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From the beginning, the movement of animals, their excitatory cells can send and receive information to the conditions of the bodies survival advantage, those actions are independent, both to the outside. Clearly, organisms that fled, in the absence of predators and feed will be innocent, it is doomed to be prey for those more fortunate fitted cell organisms representations of the world and coordinated campaign in the world.

 

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Awareness and Self-awareness

 

 

Squirming out from the primordial ooze, our evolutionary ancestors harbored within themselves a perfectly astounding invention — the excitable cell. Such is a cell that can pass a tiny electrical effect down its extent and that, in concert with clumps and configurations of similarly excitable cells, can be appropriately excited so that the organism may move, thereby feeding, fleeing, fighting, or reproducing.

 

From the very beginning, mobile creatures whose excitable cells were capable of conveying information about conditions outside the body had a survival advantage over those whose movements were independent of whatever was going on outside. Obviously, the organism that flees in the absence of predators and feeds willy-nilly is doomed to be prey for those more lucky organisms fitted out with cells coordinating representations of the world with movement in the world. With increased complexity of behavioral repertoire comes increased capacity for representing the environment.

 

Our own brains are massive mounds of excitable cells, which somehow contrive collectively to contain a rich representation of the outside world, as well as to enable the muscles to accomplish such feats as catching a ball, playing the violin, and talking, in addition of course to the fundamental feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. Additionally, the human brain, like the brains of other species, contains information about itself and about other brains, though to be sure, we do not standardly apprehend the information under that description.

 

Lurching out from the comfortable cave that is our commonsense conception of things, human brains have come to represent the sun, not as a god driven about in a golden chariot but as a nuclear fire; and the earth, not as a sheet with fat-cheeked cherubs blowing from the four corners but as a ball hurtling about the sun; and the heart, not as a cauldron for concocting animal spirits but as a pump for blood. We want also to understand our brains, and thus the brain investigates the brain, emburdened no doubt with a pack of misconceptions not unlike those impeding the investigation of the sun or the heart, but empowered for all that to disemburden itself and to bootstrap its way to insight and understanding. 

 

 

 

 

—Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 comments:

Sprit O said...

Undoubtedly, with a pack of misconceptions like those who do not impede the investigation or the heart of the sun, but in the final analysis, the right to own and guide their disemburden way to insight and understanding.

O truth of the earth,
O truth of things,
I am determined to press my way toward you;
Sound your voice!

I scale mountains,
or dive in the sea after you.

Walt Whitman
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