Kaballah and the Zohar?

[invert_nexus]

I though it was rather apt. On the subject of language being under siege, or itself besieging the freedom of thought. And its relationship with conscience and a morality that engenders guilt, and how it enables the necessary capture of meaning.

Meaning is the golden mean between free life and slavery to ideas.

To be honest, practically anything is on topic in this neck of the woods. But, it did appear that you were defending christianity from our atheistic tampering.

What Gendanken was getting at in her description of language (I feel) is that the remorseless killer doesn't chain himself with language. With concepts of remorse, grief, gods, etc... She wasn't saying that language is a remorseless killer. (Although, in many ways it is. It has no remorse in killing our animal nature. It has no remorse in confining us to definitions and dictionaries. Symbols and abstraction.) She wasn't saying that language was some dead thing. On the contrary, it is alive and is evidenced by the nested loop analogy. It feeds and grows. She brought in the John quote as a demonstration of how god being the word is a fabrication of her spandrel. Of the angles coming together forming a myth at the top. God. Religion. Spirit. Abstract in the extreme.

Take your fingers- make an L with your left hand, using the index and thumb.
Make another L with your right hand, using the index and thumb.
Both angles (made by the L, 90 degrees) represent sepereate, concrete entities.
One represents magic.
The other represents a mixture of language and fear.
Both are concrete particulars.

Put those two angles together to form a triangle. That angle at the top only "exists" when these two come together, but it is illusion. It disappears as soon as you tear these two angles apart.
That illusive third angle is......soul.
You have just taken concrete particulars and created a generalized abstraction- an illusive angle that does not really exist, coming to life only when these two things are together. The magnetism that drew these two fingers togehter is the process we're dissecting in there.

my stating soul is an illusory by-product of two concrete realities coming together in those curious little fivephallangion L's that made a phantom in their union....

The transition of concrete made abstract, what I've been saying all along.
Therefore, imagine those fingers now coming together. There before you is the story of John being told as you move them together to make that angle on top: God *is* Word now, but you pull them apart and he disappears.
You pull language apart and he disappears.

Do you see now?

I think the angles are a bit elusive. Exactly what they are constructed from. But, the idea is sound. She describes one as magic which we determined was the product of animism. The manipulation of anima. The other language and fear. I'm thinking that perhaps we should alter the definition a bit. The base line of the triangle is language, hence when you pull language apart... The two angles are magic (pattern-finding) and fear (memory and false assumption). There is room for more to be added to the triangle with some extra thought. I admit, that this analogy has not been present in my mind much (apologies again, Gendy. Learning so much makes it hard to keep all in thought at the same time.). So, anyway there are the two lines on the side that can be defined and also the area in the middle (which is split in half when the triangle splits).

Funny how the rule of threes always comes into play. Animism/magic/religion. Father/son/holy-spirit. Gendanken/Invert_nexus/Rosa Majika. I believe I have noticed many other threes that I can't recall right now. I've been working on this post too long and my mind is getting a bit loopy from reviewing for references on the triangle. I suppose it's all just the old pattern-finding skill coming into play. Seeing things that aren't necessarily there.

The lower temporal lobe is the brain's visual association area; it connects images to emotions and memories. It's involved in the process by which images facilitate prayer or meditation. For example, when an image of a cross or an icon triggers a feeling of awe, it is because the brain's visual association area learns to link those images to those feelings......

Hmm. I obviously did miss something in my reading of the Naked Neuron. I had developed the idea of the temporal being auditory, occipital being visual, parietal being sensory. Angular gyrus the conjuction of the three. I need to reread, methinks. Fuck, can't believe I forgot the temporal connection you made so early in this thread. My humble apologies, madame. You may kick me now.


Shit, had more to say, but my minds getting a bit loopy here from reviewing. I need to rest the melon for a bit. No work today, so I'll be back later.

 

[Jenyar]

Invert

I appreciate the trouble of reviewing everything to bring me up to date. I came to the discussion at a tangent, but I hope it wasn't too disruptive.

I really like the two L's analogy. But who decides what makes up whole parts and what is considered 'soul'? I would guess the force that makes us connect concrete particulars into a apparent unity is the same gestalt principle that makes us see unity where there "is" none. I say "is", because in the end, doesn't language prove to be a very useful and surprisingly accurate abstraction? Doesn't it suggest we communicate truths through myths by necessity? Language is a fabrication, but it's a fabrication that doesn't discern between truth and lies - it is blind and dead. It's what's on the other side of the figure 8 that decides what is representative and what is misrepresentation.

The difference between the phenomenon and the understanding it is in its inherent meaning - its "life" instead of its "death". Not to put too fine a point on it: its soul.

At the risk of everybody becoming defensive again about my Christianology, I'll return to the John 1:1 example. The "Word" here is the divine logos of the gnostic tradition, but John's point was that this abstract has found concrete form in Christ. Not an illusionary corner of the triangle - but a real one. As real as the meaning of a word. This Word was after all supposed to reconcile a broken relationship: humanity as the one particular, God as the other.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.​

But even more than this (and this was the image conjured up in my head by Rosa's fantastic figure 8), he connects spiritual and physical, heaven and earth, word and deed, law and fulfilment, into one transcendental yet relevant reality (as opposed to illusion). That's the holistic explosion that shook mankind. The black and white of legalism, and the greys of trying to live between its laws, are only a drab image of the real Spectrum. A crossing-over (no need to excuse the pun) was necessary. It's no wonder that the event was almost exclusively understood within a moral context (John 1:17 For the law was given through Moses [man's Ten Words]; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ [God's Word]).

 

[invert_nexus]

I don't think I'd want to know everything. Make that optional omniscience, or you'll never have a surprise or a conversation again.

Edit: Heh. This is a line from another thread. Didn't even notice I pasted the wrong line earlier. Here's the real one.

I appreciate the trouble of reviewing everything to bring me up to date.

I did it to refresh my own memory, as well. I started to explain the triangle analogy to you and I realized that I couldn't quite remember exactly what the angles were. Sorry, Gendy...

I came to the discussion at a tangent, but I hope it wasn't too disruptive.

Not so far. The thing is that you seem to grasp the basics of what we are discussing, but then you graft it into your full-fledged beliefs. In this there is danger of disruption. Of diverting the topic. Christianity is a johhny-come-lately. YHWH himself is a latter-day god compared to what we're trying to get at. We're going to the roots. To the days of Ug, the caveman lawyer. Who saw spirits in the wild and gave them names. Who devised methods of dealing with these spirits. And who took the power into himself when he became a priest (shaman, actually would fit better.) The rest is later and is just muddying the waters, so to speak. They build on Ug's foundation.

I really like the two L's analogy. But who decides what makes up whole parts and what is considered 'soul'?

Well, it is Gendanken's theory. So it would seem that she gets the final say on that. However, feel free to take the analogy and use it as you will. I might suggest that carrying it too far from what we've outlined would be leading the thread off course though, and might be suited better elsewhere. Especially as regards christianity and the later religions of man.

I would guess the force that makes us connect concrete particulars into a apparent unity is the same gestalt principle that makes us see unity where there "is" none.

Good point. I didn't even consider the fact that there is a force, an action being applied to the two L's. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with this gestalt principle. It sounds like what I've been referring to as pattern-finding.

I say "is", because in the end, doesn't language prove to be a very useful and surprisingly accurate abstraction? Doesn't it suggest we communicate truths through myths by necessity? Language is a fabrication, but it's a fabrication that doesn't discern between truth and lies - it is blind and dead. It's what's on the other side of the figure 8 that decides what is representative and what is misrepresentation.

Hmm. Interesting. I think I see where you're going with this. You objected to what you saw as Gendanken describing language as "dead" earlier. But, now you change your opinion. I think that now that God has been removed, you feel that language is dead. That without god, without the purpose of god, it is dead.

I'm going to have to let Gendanken field this one. I feel that in a way language is both live and dead. It feeds, it grows. But, at the same time it does so in an isolated manner. Without guidance. It has connotations of life and death.

About language being a fabrication. That is the heart of what we're discussing. The abstraction that language makes possible. The transferrance of emotions to external objects. The transferance of animus.

Another key aspect of the theory is guilt and fear. These spiritual anima inspire both. Without language, guilt and fear vanish. They cannot be maintained for any great length of time. Language maintains them. Feeds them. And they in turn feed language.

Truth and lies. You've stumbled onto the interpreter mechanism here, my boy. Truth and lies are meaningless. What is truth? What is lie? The only truth could be a phsyical truth. This is a rock. This is a tree. This is food. This is woman. Concrete realities. These things need no labels. Without language they would still exist. Abstract concepts however are another story. They are a construct of language. A construct of that part of the mind that revels in constructing these schemas. Whose only purpose is to continually build these castles in the sky. Error slips into everything we think because we see through the mirror darkly. Error compounds error. And in time, vast constructions that tower above us (seemingly) are made. Fairy constructions of light and darkness. But they are shadows. Schema.

The difference between the phenomenon and the understanding it is in its inherent meaning - its "life" instead of its "death". Not to put too fine a point on it: its soul.

Lost me here. But, I think I might see a glimmer. And in fact, if the glimmer is what you're saying then you're saying exactly what Gendy says. But, you see it as good. We see it as bad. You revel in the play of lights and theatre. We seek the root form that lies beneath the construction.

Let me explain what I'm thinking. You say that the only difference in the phenomenon and it's understanding, it's life instead of death (words by the way. And misleading I feel.), is the soul. Ok, let's take a simple example. Remember, the triangle. Gendy's spandrel. (You like, Gendanken? Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?) Now, have you read the beginning of the thread where we outlined language-> anima-> magic-> religion? Each a further step in abstraction (although, magic may be a step towards concreteness. Step forward, step back. A waltz.) If not, I urge you to do so. This is also at the heart of our discussion.

Where was I? An example of a phenomenon and it's understanding. Ok, Ug, our caveman lawyer, is wandering about the savannah. Pattern-finding as his is wont, his skill, his means of survival. And he sees an anthill on the horizon. Now, let's assume that he's never seen an anthill before. He marvels at it. What is it? How did it come to be? (You realize language is required for this process?) Now, to understand it is beyond him. He does not have the required facts. The knowledge that would allow him to approach an adequate understanding. So, what does he do? He makes up a story. His interpreter mechanism confabulates a wondrous tale of the anthill. Now he understands it. It is filled with anima. It has a soul. Where did the soul come from? Was it there before he confabulated the tale? No. It's a construction of Gendy's Spandrel. Language, the abstraction provided by language, the pattern-finding inherent in our minds, the fear and awe of the unknown. All these combined to create this soul. A mythical soul at the top of an illusory triangle.

Damn, that was pretty fucking good. What do you think, Gendanken? I'm proud of myself there.


And, as to the rest about Christianology and God. That's just more words conjuring up an illusory understanding of an abstract notion. No offense, but it illustrates the point well. "...John's point was that this abstract has found concrete form in Christ. Not an illusionary corner of the triangle - but a real one. As real as the meaning of a word." See this? Concrete form in Christ? Can you touch him? Can you see him? Has he spoken to you other than in "vision?" Christ is abstract. The church founded in his name doesn't even conform to the principles that the man held in his own life. IMO. All this is storytelling. Nothing more.

I'm not saying that nothing good can come from storytelling, from confabulation. On the contrary, lots of good can come from it. But lots of bad as well. And the bottom line is that it must be realized what it is. It is a product of a tool. We must advance beyond the tool. We must not allow the tool to become our master. We must not become tools of our tools. This is what this thread is about.

 

[water]

Invert,

Don't take no shit, draga zmaj (Proper usage, Rosa?)

You remembered! Hihi.
*jumps up and down seeing fancy words of her native language*


The word zmaj is masculine, so it would have to be "dragi zmaj", meaning 'dear beast', 'my beast' would be "moj zmaj". [gross, Invert, shame on you!] Using it for a woman makes the word zmaj even more signifficant, as it suggests the woman is masculine.

 

[invert_nexus]

I latched onto the dragon aspect you gave it. Is it more beast than dragon?

Edit: Oh, and by the way, Gendanken would probably take it as a compliment then. Misogynist that she is.

 

[water]

I latched onto the dragon aspect you gave it. Is it more beast than dragon?

Edit: Oh, and by the way, Gendanken would probably take it as a compliment then. Misogynist that she is.

A zmaj in a fairy tale is a dragon. A zmaj IRL, when used for a person, is a beast. The word is a bit ambigous.

 

[invert_nexus]

Damnit Gendanken! I've been waiting damn near a week for your reply. Any day now...

 

[gendanken]

What's interesting about Judaism is that it was an oral tradition for so long. It wasn't written down until long after the time of Moses. Which was long after the time of Abraham. So we have two aspects of language that are central to Judaism. But, the thing is that Judaism is a relatively late religion in the scheme of things. They took ideas that were there before them and merely shifted them around. Reversed the goddess myth to validate a patriarchal society.

Certainly.
The Jew went "shopping" among the great philsophies to patch together his religion. But we can't blame him; all religion is burglary.
Jehovah used to be a war god, literally. The Christian pussified him and made him a father.

Seems our echos roll and grow and grow and grow, yes?
Pity.
Jenyar- wonderful input but I'm afraid he will never show here again so I won't waste my time. One echo.
Rosa, same thing. Second echo.
Bigal- third echo.

Moving on:
Fell in love with this:

"Just as humanists like John Updike have their thread that 'runs through all things," as I say in Chapter 1, so, too, is the interpreter omnipresent in our lives.......in general, the interpreter seeks to understand the world. In doing so it creates the illusion that we are in control of all our actions and reasoning. We become the center of a sphere of action so large it has no walls"..The Mind's Past, p. 151

Omnipresent.
A sphere of action so large it has no walls.

Here is born that cerebral autobiography we call soul, a simple thread filled with errors useful in understanding our world. Errors we call truth in our distaste of confusion, errors glamorized as morality and virtue. These helps the peasent sleep at night and keeps him off his neighbor's property.
Self, then, is a biological phenemona immortalized by language. How so, you ask.
Human sanity is only possible in a factory of lables, churned out year by year, hour by hour, second by second on a conveyor belt we call Memory. Every thing else is chaos with a tortured man at the mercy of his own brain- schizophrenia, Alzheimers, the thousand and one dissosiative maladies that makes our species interesting.
Agree?
Rob it, the brain, of language and you kill the immortal and you're left with a simple 3 lb mass of convoluted tripe that is dead to pixies and dragons and God; dead to the thrill of Oneness, to the life force of Kaballah.
Its a wonder to think that self and soul are little more than wordy memories, an autobiography. Religion, an autobiography. Oh but what will the moralist say, the biggest labeler of all?!!
Heresy. And the Christian scientist will timidly join him, dismissing the brain altogether.

Where was I? Yes:

In fact, in hebrew mythos, names and words are a powerful force. God was a word, and in speaking the word, creation. Very powerful juju. I'm sure you know about jews writing G-d. Don't you?

*sigh*

"This is it.
This is just it, the way these philosophies insist on labeling these complexia as Unknowable- the 'numinous' accoring to Otto, the G-d concept with the mystical Jew making it far more untouchable by refusing to spell the name out.
What better way to keep a king on his throne than to idealize governmental complexity when its really a simple idiot on a throne?"
-gendanken
06-30-04, 10:24 PM


This is exactly what I was getting at. Who says God is powerful? The priest and his choirboys? Their praises don't do nearly as much advertising as their silence does- surround an object in secret and you make it enchanting. (Neglect, first order)
The human eye is an organ that craves beauty, and when it desires the enchantment becomes holy. All the Jew had to do to dazzle his followers was leave out the O in God and behold- a simple idea is bewitched with its self-imposed silence. Its become untouchable and by doing so, powerful.
Men crave virgins.

Good for analogy, but we must remember God is a latecomer to the religion game.

Agreed. Magic and animism needed to perculate first into wicked, wonderful things.

"But it was not the priests that made religion, but religion that made priests (and god);the ineradicable hope and faith of man made and will always make religion. It was the priests who made the church."- Pleasures of Philosophy

And I move to say that both faith and hope are two abstracts distilled from the interpreter mechanism on the left, always in search of truth and order yet quietly driven by guilt and its own noncomformity.
The left is like an obssessive monk.

Hmm. That's weird. For some reason, while reading left temporal I was thinking left frontal. The temporal lobe is a strange place to be having visions. Many religious experiences involve the voice of god. That makes sense. Perhaps if the seizure extends into the occipital then visions occur?

More from the site: "found that people with frequent bursts of electrical activity in their temporal lobes report sensations of flying, floating, or leaving the body, as well as other mystical experiences. By applying magnetic fields to the brain, he can also induce odd mental experiences — possibly caused by bursts of neuron firing in the temporal lobes. For example, he has made people feel as if two alien hands grabbed their shoulders and distorted their legs when he applied magnetic fields to their brains." This sounds like parietal phenomena to me. Why would the temporal lobe have this effect. Did I miss something?

More: "Note that the overriding emotion experienced by Mohammed, Moses and St. Paul during their religious visions was not one of rapture and joy but rather of fear. When Moses heard the voice of God from a burning bush, he hid his face and was frightened. ... Other psychologists have noted that likely TLE sufferers such as Moses, Flaubert, Saint Paul, and Dostevesky were also famous for their rages." Interesting. Fear rather than joy. But what of the ordinary religious experience. The experience of the common man. Perhaps this explains the reason for the hellfire and brimstone of YHWH.

Thought the man was going to miss it and just at the precise moment, bingo:

Just had a thought. The amygdalla is buried within the temporal lobe. Don't see how that would apply though. Other than a tap into the emotional system. What else in the limbic system is there

...he got it.

The amydala, part of the limbic nucleus [hypothalamus, septum (essential in orgasm), and the cigulate gyrus, of which I'll get to later].
Think of language as twofold- emotional and grammatical. Almost all life forms share this emotional symbolism of the limbic system- grunts, yelps, the vervet monekys and their different calls per predator, the infant expressing mood in a laugh or a whine- Josheph calls this language we share with lower mammals and reptiles "right hemisphere and limbic speech".
We differ, quite obvisously, with our curious other language- the grammatical one.

Enter the left temporal lobe.

All four of those components in the limbic nucleus contribute those elements hidden in the religious feeling that we erroniously feel as holy- septum (sexuality), hypothalamus (adrenalin, exitement) and most important of all the cingulate gyrus which I find tantalizing- its responsible for fear. Fear, fear, fear that drove the Macbeth to tears:

" Among humans and lower mammals, destruction of the anterior cingulate (or cingulate gyrus) results in a loss of fear, lack of maternal responsiveness, and severe alteration in socially appropriate behavior.....Animals, such as monkeys who have sufferered cingulate destruction, will also become mute, will cease to groom or show affection, and will threat their fellow monkeys as inanimiate objects"- Naked Neuron, 318

Its the monopoly on fear that this part of the limbic system has that is fascinating, cut it and tomorrow you go out into the world a brave soldier.All your fears melt away.
The Benedict monk, the nun, and Dosteivsky experieced the same ecstacies the rats do, I feel, but in verbalizing it the thrill ride becomes the removed, wordy stuff of Religion.

We have here sex, exitement, and fear all embedded where? The temporal lobe and just thinking that the left temporal lobe's domain is language I am lead to believe there is something wicked in having these components (sex and fear) come together in that one place where order was becoming a thing of dire importance. I imagine language growing and being tossed about between its possessor's sexual urges and fears- it demanded order in its blooming syntactical thinking, and from this order detached itself by becoming abstract.
This is where self was divorced from body.
I tend to picture it in metaphor: the left temporal lobe was a uterus and it aborted an immature fetus we call Self, the placenta was this phenomena we call language and it grew and grew and grew to whisper a little white lie in that fetus's ear with its words: "You are an individual. An I. A soul".
With this, the world became verbalized and man called out for meaning in the confusion- so the caveman no longer grunted but drew faires and gods, and by doing so, virtues and morality to understand that "voice" inside.


Words, words words...with me? Thoughts?

 

[invert_nexus]

Ahh, blessed relief. At last, we continue. Thank you, madame. I was beginning to think I was being spurned.

Seems our echos roll and grow and grow and grow, yes?

Jenyar and Bigal of course are no surprise. But what of Rosa? She has faded away from the discussion? Have I missed something?

Agree?

Of course.

Heresy. And the Christian scientist will timidly join him, dismissing the brain altogether.

This is my greatest fear. Human thought being relegated once more to the divine. Thou shalt not question. The number one commandment.

*sigh*

Don't you sigh at me. . . I'm sorry I must have forgotten this bit and glanced over it in my many reviews of this thread, but I am not the only one guilty of similar crimes.

This is exactly what I was getting at. Who says God is powerful? The priest and his choirboys? Their praises don't do nearly as much advertising as their silence does- surround an object in secret and you make it enchanting. (Neglect, first order)

Yes. Lock it an arc. Allow only those from a specific bloodline to have access to the glory of G-d. Voila.

And it's interesting to note that the history of judea and israel was filled with backsliding. Worshipping on the high places. The worship of G-d was limited to the levites. Others had to be satisfied with providing sacrifices but keeping their distance from the actual worship. Worshipping on the high places gave the common man a means of appealing to god. And, that was not allowed.

I'm somewhat amazed, actually, that christianity never took this route. It seems to be in between the strict Levite priesthood of the jews. And the anything goes of the pagans. I wonder if this giving the church more into the hands of the people increased their power and longevity (the church) or reduced what it might have been?

Music was also extemely important to Judaism.

But, of course, we're going on about these Johhny-comes-lately. And why? Because these fuckers were so efficient at wiping out all traces of what came before. If the religion of Abraham should be destroyed for anything, that would definitely be high on the list of reasons. Death of knowledge.

"But it was not the priests that made religion, but religion that made priests (and god);the ineradicable hope and faith of man made and will always make religion. It was the priests who made the church."- Pleasures of Philosophy

Nice. Which thread was it where I talked about Pink Floyd? Was it the Other Eyes thread? I think it was. I spoke of the leaders who could not have been had their followers not instilled this godhood within them. Jim Jones, Charlie Manson, David Koresh, Adolf Hitler, the list is nearly endless. The march of the hammers in Waiting for the Worms by Pink Floyd illustrates this principle well. Pink begins by extolling the crowd. Leading them. But, as the march goes on, the crowd grows louder, the stomp of feet grows leader, Pink's voice becomes more and more strident trying to maintain his lead. In the end, he fails and is subsumed by the mob. The most powerful moment in that movie. Other than Empty Spaces perhaps. That crazy ass flower. . . (You like Pink Floyd, Gendy? I think I've seen you mention them a time or two. Not death metal, I know, but...)

Agreed. Magic and animism needed to perculate first into wicked, wonderful things.

What was the Jim Morrison line? "All great things must first wear terrifying masks..." Something like that. Don't have the movie and can't find an online quote. Close enough.

We differ, quite obvisously, with our curious other language- the grammatical one.

And I threw out the amygdalla as a last ditch kinda thing. I didn't think it would play a great part in "visions".

Before I go comment on the rest. Let me throw this out. It is a common-sense sort of idea that our language evolved from the primitive call language of the animals. The limbic speech. But, if it evolved from it, why do we still have it? We have two seperate languages. Each distinct. If one came from the other, wouldn't it supersede other? Actually take over the area of the brain with which it was used? I've got a ways to go into my language and evolution of the brain books. I'll give more details later.

Among humans and lower mammals, destruction of the anterior cingulate (or cingulate gyrus) results in a loss of fear, lack of maternal responsiveness, and severe alteration in socially appropriate behavior.....Animals, such as monkeys who have sufferered cingulate destruction, will also become mute, will cease to groom or show affection, and will threat their fellow monkeys as inanimiate objects"- Naked Neuron, 318

Yes. And if the amygdalla is damaged, they lose all social desire. They don't even see other monkeys as monkeys. They are mere objects. Furniture.

The Benedict monk, the nun, and Dosteivsky experieced the same ecstacies the rats do, I feel, but in verbalizing it the thrill ride becomes the removed, wordy stuff of Religion.

More so than just verbalizing it, I feel. Language brings with a level of abstraction. With language, once seperate feelings and emotions can be blended together into something new. Something far more powerful. Add to this the freezing of guilt. And we have all the requirements to spur religious thought. Especially considering certain individuals who are quite convinced and convincing in their epileptic fits.

We have here sex, exitement, and fear all embedded where? The temporal lobe and just thinking that the left temporal lobe's domain is language I am lead to believe there is something wicked in having these components (sex and fear) come together in that one place where order was becoming a thing of dire importance. I imagine language growing and being tossed about between its possessor's sexual urges and fears- it demanded order in its blooming syntactical thinking, and from this order detached itself by becoming abstract.

I think you may have made a slight error here. Words are handled in the temporal lobe, but language is handled in the angular gyruss, isn't it? The phonemes are processed into words, passed to the angular gyruss for syntax and grammar and then carried to broca's or exner's area for expression. If expression is required. Of course, the thing about the angular gyrus is that it is called the inferior parietal, but it is in fact a combination of the parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Isn't it? It's where they blend.

This is where self was divorced from body.

I was about to ask for clarification, but I think I am with you. Prior to this, the self had everything to do with proprioception. The parietal. But, with this new thing, language, a new self was formed. A self that could explain itself like proprioception was unable.

I tend to picture it in metaphor: the left temporal lobe was a uterus and it aborted an immature fetus we call Self, the placenta was this phenomena we call language and it grew and grew and grew to whisper a little white lie in that fetus's ear with its words: "You are an individual. An I. A soul".
With this, the world became verbalized and man called out for meaning in the confusion- so the caveman no longer grunted but drew faires and gods, and by doing so, virtues and morality to understand that "voice" inside.

Striking.

Words, words words...with me? Thoughts?

I believe I've had a few. Nothing new to add (other than the bit on language not evolving from limbic language.)

Strike that, I do have something to add. Creole languages. I know you know of Creole. But, do you know what creole is? It's not just localized french from the bayeou. It's a form of language that develops from protolanguage. Let me explain.

The parents speak a 'pidgin' dialect. They barely understand the words. The struggle constantly to speak. It is in fact much like a protolanguage. I'll go more into this later. But, for now, they pass this pidgin to their children. The children take this language and form it into a full-fledged language. Complete with complex grammar and syntax. And they do it in a single generation. That is amazing. They take a language that has no structure and impose structure into it. And they do it in the same way that a three-year old learns to speak. The natural functioning of the brain to impose order.

What do you think?

 

[gendanken]

Vert:

The parents speak a 'pidgin' dialect. They barely understand the words. The struggle constantly to speak. It is in fact much like a protolanguage. I'll go more into this later. But, for now, they pass this pidgin to their children. The children take this language and form it into a full-fledged language. Complete with complex grammar and syntax. And they do it in a single generation. That is amazing. They take a language that has no structure and impose structure into it. And they do it in the same way that a three-year old learns to speak. The natural functioning of the brain to impose order.

What do you think?

Whooah.

Fascinating. Honest? Hoping this is not some flyby headnoise you've jumbled up in your post. Makes me want to look into pidgin.
Guarateed that by tomorrow I will have the thing dowloaded.
(children? and just one generation?)

Digging this:

Add to this the freezing of guilt

The "freezing" of guilt to describe the SuperEgo.

And as its pushing up on ten oclock and time is short (godamnit) I must say you almost threw me for one with the mention of the angular gyrus, the main cortical fold differentiating us from other mammals.

Granted we aren't neuroscientists here, only poor plebs trying to voice themselves, but I know its the left temporal lobe almost wholly responsible for our language. The angular gyrus is something like an essetial hand madien, no? I wish I had a model of the brain, a complete one with labels so I could see where the bitch is at but look on page 162 of the Naked Neuron, first paragraph beaneath the subheading " Grammar and the Inferior Parietal Lobe", the tail end of the the second sentence:

".....advanced parietal tissue near the juncture of the occipital and the temporal lobes"

Location, location, location.


"We have no known for years that the left-hemisphere damage is bad news for language and thought and right hemisphere damage has its impact on spatial tasks. Indeed, people with lesion in the temporal-parietal lobe are terribly disrupted on language tasks, particularly in comprehendsion of language......"- Gazzaniga, 155

The parietal and the temporal are closely linked at this margin.

 

[invert_nexus]

Fascinating. Honest? Hoping this is not some flyby headnoise you've jumbled up in your post. Makes me want to look into pidgin.
Guarateed that by tomorrow I will have the thing dowloaded.
(children? and just one generation?)

I thought you might. It was in Lingua ex Machina.

If all there was was an "epigenetic rule" that said "Seek structure amid chaos," there would be no creole languages. Creole languages come into existence when parents who speak a structureless early-stage pidgin pass it on to their chldren. The children change that pidgin, in a single generation, into a full-fledged language. If they were seeking structure in the pidgin, they wouldn't find any -- they impose structure from within their own minds. Rather than acquiring a vague general capacity to "seek structure" -- how would any creature do that? -- I think we acuired the capacity to create structure in language ant that capacity then generalized to apply in other spheres.
Lingua ex Machina, p. 33

Kinda weirds out at the end there. But, I put in the whole paragraph anyway. The weird thing about this book is it's structure. It's almost like reading a forum. Except it's only two people and I haven't seen any flame wars yet. It's a series of correspondence between a linguist and a neurobiologist. Some good stuff.

But, on to creole. The thing that this makes me consider is that once the brain formed this capacity to find structure for language. It must have occured instantly. Within a generation. The limiting factor, of course, would be the number of words in which the brain was allowed to find structure. To impose structure. If early protolanguages had had enough words, they could have come up with english at the very first go.

... but I know its the left temporal lobe almost wholly responsible for our language. The angular gyrus is something like an essetial hand madien, no?

Now it's my turn for the dramatic *sigh*

Due to their extensive interconnections with the adjacent neocortical areas, inferior parietal [angular gyrus] neurons are able to assimilate and create multiple associations. The inferior region thus acts to increase the capacity for the organization, labeling, and multiple categorization of sensorimotor and conceptual events. One can thus create visual images, somesthetic, or auditory equivalent of objects, actions, feelings, and ideas simultaneously, and can conceptualize a "chair" as a word, visual object, or in regard to sensation, usage, and even price. Similarly, when we see an object such as a chair, we are than able to name it.
The Naked Neuron. pp 180-181.

The temporal lobe provides us with the words and the shape of language, but the angular gyrus connects this with the rest. With it's conceptual meaning. It's syntax. There is also mention made of the inferior parietal's likely course of evolution. It came from tool use. The parietal is the lobe of the hand, as you say, and as tools become more and more complicated, the steps involved in their construction became more and more complicated. If a step was taken out of order then the project would fail. The angular gyrus filled this need. And the fact that it lay in the crux of the occipital, temporal, and parietal gives it even more power. Integration of these seperate functions. It also lies on the highway of the language axis. The arcuate and longitidudinal fasciculi.

The angular gyrus is the holy land, you know. If you picture the brain being Europe and Africa, Broca's area is spain. The Primary auditory center is Algeria. Wernicke's area is Libya or Egypt. The Primary motor and primary sensory are the middle of europe, italy, germany, france, etc... And the angular gyrus smack dab on the holy land. You must remember that all information from the temporal must flow through the inferior parietal. The sylvian fissure is not to be crossed (I don't think.) It must take the long way round.

I wish I had a model of the brain, a complete one with labels so I could see where the bitch is at...

I've attached a crappy pic I found on the web. It's not really helpful, but there it is anyway. I'll look for a better one somewhere. Meanwhile, p. 137 of the N.N. There's a patchwork diagram of the brain. The angular gyrus is area 39. They show this diagram several times throughout the book. Unfortunately, they never take the time to fully label it. They only detail the parts they are talking about in any specific chapter.

The parietal and the temporal are closely linked at this margin.

Quite so. It seems from what I've read that the angular gyrus takes a bit from all three lobes at the back of the brain. It's multimodal. It, I feel, is key to much of what we as humans are capable of. It is after all one of the few areas of the brain wholely unique to humans. And, it is likely (if I recall correctly) that the cro-magnon man was the first to have an angular gyrus (don't ask me how they know. I've wondered at this myself. I can't imagine a study of the brain case revealing this area because it is in the center of the brain. Not some strange protrusion. Perhaps they are merely inferring the angular gyrus by the tool use and art.)

Anyway, where was I? Yes, angular gyrus and syntax. Angular gyrus and grammar. Angular gyrus and tool use. All these go hand-in-hand. We as humans developed as creatures of the hand. Language is a happy circumstance. A spandrel.

To be capable of learning and producing this formalized system of gestural interrelationships, considerable evolutionary adaptation and development in the parietal lobes was required. Some of this development increasingly occurred in the superior parietal lobe, which became more concerned with the movement of the hands and arms in visual space and less so with the feet. This is because, as the hands became adapted for grasping versus walking, they bagan to take up more neocortical space. With the evolution of perietal tissue at the juncture of the occipital (vision), temporal (auditory), and inferior frontal (motor) areas, the development of a complete grammatical gestural language including the temporal sequencing of sound was made possible. The appearance of the angular gyrus of the inferior parietal lobule helped make possible the creation of human speech and associated nuances of language, for example, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Grammatical, denotative spoken language is in part a secondary acquisition which follows the evolution of the hands and the development of the superior and inferior parietal regions, all of which made the ability to gesture in temporal sequences possible. Nevertheless, animals that cannot speak but whoose hands have evolved and who possess some of the same brain structures as humans are also able to learn and employ complex systems of gestureing and signing so as to communicate their own interests and desires.
pp. 143-144

Somewhere it talks about temporal order and tool use. It gives an example of steps to make a cup of coffee. If some of the steps were performed out of order, the result would be no coffee. I'm not sure where. I didn't take notes when I read it. I plan on reading it again. At the end of this stack of books and taking notes then.

Guarateed that by tomorrow I will have the thing dowloaded.

Que? Download what?

Crappy brain pic.​

 

[water]

Seems our echos roll and grow and grow and grow, yes?
Pity.
Jenyar- wonderful input but I'm afraid he will never show here again so I won't waste my time. One echo.
Rosa, same thing. Second echo.
Bigal- third echo.

ˇˇˇ

I, unlike the generic asshole, wait untill I've culled my resources without alluding to things not conducive to dialogue in my rush to reply- gendanken

You are giving yourself such credit -- yet you refuse to give us the same.
Shame on you.

 

[invert_nexus]

You are giving yourself such credit -- yet you refuse to give us the same.

She can be the impatient sort at times, can't she?


Gendanken,

Been looking around for some diagrams and the like. Nothing spectacularly labeled. Except a diagram from Gray's Anatomy which of course is 80 years out of date or so. But, it clearly shows the angular gyrus and other physical parts. It doesn't label Broca's, Wernicke's, Exner's, and the like. But, I think you can probably figure it out.

Got this from <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/107/">Bartleby's</a>. Lot's of good stuff on this site in case you've never seen it before. There's even a copy of Einstein's Relativity.

Found a couple of other sites that had excellent pictures of the brain. Both disections and mri.

<a href="http://www.vh.org/adult/provider/anatomy/BrainAnatomy/BrainAnatomy.html">This one</a> has lots of pictures of disected brains and brain anatomy. They are even labeled. I would have used one of these, but for some reason they don't show a lateral view of the left hemisphere. Only the right. I wonder why.

<a href="http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html">This one</a> has mri scans that can you can cycle through. There's also a java applet that I haven't tried. Don't have java installed at the moment. The nice link on this page is the MRI/PET link. It's not labelled, but there are pointers to specific regions of the brain. But it's somewhat difficult getting the hang of seeing the brain in this way. The weird thing is is that in their pictures, the angular gyrus appears to be on the right side of the brain. WTF? Either the MRI/PET reverses the image or this guy was one of those rare birds with reverse lateralization.

<a href="http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/">Another one.</a> This one I haven't checked out much. They have some decent pics and diagrams, but I didn't find what I wanted precisely.

I'd highly recommend you investigate at the least the top two links. You will be disappointed if these "load slow" and you give up. I guarantee it. And I don't know if you've read Gray's Anatomy, but that link is interesting as well. And, of course, Bartleby's is full of good reading material.

Enjoy.

 

[gendanken]

My old fellow, Kabbellow

Rosa:

You are giving yourself such credit -- yet you refuse to give us the same.
Shame on you.

Bet a million dollars this thread does not interest you as much as others.
Understandable, this is quite possibly the most rambling threadjacking in Forums history.
You helped out terribly though- I've placed John 1:1 at the top of the section where I have this theory written out. But nickles and dimes, you'd rather be elsewhere.

Jenyar seems more intrigued with the philosophical aspects of topics at hand- I doubt 'amygdala' perks his ears up. He's brought to light a good fucking point, though- gestalt to explain the psyche's tendency to force patterns in everything.
Courtesty of some notes jotted down on reading Stuart Vyse's "Believing in Magic":
"Developing from our tendency to sense continuity, obsessed if you, will with patterns, he brings to mind the Gestalt shools in Germany which stressed that an experinece is a unified totality, greater than the sum of its parts. We beome insensible to the consituent elements.....neglecting our creations from their birth"

If I tell Jenyar of this being a nasty habit of the interpreter in man's left cerebral hemisphere ...he would bore to tears and move on.

Vert:

She can be the impatient sort at times, can't she?

Pause.


Damnit Gendanken! I've been waiting damn near a week for your reply. Any day now...- Invert, 7-24

You are holding crack against a crackwhore when it comes to me and the brain. All wannabes are impatient.

Wonderful diagrams- but its not what I meant. I wish I had model of one in my hand, to feel the cortical nub of the angular gyrus. Any of those .gif files I could have linked you to on the internet.
But I've learned something- in you calling it the Holy Land I can see how my thinking of it as handmaiden is a bit simplistic but.......is it so?
Institutionliazed religions is only a handmaiden for the more realistic sense of ecstacy in the primitive worshiper. You yourself said God is only a johny-come-lately.
This tells me, where importance goes, the precedent is key. What came before bears more influence than things after, the ecstacy of primitive man and the god of small children are both more powerful than the diplomacy of dogma afterwards trying to tame it.

Therefore, the left temporal lobe even if it is simply resposinble for the mere shaping of words and conceptualing of a syntactical...hint....or somesuch, it is still far more powerful in its influence of man's thinking than than the angular gyyrus, which seems like a latecommer.
This explains the drama of TLE's.
And its not only the inferior parietal lobe (whreabouts this magic chunk of tissue can be found) that is different in the human as compared to other mammals- I'm sure you know the prefrontal cortex as WELL as the temporal lobe where the language centers are found are very, very different.

You also ask this, and I'm pressed for time here I've got until 10 (vultures!):

Before I go comment on the rest. Let me throw this out. It is a common-sense sort of idea that our language evolved from the primitive call language of the animals. The limbic speech. But, if it evolved from it, why do we still have it? We have two seperate languages. Each distinct. If one came from the other, wouldn't it supersede other? Actually take over the area of the brain with which it was used? I've got a ways to go into my language and evolution of the brain books. I'll give more details later.

Well, once you've learned to read do you forget the alphabet?
"Reason" is a johny come lately as well, you know. I believe its becuase of a lack of that interpreter narrowing things with its reason, eating up space an energy in its slowing down to define things and rationalize them that the savant is so in tune with his powers in his autism.
We still have them (limbic languages and tendenies) becuae we've only built up on them, imagine Crete and the layers and layers and layers of civiliazations built on top of it. I imaige the brain to be someting like Rome, but instead of seeing ruins built on top of each other so that one is only able to see one at a time, we can see all past epochs all at once if we'd only just look at them, as the autist does.
So we would see Colesium simulataneously with Nero's Golden house on which it was built on after its ruin, instead of just the Collessium up on its own hiding the golden house below it.
We see only the colosseum.
The autists sees all the goodies below it.

Courtesty of Freud's "Civilizaton and its Discontents:
"Since we overcame the error of of supposing that the forgetting we are familiar with signifies a destruction of the memory- that is, its annihilation- we have been inclined to take the opposite view, that in the mental life nothing which has been formed can perish; that everyting is somehow preserved......."


How else then do you think we can repress ourselves? Quite impossible with nothing there repress to.

 

[gendanken]

And the spelling is awful as I have no time to go back and correct.

Curse you all.

 

[water]

Gendanken,

You helped out terribly though- I've placed John 1:1 at the top of the section where I have this theory written out.

Heh.

But nickles and dimes, you'd rather be elsewhere.

Yeah, on a cherry tree, eating cherries -- but cherry season is over now.

He's brought to light a good fucking point, though- gestalt to explain the psyche's tendency to force patterns in everything.

... and in semantics the equvalent to that term would be "schemes and scripts", in System Theory "comparable world models" -- these are external ways to explain what the interpreter mechanism does and why the brain can be regarded as a guesstimator. I seriously thought this was already known, so I didn't mention it.


***

A bit off topic, but then again, this is Kabbalah:

Courtesty of Freud's "Civilizaton and its Discontents:
"Since we overcame the error of of supposing that the forgetting we are familiar with signifies a destruction of the memory- that is, its annihilation- we have been inclined to take the opposite view, that in the mental life nothing which has been formed can perish; that everyting is somehow preserved......."


How else then do you think we can repress ourselves? Quite impossible with nothing there repress to.

Elsewhere, psychological murder was mentioned. I was thinking: If you want to interpret indoctrination/teachning etc., as "psychological murder", then you would eventually have to prove that complete forgetting IS possible.

Successful psychological murder would in this be the equal to complete forgetting the old ways. But does this happen -- can we prove that (healthy!) people indeed completely forget, or retain all memories?

From here on, we can usually only work with the assumption that what gets forgotten is the "key" to a certain memory, while the memory itself may remain, and surface at some other occasions.

And it is this "key" that bugs me: Isn't this "key" some metaphor for something that, if we would re-conceptualize the whole theory of memory, would not be necessary anymore?

My main assumption is that human thinking and language has been awfully mystified, and is regarded as awfully complex, dazzling, amazing and etc. oh so etc.

I don't mean to make light of the brain's abilities, but I think humans have mystified them. I wonder why. Maybe because when a brain (with all its great abilities) looks at itself it feels like a mirror facing another mirror: infinity. Right there, in your head.

 

[invert_nexus]

My old fellow, Kabbellow

Heh. A play on Shakespeare or something? Sounds like a licqueur. Kabbellow for the deep down thirst. Refreshing.

"Developing from our tendency to sense continuity, obsessed if you, will with patterns, he brings to mind the Gestalt shools in Germany which stressed that an experinece is a unified totality, greater than the sum of its parts. We beome insensible to the consituent elements.....neglecting our creations from their birth"

Damn. Almost forgot about Gestalt. So, I've looked it up and it seems to be:

a.) A collection of memories connected neurologically based on similar emotions.
b.) Any system of stuff that appears to take on an existence of its own, beyond the sum of its parts. It can be addressed as a whole.
c.) A perceptual pattern or structure possessing qualities as a whole that cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts.
d.) The totality of an experience at all logical levels and in all senses.
e.) whole, figure, form, pattern, meaning, configuration
f.) Collection of memories that are organized in a certain way around a certain subject.​

Hmm. So, it is about pattern-recognition as I had been thinking. But it's more than mere pattern recognition. It's about holistic pattern-recognition. The sum being greater than it's parts. It does seem to define what we are talking about rather well, doesn't it? Going beyond patterns into something . . . more.

If I tell Jenyar of this being a nasty habit of the interpreter in man's left cerebral hemisphere ...he would bore to tears and move on.

Undoubtably. Since that seems to be exactly what occurred.

Me: She can be the impatient sort at times, can't she?
Her: Pause.

Damnit Gendanken! I've been waiting damn near a week for your reply. Any day now...- Invert, 7-24

I knew you were going to use that against me. We can all be impatient at times. I don't hold it against you. Hope you won't hold it against me. I just need my crack, woman!

I wish I had model of one in my hand, to feel the cortical nub of the angular gyrus.

Maybe a little. . . grave-robbing is in order? *furtive glance* kidding. of course. I do understand you. I thought it somewhat strange that you needed a diagram. They seem to be everywhere. But, perhaps these might help any following along from the sidelines. (And by the way, the first one is crap. Don't even bother calling it lovely.)

Did you check out the links I gave? I guarantee you that you will enjoy them. The MRI one and the brain disection one, especially.

But I've learned something- in you calling it the Holy Land I can see how my thinking of it as handmaiden is a bit simplistic but.......is it so?

I've begun to think that perhaps we are both wrong. I have been thinking of it as the most important area for language and syntax. You have been considering the temporal lobe for this. I think that in fact, the answer lies in between. All depends on the other. None is truly more important than the other.

Gestalt, if you see what I mean.

I've also been learning a bit more about the temporal. A lot more going on in there than words. And, not all words are found in the temporal. Nouns and adjectives seem to have their home in the temporal lobe. While verbs (and maybe adverbs) find their home in the frontal cortex. The question is. . . where are the boundary words located? (Words like since, when, the) This is an area that has not been studied greatly yet. Although a few studies were supposedly underway at the time of writing Lingua ex Machina so perhaps the answers are out there now. These boundary words are one of the greatest differences in our true language and protolanguage. It is these boundary words which allow us to parse sentences in to phrases and clauses. Without these words, we would only be able to speak and understand the simplest of sentences.

The thing is, is that not all words are confined to the temporal. Many are. But, what all these sites have in common is that they are generally within a finger's width of the sylvian fissure.

<img src="http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3053&stc=1">​

Hmm. Looking at that picture again. I had originally taken the white circles to mean naming sites as well. But, apparently not. So, from that, it seems that practically none of the naming sites are in the temporal. Naming sites don't exactly mean words though. They are used for naming objects. So, that probably explains why there are more in the parietal than temporal. The senses received from said object must be combined and linked to the name.

I am thinking that the white circles are regular word sites. Shit, could be wrong on that. Calvin doesn't go into great detail on the studies involved here. Basically a synopsis of work that is detailed in "Conversations with Neil's Brain by William H. Calvin and George Ojemann." This might be an interesting read. The tests are done on epileptics who are about to undergo surgery. They determine which areas of the brain might be safely removed.

As stated, applying electrical shock to certain areas of the brain usually result in a suppression of the activity of that site. Though, in the motor corext in the back end of the frontal lobe, it causes poorly coordinated movemtnts. Crude sensory impressions can be evoked in primary sensory cortices, but usually not formed impressions. The reports of hearing music, or seeing a man walking a dog, may be related to the patient's typical aura of an impending seizure -- something that the exectrical buzz can provoke if too strong. These "experiential responses" might just be "burned in" by previous seizures. Not easily disassociated into meaningful parts, rather like multi-word exclamations or whale songs.

I'm not sure what he's talking about exactly with that last sentence. Can you make it out?


Hmm. I think I'm beginning to diverge a bit here. One last thing on the temporal lobe. The Human Temporal Lobe: Visual in back. Auditory on top. The rest? Categories, apparently. Exactly what is needed for protolanguage's vocabulary (according to Bickerton.) Towards the rear, colors. Then comes stuff like tool concepts. The front end seems to be carefully delimited categories of one: proper nouns. Epileptic patients wh have had a temporal tip surgically removed sometimes say that they're alway having to write down a new name, that their recall of proper names in what it used to be.

Memories are stored somewhere in there too. Dammit. I gotta go back through the NN with this new temporal thinking in mind. Too many fucking books to work through. I love it.

Therefore, the left temporal lobe even if it is simply resposible for the mere shaping of words and conceptualizng of a syntactical...hint....or somesuch, it is still far more powerful in its influence of man's thinking than than the angular gyrus, which seems like a latecomer.

A latecomer, but an important latecomer. It seems to be where this gestalt process takes place. But, it can't do it's thing with out the temporal. And, it is practically temporal itself. We may be guilty of outdated thinking on the brain here. I've been reading that the brain is not so divided into lobes as it once was. And the boundaries between these lobes are difficult to pinpoint at the best of times. And, all brains are different, to some degree.

And its not only the inferior parietal lobe (whreabouts this magic chunk of tissue can be found) that is different in the human as compared to other mammals- I'm sure you know the prefrontal cortex as WELL as the temporal lobe where the language centers are found are very, very different.

I imagine so. I just haven't seen anything that details the changes in such a dramatic way as the angular gyrus. The way I read the book it seemed to be a story of the magnificence of the angular gyrus and the transcendence of the inferior parietal. Funny how POV works, isn't it? I'm going to reread with an emphasis on the temporal lobe. Perhaps you should do the same with an emphasis on the angular gyrus?

Well, once you've learned to read do you forget the alphabet?

Hmm. This was a supposition made by Calvin and Bickerton that I just repeated. It made sense. Spoke to me, if you will. But, I do see your point. It seems somehow odd that the areas of the brain used for the two different modes of communication are so vastly far apart and different in structure, use, and content. Is it important to you that our language developed from the monkey's call?


Rosa,

Yeah, on a cherry tree, eating cherries -- but cherry season is over now.

Mmm. You know, I've never had fresh cherries. Was never much of a cherry eater. But, you've set my mouth to watering with that. Maybe a trip down to fruit stand is in order.

I seriously thought this was already known, so I didn't mention it.

I think it was. It's just a new way of looking at it. Gestalt. One word that says so much.

A bit off topic, but then again, this is Kabbalah:

How dare you!?! We are never off topic in here. We are the topic. It is the gestalt that we are after. And all things serve the great gestalt.

Elsewhere, psychological murder was mentioned. I was thinking: If you want to interpret indoctrination/teachning etc., as "psychological murder", then you would eventually have to prove that complete forgetting IS possible.

You make some good points here. But, it's not merely forgetting that is required. It is a reconceptualizing. A changing of the memory, even if it isn't erased, it is transformed into something new (apparently). Your holistic 8 describes this. Gestalt describes this. Once a thing is done, it cannot be undone. Once you see a thing a new way, you can never go back to looking at it the old way. Short of brain damage, I suppose. And, with this possibility of brain damage turning back the hands of "murder" comes the possibilty that in fact the memory isn't altered, merely our interpretation of that memory. Said interpretation which lies elsewhere in the mind.

I don't mean to make light of the brain's abilities, but I think humans have mystified them. I wonder why. Maybe because when a brain (with all its great abilities) looks at itself it feels like a mirror facing another mirror: infinity. Right there, in your head.

Heh. And we've made light comments in here about such a process. How what we are doing could be compared to the original animistic inspirations. The exception being that we are gathering our information from much more. . . factualized sources. The ancients had no scientific knowledge to draw from (next to none) so they made it all up. We have tons of data and are merely poring over it in search of patterns. Of gestalt. Of ourselves.

Mystified brain? In many ways, we are seeking to de-mystify it. By understanding it. By loving it. By accepting it with all it's little foibles. It's ours after all. It may be naughty sometimes, but it's ours and we gotta love it.

 

[wesmorris]

Man where to start! Hehe. You crazy kids.

Hey uhm, i think we force patterns onto everything because of our experience. Our experiences get all crunched up into concepts, concepts form the root of the tree of our thoughts so to speak. We can encompass portion X of our conceptual basis at any given time. New input is filtered through the remnants of the process we've been ungoing up until that moment. Voila: patterns.

 

[gendanken]

My..........look here, look here. If it isn't Mr. Wesmorris himself.
Only makes me want to come back here sooner and reply.

I'm sure you noticed we've completely slaughtered this thread with my bullshit theory, yes? Invert is just as culpable.

Back here soon.

Hey uhm, i think we force patterns onto everything because of our experience. Our experiences get all crunched up into concepts, concepts form the root of the tree of our thoughts so to speak.

Gestalt in a nutshell. You'll never catch up.

 

[wesmorris]

Yeah, I can't read this whole thread. Too much for my delicate psyche to take. LOL.