The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
An organism is a colony of single-cell organisms working in cooperation and communicating with each other through various mechanisms.
A community of people is a grouping of colonies of single-cell organisms working in cooperation and communicating with other colonies of single-cell organisms through various mechanisms.
Someday it might be possible to measure the accumulated trends in neuro-chemicals in a nation. For instance, what if it was required that a sample of cerebral fluid was taken whenever a person voted in a national election. Then, through careful study, it was noted that about 90% of the times when the country voted democratic the nation as a whole measured with a greater amount of one of the neuro-chemicals. And about 80% of the times when the country voted republican another neurotransmitter was shown to be in abundance. Using the current techniques of medical interpretation, the scientific community could then say that the first chemical was a regulator of democratic party sentiment and the second chemical was a regulator of republican party sentiment.
No, this does not make sense, but it makes as much sense as saying that seratonin is the regulator of mood. The language of the country is communicated through the polls. The language of the nervous system is still unknown.
Another example: What if the English-speaking peoples had no knowledge of how to communicate with the French-speaking peoples. Using medical observation techniques and measuring brain chemistry it was discovered that a majority of French-speaking people had higher levels of dopamine in their systems than the English-speaking people. They might surmise that dopamine was the regulator of French communication and that a study of dopamine was the key to eventually cracking the code of understanding French. This would not be right, but it makes as much sense as saying that seratonin is the regulator of mood.
On a macro level a nation communicates with other nations through political positioning that is the result of the voting of the people. On a micro level an organism communicates with other organisms through the mechanisms of cellular communication (and cellular voting, in a sense). We know the language of countries, pretty much. We know the languages of individual people quite well. We do not know the language of individual nerve cells yet.
To try to explain these various levels of communication as if they were caused by particular chemicals of the nervous system is inappropriate on the national level and the personal level. I will show that it is inappropriate on the cellular level as well.
The chemicals are there. The chemicals are involved. But the chemicals are not the language of the brain at any level. The chemicals are the medium for making the language possible but the chemicals are not really the regulators of any kind of functioning. (Exposure to quantities of these chemicals has an effect on various kinds of functioning but the leap to the conclusion that these chemicals are regulators of certain functions is not taking into account some important missing pieces of logic. Remember: a severed foot might lead to a person slowing things down and getting more rest, but that does not mean that amputation is the regulator of leisurely attitudes.)
The cells in the body of an organism are still independent entities trying to live the best way possible in the environment of a colony, of a body. The mechanisms these cells use to live a successful life add up to the way the colony survives and functions. The nervous system creates our experiences and function and intelligence through the accumulation of mathematics much like that of economics explaining the function of a body of people (a country) into a complex form with many functions achieving some kind of balance.
This is a very difficult concept to explain or teach. It is very difficult to discover. Much more will need to be written to support this understanding. Many more observations will need to be discussed.
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Many of the problems of medicine, biology, psychology and philosophy require an understanding of the basic mathematical principles behind how the nervous system does what it does to achieve function and experience, and that mathematics is not explained using narrowly-focused statistics. Understanding how this math works will be the tool for the discovery of many answers of great importance to humanity. The case for this concept and the offering of an explanation of this kind of math is made in the many essays of this website.
On these pages you will find ideas that should haunt you. Included are new concepts in science, medicine, sociology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy and more...
This website and the podcasts of Everyone's Revolution explain how the brain creates the mind, but many side issues must be resolved in order to teach this material. Once you realize that the "hard problems" are really the first problems to be answered, you then have a tool for changing all of science and medicine by explaining a massive number of discoveries that will fall into line in order to unify the evidence. All of the evidence is good. The interpretations of the evidence are mistaken in many cases. For ten years now there have been new discoveries of evidence that all move in the direction of supporting this theory (or this school of many theories) and its predictions. Quite a few people have started to pay attention to this theory as well.
