The Forum > General Discussion > Reimmagine Australia adopting 60,000 year old culture.
Reimmagine Australia adopting 60,000 year old culture.
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Posted by Foxy, Sunday, 9 January 2022 3:22:25 PM
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OK Josephus this probably too late since this thread seems to be dead, but anyway:
>how was your value system formed to rationalise by looking at things from outside or within physics? My value system is a result of nature, nurture, knowledge and my brains ability to think abstractly: -1) my nature: mammalian evolution has caused my brain have certain feelings/reactions when it interprets social situations. For people in general, these feelings/emotions experienced are more or less similar across humanity but due to genetic variations it can vary quite remarkably in some cases (eg: some people are born psychopathic- they do not have empathy and this is because they don't have the right genes for it) -2) nurture: my upbringing (nurture) has taught me what is acceptable behaviour according to the current standards of the society I live in. This expected behaviour can quite often be at odds with what my natural reaction is. -3) my knowledge: informs me which behaviour is beneficial to achieve wanted outcomes and on the flip side which behaviours are detrimental. Also, knowledge of the historical development of society's morals and the context within which they were formed contributes to my values (eg: I consider some morals/social etiquette of former times obsolete because the original cause for them no longer exists) -4) and so my brain's ability to acknowledge these above inputs and its ability to reason about abstract concepts and for reflection into possible consequences of hypothetical situations produces my values. For what I understand about the brain, it's the limbic system that is associated most with this, especially the amygdala. So my values are real in the sense they are the collection of neurons/neuronal activity that encapsulates/encodes what you would call "my values". These neurons process input to produce an output that will eventually cause by body to move, and those movements will be a physical expression of "my values". eg: my brain's circuitry and processing might cause my body to write a post on a forum thread to debate a topic relating to morals/values. -- continued below -- Posted by thinkabit, Thursday, 13 January 2022 4:59:27 PM
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-- from above --
>Is your mind part of natural physics or independant of it to formulate your conclusions? I have absolutely no evidence that my consciousness (ie: the awareness of my stream of thoughts, which is what I think you mean by "mind") has any ability to influence on or control of my body. I don't know how you could perform an experiment to show whether it does or doesn't. Until you can demonstrate to me that my mind can have an effect on the world then I don't believe it is a real phenomenon (for me something is real if its effects on the world around it can be detected/measured independently). Until shown otherwise, I consider my consciousness to be a non-real emergent phenomenon of my real brain. >Are you controlled from within natural forces, or can you stand apart from what is controlling your values? I don't understand what you are asking here. I'm not sure what you mean by "natural forces"; do you mean "force" in physics or something else? Also I don't have any the slightest notion what you mean by "can you stand apart from what is controlling you values." >Explain human character by natural science, ... There's a whole field devoted to it, it's called evolutionary psychology*. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology >... does it have any link to the design of our environment? Until I see evidence to the contrary I don't believe there is any need to believe that the environment is designed. For me unguided evolution ultimately arising from the inherent properties of the fundamental particles (ie: electrons, quarks, etc.) can adequately explain the diversity of species on the planet. But besides this, yes, human character does have a link to the environment, because it co-evolved with the environment. -- continued below -- Posted by thinkabit, Thursday, 13 January 2022 5:02:58 PM
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-- from above --
* to be honest, although psychology is lumped under the umbrella of science, I'll be the first to admit that it is a very soft science (much like economics and sociology) and that a lot of it is rubbish. [by-the-way: I would like to clear up something from my previous post. When I wrote "Josephus: So what do you mean by "energy" / "energy source" ", I meant this to be a question from me to you. However the way I wrote it, looks like I'm quoting you, whereas I meant to write: "So Josephus what do you...". I hit the word limit on my post and edited it to condense it down, although the result was still too large for one post anyway. In the process of condensing it down I mangled this bit.] Posted by thinkabit, Thursday, 13 January 2022 5:03:50 PM
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thinkabit,
Are your thoughts and decisions controlled by your brain chemistry; or is your brain chemistry controlled by you? Are you entirely organic chemistry? Do creative thoughts have power to change chemistry? Does a creative spirit mind exist outside organic chemistry? Posted by Josephus, Thursday, 13 January 2022 6:14:27 PM
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>Are your thoughts and decisions controlled by your brain chemistry or is your brain chemistry controlled by you?
Well it's not so much that they are controlled by my brain's chemistry processes but more so that they *are* my brain's chemistry processes. I've no proof/evidence for believing that my thoughts are controlled* by something external to my brain. If you believe that there is something external to my brain controlling my thoughts then perhaps you can suggest an experiment that I perform to confirm this. >Are you entirely organic chemistry? Well there are many levels that you can describe a living animal life form on. eg: the fundamental particle level, the molecular level, the internal organelles of cells level, the cellular level, the tissue level, the organs,muscle and bone level, the whole animal level, the animal and its environment level. But at the molecular level, then yes, I would say that I'm entirely organic chemistry. I've never observed or experienced anything to convince me otherwise. >Do creative thoughts have power to change chemistry? A thought to me is a complex pattern of neuronal activity and since these processes involve cellular chemistry it can invoke/cause chemical changes. However, as regards personal awareness of thoughts (ie, my consciousness), then as I explained in my previous post, I've no evidence that my consciousness can an anyway affect the world. So I don't believe that my consciousneess influences my brains processes however I certainly do believe my brain influences my consciousness (in fact it's my brain's processes that creates it). It appears to me that my consciousness is an emergent property/result of my brain's processes, but it cannot physically interact with anything. Does a creative spirit mind exist outside organic chemistry? Again, I've no evidence/observations that leads me to believe that there exists a "creative mind spirit" that is real (where "real" means for me that it can interact with the world in some way) *: my thoughts aren't controlled by something external to my brain but they can be influenced by external stimulus. eg: reading your last post has influenced my brain processes Posted by thinkabit, Thursday, 13 January 2022 9:55:52 PM
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Fair enough.