Posted by SeeJay on August 04, 1998 at 18:42:01:
In Reply to: A place to start... posted by rpcman on August 04, 1998 at 12:30:16:
I have read widely on this issue and I feel that reductionists have got a long way to go to explain: consciousness (self-awareness), free will, qualia (eg. the redness of red, the painfulness of pain) and neural function.
I think the key is in that last one: neurons. As far as we can tell they are little mystery bags of molecules. We know that stimulus causes them to fire more rapidly, but cannot figure out the relationship between input and output, even for a single neuron. We also know they are organised into general areas in the brain to deal with specific functions (eg. visual cortex). However, there seems to be considerable overlap; indeed, the structure of the cortical sheet seems to imply the brain evolved in order that there be considerable overlap, and there is evidence of brain-damaged people retaining or developing functions previously lost.
In summary, we really have only very vague hypotheses about how the brain works.
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