Are you your brain?

I think we are just brains, our body is our 'vehicle' which our brain drives. Other organs and features are needed for us to live but ultimately our brain controls everything we do from pumping the blood round our veins to enabling us to run a marathon.

 

If you can't apprehend gamma rays, how do you know what they are? And, you would have no way of identifying x-rays as the cause of your done-ness.

We can't hear very low frequency sounds, say in the range that an elephant can, or high frequency sounds, say in the range that a dog can. We are hurtling through space say at 65,000 miles per hour but we have absolutely no sensation of that. Yet we can apprehend these things, not through physical sensory input, but through the sense to make sense of things. We can make measurements and comparisons that range far beyond the reach of the physical body.

Perception is not knowledge.

 

Ah, you're talking about technology. If that's the 'mind' then the field is wide open. The body apprehends all it needs to. The mind can perceive more. I used the word perception in the wrong way - I don't think it can apply to the body at all.

Hmm.

If you perceive something mustn't you first have knowledge of that something? A mother says to a newborn child "look, that's a bird". That's when the stream of light and colours and sound becomes an object of perception in the baby. Without forming a concept there's nothing there - the body acts instantly and then stops acting.

 

Perceiving is the mind in conjunction with the body as perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to fabricate a mental representation .

We are never without knowledge as it is being shared.

You are talking about naming things. Our genetic code is inherent modeling. Names are place holders for neural net modeling, fabricating a mental representation.

 

I don't know, I mean...I do. Knowledge is knowing, just as perception is perceiving, and I can see the certain synonymity between them! :-D

 

You neglect to mention what it is that is doing the organizing. If it were a passive process of the hardware I would observe the same things at 12 years as at 60 years. Surely knowledge is the active participant in perception.

But naming is modelling, surely. Any manifold of color and sound that is used to build a concept is designated by something other than ourselves. This is another way of saying it is given a name, whatever that may be.

 

That's a great concept! That could integrate into the concept of a collective subconscious to some degree, a theory I've always been interested in!

 

I don't think I neglected to say the mind, in conjunction with the body works to fabricate a mental representation. I also said we are never without knowledge as it is being shared.

Perhaps it would be helpful to say, knowledge is beyond symbols.
Perception by it's nature is symbolic representation.

To call a lion a lion, does not make it a lion. It has a creaturehood in it's own right. We have inherent genetic modeling and we are endowed with the capacity for neural net modeling and I was trying to make the distinction. The one, you are born with, the other you make up.

 

Are you certain in what you see? We see reflected/refracted light.

 

In what I see, yes. If knowledge is not perception, then I don't know what is! :-D

If perception, by its nature, were only symbolic representation, knowledge would be forever beyond us!

 

You don't know what perception is or knowledge?
A tree knows but does a tree perceive?

Why?

 

These examples are not interchangeable as neurology and psychology has demonstrated a tremendous amount of connectivity between brain activity and brain regions with corresponding actions/behaviors/responses. Damaged, infected and deterorating brain regions produce radically altered behaviors without fail, speech disorders consistently link with a few specific underdeveloped or damaged areas of the brain, whole lobes of the brain reveal designated functioning towards sight, sound, so on and so forth. Newer technologies measuring brain activity are reinforcing these concepts.

With that said, there is certainly a long way to go to fully understanding the brain and as its not a static organ, there are seemingly always going to be some questions/situations left unanswered. Perhaps there is aspects of the self that exist beyond the brain but to suggest that there is no connection being found between the brain and our behavior shows a very primitive understanding of neuropsychology.

 

thedope:

Not if they're separate, though I can't see how anyone could know them to be so.

A tree grows!

Because, as you say, knowledge is beyond symbols.

We're our brains. Why shouldn't we be?! It's not stopping us being more than them is it? :-D

 

i just pulled a little muscle in my brain.

 

Have you ever seen something that wasn't there or failed to see something that was there?

A good place for the word exactly.

I don't get it. You are not a symbol.

If we are our brains then we are subject to decay.

An individual brain does not constitute, we. It is mind that we share and the mind we share transcends the brain.

I regard mind as ubiquitous and not confined to central nervous systems.
We are not our brains but our brains are necessary that we may relate according to a certain frequency or spectrum.

I doubt the existence of the graviton.

 

No to the former, yes to the latter, but perception is nevertheless knowledge.
I know no absolute.

A good place for the word 'exactly'?

Yet a tree roots and leaves. :-D

Our being bodies doesn't stop us being beings! Rejuvenation belongs to the self.

The individual brain does not constitute us, no, and yes, our mind transcends the individual brain...but there is no reason on earth for transcending its part in our constitution! :-D We are our brains, no matter that we are more than them.

My feet are not my only carriage!

I regard mind as unique to them. The universe is only conscious through life.

May what is regarded as only a necessity of relation be discovered as entirely desirable! :-D

 

Have you ever thought a thing to be one way and discover that it was quite another? (another way of seeing something that is not there.) We try to be knowledgeable in our perceptions, but we may easily find ourselves mistaken.

Excepting the body for us?

I don't find it that fortunate as the word exactly doesn't satisfy my curiosity about your statement.

Why would knowledge be beyond us if not for perception?

I need to recharge. Shall return.

 

Yes.

Sure.

No exceptions.

Because knowledge remains perception. There is no knowledge beyond the active state of knowing.

That we can be mistaken in what we perceive to be our knowledge in no way counters this.

 

Do these knowing things depend on perception?

My feet are not my only carriage! [/QUOTE]
So the statement, we are our brains, is qualified?

Nervous systems? A sponge doesn't have one.

?

Honestly, without pain it would be no problem.

 

If we can be mistaken in our perceptions then how can perception be knowledge?

Except the universe is only conscious through life?

The two are not synonymous. That your heart has a rhythm, or that your breath rises and falls is an active state of knowing but they do not require the attendance of active perception.

If we are mistaken in our perceptions then perception cannot be knowledge.