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From: larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Causality and the Is (NOT God)
Message-ID: <618@grkermit.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 11:39:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: grkermit.618
Posted: Wed Aug 24 11:39:26 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Aug-83 17:17:19 EDT
References: <963@ittvax.UUCP>
Organization: GenRad Inc., Concord, MA
Lines: 53


	From WEX:
	Oh, so you're claiming to understand human DNA?  Right.  Let me paraphrase:
	"Until you can justify putting human action *inside* the laws of physics,
	your argument doesn't hold water."

In science, you always assume the simplist explaination until the
evidence contradicts it.  I know of no evidence which contradicts the
purely chemical roots of human behavior.

	Let me cite to you a powerful example:  I am playing tennis at a local
	club.  My regular opponent is ill, so I find someone else.  I don't
	know this person, and he's not a club member.  He absolutely,
	mercilessly thrashes me.  He aces me as often as possible, smashes
	volleys into my face, and generally is obnoxious.  After the game, he
	walks off the court past me, laughing a lot.  I have a momentary desire
	to smash him over the head with my racket.  This desire is quite
	intense, and in fact my adrenaline starts flowing.  Now explain why I
	didn't hit him (in terms of 'certain chemical structures in my brain
	which...').

The brain is made up of three main main sections.  The Neocortex, the
Limbic system, and the R-Complex.  The R-Complex is the phylogenicly
oldest part of the brain, going back to fish and reptiles.  The limbic
system didn't appear until mammals, and the Neocortex is unique to
higher mammals including man.  The R-Complex tends to deal with
regulatory and survival type functions such as territoriality.  The
Limbic system tends to deal with what we consider emotional states.
And the Neocortex is primarily concerned with higher mental functions
such as language, sight, abstract thought, etc.

Each of these systems operates in a semi-autonomous manner, with
signals being sent back and forth between them.  Thus, human behavior
is a result of the interaction of these three systems.
A plausable explaination for you actions is that your limbic
system generated a feeling of fear
or hatred of your opponent for humiliating you, (although the
humiliation feeling  itself may have originated in the neocortex).  Your
neocortex sensed this feeling or rage and blocked it.  It did so because
its analytic part realized that there would be negative consequences if
you were to actually hit the opponent.

The generation of the fear in the neocortex can easily be understood as
the setting off of certain chemical reactions due to inputs from the
neocortex.  These reaction cause andrenalin to be produced, which makes
you actually FEEL angry, this is sensed by the neocortex (again
chemically), and the neocortex goes through certain chemical processes
which inhibit any signals to your muscles to hurt the other guy.  I
could go on and on, but I think this gets the point accross.
-- 
Larry Kolodney (The Devil's Advocate)
{linus decvax}!genrad!grkermit!larry
(ARPA)  rms.g.lkk@mit-ai