Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation. I think humans have developed a self-image mainly to establish a homeostatic organism. The brain constantly needs up-to-date information on the body's state to regulate all the processes that keep it alive. This is the only way an organism can survive in an ever changing environment. Emotions alone—without conscious feelings—would not be enough. Adults would be as helpless as babies if they suddenly lost their self-image.
Could it be that the heart has, somewhere in its biology, a neural network capable of thought, just like the mind/brain itself? — TheMadFool
center of emotions — Lone Wolf
Thinking is what an organism, embedded in an environment, does. — Πετροκότσυφας
The brain is part of the organism as are the heart, the lungs, ....treating parts as the whole is a fallacy. — Cavacava
The heart's nerves aren't wired to extract or process information. They're just wired to set a rhythmic pace of heart contraction. The gut's N.S. just helps to mediate reflex - peristalsis coordination. I dont think it's capable of awareness or experience.. there are special brain specific networks that mediate those processes — aporiap
You do realize, don't you, that the term "heart" in this context is a metaphor? — T Clark
An inability to recognise metaphor is my own Achilles heel. Who would have thought that the inability to do something would reside in the foot? — Cuthbert
According to current biology not so. I think it's called the limbic system - the part of the brain that does emotions — TheMadFool
I used ''heart'' as a matter of convention. For my purposes ''heart'' means anything non-brain and capable of thought. — TheMadFool
Why can't the heart (the actual biological organ) think?
I know most think that the heart organ lacks the neural network to be capable of thought but the mind-heart connection is hard to ignore. Thoughts give rise to emotions and vice versa. Most think this connection is unidirectional brain-->heart but what if it goes both ways like brain<-->heart?
That would be interesting right? — TheMadFool
According to current biology not so. I think it's called the limbic system - the part of the brain that does emotions.
People (it's a hunch of mine) like paradoxes. It seems to stimulate them somehow. Some of these pardoxes are unsolvable and even if answers are found they're, on the most part, unsatisfactory.
Why is this? What about the obviously irrational (paradoxes are contradictions) is appealing?
I don't think it's our rational side. It must be something else. For lack of a better term I call this side of our personality, which finds paradoxes appealing, the ''heart''.
Some have mentioned that ''heart'' is a metaphor and they're not wrong but are they completely right?
Why can't the heart (the actual biological organ) think?
I know most think that the heart organ lacks the neural network to be capable of thought but the mind-heart connection is hard to ignore. Thoughts give rise to emotions and vice versa. Most think this connection is unidirectional brain-->heart but what if it goes both ways like brain<-->heart?
That would be interesting right? — TheMadFool
Can the heart think? — TheMadFool
What if it could? — TheMadFool
What does "direct and active involvement", as opposed to involvement simpliciter, mean? — Πετροκότσυφας
Do neurons think? And if everything is actively involved in thinking, then what is this everything? Isn't a lung cell part of it? — Πετροκότσυφας
Do you accept that thinking is a function of an organism embedded in an environment? Do you accept that the organism, as a unitary system, and its relation to its environment are indispensable for thinking as we know it? — Πετροκότσυφας
Can you give an example of a paradox which you think is unsolvable? — Sapientia
I think we have an innate drive to resolve kinks or contradictions in our knowledge. Feeling of dissonance and/or confusion, or feelings of knowledge incompleteness I think fuel the drive. Fixation on paradox is an extension of this I think.Forget the heart for the moment.
We're drawn to mystery and the unknown. Does the proclivity for paradoxes originate in our minds? Why does the mind, seat of rationality, like an unsolvable riddle?
Is it because we want to find the fallacies within them or is it another part of our brains, a non/i-llogicaly dimension, that finds these paradoxes interesting and worth visiting.
Note, some of these paradoxes are literally unsolvable.
I'm not sure the mind likes anything, but insofar as you mean "how do paradoxes arise"? perhaps Kant's suggestion is worth thinking about: that it is a result of us taking principles of theoretical reason that apply only to actual and possible experience, and trying to apply them beyond all possible experience.Why does the mind, seat of rationality, like an unsolvable riddle? — TheMadFool
''This sentence is false''.
The accepted solution is to call it nonsense - that it's not a logical proposition. Isn't that convenient? I could do that to all paradoxes too but surely that would be avoiding the problem rather than providing a solution. — TheMadFool
I think we have an innate drive to resolve kinks or contradictions in our knowledge. Feeling of dissonance and/or confusion, or feelings of knowledge incompleteness I think fuel the drive. Fixation on paradox is an extension of this I think. — aporiap
But what if there's truth in these paradoxes that some other part (non-logical) of our minds can understand? — TheMadFool
I don't see how one can contradict the other. Your stomach does not think. Your brain does not think. You think. The video is pretty much irrelevant. — Πετροκότσυφας
What kind of discovery would discredit the point that thinking is a function of the organism and not its organs? — Πετροκότσυφας
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