[FRIAM] quickening

[Nick Thompson]

Jon

 

What on earth is a D and D campaign?  

 

Imagination runs wild.

 

The first question to an evolutionist is, “what is a given pain for?”  So, pain is a mechanism to get the organism to do or not to do something, including, in social species, to cry for help.  Once you know what a pain is for, the next question is, “How can it misfire?”  So, if a particular pain system is designed to operate with in some limits, forcing it to operate outside those limits will produce pain that is for nothing (Phantom Limb), or will produce no pain when there is something that needs paining (carbon monoxide poisoning).  

 

To a dualist, pain is kind of troublesome because, of all the senses, it is the once that is most about … itself!  In other words, it’s not easy to designate the domain, external to the senses, that pain tells you about.  But to a monist, all senses are like that, since the only thing that experience can “speak” of is other experiences.   

 

There.  Is that friammish enough for you? 

 

Nick 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 1:33 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] quickening

 

With few apologize, I have not been contributing very much as of late.

The last few months have offered new opportunities for work, meditations

on new life, and a whole lot of commutative ring theory / algebraic geometry.

 

Sometime soon, I hope to meet with my friend Ashley (an ex-Johnnie)

whom it seems has thought quite a bit about consciousness and embodiment.

She and I are in a D&D campaign together and we spend our `smoke` break

talking about phenomenology and mind. I would appreciate any `concise`

thoughts that members of FRIAM have on the subject, as sometimes I see

it as my job to pollinate my environment with the thoughtful ideas of others.

 

For those that do not yet know, Sarah and I are going to have a baby in

March. This experience has me wondering about how it is that we `come

online`. This tiny organism begins as Sarah and slowly develops a heart

and a nervous system. Is it an eventual critical mass of neurons and the

like that brings this thing (otherwise indistinguishable from an organ)

across the threshold and into a cognitive being? I muse that the first

experiences are proto-painful as I am not sure what a growing pain is

when what is growing are the very first sensory organs the thing has.

What is it to experience and then to become aware of experiencing?

Unfortunately, I cannot remember.

 

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