Although later suggestions from parents or other adults may, to some extent, modify memory, current research shows that what Q wrote is certainly possible. The best case anti-abortionists can offer is fetal memory or the possibility that a fertilized egg already contains certain properties of both parents. The problem then becomes who are the parents? Was the child concieved through incest or rape? Is it an eugenic idea to abort? But this is off track of the main thread. I can’t remember anything beyond my fifth year. I do not doubt that others can.
Early memories in the womb are great but, Istill do not see that it makes that fetus sentient or human until mid2cnd trimester when it is fully formed. I would say that even animals have fetal memories and are perhaps more intune to them than we could ever be.
I would suggest that, since there are no gaps, only stages of process, in biochemistry producing minds, everyone’s earliest “Memories” are pre-natal.
Lady K., what goes on with the fetus in the mid, 2nd trimester? I’m ignorant of such things; but I can’t consider a fetal brain as capable of thinking, even though the self-other interactions are already present in the womb. I could be wrong. So what do you mean by sentience at the stage of development to which you refer?
I agree about animals.
Up to the midpart of the second trimester the body and brain are still forming, the body is incomplete there can be no humanity with an incomplete body and brain. Can a brain that is not fully formed be sentient? I say no. I realize that some are going to get rabid about this but it is a valid question and subject.
Up to the midpart of the second trimester the body and brain are still forming, the body is incomplete there can be no humanity with an incomplete body and brain. Can a brain that is not fully formed be sentient? I say no. I realize that some are going to get rabid about this but it is a valid question and subject.
There’s no such thing as a complete body and brain. We are what we are, in each moment. All you’re saying here is that a fetus isn’t a child. Well a child isn’t an adult, either.
And out of the chute to grab the first pick, anon!!! ROTFLMFAO. Anon you know what I mean, don’t pick nits on it. There is forming then there is growing, you know this. I did not say grow I said formed. and that means it is still getting put together in one viable item. Unless you are stating that a two day old fetus already has fully formed hands?
:lol: And out of the chute to grab the first pick, anon!!! ROTFLMFAO. Anon you know what I mean, don’t pick nits on it. There is forming then there is growing, you know this. I did not say grow I said formed. and that means it is still getting put together in one viable item. Unless you are stating that a two day old fetus already has fully formed hands?
I’m glad I amuse you.
I guess I’m just never happy with people trying to pin down what is or isn’t life, sentient, human, etc. Anti-abortionists say one thing, pro-choicers say another thing… But everyone is always trying to turn difficult choices into easy ones. But I think some kinds of choices should always remain difficult ones. Otherwise, we become less human, in a sense.
I fully agree that some choices should always be difficult. Especially this one. Once it becomes mandated either way then a child becomes a commodity. i fear the day we lose choice. I cannot ever say that someone who believes life begins at conception is totally wrong, I cannot condemn that. I do expect the same respect. but, it seems those that are in charge are leaning towards making women walking incubators wether that woman want to be one or not. it, to me, is a form of slavery to force a woman to carry.
I fully agree that some choices should always be difficult. Especially this one. Once it becomes mandated either way then a child becomes a commodity. i fear the day we lose choice. I cannot ever say that someone who believes life begins at conception is totally wrong, I cannot condemn that. I do expect the same respect. but, it seems those that are in charge are leaning towards making women walking incubators wether that woman want to be one or not. it, to me, is a form of slavery to force a woman to carry.
I’m glad we generally agree. You worried me for a second.
I just cannot see a fetus as human until it actually begins to grow after being formed… I think that is where we may disagree. when does a seed become a tree? When does a seed become a seed?
:lol: I just cannot see a fetus as human until it actually begins to grow after being formed… I think that is where we may disagree. when does a seed become a tree? When does a seed become a seed?
I don’t consider anyone to be human until they can buy me a pint legally or otherwise. Probably just me though.
:lol: I just cannot see a fetus as human until it actually begins to grow after being formed… I think that is where we may disagree. when does a seed become a tree? When does a seed become a seed?
What is “human” just depends on the definition we assign the word. That’s not so much the issue for me. The issue to me is that a fetus (I think) experiences his or her world, feels pain, etc. And even if that isn’t true, our relationship to the unborn is indicative of our attitude towards all life. I think abortion is sometimes the best choice in a given situation, but the thought of aborting a fetus as freely and easily as we throw away food scraps… well, that just doesn’t sit well with me. And now with the growing fertility industry, isn’t that the inevitable outcome? Oops, quintuplets on the way! No problem though…
I don’t have an answer, policy-wise, by the way. This is just my basic attitude.
anon, I agree but, I also see the flipside of not being able to freely abort. Because I believe in quality of life over quantity , I would rather that fetus be aborted than suffer abuse, neglect, drug addictions etc. The socialservices for unwanted children is overwhelmed now. Imagine if you would dumping so many more on an over worked system. What happens to those children? What kind of life will they have, how many will fall through the cracks and become something that is abberant? The system will have to accept foster parents with less background checks and no experience… that scares the crap out of me. Accepting life just because its human can cause untold issues in overpopulation, health risks, mental and physical, it has the potential do be incredibly damaging to humanity as a whole. If abortion becomes illegal its just the first step down a really frightening slippery slope.
anon, I agree but…
Not sure where the “but” comes in, because I agree with you.
anon, I agree but, I also see the flipside of not being able to freely abort. Because I believe in quality of life over quantity , I would rather that fetus be aborted than suffer abuse, neglect, drug addictions etc. The socialservices for unwanted children is overwhelmed now. Imagine if you would dumping so many more on an over worked system. What happens to those children? What kind of life will they have, how many will fall through the cracks and become something that is abberant? The system will have to accept foster parents with less background checks and no experience… that scares the crap out of me. Accepting life just because its human can cause untold issues in overpopulation, health risks, mental and physical, it has the potential do be incredibly damaging to humanity as a whole. If abortion becomes illegal its just the first step down a really frightening slippery slope.
If the fundies get their way, Roe vs. Wade will be undone after the coming election. Not being a woman, I feel I have no right to say what a woman should do with her own body. Back to back alleys and coat hangers? The rich will just go to countries where abortions are allowed. The Chinese now have laws regarding how many children a woman should bear. Some Catholics consider any form of birth control other than coitus interruptus to be abortion. The slippery slope you mention could have to do with practical issues such as population control on one side and abortion as a form of unwarranted birth control on the other.
Back to the OP, sound memories occur in a fetus at 30 weeks, touch occurs earlier. So what is the first possible memory?
vibrations of the mothers body, heartbeat, walking, talking, these things would form waves in the fluid surrounding the fetus, massaging the body. That would or should form the first memories.
and my friend when there are too many lives, life becomes cheap and lives will be used in horrible ways. The youngest, the weakest , the smallest will fall victim to atrocities that would make us all here vomit.
Back to the OP, sound memories occur in a fetus at 30 weeks, touch occurs earlier. So what is the first possible memory?
Kriswest:Herre is a question/s do colors only exist for the sighted? Do those that can’t see have images of various colors and can we have colors in our minds as fetuses?
Lady K.,
I don’t know if Spiralize88 would want us to go into these areas of thinking. But, I’ll persist unless told otherwise. There was a thread on color perception. Can’t remember when and where it was. Oliver Sachs tells of several instances of blind persons “knowing” what colors are. The brain equipment for discerning color exists in blind persons. It could also exist in fetuses. The development of their brains into ability to think comes after they are born. I firmly believe a fetus “knows” color by senses that are developed in the womb.
On “memory” in general, I think that the search for the engram or "Grandmother " cell (what makes you remember your grandma’s face) are now oudated. Early on Donald Hebb showed how memory begins on the human biochemical level. He noted that, if certain neural routes are used again and again, they become the “preferred” routes and are used almost automatically, e.g., learning to drive a car. Perhaps much of what the philosophers call “sensory” data (what senses perceive) has already become “automatic” in fetal brains.
Bit of a sidestep but worthy of discussion, I don’t mind at all.
Here’s a link of Sacks’s talking about the question directly. I can’t remember if he answers it, but see for yourself:
My ‘Wheel of Atlantis’… I posted this on a Theory of Mind Theorist website, so some of the terminology is his, but I think it’s common enough that you’ll slug through it, I do a cognitive breakdown of my earliest memory, which is formulation to a central aspect of my philosophy. You’ll find out what parts of the brain I likely activated and stumbled on, and what wasn’t working, and the long term why:
Growing up, I had issues with a self diagnosed Limb-Kenetic Apraxia where I could envision what I wanted to do physically- such as hand-eye coordination added to motor skills o the hand, but could not pull it off. This was very frustrating and maddening- literally crazy maddening- and gave me compulsive problems with my active imagination well into my teens before I learned to control my imagination- the problem (and solution) seems to be linked up to Ideational Apraxia. I call the whole scenerio (from the LKA angle at least prior to finding the solution) ‘The Wheel of Atlantis’…… it was the most maddening psychological effect you can imagine, but I didn’t look classically hysteric when it happened, just like I had a anorism and fell down into a shaking defensive position- possibly from a strong headache- at it’s worst behaviorally to someone looking at me from the exterior. Leading up to it though- not too pretty. I might whine or scream in frustration or have a look of panic or resigned acceptance something bad was about to happen.
First time it happened, I was a toddler, with little chubby fingers. I was building a wooden block tower, stacking them higher and higher, almost shoulder high, and had the idea of putting a wooden triangle block on top as it’s eventual roof, but could never get there with any of the four towers I built. I built them higher and higher, and got a little better over time, but there was this glass ceiling in which I couldn’t pull it off. I remember trying to guide the steadiness of my one hand with the other- and putting it down gently. The heat and pressure of my hand would magnify, and I would become enraged with any shaking of the hand. It would topple again.
I remember being flung into self hatred, and started thinking of a wheel in my head. I made it spin. This was easy and normal, nothing unusual in it. Was was unusual was that I couldn’t reverse the tempo of it’s movement- it’s speed only moved in one damn direction, and it was faster. I didn’t know how to stop it, and it drove me into a horrible state of dispair.
My curiosity would get the better of me over the years, and I would think of the wheel in my head. Not spinning, no problem. But if I started spinning it, it would spin, but was never able to stop it, only increase it’s speed. Faster and faster and faster it would go. I would try tricks, like make it a bicycle wheel, and try to jam a bar through the spokes to slow it down, but the physics was impossible to break, and it literally broke me off in my own mind- driving me into dispair. The thing wouldn’t end on it’s own, and I spent many nights trying to kill this effect.
I started noticing whenever I would do this, I was prone to impulsive behavior…. I had a friend who very quickly stopped being my friend who in second gradesaid would write a book with me- but in his late teens was jailed for breaking into a praty at a house where he knew no one and cut the guys eye out infront of everyone at the party…… he’s still in jail from my understanding…. a very insane and quite evil exhorter who has something going on with teacher but no mercy. At times- he would just randomly attack me- but I got used to holding him off- but if he got me at the wrong moment, he could pick me up and slam me. But the sensation of uncontrolled chaos I would get from this wheel would be the same if I saw him or someone else do something wrong, and it would bring out a deep rage in me…. leading me to do incredible acrobatics (not circul level stuff, but stuff I usually couldn’t do) and take him/them down. I found my more natural level of skill in fighting was spatial reasoning and dynamic juxtapositioning instead of one on one. I know of only one other guy who admits to this- it’s the author of the comic strip American Life- I heard him describe a similar scenerio growing up and everyone fighting him- he was worthless one on one but excellent in group fights where he was outnumbered…… but I think he is more server than anything…… though he could be a contributor with strong server traits- just struck me as a server.
Anyway- the problem continued until I learned how to modify the physics of the wheel’s surroundings. Such things as stairing at dented brass doorknows while stuck in the corner trying to figure out what the whobbly shapes behind me for hours at a time helped. Books like Flatland did too. I don’t think I knew how to control my Contributor thought growing up, and it was always prey to exhorter and teacher. I would like to say server was involved, but I am not all that certain it was…… as I tend to see it as affiliated with the physical body.
Anyway- this opened up a whole new paradox I had to deal with…. the Ideational Apraxia. I am prone to quirkiness. I put my socks more often inside out (how they come off when I wash them) toe first, and reverse envelope them back up till it’s at my ankles, on correctly. It’s faster and takes less time for me. I learned to do this on my own. I wear my watch on my right hand, because no one ever taught me how to wear a watch…. it was highly useful in the military holding a M4 in the prone position, as the right hand for a right handed user is the trigger finger, and the left hand is holding the barrel. In order to look at your watch, you would have to move your support from the barrel, causing the barrel to move. Right hand doesn’t matter as much, as it’s supported in your shoulder as well. Just a slight flick of the wrist inwards, and you can look- without moving anything else but a eye.
However, being taught things was hell. For starters- no one’s voice sounded right when heard thcommand, and I was worried I was going deft- so I just started guessing at what I was being yelled at for. I got a few hearing test, and somehow had super hearing- but couldn’t even flollow when the drill sargent would scream in my face. I would have complex tasks told to me, to do step by step- and wouldn’t be able to do it- or I would start working on the incorrect stage first. Now- in fairness, looking back and fully comprehending what was being asked- and having a damn good theoretical knowledge base on military psychology and tactics and field engineering- my approach wasn’t ever ‘wrong’ and in fact was more correct at times than others…… just wasn’t doctrine at the time- or still isn’t, but was once at some point in history. This is the difficulty of getting a message- ‘hearing it’ and not being able to process it server-teacher wise. My thoughts were ‘um…. fuck…. what was I supposed to do? Ummm…… it’s like, just do it’.
Anyway, I was the worst you can ever possibly imagine at large movement drill. Johnny English- the Roland Adkinson movie that just came out, pretty much shows my level of physical comprehension at drill. This being said- I was scary efficient in sim round battles- sim rounds are actual little bullet-paintball hybrids that shoot out of your real lfe weapon at a lowered velocity- in a melee enviroment, and could read a situation better than anyone else in my battalion. I know this as factual experience- I was stuck down in victorsville for a week while in the army with a knee injury as a make believe insurgent with other support guys. We would operate in a actual abandoned neighborhod and have to hold it against a attack from a fully stacked infantry company. After a few hours, I was leading office guys on ambushes of heavy machine gun squads or the company commanders/first sargents. I would see a three-d representation of of the battlefield, with huge questionmarks, and intuitively build likely shapes for stuff beind it, lanes of fire, sniper positions, and interpolated small unit maneuvers over that- and predict where people would be and how they would react. I started doing all kinds of crazy stuff- even with my slow limp, just working large units, appearing and disappearing at a walking pace through buildings, blasting away at their backs at they looked out the backside where they thought they saw me walk as I would walk in from around into the front door, only to dissapear out the back again and shot someone else while standing behind a tree, then wiat a few second as his team members look and dart back in, and continue on my merry way.
I can do stuff like that easily… what I could never do was follow orders if they were very new and yelled in the required sequence. It wasn’t until my sense of self completely crashed in Iraq that I was able to reset this phenomena for the most part- it’s been a learning experience, and it stll took one hell of a depression two years later to mop it up more.
The inability to sequence things though seems directly related to my ability to control the wheel in my mind. I learned how to sequence via that internally. It solved the infinity problem inherent in the wheel of atlantis. I see alot of mathematicians struggle with it though and can’t balance it, and in some cases it brings to literally to madness then death- was a problem during the twentieth century. To this day, I still identify the concept of a indeerminable multi-polygon based infinity with a wheel, but couple it with the holding concept of zero. My mathematics operates within it, which isn’t unique- was tried in the past…. but it’s the simplest method to numbers I know of, and better than the arabic numeral system. I can see how a lot of mathematicians this monadological approach to numbers isn’t intuitive aall, being lefties…. but it’s the only viable solution to number paradoxes that I know of that still accounts for the paradox while bulding them into it while deliveringobjective data sequencing.
Some cues of the Wheel of Atlantis:
Inability to control rotational speeds upwards of infinity loops
Associated with Hand Eye coordination and Motor Reflex failure (something going on in the Corpus Collosum for bi-lateral corridination)
Contributor Thought is held Hostage to Exhorter and Teacher- Server Skills are not seemingly even optional, and when done initially, fail in terms of spontaniously generated physics.
Is resolved by a later, gradual build up of interpreting spatial reasoning in reference to objects not otherwise viewable to the naked eye (theoretical astrophysics built from astronomolgical anomalties would seem like a good solution to a mathematician struggling with infinity complexes- as would time spent in intel with a involuntary obsessive compulsive military worker unable to close the gap in a tactical synthesis he keeps spotting his weaknesses in.
Inability to interprete what people are saying, but hearing them, and understanding a task is at hand- and being competent enough to finish it, but not being able to remember the sequential order of doing the task.
Becomming exceptionally good over time in intuitively picking up on people’s typology and expectations, and reacting to them PRIOR to being asked by juxtapositioning emergent situation with circumstancial evidence and know how on your end. Makes for a excellent everything…. and a diabolically scary efficent and inventive philosopher who knows the arguements that will be used in advanced in real time- to the point he can say what thoughts people in the group are stuggling with, and what would be the limits to their thoughts.
Having a immature underside of untempered rage, where the meeting of the crux and crucible of life is experienced not so heroically. Mine never left the toddler stage, and I can still revert back to it at times. Number 5) makes heroic acts look rather mundane, as Contributors are prone to cover all our bases and then take ‘risks’…. actually such moments are not heroic, just look like it to others who don’t quite grasp what is going on. It’s the little things, like firefox freezing up unexpectedly that brings out the whiny frustration and rage and shaking and the screaming out of ‘noooooo…… why the f*k in hell I never told you to do thattttttt!!! Stop this madness’…… yeah, unfortunately that survives.
The learning curve on stuff directly related to my persona when facing the dividents of the crux and crucibles have progressively died down though- the stoic is beating the cynic in it’s acceptance- and very bad things can happen to me without much of a notice in a change of behavior- though my mind may race… however, my mind is orderly…. unlike in number 6. I can note irony and exhibit moments of letting off stress, but it’s mostly undercover and quite cool to outside observers.
Failure of the Wheel of Atlantis in a Contributor will seemingly almost certainly lead to failure and PTSD symtoms upon realizing the onset of another episode, and likely eventual death. I don’t see a full conversion over into a deranged exhorter happening. Like the character Monk in the TV show Monk, when he was in Mexico- a Contributor simply will not accept that on his life. I note the mathematicians I am visually recalling (though oddly enough not erbally right now- I remember posting a video of a few of them on cognitionexpo a year back) seem to be facilitarors and unequiped to handle such a situation once their problems of mathematics lead them to triggering this phenomena consciously. I don’t know how facilitators access contributor thought intuitively, as a Contributor I can push down into a handicapped facilitator, but not do much. I suspect they would know even less about navigating the finer details of our mechanics than a young contributor child would. I suspect the occurence of this phenomena is quite low in the contributor population- I had a fancy at a few young age to mentally image this shape during a difficult event. I suspect the mechanics to handle this matures over time for a contributor, and wouldn’t effect him as much- but nor would he gain the advantages in having known the pitfalls and navigation of his memory. I suspect alot of spontanious suicide resulting from the lost sense of self is the onset of this phenomena without knowing how to react. A lot of male deaths resulting from financial collapse would be related. A infinity build upwards that is triggered from inability and a challenged sense of self isn’t too different from a nihilistic collapse at the face of a impossible downward spiral. I can easily see such a person freaking out at the financial section of a newspaper screaming ‘no…. you weren’t suppost to do that’ and then leaping out of a building during the market collapse at the beginning of the great depression as I do to my firefox. In my case, my sense of self and the aparatus is seperated. In many undeveloped contributors, the philosophical ‘apparatus’ and the sense of reality and it’s relationship to selfhood is the exact same thing.
I always leave something out…. which in and of itself underlines’ one of the side effects of Contributor thought on the logical level, but not it’s lowest level (which is a refutation to those who think Logic is the most basic level that a INTJ’s brain is made of- not the case in me)- the nesting phenomena inherent in our logic.
Take a scheme for example. I can remember stuff in real time, but not necessarily specific elemtns in the background…. as a memory is accessible only as to how it was recorded- it’s meaning. I can recall those very early Wheel of Atlantis moments because it meant something- but it’s been years since I rembembered the sheen and the color of yellow for the triangular wooden roof block, or that there was four towers, or the room was a waiting room with sofas in it. These particulars blur away in the bulk of the memory, and can unfold- or be artificially manipulated. It’s why hypnotic regression into traumatic memories are not all that great for evidence in courts. Sometimes a nesting sequence is left out during a explanation that unfolds into a crucial direction.
Frank Herbert- a Contributor himself, played with this phenomena a bit…. in his character Leto Atreides…. who is as INTJ as it gets youtube.com/watch?v……x4-60r5Pp0
Alot of the mature effects of a contributor is there after the jacurutu event, but not prior. His assimilation of his genetic memory is very similar to my memories of myself during my depression where I would discover entire events I had no memory of, bt once recovered, could make a better understanding of my sequencing- the repression of which happened to protect me so I could carry on growing up. The Corpus Callosum can be stunted in it’s growth in childhood by PTSD, the ability to repress is of huge, massive importance in order to carry on with normal brain growth- but the onset of maturity in a adult- especially a Contributor means stuf that was impossible to change as a child becomes a possibility to change as a adult…. even stuff others think are impossible to change. We have a way of historically slugging through a impossible mess to a confrontation or a solution. Why I included the world ‘whirlwind’- the social phenomena of a introverted contributor (don’t see a ENTJ doing this) stuck in a middle of a much larger extention of himself into the psyche of others and the enviroment. The concept is a Nietzschean one- as Frank Herbert was Jungian and both heavily influenced by Nietzsche, but has some great historical precidents that we’re attracted to by vocation. Think of the movie ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ when Saladin was in the whirlwind. It’s a computative model we’re quite at home with, though bewildered a bit. There is something…. coherent in the chaos of the melee. I think Colonel Du Picq’s classic work Battle Studies would be a good start to understanding this. The nesting phenomena is very fast, it’s as much recall as rearrangement, and extrapolation and linking. Like a many armed hindu god at work who is very efficent and logical. But it burns you out after a while….the social component at least faster than the intellectual one. It’s alluring none the less. I think in classical times our fighting skills in a melee stood out, as well in modern ones to lead. Staying put within a group totally blows on a level you can’t imagine. The whirlwind effect needs to be understood in logical nesting, as it’s weakest point but also as what charges it the most…. as well as how we tend to screw up the worst. Pompey- after his defeat against ceasar…. took one look at his superior line of navial logistics and immediately realized how not picking up on this one littlefact caused him to judge his actions disastorously- be could of easily of outmaneuvered caesar to invinity, denying caesar coastal supplies while doing hit attacks wherever he wanted. It’s why caesar had such a hard time tracking down down his enemies forces after defeats- they loaded up on a thier ships and left- whereas Ceasar had to figure out how to continue chasing them. It’s the odd nesting phenomena- good vertically, but sometimes pockets are missed horizontally.
Ierrellus:Back to the OP, sound memories occur in a fetus at 30 weeks, touch occurs earlier. So what is the first possible memory?
[youtube][/youtube]
Thanks for this. LaMark (SIC) wasn’t entirely wrong. Epigenetics is now considering that it takes DNA plus environment to release certain traits and dispositions. As the son of five generations of ministers, I feel the breath on my heels of the hound of heaven. I don’t seem to have the ability to disbelieve certain isms and dogmas.