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nasabere's picture

The brain and order in the disorderly

While I'm also inclined to believe that something exists beyond the nervous system which is responsible for the mediation of "behavior," I think it is a bit problematic to associate "inexplicable things" with randomness--or disorder. Perhaps an order, unobservable to the human eye, exists. If this is the case, I find this rather simplistic model to be quite profound.

More on order and disorder (and I apologize in advance for the circularity of my discussion): Is not our notion of order and disorder but a mere human construct? It seems to me that order is inexorably tied to the language with which we speak about these phenomena. That is, as science evolves, so will our understanding of "orderliness"; orders and complexities can thus be created.So, if we are to associate "randomness," in terms of response, (and thus disorder) with the uniqueness of each human experience, then perhaps you are right--some other element may mediate these differences, because a "linear" system can not account for such discrepencies. On the other hand suppose that the so called "randomness" associated with nervous system response is in fact quite orderly--as I am inclined to believe. Then this model would truly be "more right." I think our inability to understand the "orderliness" of the nervous system stems from the fact that modern science has yet to equip us with the skills to understand the mode of its governance. As you see, our modern understandings of "order," "disorder" and even "randomness" are quite subjective and perhaps we might benefit from creating a working definition of all the aforementioned terms before we can address the predictability of the "system" and its endeavors.

I am becoming more confident in this notion of "inputs" and "outputs." If this is "more right," it can be inferred that the brain and its associates are are in  fact very predictable and nothing more or less than a series of input/output boxes. A bit unrelated to this--I am intrigued by the idea of "no inputs" and "no outputs." I've always thought of the nervous system as being in a perpetual state of information exchange. I don't know if I buy that there are moments of pure nonexistent input...

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