At 09:50 PM 7/09/2001 -0600, DCH wrote:
>xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>i'm confused a lot here.
Me too. But I read Voltaire as satire, if that helps.
>why does a brain have incoherent ideas
I think Voltaire's point was "incoherent from whose perspective?". Maybe
I'm confused.
>[snip]
>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
Not generally -- but such things happen in myth, as allegory etc: is the
mythologist incoherent?. But the rationality or otherwise you seem to be
meaning here is that the six-y.0. is not capable of impregnating the elder
woman, nor is she able, perhaps, to conceive. Anyway, if you ask me, the
rationality of anybody wanting to be impregnated is dubious.
>- it isn't rational to demand answers about
>motivation from the engine of a Nash Rambler
It is if you are a historian of technology or a political economist or some
such. You just can't ask the engine a direct question using words and
expect the engine to speak back to you. You would have to ask the
architecture of the modern urban landscape to render up its secrets in
relation to the engine, or ask how the engine was produced, distributed, or
etc. The stubborn thing will give up at least some of its answers in terms
of motivation (meant here two-sidedly), however indirectly.
>, or to probe an orange for natural strains of cyanide that have been
>prompted by the devil's
>interference in orchard development.
Depends on your definition of "the devil". Like god, I think the devil has
a corporate (social-systemic) form and origin. Should the orange begin to
display strains of cyanide, I might say "a devil did it".
>so, why does a brain produce irrational ideas, like relations between
>microwaves in the air and messages from aliens,
Well, a lot of stuff gets transmitted by microwave these days. My whole
university campus's communication system runs on microwaves. And I am sure
there are aliens running the admin and IT departments. And since we are all
alienated from each other, mediated by myriad things, and because we
communicate using microwaves as a medium, it is quite reasonable to assume
that messages from aliens arrive all the time.
Shazbut! (Mork)
>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?
Yeah --- I think that's Voltaire's point.
>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?
The sickness of an insane social system that produces insane people.
Neuroscience interests me not in the least.
>i've lost the train of thought.
I missed the train of thought, so I jumped in a Nash Rambler of thought
instead, and drove off to work at the same time as 12 million other people,
thinking scambled thoughts all the while.
confusedly, pokingly, proddingly, teasingly,
Phil
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