Klaus et al,
...I'm not sure about this. I mean, yes I accept what Klaus wrote about
what he read about the brain, but not necessarily the conclusions he draws
from them.
Part of it relates to "nature versus nurture". Anyways, it shouldn't be
"versus" but rather "and". It is evident from current science that the
actual structure of one's brain impacts how one reacts to experience. On
top of this, each experience tweaks the brain a little and so future
experiences will evoke different reactions in different people.
There seems to be alot of work (of which I am aware only thanks to
Scientific American again) that has identified chemical and electrical
bases for at least some behaviours. Granted we seem to still know only the
most basic things about how the brain works, but we know ALOT more than we
used to even 10 years ago. The work that's being done now is, for example,
driving the development of drugs that modify behaviour, mood, thought, etc.
Are not these parts of the "cognitive landscape"?
All I'm saying is that alot of the literature that was taken as
authoritative a few decades ago was based on a significantly weaker
understanding of the brain's operation. Isn't it possible that those
writers were, through no fault of their own of course, wrong?
Let's work with the best information we have available, but let's also keep
an open mind regarding the advancement of science and our understanding of
our selves.
Cheers.
Fil
klaus krippendorff wrote:
> i just came across a few bits about the human brain -- not that it matters,
> just for fun:
>
> did you know that the number of neurons in a baby's brain is larger before
> birth than after and slowly decays as we mature?
> what changes in the brain of a human being is the increasing numbers of
> connections among a decaying number of neurons.
>
> the brain is the primary human organ that converts the history of
> experiences (interactions) literary into flesh (gray matter, connections).
> true, it is not the only part of the body that responds to the
> environment -- our feet are shaped by the shoes we wear -- but the brain
> does mainly that, extremely well, appropriately fast, and in support of the
> human body's viability.
>
> it follows that our knowledge of how a particular brain responds to current
> experiences is a function of the history of experiences that shaped that
> brain. it cannot possibly be a function of a disembodied logic called
> cognition, which is (a) abstracted from observed behavior (ideally stated as
> a computer program that can be run on any machine) and (b) radically
> individualized (located as occurring entirely inside a human being, which
> ignores the social history of the brain, the history of experiences).
> [...]
--
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
350 Victoria St. Fax: 416/979-5265
Toronto, ON email: [log in to unmask]
M5B 2K3 Canada http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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