rscanlon at nycap.rr.com (ray scanlon) wrote in message news:<363d693e.0408311503.3f82f3e9 at posting.google.com>...
> David Longley writes:
>> > Don't you think sleight-of-hand and metaphysics deserves derision?
>> Well, then let's drop all the sleight-of-hand and metaphysical
> prejudices and talk about the brain.
>> Since the neural net (interneurons) appeared in Cnidaria, what has
> changed? For one thing, the DNA has evolved to a point where it is
> able to construct a whole series of motor program generators, groups
> of neurons that when triggered produce a motor act. These generators
> can be modified by experience but they are not learned. We are born
> with them.
>> The location in the nervous system of some of these motor program
> generators can be more or less specified.
>> Orofaciopharyngeal movements: facial expression, vocalization,
> licking, chewing, and swallowing in the dorsolateral hindbrain.
>> Reaching, grasping, and manipulating in the spinal cord (cervical
> enlargement).
>> There are more, of course, but we take these for starters.
>> (The specialist talks about controllers, imitators, motoneuron pools,
> etc.)
>> The important thing is that these are not, repeat not, learned?they
> are constructed by the DNA. Under vocalization are the phonemes?also
> provided by the DNA.
>> Some synapses in the nervous system can be altered by experience. This
> allows us to string the phonemes together into language.
>> This lays the groundwork for a scientific explanation of brain action.
Hardly. Since *DNA* doesn't *construct* anything.
Regardless of what any "motor" DNA *codes*, they
are not *triggering* any *motor* action. It's only
on context of the extremely more complicated *controllers*,
and imitators, that you can even barely lay the
scientific groundwork for *Virus* action, nevermind brain action.
> Ray
