Re:Origins of the myth of dopamine as the ‘pleasure chemical’
by coldtea on Sunday April 15, 2018 @12:56PM
(#16843511)
>More so, if you really feel the mind is entirely the product of chemicals, can you describe what is happening when someone faces a tough choice, one which, up to the last second, could go either way? Are you suggesting probabilistic outcomes for normally deterministic chemical processes?
Huh? You're seem to be the one to suggest "probabilistic outcomes for normally deterministic chemical processes".
If personal choice is not an illusion/rationalization (as the parent suggests), then it's real.
By which means such a real agent would come into play in an otherwise deterministic universe?
Or are you saying the universe is not deterministic?
Re:Origins of the myth of dopamine as the ‘pleasure chemical’
by psyc on Sunday April 15, 2018 @01:35PM
(#16843764)
My understanding of the consensus in quantum mechanics, is that the wave function evolves deterministically, but the state of the universe falls out of the wave function non-deterministically. So the probabilities evolve deterministically, but the empirical state of all the 'particles' doesn't. Second-order determinism, not first-order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Other_matters_of_q...
If true, can you state which chemicals are in charge of the hypercompetent rationalizing system? What happens when these chemicals are absent or their delivery is absent?
More so, if you really feel the mind is entirely the product of chemicals, can you describe what is happening when someone faces a tough choice, one which, up to the last second, could go either way? Are you suggesting probabilistic outcomes for normally deterministic chemical processes?