The body is an organism that is build to survive. Thus, input and internal processes are meant to have it live and keep living. We have chemical influences to the brain, making sure that the neural responses stay in favor to survival, but of course we have an abundance of neural input from visual, auditive and haptic stimuli. However, most organisms (and humans are no exceptions to this rule) have instinctive behavior to these stimuli. The crux is, that the more complex the neural network, the more diversion there is in processing the incoming signals.
Fear the dream
Emotions are the level where instincts can be ‘conflicting’. Animals have this, where they are ‘instinctive’ to act one way and eventually are forced by either other instinct or stimuli to divert from this. That is why dogs also are sometimes noticed to be vividly dream. Humans have not only instincts and emotions on top of them. They are even self-aware of their choices from both these two layers. The stimuli are electrical current changes in the nervous system. Neurons are the storage/processing containers of these electrical charges and respond to specific ‘levels’ of charges. When something is processed repeatedly, the neurons/nervous system will ‘etch’ it. It becomes an instinctive behavior. Before it becomes something like that, it requires quite some work. The layer above it, is the emotional processing. We store most memories by emotional hooks (do understand that these are also connected to strongest stimuli during these emotions: smell, sound, visuals).
These emotional hooks decide how we will respond to these kinds of stimuli the next time. But before such emotional hook is stored, it has to have a unique flow in the nervous system (If you know what an EEPROM is, you might get some analogy here).
The Alpha and the Omega
When we receive new stimuli, that cause (and they always do, don’t kid yourself) emotional feedback on the nervous system, it doesn’t mean the brain will automatically process it. Often we are cognitively so busy that the default electrical charge on the brain the ‘signals’ to be bouncing through the matter, without having any effect. But you can understand (I guess) that this just adds to the already existing charge in the brain (consider it the Beta, Alpha and Gamma wavelengths, where the level of stimuli adds to the lowest, causing it to move to a higher frequency). When we go to sleep, the average charge is lowered, because we are not actively influencing our own awareness anymore. Visual cortex is ‘shutdown’, Auditive cortex is shutdown. etc. So, the brains ‘instinctive’ and ‘emotional’ responses are shutdown. But what is left is the residual charges that bounce through the brain. This residual charge will fire parts of the cortexes, that will result in dreams. The same is also why especially as a child, our dreams seems so random and often have no limit in weirdness. Because as a child we are learning about our instincts, emotions and cognitive abilities (often most apparent in our social behavior), we dream more during our younger years. Our brain needs more answers to ‘unknown’ emotions etc.
Dream Ja Vu
When we sleep enough (and dream enough in REM level), our brain has time to process all the ‘overhead’ charge. It has time to settle in the sediments and etch or sink down the new behavioral patterns.
When we don’t sleep enough, we tend to feel restless, because these additional charges cause a discrepancy in our instinct/emotional and cognitive responses. Consider the following:
We have experienced something.
We have responded, but are unaware if this is the right way.
We sleep but the emotional charge is not dispersed into the brain.
We experience the same situation, but we are aware we do, but we are also aware we ‘haven’t made up our minds yet’ on how our response will be.
This is a short example on the neuro-biological behavior.
Why does THC influence dreaming?
Because the neurological impulses are held back (basically THC causes the nerve endings to slowdown and stimuli to not reach the brain the same moment for instance visual input does. Unless the intake also influences the visual cortex, in which case, the brain will fill in random blanks with very weird stuff), and therefore there is a disassociation between the different signals (besides the signals being weakened. When you finally stop the THC feed, the nerve endings will discharge and even the slightly lower levels of charge will hit the brains neurons full on, with the extra. Consider it a hose, where you left water in it, because the tap was not closed correctly, and you open the tap and the hose will burst water (including that which was already there).
Because not only humans dream, but other animals, too, we know that dreams are not based on cognitive (thoughts) impulses, but rather emotional ones. This has to do with the fact that our brain works in three layers.
Instinctive behavior
Either by genetic blueprint or attained through learning, any organism will adapt to recurring patterns to prevent it from danger. The genetic part is of course hard to change, but the ‘tree’ of choices (I call it the decision tree), the response mechanism of most mammals is automated. Meaning, if something gives an impulse, especially repeatedly, that causes a positive or negative reaction to the nervous system, it will become an instinctive behavior to move to or from such stimulus.
Emotional behavior
Mammals and especially primates (being very recognizable to us). They differentiate in group sizes and survival mechanisms because of that. They have empathic abilities to survive in social groups. But they also see emotional behavior in strong generational cohesion. Where offspring is heavily dependent on parents, we see the equivalent of our own emotions within such ‘family’. These emotional behaviors have different reasons.
They cause automatic bonding, dependency.
They cause mimicking of behavior (we have seen this behavior between species even, remember the stories of Tarzan, or Romulus and Remus?).
They set a path for pattern recognition within the nervous system.
Certain key values which change with each generation to ensure possible survival. The emotional layer, can be seen as a ‘neural’ filter level.
Cognitive behavior
With awareness comes the growth to conceptualization in communication. Because we are instinctive, emotional beings, but also self aware and sometimes differ in meaning of emotion, we need a way to explain when an emotional behavior is not meant as a threat, etc. You could call it a protocol equivocation behavior. These concepts are starting with leveling of emotional responses between the self and others (independent of species), but evolve through a process of emotional impulses to stimuli and responses within relations and our interactions with the world around us into cognitive structures of words, representations and a general worldview.
Self-awareness
We as humans are in possession of all three layers. When we are young (between age of 3 and 9) we run through many changes in emotional responses. We are first heavily bombarded with positive responses to new abilities we show to parents. At the same time on increasing occasions during that time we are shown that we are also growing within boundaries of the use of such abilities. The brain will process these responses into the emotional layer. That layer starts quite blank and if repeated and found with consistency, will filter into the instinctive layer. If we find ourselves with a conflicting response, it can cause emotional dissonance (not cognitive). When the brain ‘shuts down’ at night, the reflux/feedback of these neural charges will cause the brain to fire memory or general pathways that are perceived as dreams. Because emotional ‘challenges’ are becoming rarer as we grow older (They are more frequent during more active development stages like adolescence), we tend to dream less obvious the older we get.
Keep your dream alive
In general dreams are a process of the nervous system to make emotional conflicts of the day, be adapted into the instinctive layer, so we don’t have to cognitively or emotional deal with them again.
The decision tree model takes the following theoretical bases.
The three layers
The neural response system of humans exist of the following three layers. (You might recognize something of the Triune brain in this, though I can honestly say, I didn’t know about that until I was searching for an image for this article: ‘Three layers of brain’)
Instinctive behavior Either by genetic blueprint or attained through learning, any organism will adapt to recurring patterns to prevent it from danger. The genetic part is of course hard to change, but the ‘tree’ of choices (I call it the decision tree), the response mechanism of most mammals is automated. Meaning, if something gives an impulse, especially repeatedly, that causes a positive or negative reaction to the nervous system, it will become an instinctive behavior to move to or from such stimulus.
Emotional behavior Mammals and especially primates (being very recognizable to us), being differentiated in group sizes and survival mechanisms because of that, have empathic abilities to survive in social groups. But we also see emotional behavior in strong generational cohesion. Where offspring is heavily dependent on parents, we see the equivalent of our own emotions within such ‘family’. These emotional behaviors have different reasons. 1. they cause automatic bonding, dependency. 2. they cause mimicking of behavior (we have seen this behavior between species even, remember the stories of Tarzan, or Romulus and Remus?). 3. they set a path for pattern recognition within the nervous system. Certain key values which change with each generation to ensure possible survival. The emotional layer, can be seen as a ‘neural’ filter level.
Cognitive behavior With awareness comes the growth to conceptualization in communication. Because we are instinctive, emotional beings, but also self aware and sometimes differ in meaning of emotion, we need a way to explain when an emotional behavior is not meant as a threat, etc. You could call it a protocol equivocation behavior. These concepts are starting with leveling of emotional responses between the self and others (independent of species), but evolve through a process of emotional impulses to stimuli and responses within relations and our interactions with the world around us into cognitive structures of words, representations and a general worldview.
Intrinsic accumulation
The layers work accumulative, where instinctive is built up from two different influences: Genetic inheritance and developmental alteration (learning). The emotional layer is a constructed layer depending on the complexity of the organism and the amount of instinct branches. The cognitive layer depends on both underlying layers but (as we can see in different human individuals) can work independent of them.
Current, tide and flow
All processes within the organism (whether human or otherwise) are based on simple building blocks that exist in
nature. The physical economy depends on the existing concentrations of minerals within the available solution (water). This does not ends with the intestines, blood-vessels and muscle tensions of an organism, but also in more intrinsic parts and effects within the body. Even the most sophisticated patterns like our nervous system are build on these same principles.
Micro, Meso and Macro nature and culture
As well as the building blocks, the development and processes of both nature, species and culture (social extension of groups of species), are based on such equal principles. This means that taking the basic evolution of a natural process, this can be translated into a process within a species, as well as into the working of a social construction.
Fear first, eat later
All and every behavior that is correctly addressed, can be retraced to the most basic stimuli and responses of nature. All and every organism is in base principle primed to prevent harm to self. Instinct is based on the equivalent of fear, all the way to the first ancestral organism. In this progression, all instincts based on survival have the initial response to the digestion of food.
Be neutral not shallow
All processes in nature, as well as within organisms (if you have read the above correctly this is a no brainer for you), seek a neutral shift. This means that concentrations are diffused, levels are equalized.
Accepting what can be observed is something very different from accepting what can be seen. Ask a blind person..heck, even a color blind person. A deaf person, a mute person or a tactile inpaired person.
The identity is a complex combination of continuous impulses from our senses and the feedback system of our overcapacity in our brain (prefrontal cortex, temporal lobes, etc). We observe and build a reliance on the combined input from the world outside. Depending on the level of logic in cause and effect we have been taught, we are able to decide what is real and what is not. The same way a fly will move towards food with deliberation, simply because its instincts (inherited) tell it that that will give it chance on survival. Humans are little different from instinctive ancestors, we still are 80% or more instinctive. However, we do have the selfawareness that gives us the ability to question the world around us. Because at first we do not understand causality, at young age we infer our internal working on the working of the world around us. ‘Stupid chair’, ‘Yes that vase fell by itself! I didn’t push it!’. But as we learn how cause and effect works and we understand that we can logically deduct the outcome of an action, we start to recognize the ‘laws of nature’. This is how we deduct that when all senses agree with each other and what we observe doesn’t differ from the expected outcome, there is no reason to use cognitive effort to infuse different magical values. Like…wow…that door opened when I pushed it, perhaps there is a leprichaun behind it that opened it for me at exactly the same moment, even though I don’t see it and have no reason to think anyone would actually open a door without reason or corporal ability.
We accept that the world is what we see, as we know (humanity developed science to investigate beyond the physical abilities of observation) that there is more, but that which we don’t see, doesn’t differ from the working that we do see.
Well…the title is a bit deceiving. What I want to write here, is about reexamining the universe and the way we modeled ‘physics’. For those not much into the matter:
Science (any science) is the method of examining the relations between causes and effects in the universe. Building a model from those relations that can be used to calculate how things in other situations will behave.
This is how we got the ‘Laws of Thermodynamics’, and the ‘General Relativity Theory’ and ‘Special Relativity Theory’ and even the ‘Theory of evolution’.
The first is a model that has observed the causal (cause and effect) connections in movement of objects and matter in general. Though it has been refined over the centuries, it is an important base on which we decide how the effects we observe should be connected and which sub-steps and by that sub-causality can be found (which in many cases have been very precise and correct. Others are still being investigated, which caused us to come to more complex/elaborate fields like ‘quantum physics’).
The second is a model that relates to how we actually observed the causality of the first. That when something moves, it is depending on distance, angle and more (ie. both Light and Observer are connected to the movement of the matter and energy in the first model).
The third is a model that explains how the process of evolution is causing different effects to be observed. Though there are people not up to speed with reality yet, regarding the whole fact that people have sex, and their parents had sex and even their dead great great great great grand parents had sex and brought forth new generations with altered combinations of genes, it is what causes life forms (we call categorized them/speciated them into species) to change and diversify on Earth.
Why these three examples? Well for no apparent reason, but there is always a possible causal connection. One of the most attacked theories/models is that of evolution. This has to do with the fact that no scripture writes about the other two (though plenty of them tell tales defying the first and others can only have been observed by defying the second mentioned model). But the first two even have different names and that is something that I do want to address: The first is ‘The laws of…’ which states that the observed is irrevocably correct, while the second one is ‘…theory’, which means there is evidence and proving to support it, but it can still be falsified. The third is, in my mind, a misdenomer. You can’t falsify evolution, even if you wished. You can falsify some small theories (as has been done the last 400 years) regarding partial observed causality, but the actual evolution can’t be denied.
So….what is this ‘reinventing’ or ‘reexamining’ the universe about?
Well…basically it means, taking all the current ‘information’ and ‘data’ we have gathered about the universe and redefine the ‘laws’, ‘theories’ and intrinsic causality. I think that what current sciencific consensus has done, is make a shoestring action (string theory anyone? XD)
We now know that the universe exists of pretty much the same stuff everywhere. There will be exotic options elsewhere, depending on the influences of forces and ‘age’ of the universe at that spot.
We currently hold a model of the universe, where all we observe exists as a ‘spacetime’ unit. Matter is a ‘state dependant dilation of energy of a specific frequency’ E=MC2. In other words, the longer the frequency the more it shifts from energy observation to matter observation. How do we know? Energy is hotter than matter. Meaning the radiation in energy is higher than in matter. Obviously, as a rock is colder than a flame. Though lava is hot, it is so, when infused with radiation.
So, why do you want to re-examine or ‘reinvent the wheel’, you already named it as we know it?! Well…I think you can come to very interesting new insights if you do.
About spacetime. I don’t believe it is a good representation of what we observe. Why not? Because it was a model created as a starting point. If the causal calculations then require arbitrary ‘Constants’ like C, for which Einstein himself said he felt bad to have to add it because he didn’t recognize any other way, it shows that somewhere before that, it went wrong (same as in programming).
So, what is spacetime? Nothing. Lets start at the start. The universe has ‘evolved’ from the very early point. We don’t know about space yet, because all we observe is spatial states. There is always the question of whether wat we ‘experience’ (in the scientific sense of the collection of impulses from the universe to our awareness) is actually what exists. I don’t think spacetime exits. I think you can say: existence is the observed reality (collection of impulses gathered by awareness) of which the state exists without the observer. Yeah, wishywashy eh?
Basically, if we take time separate, we have nothing. Time doesn’t exist without existence. Why not? Because it can’t be measured without us. We are the ones observing it. But how did time pass when we didn’t exist yet? It basically didn’t. What happened was the evolution of the universe in progress. IE. change. Or the movement towards entropy. And how did that come about? Well…think of it as a ripple in a pond (bad example, because it requires something to start the ripple, but still). The ripple starts with large/high waves. Then when the movement is spread, the diffusion of the wave causes it to lose amplitude and angular frequency decreases.
Yes, we are talking wave here. What I will try to explain is that the universe is an extensive model of three dimensional wave functions, which cause what we observe as three dimensional field functions, which in turn is what we perceive/experience as reality. This is NOT a representation of a field theory, or wave theory (well the latter a bit more). What I will try to explain is that particles don’t exist without wave and field, instead of the other way around. Classical physics (but also quantum physics) starts from ‘there is matter and energy’. But the point is, that we also agree in that that matter = energy and visa versa. But if that is true, why do we have particles? Because of mass? Or, because we address matter and mass the same? We often example gravity as a force, that depends on mass. But what if gravity isn’t dependent on mass, but our observation of mass is dependant on the amplitude and the angular frequency of a wave function, and intrinsic behavior as a field function? In other words, what we observe as mass, is the implied result of interaction of the wave/field function in fluxtuation (was writing time there, but I want to explain how we observe time from the actual wave/field function behavior).
Now, lets see where we are. We have a wave (for which we have a flow, which causes the amplitude to diminish due to the frequency that interacts with ….), which has to start somewhere (we call this the big bang/rapid inflation model). At the very start, the amplitude was nearly infinite vertical and it will go to a amplitude infinite horizontal (figuratively, because direction in non-linear space is arbitrary).
You could prove your consciousness is separate of the functioning of your brain, IF it could exist without physical processes. Good luck in that.
You will find, it is impossible to have consciousness without physical processes. Why? Because of the way that the actual stimuli and their responses are causing us to have anything to be aware of.
Consciousness, or awareness, means nothing more than: ‘being able to respond to’. In other words, a single-cell organism is aware of barely anything. That is why it can do barely anything. Still it responds to stimuli on the level that its complexity allows (Pressure change, temperature change, lack of food).
Multi-cellular organisms have (depending on its species) more awareness of change in its surrounding. For instance: Pain receptors, or temperature receptors. Almost all complex-cellular organisms have a neural center that processes the different signals from receptors in a layered manner. This is what we call the nervous system. In vertebrates, this system has developed pretty similar in most species. Every animal is aware of its surrounding, depending on the amount of senses it has (sensible receptors, but senses is shorter). These senses have, through generations, been specialized at receiving a specific type of stimuli. Some for the electromagnetic spectrum we call light. Others for pheromones or aerosols. Some have tasks almost indistinguishable, yet for different speed and reasons. The skin has nerve endings for pain/heat/touch signals, the tongue for chemical imbalances, like the nasal cavities.
With worms and insects the signals from such senses go to nerve-knots. With vertebrates to the brain/neural center.
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