At 21:33 27/05/2003 -0400, you wrote:
I guess it always gets back to the cause of the first cause: What gets the
mind to physically change the brain.
We certainly have a brain, but where do you get the idea that we have a mind? (This is equivalent to having a soul. This is what Brad McCormick calls a medieval notion.) We have a stomach but we don't have a thing called "digestion". Digestion is a process that happens in the stomach. The mind is a process that goes on in the brain.
Besides, how do we know that our minds are under our individual control? It is a demonstrable fact that our minds could be under the influence of perceptions that we are totally unaware of. In short, our brains are not closed systems. We are possibly open to a more mysterious world which some call God and some (including myself) call the "quantum universe" (for want of a snappier term). How much freewill do we have, and how much freewill does the universe have? So far, neuroscientists have had enough excitement on their plates in recent years not to investigate this more thoroughly and this matter has only been approached from other directions by eminent physicists such as Freeman Dyson, Frank Tipler, David Deutsche or Roger Penrose who have had several decades on which to ponder these matters since the dawn of quantum theory.
I'm not so sure that these questions will ever be settled simply because of the physical limitations of our brains, but I think that, in due course, the dawn of life and the evolution of lifeforms will not be seen as a unique event but an inevitable product of the universe.
(Which reminds me [wearing another hat] that, this week, two of my Handlo colleagues have finally finished engraving Haydn's great oratorio, The Creation, after several months' work, and that vocal, orchestral and instrumental parts are now available from the Internet at much lower prices than the existing monopolistic publishers have been charging. Thus, pace Ray Harrell, I'm doing my little bit so that great music has a chance of remaining alive and affordable to perform.)
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
