Steven Brust wrote: > At 08:11 PM 8/21/2002 -0700, Frank Mayhar wrote: > >Steven Brust wrote: > > > Deffusing neurotransmitters through the soup, as you put it, happens > > during > > > a lot of activity that cannot be considered "thought" by any reasonable > > > definition. What distinguishes what we call thought from the other brain > > > activity? > > > >In a word, nothing. "Thought" _is_ the release and reuptake of > >neurotransmitters, the electrical impulses transferred along the axons > >of neurons. > > That's like saying, "What distinguishes prose from random collections of > words? Nothing. Both are made up of letters." I, um, disagree. Strongly. The "other brain activity" you spoke of, as distinguished from "thought" is by no means random. In fact, that "other brain activity" affects ones thought, both directly and indirectly. You seem to consider "thought" as distinct from other processes. I, on the other hand, lean much more to the view that it is part of a continuum, inseparable from the processes of which it is a part. There are all kinds of "thought," from stuff we have no conscious knowledge of at all, through stuff that appears in our consciousness as if instantly full-blown, through stuff we are only dimly aware of, to the kind of thing I'm doing now, as I quite consciously order and interpret my thoughts to write them down in this message. The low-level neuronal functions are by no means analogous to letters in an alphabet. They might be more closely analogous to individual computers in the huge seti at home project, or one of the other distributed-computation projects. -- Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/