Thank you for the contribution! I shall certainly think on this more. Now that you mention it, hunger and thirst are powerful factors in an organism's will. in fact, I think that a will to do anything else is a product of excess. When we have met physical needs, we search for other things to expend excess energy doing.Greta wrote:There may be another source of this intent or volition that is primal. In both evolution and gestation metabolisms form first and brains afterwards. You can have a metabolism without a brain, eg. microorganisms, but you arguably can't have a brain without a metabolism. If the metabolism formed first then, in some sense, your brain is less fundamentally "you" than your metabolism. You brain's job in evolution is clearly is to help the metabolism / bowel survive.
Because they contain about 100 million neurons stomachs are sometimes referred to as "the second brain". I posit that it's actually our first and original brain, and that our cerebral matter is the second brain - and an obviously new and improved model.
If the bowel needs water, food or waste expulsion, or if the lungs need air, you soon find out whether your innards or your brains are fundamental. I see the nervous system as akin to the CEO and executive team, while but the bowel is like an untalented company owner who inherited the business.
Our digestive organs have far more influence on our conscious processes than we care to credit, most obviously evidenced by the effect of large meals before sleeping on our dreams. The primal messages of the bowel are reflexively "translated" into language-based concepts by our brains. If it happens in dreams, it is probably happening in waking states too, with our metabolisms pulling the strings without our knowledge.
This effect was shown in an experiment where an actor is walks along with a bundle of papers while holding a drink. The actor drops the papers and asks a passerby to hold their drink for them while they pick them up. The passersby were later interviewed about their impressions of the actor who'd dropped the papers. Strangely, if the person was handed a warm drink, they tended to think of the actor as being a warmer person than if they were handed a cold drink.
None of this conflicts with the quasi-panpsychism of the OP, but our bowels are a factor that should be taken seriously when discussing intent/volition/will.
My argument for the fundamentalism of consciousness
- ThamiorTheThinker
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Re: My argument for the fundamentalism of consciousness
2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
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