Overall introduction
From the moment of conception, our body is build to respond to impulses. Though we could look at the neural responses and the way it influences our psychology from this point, I rather go a bit deeper.
The human neurology is based on millions of years of evolution. Starting (like the conception of our current organism/life) at it’s conception. As humans we are often very easy to add emotions and thoughts to organisms that are not aware like us, don’t have the same intrinsic responses as we have. However, like everything that evolves, our responses are all based on those of who came before us.
To explain what is meant by the inherited responses, I like to take the examples from research, where mice bred from mice that have walked a maze repeatedly. The next generation would be able to solve the maze more easily. Their neural pathways had adapted to possible stimuli. If they merely had the same pathways and had to learn, they would roughly need the same amount of time. This is what we already learned from research on the short term, but we haven’t just come to this point of learning, adapting, living. These adaptions are caused by the way we have evolved. At each point they are the optimum mode of operandi for a species. Until the habitat changes to fast and the adaption within the culture is not possible within enough generations. When a species is the optimum of operandi, a stasis in development can be observed. It means that the neural pathways are optimally used for responding to the environment the organism is living in. We have already found the track back to the initial primates. But the actual decisions are based on much older neural choices/responses to stimuli.
Life is about consumption It is about continuing motion. In organical sense, our bodies have started somewhere as as simple an motion as the tides of the oceans.
The Layers
The human mind is currently the top level of several layers of processes that are going on within us as an organism. Though many other animals show signs of behavior that we describe to ‘intelligence’. Intelligence isn’t necessarily the same as mind/self awareness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence Reference to human and animal intelligence.
In all, we can say that because humans aren’t the only ones with a minimum level of intelligence, it is NOT the mind (the cognitive decision taking) that holds ‘intelligence’.
So, there is a layer before the layer of ‘mind’ that can hold ‘intelligence’.
——— insert from my other blog to be edited in —–
1. Animals don’t have such valuation system (regarding good and bad/right and wrong). They learn what is healthy and what is not, but they are not making a conscious choice to implicate a future situation to mean this cause of effect to be positive or negative on their health. Water is to drink. Positive. No matter if it is poisoned. Some animals have a nose that will tell them that water is undrinkable, yet most don’t have that luxury, because their ancestors lived in environments that had an abundance of clean flowing water, or very little water, so the ‘society’ of the species stayed so small, they would not evolve the reaction to a deadly situation, so that the species would act on instinct (this is a neural pathway created by genetic material).
2. This is also something that animals don’t reasonably have. They can be fierce, deceiving, agressive, but that is from instinct and not by choice (we have choice, because of the abundance of neural options). So, how can we figure out what is objectively good or bad/right or wrong? Any action we do ourselves is with ‘intent’ and as such is already given value by acting. From the point of an animal, we will have to assume, the animal is not too much domesticated, that it will adher to human behavior and be deceitful by choice. Also, we now know that for instance dolphins have the option to choose to be nice to other animals (likely there are more). Now, what would be a thing to see without emotional value?a rock. But we know a rock will just lie and do nothing. Until we pick it up and act with it. It will not influence us, except when we interact WITH it. Automatically putting the value of action on our own part.
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