Reply to comment

 In the beginning of the semester, I was on the Dickinsonian side of the spectrum, and I maintain my stance now. I also believed that the soul was part of the mind/brain, because I did not see any proof otherwise. Where else would the soul be? From this class and from the book I read for the commentary, "Proust was a Neuroscientist", I can conclude that not only does the soul come from the brain, it also comes from the body; the soul, mind, and body depend on each other. Surely without the I-function, we would have no sense of self, no consciousness. We would have no body and no soul. However, our feelings also depend on our body as we are in tune with many of the fine changes going on within our bodies (sensory input, muscles moving, pain, etc).

I thought this class was very interesting and I would recommend it to other people because I think a lot of the ideas are important for others to be aware of. One in particular are the ways our brains/ns are malleable and those in which they are not. For example, we have certain set points, but on the other hand, we are more creative/imaginative than we think. Our neural connections can change, but many of our actions depend on established patterns of activities across motor neurons.

One idea I am still considering is the nature of sensation. How interconnected are our senses really? How do we distinguish between our interconnected stimuli, how different (how interrelated) is vision from our other senses?

Another question I have is how we build concepts of things: how do these connections grow and how dependent are they on our sensory input?

I also have lots of questions about artificial intelligence and connectivity that I hope can be answered in researching my last web paper as well as taking some computational methods classes!