, then to the motor neurons or something like that to make it happen... (to be continued)

15. But it can happen that the information goes from the eye to the lateral geniculate to the amygdala (on the basis of the reticular formation's selective attention or shunting) without area 17's getting involved (think of us reacting like a frog that shoots its tongue out at a darting fly)

16. The species of agnosia called contralateral neglect indicates that spatial memory is referenced to one's body image!

17. That there are higher & lower visual areas (as well as auditory, etc.), and that these higher areas are necessary for sortal, motion, color and facial recognition.

18. That the limbic system subsumes learning, emotion and executive function.

19. That scientists have somehow wired a camera to a surface that touches the touch, with the result that the blind can see well enough to catch a ball. And the signals from the tongue go to the visual cortex (says phil of mind dude on teaching company lectures).

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

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