Chapter 13 The Trends Spectrum Profile.

In the opening chapters of this theory, I have alluded to two concepts of great importance.

They are the almost absolute immutability of the innate tendencies that will characterize a person  during his life, once they have been established, and the other is the extreme variability in the intensity that each tendency can have when we compare one person to another.

We must specify what we understand by innate tendencies, differentiating them from the most basic survival instincts, which are the base of simpler primary responses, and are a lot more similar in everybody.

The tendencies to which we want to refer here are those inclinations (drives), or rejections that a person feels towards any idea or stimulus , which can have quite precise discriminatory features.

They are depicted in detail in chapter 4 of this work.

As characteristic examples, I can mention here: the tendency to exert violence and/or threat to obtain certain goals, the tendency to use deception and/or trickery, also to gain specific benefits. The tendency to obtain and maintain great power and dominance over others, the tendency to posses great wealth, be it in money, territories, goods, etc. The tendency to homosexuality, hypersexuality, bisexuality, among many other sexual drives. The tendency towards religiosity, etc. etc., to mention just a few examples of those many that have been  described previously.

What is remarkable  about these tendencies, (with the exception of very exceptional cases, after catastrophic  or very traumatic events) is how permanently they characterize people, as they maintain their "own nature", their way of being and feeling, throughout their lives.

We have also said that these trends are not matter of free choice for each person, since they are originated in our primary brain, and are simply "felt or experienced" as they come, in such an important degree that they play a very decisive role as they participate in  behavioral decisions.

Many people believe that they are "freely deciding" when they follow these tendencies, and feel totally subjugated when they are encouraged or forced to change their conduct.

From this point of view, it is a paradox that a person would act in a more free and rational way if he/she was able to decide against what he/she "really wants at that moment".

We have also said that the development and consolidation of these trends  in the primary brain follow a pattern that is more quantitative than qualitative. In other words, it is not that people can have some but not other, trends. Instead, they are all always present, but with bigger or lesser intensities, that can go from a maximum to a minimum, that in this last case can appear as absence of that tendency.

With all the previous elements characterized, we can say that each person has his/her own specific profile of tendencies, defined by the intensity of each of them. In other words, each person has his/her own  Trends  Spectrum Profile.

Thus, we can analyse and distribute people according to their profiles. Given that all combinations are possible, distributed statistically, we might find similar profiles, opposite profiles, or others in which comparisons or differentiations can not be easily made.

As we have said before, it is this profile, characteristic of each person, the real and fundamental origin of their preferences and  opinions (which are not necessarily confessed or publicly stated), and therefore, the origin of their vocations. This why this is the key for people to be more or less happy or fulfilled in their lives, as they confront their achievements against those innate goals that are most precious to them.

When and how are these trends established in each person?

In chapter 2, I wrote: "it is as if each one of us was born with a filter that makes us perceive and analyse reality in a particular way, different and impossible to compare with that of others".

This "filter" to which I allude is made up by the set of trends that characterize each person, and makes him/her appreciate in his/her own way each stimulus, each situation, each person with whom he/her makes contact, among many others instances that the "world" may present.

Of the currently available scientific evidence on the origin and determination of each trend, not much can be stated with complete certainty.

It is known that both the genetic information that each human being has, as well as the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate the expression of those genes, participate in embryogenesis and cell differentiation, in the conformation of organs and structures of the new being, and the neural circuits of the brain are also participants of this process.

However, stimuli from the external environment, through the senses, also may begin to intervene during the child´s first years of life.

There are probably, apart from the above, some limited genetic expressions that could be produced by more or less random combinations of the aforementioned factors, being this very useful from the point of view of the necessary variability of the genetic expression, indispensable for the concretion of mechanisms of natural selection that allow the evolution of species.

However, even without being able to specify up to now the exact participation of each factor in the generation of the trends that will characterize each person´s primary brain, we can argue that this occurs fundamentally from the fetal period to the fourth of fifth years of age, and that when established , they constitute strong behavioral constrains that have arrived to stay.

How much of the final result was genetically predetermined, and how much and how is it determined along the development course, is a question that will need more time to be answered with sufficient scientific base.

However, the advance of knowledge is unstoppable, so, sooner rather than later, we will have new lights to continue delving into these fascinating topics.

Jorge Lizama León

Originally published in june 2011.

Chapter 15. Some Appreciations on the Concept of Reality.

In this chapter I make some elaborations, a little intermingled and scattered, regarding the concept of reality, as a prelude to the task of beginning, in the future, the attempt to delve deeper, with more ambition and detail, the study of a particularly complex subject.

This is to be able to fully discern what "really" means "the real" and "the unreal", the "concrete" and the "imaginary", "the objective" and "the subjective". 

All these concepts are at first glance obvious and clarifying, but when we analyse them with more determination, they begin to expose all their limitations, and possibly, their intrinsic falsehood.

As an antecedent of these ideas, I recommend having read the previous chapters, and , among them, especially the last one, number 14, "The Ethereal Nature of the Mind".

The human brain is a "representator" of the world and a "creator" of "concepts" and "realities".

Thus, it constitutes a "virtual reality machine" that allows us to coexist and interact, in a progressively influential process, for the better and the worse, with the world of which we are part. 

These concepts and "virtual realities" give the people who own these brains a more or less reliable base on which to stabilise their existence and their ability to interact both with inanimate elements as with other living beings that exist.

This is essential, as it allows people to have margins of confidence regarding their present existence. The past, on the other hand, constitutes the comparison parameter, with what will come.

What has all of the above to do with "true reality"? Little, nothing, or a lot, depending on the perspective and quality of the analysis we are able to carry out, but probably never with "all".

The most ambitious definition and description we can imagine about reality, "exact, perfect and absolute", that we can try to accomplish, will always be not more than a utopia, given that we are biological beings subject to a permanent process of adaptation to the world where we exist.

This world contains an enormous number of variables that can affect us, up to a point that they are a lot more than those that our adaptive evolutionary process has allowed us to perceive, understand, and manage.

This, despite that indirectly, using scientific knowledge and technological  tools, we have been able to discover, characterize, and partially handle and control material objects that are disproportionately bigger and smaller in relation to our body size.

We have also been able to understand, control and use forms of energy, that we did not know about until very recently, through the development of machines and instruments that have allowed us to manage variables that are beyond our direct grasp.

As an example of the above, we can cite the use of electricity, as a source of lighting, and even earlier, as the basis of the first telecommunication system, the telegraph. Later, with the use of the electromagnetic waves, came radio and television.

With the digital revolution,  computers and the internet, which at this point constitute a resemblance, for planet earth, although still a very primitive one, of what the mind is for brained beings, all the way up to what is its most developed expresion, the human mind.

Thus, with the internet, planet Earth today has something that it did not have before, which is an electronic (energetic) process all over its surface and beyond, that, as if it wanted to imitate a neural network, provides to its human inhabitants (that in this comparison would be the equivalent of neurons), the capacity to have permanent communication and interaction.

In other words, it is as if our planet was developing its own brain, and a certain "mental capacity".

The capacities of the human brain of our days, make possible all the human accomplishments of this 21st century, and are the highest expresion of the evolutive process of mankind, and they imply processes that go beyond what is concrete and material.

That classic disquisition, which often reaches very emotional and even revengeful limits, of opposing what is "humanist" to what is "scientific", will end up losing all relevance.

This is because  as human knowledge advances, it will show us the true value and relevance of the fact that what is mental is an energetic process, based on specialized organic matter, that has infinite potentialities in terms of generating a powerful conceptual interpretation of the world, which will continue to endow us with increasing capacities in our ambition to understand and manage "everything".

Included in this "everything" are not only the elements of the material world, but of the energetic, spiritual, social and cultural realms, in all their manifestations, present, and future.

Why is it that the idea of creating a human brain by means of a non biological machine produces such skepticism in many people, and in fact, is something that will most probably never be achieved?

This is because of the fact that in any machine there is a lack of the "will" that urgues and moves living beings, already present even in the most simple living individuals, and that in humans reaches a very powerful and complex spirituality.

As powerful and complex as the neural architecture, which we are at present days just beginning to be able to study in depth.

That motivation, that only exists in living beings, and is transmitted from antecesors to descendants, has never been able to be crated "de novo" by humans.

It is innate to the essence of life, emerging from the "divine breath of the creator", according to those who are religious, and inexplicable for agnostics and atheists.

It is in this spirituality, in this will, in the capacity to enjoy and suffer, to strive to get along "better than worse", that based in an ever growing consciousness , characteristic of humans (which imply self awareness and indirect awareness of the consciousness of others), that humans reach their highest expression.

Thus, this spirituality, unique to humans, is born from the essence of the biological being, constituting in its origin and potential scope a hitherto unfathomable mystery.

This spirituality, which contains all our self perception and emotionality, is finally, what gives true meaning to our existence, being the ability to "perceive reality" in permanent contrast to "the imaginary world  of ideas and concepts", (but by no means less "real"), the instrument that allows it to reach its full meaning, despite its historically limited and imperfect performance, both at collective and personal levels.

So, we must understand and assume, even if its difficult, that we must abandon the old quarrels that perpetuate the antagonism and rivalry between the scientific and the humanistic, the material and the mental, the technological and the spiritual.

Some might wonder, then, given all the progress of human knowledge, why we continue to interpret the world and its "reality", each one in such a diverse and often opposite ways, which provoke discussions, conflicts, violence and wars?

This is also part of the human essence, of the necessary diversity of appreciation of the world, that originates in our primary brain. So each of us "feel and appreciate everything" in a unique way, as we have insistently pointed out in our Theory of Human Behavior.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the general balance is always positive, culture and civility of humans are in continuous expansion and strengthening, no matter how slow and torturous our path might be.

All the components of our world and our existence are necessary and complementary, they reinforce mutually, and allow us to advance in our quest for knowledge and wisdom, the most important for human beings

All this without forgetting, at the same time, that this crusade reaches all its relevance and significance only because it is at the service of our spirit, which, being immaterial, is however, the most "real" and important thing that we have.

Jorge Lizama León.

Originally published in june, 2012.











 

Chapter 14. The Ethereal Nature of the Mind.

It is not difficult or complicated to have a more or less clear idea of what we mean when we speak of the brain as a material organ of the human body, in a category similar to other viscera such as the heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.

Nor is it a difficult undertaking to have an approximate idea of what is meant when someone refers to the human mind.

Relating the mind with thoughts, the ability to handle and transmit ideas, understand them, feel and transmit emotions, and, in general, what has been called "cognitive abilities", is logical for the vast majority of people.

Considering the brain as the material origin of the mind, although for many is an obvious concept, is something that for others begins to pose some difficulties.

Not surprisingly, many people question, for example whether the brain itself, as an organ confined to the skull, is sufficient to fully explain the entire genesis, processing and regulation of mental activity.

(At this point we know that brain-body integration, in its entirety, is so rich and complex in nature that we can´t consider the brain as an isolated organ, but let´s not get ahead of ourselves).

Looking at this subject from the opposite perspective, we can ask ourselves the following: do thoughts have the capacity to exist by themselves, independently of an organic substrate?

Do spirits exist? What are souls? Are there souls in pain? Can we be visited by  the spirit of people who have already died? If they exist, do they have the ability to communicate with us?

About these questions many people will have the certainty (and/or the intimate desire), that the answer to all or some of them is affirmative. Others will show different degrees of skepticism, going through to the extreme position of those who will categorically deny any possibility of "witchcraft and other magical manifestations".

This diversity of opinions is fully consistent with our concept of  the "Spectral Trends Profile" (chapter 13).

In the cartesian philosophical tradition, which still has a lot of weight in our western world today, the mind-body separation is a fact not only unquestionable, but essential, so that there is no confusion or disturbance in the "scope of action" that corresponds to the humanistic world, (world of ideas) different and totally separate from the matter (scientific) world.

However, for some time now, different thinkers believe that based on the scientific and technological advancement of our present world, it is no longer possible to deny the fact that mental processes have an organic basis, and that we are now capable of studying and researching these matters with a depth that was unimaginable until recently.

Advances in neuroscience, supported among others by the vast field of studies of functional images of brain activity, have progressively provided more and more evidence that the way of reacting to specific stimuli in different people has different patterns, more or less specific to each of them.

In this chapter I want to refer to a topic of special interest, which is to consider, in the light of the current scientific knowledge, and based on a logical and coherent interpretation, what would be the reasons that historically it has been so evident and unquestionable that the nature of mental processes is unique in the sense of being unapproachable and unattainable with the tools used to study phenomena that affect the concrete matter.

The only method of concrete analysis of mental processes that we traditionally have  had at our disposal is that of introspection.

That "inward look" that we use when we question ourselves, for example, how and in what way we "process" and "control" our thoughts.

This introspection suffers from several imperfections, among which we can mention, for example, that we can only carry it out towards the interior of our own mind, and not the minds of others, which leaves us out of the possibility of making comparisons, and, on the other hand, the fact that we are trying to study something about which the only available study instrument is the object of the study itself.

We only have at our disposal the analysis of our own thoughts and the sensations produced by those thoughts, a circumstance that is very familliar to us, since our thoughts come to us always accompanied by value "tags" (emotions), that can be of greater or lesser intensity.

When these emotions are very powerful, an organic repercussion is added to that "pure thought", which can include intense heart beating, sweating, hair erection, chills, shortness of breath, in a way that these sensations "land" in an earthly, concrete, and organic (material) environment. So, something that otherwise would have remained in a pure spiritual world, now has acquired a material manifestation.

On the contrary, when a thought is directed to more abstract and impersonalized ideas, we get a more immaterial perception of it.

Why, then, do we perceive the curse of "pure thoughts" as immaterial?

We can imagine various reasons, of a philosophical and religious nature, which have historically weighed to limit the problems of the mind to an exclusively spiritual world, and that can only secondarily have repercussions in  the organic and material world.

To these cultural reasons we must add another element, which is the main objective of these reflections, and that explains why perceiving as immaterial our mental processes is naturally "evident" to us, if we carry out our analysis of this problem in an unrigurous way, that doesen´t consider the scientific knowledge acquired in recent times.

We must now refer to the anatomical-functional relationships of the brain with the rest of the body, and the varied implications that this has.

From the traditional scientific point of view, the brain is an organ that has an enormous number of functions and responsabilities. Among the most basic, controlling and maintaining the internal environment of the body, that is, of each and every one of the cells that compose it, in a state called homeostasis.

This means that a series of variables, such as temperature, acidity, oxygen and Co2 levels, among many others, must be kept within very precise levels. Any lack of control and departure from these margins puts the life of the organism at risk. This function is common, in very similar terms, to all warm-blooded animals, including humans.

We also know that in humans the brain also fulfills the higher functions of abstract thinking, which we have functionally located in what we have called the secondary brain, in this theory.

To carry out all its functions, the brain is endowed with a unique capacity, which is to "represent the world", in a language of maps and images of its own. (Do not confuse these concepts with visual images or with the communicational , oral and written language that we humans use, which are at an even higher level of elaboration and processing).

This world, "represented" by the brain is both the inner world, that is,  the individual´s own brain and material body, and the the outer world, or all which is outside the body.

The inner world is represented through information derived from specialized sensors, and the outer world from information that is provided by the sense organs.

The brain, to fulfill all of the above, is intimately connected with the whole body (including internal organs such as liver, lungs, heart, etc., and has also specialized sense organs such as eyes, ears, skin, etc., so it is able to receive input directly and from the peripheral nervous system. So, all these connections are made up with nerves that come out directly from the brain or that travel through the spinal cord.

This functional architecture allows us, for example, if we want to guide the process consciously, to "mentally travel and feel our body". Such actions are typical in relaxation exercises of eastern disciplines.

Thus we can "travel" our limbs, trunk, neck, and also our head. Our face, richly innervated by motor and sensory nerves, the scalp, and even the cranial bones, if we hit them with our hand, for example, can be "felt" as very concrete and present.


We can also know, even with our eyes closed, in what position we have our legs, arms, neck and head. However, no matter how much effort we make, we are unable to feel, as if occupied by a solid substance, the interior of our skull. (This despite the fact that we have learned since childhood that the skull is not empty, but occupied by the brain ... although even at this point there are iterative jokes about those who, by their behavior, appear as if their heads were empty).

The explanation of this "inability to feel our own brain", must be looked for in the fact that the primary function of the brain is "to feel the body, and through it, the world", and is so expressly dedicated to this function that it lacks a self-input destined to "feel itself". (Which is not equivalent to "representing itself", a function in which it is superlative).

So true is this fact that it is known that brain tissue is self-insensitive, since it can be operated upon, during brain surgery, while the patient is awake, and no pain is felt. There is another characteristic of brain function, that adds to this self insensitivity, characteristic that is determinant in "creating the impression" that nothing physical occurs to the brain itself while we are conscious, but that "things happen in places that are separate" from it.

Thus, the sensation of touch, pain, heat, or the visual or auditory inputs that we experience, never seem to happen in the brain, but at the "place of the stimulus".

That is, if we touch an object with a finger, the sensation of touch occurs "on the finger". If we see a person 10 meters away, we see that person "there". A distant noise is heard spatially located where it is coming from. If our intestine hurts, we feel it "in our abdomen".

All this is as clear to us as "reality itself", and yet it is nothing more than an illusion, the product of the mechanisms of representation with which our brain works.

We experience our sensory inputs where they are "really" happening because our brain, in its evolutionary and adaptive process regarding the environment, has developed a way to "show us the world", both internally and externally, in the most useful possible way for us to interact, and thus enhancing to the maximum our survival options.

The fact that we feel pain, for example, is a mechanism that ensures that we will avoid as much as possible being subject to a harmful stimulus. It forces us to avoid receiving strong impacts, or contact with objects at very high temperature. (Although there are circumstances when we don´t react in time).

All this has been evolutionarily successful, and the best proof of this is the progressive increase of human population, even before the development of modern technology and medicine.

And yet, if we finely delve, we can realize, for example, that an object that we see underwater (but looking from out of the water), is not exactly in the position that it appears, and a piece of metal that is very hot gives us no clue of its temperature to our sight.

There are cases in which we receive a hard hit in one of our feet. If by chance it happens that we were looking at our feet when this happened, we will know a few milliseconds before we actually feel the pain, that that pain will come to that feet. The explanation to this phenomenon is that we are capable of anticipating rationally the idea of the pain we will receive, in a shorter time than the one it will actually take for our pain nervous fibers to bring the signal from the feet to the brain.

All these examples illustrate the fact that our sensations are perceptions are really incomplete or imperfect representations of the stimulus that the world is capable of causing us. In other words, an imperfect representation of "that" that we call "reality".

Regarding this subject, I will elaborate, I expect shortly, a chapter focused on our "apparent and/or relatively false sense of reality", (which we need so much to rely on), in a more thorough analysis.

With all of the above, it is not so difficult that we can be able to understand that our brain is really a "machine" whose purpose is to show us the world in its own way.

It operates by locating the facts and sensations "at a distance", at their points of origin, and not where the integrated sensation, with all its components, is really being processed, since this way of operation is essential for us to have the "feeling" that "that" is happening "there", and not in the interior of our head.

For this "feeling of reality" to be fulfilled, it is essential that the process that creates this illusion is not evident to us, that we are not aware of any "brain work process" that is taking place inside our skull.

It is also for this reason that, in the world of thoughts and ideas, the "mechanics" of their processing, being carried out by the same functional neural structures (brain tissue) that process our perceptions and sensations (and with which they are richly and finely integrated), they accomplish their work, from the point of view of our perceptions "somewhere in the emptiness of our heads", without letting us have any "feeling" of that process being carried out.

Thus, our thoughts "live by themselves", whether we intentionally guide them with our will, or they "appear to us without being called".

They travel along  imperceptible paths, they do not need rails to guide or assert themselves, they simply "flow in the void".

This is my explanation to the surprising wonder that gives such and ethereal or immaterial character to our thoughts, that impress in such a profound way thinkers, artists, writers, etc.

Are we "the owners of our thoughts"? Can we always maintain full control over them? When we are "assaulted" by certain ideas, or when we suffer the insistence of concerns "that do not want to leave us alone", although that is our rational desire, it becomes evident that although we have a degree of control, it is not complete.

Who am I really? Am I my material self, body and brain? Am I also my "immaterial self", the one who "thinks and decides"? (See references to secondary brain, alluded in most previous chapters, and as a basis for self awareness in chapter 7)

As we can see, the implications of the concepts analysed up to here, and the questions that they naturally pose us are varied and numerous, to a point that it is not possible to study them without extending this chapter out of proportion.

This is why they should be included in future chapters, I hope not so long from now.

On all these topics, and for those of you who might want to delve more deeply in the fascinating subject of the organic bases of thoughts and consciousness, I reccomend reading the books of authors mentioned in the reference page available at www.conductahumana.cl  Especially the works of Edelman, Damasio and LLinás, of a quality and richness that never cease to amaze me.

Jorge Lizama León.

originally published in spanish, in february, 2012.

Note: The translation of this 14th chapter is included in this blog, in anticipation of several other chapters that are still awaiting translation. As this topic is of special interest for me, I will carry on this work without chronologic order. Next chapter to translate should be number 15.