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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: irie.one]
    #14090078 - 03/08/11 11:37 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

irie.one said:
Are you considering thoughts to be only forced by an individual's thinking or do you consider instinctual actions (breathing, seeing, etc.) to be thoughts as well?




if one is thinking about breathing, then yes breathing would qualify. If one is not thinking about breathing, I wouldn't include it in what I'm asking about, even if breathing is still happening. 

Quote:

irie.one said:
Hmm, so you're asking if thoughts physically exist, like molecules and whatnot? In that case, no, thoughts have no physical power. They are not subject to the laws of nature (such as gravity), and they cannot be located as anything more than connected neurotransmitters in the brain. If this weren't the case, we could have the ability to physically manipulate thoughts like being able to remove or relocate them.




Yeah, thoughts have a physical correspondence in the brain for sure. And we can to a certain degree manipulate thoughts. Many individuals with brain damage exhibit varying thought patterns related to the area of damage and varying behavioral patterns that correspond. The very famous case of Phineas Gage shows this in crude detail. Further cases get much more specific.


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Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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InvisiblePoid
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: circastes]
    #14090153 - 03/08/11 11:49 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

circastes said:
Funny debate.

Thought is everything.


Impeccable evidence, my good sir. :sherlock:


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Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. --  Bob Dylan
fireworks_god said:
It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.

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Invisibleirie.one
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14090235 - 03/09/11 12:07 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
Quote:

irie.one said:
Are you considering thoughts to be only forced by an individual's thinking or do you consider instinctual actions (breathing, seeing, etc.) to be thoughts as well?




if one is thinking about breathing, then yes breathing would qualify. If one is not thinking about breathing, I wouldn't include it in what I'm asking about, even if breathing is still happening. 

Quote:

irie.one said:
Hmm, so you're asking if thoughts physically exist, like molecules and whatnot? In that case, no, thoughts have no physical power. They are not subject to the laws of nature (such as gravity), and they cannot be located as anything more than connected neurotransmitters in the brain. If this weren't the case, we could have the ability to physically manipulate thoughts like being able to remove or relocate them.




Yeah, thoughts have a physical correspondence in the brain for sure. And we can to a certain degree manipulate thoughts. Many individuals with brain damage exhibit varying thought patterns related to the area of damage and varying behavioral patterns that correspond. The very famous case of Phineas Gage shows this in crude detail. Further cases get much more specific.




I wouldn't consider breathing to be a thought since more times than not it occurs involuntarily, yet the process of breathing as it happens in our brains is the same as a conscious thought; just a series of connected neurotransmitters except the reaction happens automatically.

By manipulated thoughts I mean it more in the sense of being physically manipulatable, like picked up and put in a different location or something of that sort.

Having brain damage as Phineas Gage did caused a deactivation of certain neurotransmitters in the part of the brain that had an effect on his judgment (notably judgment on what he formerly considered to be morally right), which took away his ability to create involuntary thoughts that would have prevented his post-accident immoral behaviors (being profane, lying, gambling, etc.) from occurring. The thoughts weren't manipulated as much as they were just unable to occur.


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: irie.one]
    #14090309 - 03/09/11 12:19 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Sure. I consider it manipulation but limiting ability works just as well for me :thumbup:

But getting back to the original topic, does this suggest that there is an innate power to thoughts, e.g., thoughts regarding judgement, that cannot be overcome without physical intervention?


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Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14090436 - 03/09/11 12:44 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

does this suggest that there is an innate power to thoughts




Been over this.

No.

:lockdance:


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Invisibleirie.one
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14090446 - 03/09/11 12:45 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
Sure. I consider it manipulation but limiting ability works just as well for me :thumbup:

But getting back to the original topic, does this suggest that there is an innate power to thoughts, e.g., thoughts regarding judgement, that cannot be overcome without physical intervention?





That's an interesting suggestion... I suppose that is the logic behind a lobotomy, that some thoughts can't be altered except by drastic physical intervention. I wouldn't consider a lobotomy to be a successful method of correcting problems, maybe it accomplishes a more mellow individual, but at what cost of other types of thoughts such as happy ones?


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Invisibleirie.one
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14090849 - 03/09/11 04:22 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Here's a video from this thread that raises my curiosity about thoughts having power. You can watch the first two minutes and get the gist of it, but the whole clip is pretty interesting.



How does this affect the argument that thoughts have no innate power?


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #14091882 - 03/09/11 11:00 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:

does this suggest that there is an innate power to thoughts




Been over this.

No.





Why not?


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Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14092161 - 03/09/11 11:55 AM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
Where does their influence come from then?




brain function and chemical reaction


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
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InvisibledeCypher
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle]
    #14092248 - 03/09/11 12:16 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Hmm, by innate power do you mean causal efficacy?  I'd say that brain states have causal efficacy but thoughts do not; they are a side-product of brain processes.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Icelander]
    #14092249 - 03/09/11 12:17 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Homunculus.


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: deCypher]
    #14092260 - 03/09/11 12:18 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

deCypher said:
Hmm, by innate power do you mean causal efficacy?  I'd say that brain states have causal efficacy but thoughts do not; they are a side-product of brain processes.




:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

thanks for putting it like that, cleared a few things up for me.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Kickle] * 2
    #14092307 - 03/09/11 12:29 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

DC likes to kill threads with lucid explanations. :mad2:


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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #14092320 - 03/09/11 12:32 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

yeah, what a spoil sport


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InvisiblePenelope_Tree
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: deCypher]
    #14092417 - 03/09/11 12:54 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

I have something to say!!

Thoughts as a side-product don't seem to be advantageous.

Perhaps thoughts originally arose accidentally as a side-process, but it seems like the advancement of species is moving towards harnessing the 'power of thought'. Take abstract thought for example, namely mathematics. You want to solve some equation, but you don't yet know the steps, so you're following from a reader. You think about the steps involved in the equation, going from 1 to 2 to 3, etc, until eventually you've learned them well enough to do it automatically, or 'without thought'. However, cognition is still involved; you've just taken it to the point where its no longer salient.


My point being, it doesn't seem that thoughts are causally inefficacious. In the example, thoughts facilitate a series of thoughts, and it could work in reverse too, where thoughts inhibit thought.


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InvisibledeCypher
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Penelope_Tree]
    #14092447 - 03/09/11 01:02 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
yeah, what a spoil sport




:ilold:

Quote:

penelope_tree said:
I have something to say!!

Thoughts as a side-product don't seem to be advantageous.

Perhaps thoughts originally arose accidentally as a side-process, but it seems like the advancement of species is moving towards harnessing the 'power of thought'. Take abstract thought for example, namely mathematics. You want to solve some equation, but you don't yet know the steps, so you're following from a reader. You think about the steps involved in the equation, going from 1 to 2 to 3, etc, until eventually you've learned them well enough to do it automatically, or 'without thought'. However, cognition is still involved; you've just taken it to the point where its no longer salient.


My point being, it doesn't seem that thoughts are causally inefficacious. In the example, thoughts facilitate a series of thoughts, and it could work in reverse too, where thoughts inhibit thought.




I don't know, I feel like the feeling of thoughts causing other thoughts is really illusory; instead we experience a succession of thoughts that appear to be causally connected only because the brain states that produced each thought were causally connected.  If you do accept the causal efficacy of thoughts then you run into troubles trying to mesh this with the causal efficacy of brain states: are BOTH the thought "I'm going to move my hand" and the brain state that is correlated to this thought responsible for the movement of your hand?  Can we take away either cause and still have the effect?


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InvisiblePoid
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: deCypher]
    #14092658 - 03/09/11 01:44 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

deCypher said:
Quote:

Kickle said:
yeah, what a spoil sport




:ilold:

Quote:

penelope_tree said:
I have something to say!!

Thoughts as a side-product don't seem to be advantageous.

Perhaps thoughts originally arose accidentally as a side-process, but it seems like the advancement of species is moving towards harnessing the 'power of thought'. Take abstract thought for example, namely mathematics. You want to solve some equation, but you don't yet know the steps, so you're following from a reader. You think about the steps involved in the equation, going from 1 to 2 to 3, etc, until eventually you've learned them well enough to do it automatically, or 'without thought'. However, cognition is still involved; you've just taken it to the point where its no longer salient.


My point being, it doesn't seem that thoughts are causally inefficacious. In the example, thoughts facilitate a series of thoughts, and it could work in reverse too, where thoughts inhibit thought.




I don't know, I feel like the feeling of thoughts causing other thoughts is really illusory; instead we experience a succession of thoughts that appear to be causally connected only because the brain states that produced each thought were causally connected.  If you do accept the causal efficacy of thoughts then you run into troubles trying to mesh this with the causal efficacy of brain states: are BOTH the thought "I'm going to move my hand" and the brain state that is correlated to this thought responsible for the movement of your hand?  Can we take away either cause and still have the effect?


Do you have any proof that the brain state isn't the same thing as the thought, and that thoughts are correlated with brain states?


--------------------
Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. --  Bob Dylan
fireworks_god said:
It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.

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InvisibledeCypher
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: Poid]
    #14092669 - 03/09/11 01:47 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Brain states are physical, thoughts are mental.  And you can show correlation between the two by looking at an fMRI scan of a person's brain while they're thinking.  Also there's no such thing as proof in science.  :nono:


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InvisiblePenelope_Tree
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: deCypher]
    #14092674 - 03/09/11 01:47 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Where to draw the line seems to be the big question in brain state vs thought..

Much learning occurs due to the process of dendritic pruning, whereby connections among neurons are lost, rather than made, in the brain. It seems like the brain could regulate bodily processes quite well regardless of learning (I'd say procceses such as regulating breathing are innate to the brain's purpose), but in order to learn, the brain would need some sort of feedback so that it could lose unnecessary connections. The mechanism that would be responsible for learning would be thought. In this respect, it seems like thoughts are able to act upon the brain.


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InvisiblePoid
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Re: Do thoughts have innate power? [Re: deCypher]
    #14092772 - 03/09/11 02:07 PM (12 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

deCypher said:
Brain states are physical, thoughts are mental.  And you can show correlation between the two by looking at an fMRI scan of a person's brain while they're thinking.


So how do you know that what we detect on fMRI scans and actual thoughts aren't part of the same system? What makes you believe that the correlation between them is so loose that the causally connected brain states that produce thoughts don't necessitate that thoughts are also similarly causally connected?


Quote:

deCypher said:
Also there's no such thing as proof in science.  :nono:


You know what I meant..convincing evidence.

If there's no such thing as proof in science, then where is there a such thing as proof? Subjective experience? :undecided:


--------------------
Well I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them. --  Bob Dylan
fireworks_god said:
It's one thing to simply enjoy a style of life that one enjoys, but it's another thing altogether to refer to another person's choice as "wrong" or to rationalize their behavior as being pathological or resulting from some sort of inadequacy or failing so as to create a sense of superiority or separation as yet another projection of a personal fear or control issue.

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