Home
Yomama wrote:surfnrg wrote:Eric et. al:
If you go to the other thread where I posted a lecture by Dr. Robert Sapolsky
and listen to it you will find that all the neurological disorders you listed are
just a little further one way or the other on the same time line from normal human behavior. In other words WE are all on the same continuum. If you could give us an injection of say "A" hormone we would act in exactly the same way as a paranoid schizophrenic. And indeed it might take less to get me there than say Seaoat because "A" hormone exists in all of us.
The fact that that "A" hormone was formed as an infant in the schizophrenic in reaction to a severe bout with rheumatic fever and was over produced or a brain barrier broke down through a one in 15,000 chance was not his 'CHOICE' no more than it was your choice that your body reacted normally when you had the same disease. So schizophrenia is not a choice no more a choice than Seaoat wound up with a normal amount of it.
What I studied and matriculated with a thesis in epistemology on Jean Piaget. The works of all those great philosophers et. al. has not changed but the understanding brought to the table by molecular biologists and neuro biologists has turned the whole thing upside down.
And while the example above which illustrates why free will does not exist the disease I illustrated the new biology of the mind would posit that same firing of neurons over exactly the same synapses is ultimately controlled by chemical reactions. And these chemical reactions can be measured and are in direct response to any given stimuli or challenge. Ergo free will is an illusion.
http://samsnyder.com/2011/05/12/the-end-of-free-will/
Watch the videos I am posting as they are the most fascinating things I have seen since university. Indeed as an existentialist I can't find an argument to overcome laboratory verifiability and duplication. The are simply,
right.
I see where you are going with this Surf, and agree that conditions can be aggravated by chemical stimuli. I agree that I could be driven crazy by a drug... and do crazy things... things I wouldn't ordinarily do.
There is no normal... everybody is "off" a little bit, but the average Joe makes his own decisions... ergo, free will.
Desperate folks rob convenience stores because they needed the money and decided to rob the store... a conscious decision... not because they had a chemical imbalance and like Flip Wilson used to say "The devil made me do it". They had a choice and made the wrong one.
As you know the culprit is most likely an overproduction of dopamine.
