Polynomial

As I’ve recently been discussing aspects of the mind in the blog entitled Self Similarity ~ Fractals, Fractals Everywhere… where I have proposed a system of biofeedback based on concentric basins of attraction i.e. sexual drive for propagation, flight-and-fight reactions for survival, self maintenance requirements such as hunger for food, thrist for water, etc… We saw that these attractors, which were localized in specific areas of the brain, made up the mind and produced the experience of consciousness that we all experience today. I postulated that, because of these varying strange attractors at work, attractors which are in essence fractal, that our minds use similar structures and processes to perceive the environment around us with… Structures and processes that naturally share the environment we live in.

And once again, I would like to hand the reigns of this topic to an expert in the field of philosophy and understanding. Patricia Churchland wrote an article for New Scientist back in 2006, which very delicately muses upon the very sensitive topic of whether or not we, as human beings, actually have free will.

In 2003, the Archives of Neurology carried a startling clinical report. A middle-aged Virginian man with no history of any misdemeanour began to stash child pornography and sexually molest his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Placed in the court system, his sexual behaviour became increasingly compulsive. Eventually, after repeatedly complaining of headaches and vertigo, he was sent for a brain scan. It showed a large but benign tumour in the frontal area of his brain, invading the septum and hypothalmus – regions known to regulate sexual behaviour.

After removal of the tumour, his sexual interests returned to normal. Months later, his sexual focus on young girls rekindled, and a new scan revealed that bits of tissue missed in the surgery had grown into a sizeable tumour. Surgery once again restored his behavioural profile to “normal”.

This case renders concrete the issue of free will. Did the man have free will? Was he responsible for his behaviour? Can a tumour usurp one’s free will? With the tumour, he had powerful, but atypical desires; he was not himself. Even so, the case reminds us that most adults also have powerful, albeit typical, sexual desires – desires that are sometimes more powerful than the need for food or the fear of pain. These sexual desires are regulated by hormones that act on neurons in the septum and connected brain areas. How different, then, are normal humans from the Virginia man where free will is concerned?

…continued here…

About Patricia Smith Churchland:

Patricia (born July 16, 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian-American philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) since 1984. She is currently a professor at the UCSD Philosophy Department, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and an associate of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (Sejnowski Lab) at the Salk Institute. She won a MacArthur prize in 1991. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Oxford (B.Phil.). She taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is the wife of philosopher Paul Churchland.

If you would like to learn more about Patricia and what she’s upto, please click here.

Ideas tackled within this article will be continued later in an article entitled “Is The Universe Deterministic?“