No, it isn’t.
Yeah.
phoneutria,
Once again you deserve praise for your effort.
I was aware of this but in princlple only. You forced me to look for details and within 5 min, i found the answer.
This is precisely what i was suggesting in principle.
Nociceptors are precisely what i described as less cognitive portion of the mind, the second line of decision making. Though, i was not aware exact termionology and functioning. But, do realize that these nociceptors are neither isolated or autonomous decision making bodies nor they have any cognitive ability of their own to deduct or feel than sensation. They have to depend on main brain through spinal cord.
with love,
sanjay
Yes, that will happen but not if new references will keep coming.
Well, i am not sure that my mere mentioning could change the working of your mind that easily. But, if you feel that way, the reason may be that, before you would not able to realize what is happening exactly. Let me tell you that we do not know ourselves very well but think otherwise.
Maia,
Now tell us about your sleeping habits.
How and when you feel sleepy? What helps you in sleeping and what causes disturbance?
Does music or perfume help you sleeping or cause trouble? What are the most and pleasing and annoying for you after being slept? Or, anything else that you think is important and want to share?
with love,
sanjay
It’s not isolated, but it is autonomous. We are talking about a reaction that happens in a fraction of second, and the information between peripheral nerves and cns travels ridiculously fast, so it’s difficult for us to conceive the cognitive and non cognitive portions of the reaction as isolated events, but they are. They are triggered by the same stimuli, but they fork into 2 separate processes. The fact stands that there is zero learning involved in somatic arc reflex. The very first time you stick your finger in a blazing piece of charcoal, your arm is going to jolt out of there, no questions asked. Your nerves don’t care if you even know what a blazing charcoal is.
You are right in principle.
Make no mistake. Even autonomous reflexes are controlled by brain, both directly and indirectly. The only difference is that those cannot be influenced by the will.
Here the term autonomous merely refers to not induced by will. But, by no meams, it is beyond the control of the brain.
Good question.
There is no problem in accepting closed eyelid as relaxed musle. But, that again begs a question.
Going by your theory, we can relax or give rest eyelids anytime. It simply means that we can close eyes to it rest for one time and sleep another time. It should be possible because eyelids would have enough rest by the time of sleep. Right.
it other words, we can keep our eyes the whole day but would be able to sleep with open eyes because eyelids have enough rest already. But, is it possible?
with love,
sanjay
It was just you mentioning seeing the word appear, made me think of reading it (in Braille). It’s not something that I normally think of, when I think of a word.
I don’t find it at all easy to stick to a proper sleeping pattern, and if it weren’t for my job and other daily routines I would just sleep when I felt sleepy and wake up when I wanted to. I don’t have a natural diurnal rhythm, in other words. I often listen to music when I’m going to sleep.
No, i am not. I very well understand the difference. And, i also agree with you that a child is born with the capacity of feeling pain (a priori).
But, even a child does not has to learn the feeling of pain, he still has to learn what incidents cause pain. And, that comes with experiecnce and time, thus a subject of learning.
with love,
sanjay
phoneutria,
What do you mean by autonomous? And, how it can be autonomous ever, if it is not isolated from the brain?
Autonomous simply means that is some other decision making authority in the body, other than the brain, that takes decisions in the cases of reflex actions. But, that is not true. I have looked into this issue in last some days from pure biological perspective. Whatever scientific knowledge we have about the brain, does not support what you are suggesting.
I can give you technical details too, if you want. And, i will include those details in my concluding post too.
You should have a look to my last post to Mithus too.
with love,
sanjay
Okay.
with love,
sanjay
I think that i should put my perceptive forth now.
But, that will take some time, at lest two days. Because, that needs two hours in one sitting at least (for me). Right now, i am follwing something and that will conclude tomorrow. I will able to post only after that.
For a time being, i want to ask one more pertinent question?
Many of us would have noticed that sometimes they or some other persons, tend to close their eyes when they think very hard on any issue.
Why does it happen?
with love,
sanjay
To eliminate distraction, perhaps?
Right.
But, why only closing of eyes eliminates disraction?
And, why closing of ears and other senses is not helpful in avoiding distraction?
with love,
sanjay
As I said before, to the degree the brain can “close those other senses”, it does. It finds calm, comfortable, dark, and quite surroundings. It didn’t have a body genetically formed with such closing lids because they were not a high enough priority and also hearing, smells, and touch are still active in sleep, just minimized.
It would be cool if we had wings and could fly, but that doesn’t mean it will happen.
Evolution doesn’t give us things we need, it makes us keep them when they spontaneously appear.
Guys,
I am sorry that i did not keep my promise. I will post tomorrow.
with love,
sanjay
Unavoidable circumstances kept chasing me since last two days and I literally got no time whatsoever. Nevertheless, I am free now and my reply is following within an hour.
with love,
sanjay
Not always does everyone close their eyes while sleeping. I have seen my sister sleep with her eyes open before, it was pretty creepy but nonetheless interesting, I saw it myself. Most of the time people do shut their eyes while sleeping though, but not always. I have also heard stories of students/teachers sleeping in class with being able to keep their eyes open so that they may sleep without getting called out.
My guess is that so our eyes do not dry out and debris/dusts and what not do not fly into our eyes when we’re asleep, since the eyes are pretty sensitive. It is perhaps because sleep is tied to the subconscious while being awake is tied to conscious, maybe the subconscious does not register to keep eyes open while sleeping, why would it? Sleep and dreaming are times for self reflection through darkness. It’s subconscious meditation in a sense, and rest for the physical body.
The fact of the matter is that, the reason of closing the eyes before sleeping is not complicated but a very simple one, if one gets the basics and methodology of the mind right. Then, it becomes just an issue of putting things into perspective. That is all.
Actually, it is the issue of consciousness, but I have put that perspective aside in this thread and focused only on functioning of the mind/brain and biological explanations. I do not want to provoke any metaphysics in it.
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The first reason that compels brain to close the eyes before sleeping, is the fact that the cognitive portion of the brain can focus only one issue at a time.
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The second reason is as the vision is most useful and important sensation for the brain, thus cognitive brain makes it (vision) and eyes as a default sense organ for concentration.
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As the cognitive brain is required for other purposes after sleeping, thus it does not have any other choice but to shut the eyes, in order to make itself free for other uses.
Now, let me elaborate these three premises, one by one.
The first premise says that brain can take up only one cognitive thought at a time. On a face value, this seems to be false but it is not. The reason of this phenomenon again goes into metaphysics but that is not relevant here, thus we should stick to examine the validity of the first premise only from the perspectives of psychology and biology.
Say, that a person is driving a car on a highway in a good speed. He is listening to the song being played on the music system and enjoying it too. And, as the result, he is tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to match the beats of the music and imitating that song too.
All that suggests that the driver is successfully executing multiple jobs simultaneously. First of all, he is driving a car, then listening the song, then singing it all along, making rhythmic tapping from his fingers and shaking his head to the tune too. But, the reality is that his actual cognitive abilities are not much busy in any of these actions.
Now, all of a sudden, after crossing a blind curve, driver sees that a small child is on the road. He immediately applies brakes and car skids on its wheels for some seconds and then stops. All that happens within some seconds.
But, if now anybody asks that driver that what was the lyrics and music during those very seconds, when he saw that child and the car stopped after skidding, he would not be able to recall that. Because, his cognitive brain shifted focus from the song to the more important situation.
It is not the case that song was stopped. The music system was still paying that and his ears were listening that song too. This simply means that theoretically he must have heard the lyrics yet he would be unable to recall that. Why? I can give many other examples of this phenomenon, which we experience in our daily lives.
That proves that brain can entertain only one cognitive issue at a time, not many.
Now, let me take the second premise that vision is the default sense for the cognitive concentration of the brain. It shifts its focus from the eyes only when other senses requires that attention, otherwise keeps focusing on the vision all the time.
We have millions of daily life experiences that support this premise. Say, that a person is in his normal frame of mind and busy is doing something and suddenly he hears a big sound like a blast or falling something big on the floor. What will be his first reaction? He will turn his eyes to the spot of that hearing, without any doubt. And, that is a default process. But, why that is necessary? Why mind cannot conclude its thoughts about any event without looking at it?
The answer lies in the way that human mind has been evolved over the ages and that can be verified too by looking at the structure of the human brain and its difference with the other species.
This tells that how much the human brain is focused on vision. And, i think that this is perhaps the reason why humans have to follow more systamic way of sleeping than other animals. Like, in the case of dogs and cats, these is no default system of sleeping. They use to sleep whenever they get time, whether day or night. Futthermore, they do not have any prolem in broken sleep. Means, a dog can complete his sleep in as many portions as he wants and it would not affect him. But, humans cannot do that. They cannot sleep for 15 min, then become awake of next half hour and then again go to sleep for next 15 min. But, this is not an issue with dogs and cats. Secondly, the daylight/darkness is also is not an issue in sleeping in the case of animals.
This prolong or onetime sleep pattern of humans has one more reason. I will take that up later.
There is one more issue that should be put into perspective here; the cognitive/reflex duality.
People sometimes confuse reflex action as they there are autonomous, but there is no such thing, and these actions are very much part and parcel of the brain. The only difference is that they are not cognitive decisions. Mind has become well versed with those situations over the time and now need not to go in the details every time, thus this duty is transferred to the second line of decision making, which is still very much the part of the brain.
The overall athourity that govens the body is CNS, and spinal cord and brain are its two components. We have slight misperception of the brain and its methodology, that creates confusion that these are two independant decision making bodies, which they are not. We tend to think that it is only the brain that repsents self while others not.
The point to be noted here is that spinal cord merely has some minor decision making authority, subletted by the brain, but it has no cogitative mechanism whatsoever. All that is reserved for the brain. Secondly, spinal cord has to inform the brain about its all decisions, otherwise we would never be able to know about those.
Perhaps, this confusion in perception is derived from our understanding of the brain and self, as Descartes put that- I think, therefore I am. And, going by his definition, we tend to think that the brain is responsible for only those decisions, which we can feel, but this is not true.
Medical science does not support this theory too. It clearly says that brain is responsible of all types of decision making, whether repulsive, autonomous ( not cogitated ) or cogitated. Furthermore, all decisions, other than cogitative ones, use to happen very fast, almost spontaneous but cognition takes time, thus it seems that the decision making authority is not brain but someone else. Non reflexive autonomous actions like heart beating, sweating, metabolism etc are all governed by the brain.
So, it can be said without any reasonable doubt that vision is the most important sensation for the brain to cogitate things and it pays the most attention to it, up to the extent of making it as a default sensation for almost all cogitations.
Establishment of these two premises leads to the third one; the need of cognitive brain during sleep.
To understand this, we have to look into the issue of conscious and subconscious minds, their working and relation. Without going into the duality of brain/mind, we will focus only on the working of both minds. To keep it simpler, let us assume that conscious mind is that portion of the mind, that concentrates more on present issues, and subconscious mind is such part of the brain that gives second thought to the cogitations of the conscious mind and keeps it twisting or refining continuously.
Going with the first premise that the brain can analyze only one thought/feeling at a time, we can safely say that brain cannot focus/feel on both of conscious and subconscious mind at the same time. It has to choose one of those.
But, still one question is remaining; what is the need for brain to shift focus from conscious mind to subconscious mind? Why it cannot get away with focusing only on conscious mind? And, why sleep is required in the first place?
That is a bit complicated issue and needs detail investigation on various verticals.
Giving rest to the body or the brain cannot be the ultimate cause. One can give rest to the body by relaxing but that does not entail sleep. Secondly, most internal and more important organs of the body keep working non-stop throughout the life. Like, heart never stops pumping blood, lungs never stop breathing, so other organs and muscles or the body also can work throughout life without stopping. And, we also know that brain also never stops functioning, whether we are in awaken position or sleeping. So, why sleep is even required?
Sleep is not a physical need but mental only. Body does not require sleep but that is essential for the mind. The perception that mind needs rest in myth. Mind never takes any rest whatsoever. Resting of mind is nothing but death. It is as simple as that.
We come across to enumerable things daily in our life. If we start keeping the data of all those incidents and derived thoughts from, it will surprise us. The numbers could easily go up to millions, if not more. Brain cannot handle such data because it has limitations. Thus, it uses the time of sleep to get all that information and thoughts into perspective. It filters, twists, tweaks and keep refining all that is gathered during the awaken position. It creates a concise summary of all that and stores only that into the memory for further use, while putting the waste component into the recycle bin.
This is the real reason why sleep is required, not the rest. Brain does not need rest anyway.
This filtering and refining process is necessary in order to keep brain not to become overburden and from preventing any breakdown too. But, this process could not take place if new raw information would keep coming all the time. Brain can either use its cogitating capacity in focusing new events or give those second though at subconscious level. But, it cannot do both at the same time. And, both are equally necessary, that is why this cycle of awakening and sleeping and closing of eyes before sleeping are evolved.
Dreams are the manifestations of that process. That is why we experience dreams mostly in the last leg of the sleep, not in the starting. In the dreams, subconscious mind gives back all that raw information back to conscious mind, after refining, that it receives from conscious mind during awaken time. Though, they are much more than mere this, but all that is not pertinent here.
In the last, i want to say something. First of all, i want to thank Maia, phoneutria and Mithus for their contribution. They pushed me to look into the issue from biological perspective.
Secondly, I did not find anything such in the biological details, that contradicts my previously formed metaphysical perception, which is derived from either from ancient scriptures or my personal experience during meditation. On the contrary, every detail seems to be confrming that.
Thirdly, during looking from the biological perspective, i came across to many other things as well. I want to include those into this reply too, but avoided otherwise the post will become too long. But, i will put those forth in different threads in the future.
Any criticism or cross questions are welcome.
with love,
sanjay
Maia
Hi, i am wondering how you cannot see darkness?! Do you mean that your perception is of emptiness and not blackness? What are colours in your mind?
The rest of your posts sounds as if you think in terms of conceptual objects in the same way as sighted people, except that you perceive the object brightly [strongly] where we dimly perceive it, and your brain associates other attributes like colour and brightness [?] dimly where we perceive them strongly? It’s all the same instrumentation and aspects of the human mind, just being made a different utility of. 
I can’t imagine colours, darkness, brightness, or anything like that. I don’t see darkness, or emptiness, because I don’t see anything at all. I don’t have any visual frame of reference. I’m sure that’s as difficult for a sighted person to get their head around as it is for me to try to imagine what seeing is like, and believe me I’ve tried, all my life.