xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>If the doctors still have a little sense they would reply: "We don't
>know."
>They will never understand why a brain has incoherent ideas; they will
>understand no better why another brain has regulated and consistent
>ideas.
>They will believe themselves to be wise, and they will be as mad as the
>lunatic.
phil, dude-guy-ozzie-meister,
i'm confused a lot here.
why does a brain have incoherent ideas - well, first off, coherence is
subject to normalcies of the social, ee-ya, but also basic linguistic
structures - Kristeva, for example, reads transcripts of psychotic
babbling alongside infant babbling as a way to reckon with the notion or
experience of "babbling" - but the difference, obviously, is in
experience, history, and so on. ,
rationalism is both ideological and linguistic, as well as cultural and
social - it isn't rational for an elder woman to ask a six-year old boy to
impregnate her with his semen - it isn't rational to demand answers about
motivation from the engine of a Nash Rambler, or to probe an orange for
natural strains of cyanide that have been prompted by the devil's
interference in orchard development.
so, why does a brain produce irrational ideas, like relations between
microwaves in the air and messages from aliens,
or satanic spirits who direct human motivation to act, i mean, here IS a
line where most of us can say
"no" - it isn't so much about knowing WHY but as recognizing how
experience and chemistry, biosocial organisms, are infinitely complex, ya?
what neuroscience has learned about dopamine and serotonin, alone, could
consume a lifetime of learning, relations of addictions with irrational
behaviours, fetal-alcohol syndrome,
not to mention psychosocial dis-orders of brain activity,
MRIs produce information about synaptic processes,
so what, really, have you been asking about here?
i've lost the train of thought.
diane
************************************************************************************
"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a
cigarette in a gutter - all are stories. But which is the true story? That
I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard,
waiting for someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making
this note and then another, I do not cling to life."
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931.
(...life clings to me...)
*************************************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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