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ORIGINAL: MrBukani
Character is not the same as personality, or is it?

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ORIGINAL: MrBukani
Some connection will always be a unique print of you and your past.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

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I'm more curious about the implications of matter (any matter) being alive.

K.

This is not aimed at any one in particular:

Isn't this little disagreement merely a re-hashing of the old question: Is a human being the sum of its parts?

If so, here's my contribution: A human being is the sum of its parts plus something extra.

I have no idea what that 'something extra' is. I can't even begin to define it. I've no idea what it might be composed of, if indeed it has a material dimension. But I tend to think that something is there.

FWIW investigating that 'something extra' has the potential to be the most interesting and illuminating aspect of spiritual, intellectual and scientific inquiry. So I find it sad that both sides appear so often to approach this issue from fixed, sometimes dogmatic positions.

I can't agree with your characterization of "this little disagreement merely a re-hashing of the old question . . . " The question may be historically old but to each individual who seeks meaning to his/her life it is born anew. The answer of course depends on what you have learned and where you stand. It is the most personal of all questions, imo, and is why each of us has different answers which satisfy us.

In your tentative formulation, as I read it, the "something extra" seems to be something "extra corpuscular" to coin a phrase. In my materialistic metaphysics the "something extra" is imagination/creativity, wonderous to contemplate, difficult to measure, but activities of the brain, part of the sum total of brain activity we call "mind." Perceiving, learning, imagining, creating are, to suggest an answer to another question posed above: "implications of matter (any matter) being alive."

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Nevertheless, if we accept your premise we are still left facing the unavoidable fact that the components of living systems are not alive. And if you are willing to grant, as you seem to be, that there is a fundamental difference between living beings and inanimate objects regardless of the complexity of their arrangement, then to attribute the qualities of a living being to a complex system of inanimate objects commits a category error.

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Something has to give here, and the options appear limited. Either so-called "dead matter" (matter/energy) possesses qualities beyond what we currently believe, qualities that become manifest as self-organizing aggregates evolve in complexity, or else living beings are comprised of something more than just "dead matter" which accounts for them being fundamentally different from inanimate objects or complex systems thereof.

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Emotions are an integral part of the human experience. They don't appear to have a physical presence but their operations can be traced physically sometimes. Their effects are sometimes measurable while the cause remains invisible and intangible

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Interestingly, emotions are not human specific, as any dog owner will tell you. Just to further complicate things, humans appear to experience their emotional ranges in (potentially) individually unique ways and intensities. To put that another way, there appears to be quantitative and qualitative differences in the manner in which humans experience their emotional ranges.

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Emotions colour every aspect of our beings, as anyone who has ever experienced love can confirm. Love, it's often said, changes everything and changes nothing. Our physical beings, our mental states, our minds are all areas where the effects of emotions can be seen and sometimes measured. Emotions can have such powerful effects that they can cause people to kill themselves - thus violating what is often and erroneously called one of the First Principles - self survival. Yet consciousness does not appear to be a pre-requisite for emotional capacity ( new born infants, according to their mums, have emotional ranges, yet we don't ascribe consciousness [self awareness] to infants).

In short, emotions can shape the ways in which we perceive the world, interpret our senses and experiences, select our behaviours and interact with others and the world in general. Yet while they don't appear to have a physical tangibility, they're intricately connected with our physicality.

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If you accept, as you say you do, that living beings and inanimate objects are fundamentally different types of things, then assigning the attributes of living beings to inanimate objects or complex systems thereof, except as a metaphor, commits a category error. That you choose to view life "holistically" does not escape it.

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Machines use energy, have functionality, some have been designed to self-replicate, many have sensors and complex signal processing systems that allow them to respond proactively to events in their environment, and some can even aggregate to confront challenges they could not meet individually. But they are not alive.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

Ummm, where did I assign the attributes of living things to inanimate objects? Well, I never did.

If you argue that matter is lifeless, but that complex systems of definitively non-living matter can somehow become "alive," then you are doing exactly that, regardless of whether or not you are willing to accept it. What you are proposing is magic.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

Ummm, where did I assign the attributes of living things to inanimate objects? Well, I never did.

If you argue that matter is lifeless, but that complex systems of definitively non-living matter can somehow become "alive," then you are doing exactly that, regardless of whether or not you are willing to accept it. What you are proposing is magic.

K.

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And finally, I will not be drawn into these repeated attempts to impute to my position some imaginary theological proposition. Get over it.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Emotions are an integral part of the human experience. They don't appear to have a physical presence but their operations can be traced physically sometimes. Their effects are sometimes measurable while the cause remains invisible and intangible.

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ORIGINAL: http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/where-emotions-in-brain
Emotional responses seem to be centralized within one area of the brain: the limbic system. This system is located underneath the cortex. There are a number of parts to the limbic system. The amygdala and hippocampus, both small structures within it, are believed to be the primary areas managing your emotions.

The amygdala has a critically important and memorable role in our experiencing and processing of emotions: It handles fear. It's the central processing area for our feelings of fright, whenever they occur. It combines scary sensory stimulus, such as someone approaching you with a gun, with a fight or flight response. The amygdala gets input from high-level areas such as the parts of our brain that process sight and sound and sends its response output to the hypothalamus and autonomic portions of the brainstem. The amygdala also has a role in mood as well as conscious emotional response to things that happen to us such as anger, pleasure and, again, fear.

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ORIGINAL: farglebargle
Please DO NOT refer to a Judeo-Christian "tradition".