Posted by alexandra_k on October 22, 2005, at 18:21:59
In reply to Re: uh, just a question- » alexandra_k, posted by Declan on October 22, 2005, at 18:09:44
> If I had voices from God telling me things I wouldn't want to stop them.
Yeah. Though I guess I'd say that the situation is more that... You experience voices and then you form a hypothesis as to the identity of the voice: ie that voice is the voice of god rather than an alien or satan or your long dead uncle or whatever...
>A hotline to the Almighty telling me halfway nice stuff. There's plenty of historical characters who claim to have been told things by God.
Yes. Jesus even ;-)
I wonder how many of them actually heard voices and how many were using this as a metaphor.
Hard to say. Socrates said he had inner voices. Seems he might have meant... conscience. He experienced his conscience as a voice. Back then there wasn't really the concept of ones conscious. Without that way of conceptualising it... I suppose it might be experienced as a voice.
One theory is that voices are thoughts.The best way into understanding this is via the related deluison of alien control (an external agency is controlling my actions). Basically... There is some evidence that the unconscious parts of our brain that initiate a command to the motor production regions of our brain send a copy of that message to a comparator. The comparator compares the message sent to the motor production areas with the response that is generated. It is basically a biofeedback mechanism that sends a message back to the unconscious parts so that next time similar action is required the unconscious parts can adapt their signal so the actual behaviour generated is what was intended.
(sorry if that sounds complicated)
It is supposed to be the mechanism that allows us to improve performance on motor activities (such as hitting a golf ball etc)If the message at the comperator somehow gets altered from the message sent to the motor production areas then it might be plausible to suppose that the person has the experience: 'that action was not initiated by me!' From there it is a little bit of a jump to the hypothesis that an external agency generated the action... From there it is a little bit of a jump again to the hypothesis that a specific external agency generated the action (ie god).
It has been suggested... That there may be a similar mechanism that results in ones thoughts being tagged as self initiated. If there is a problem with the comparator (like in the last case) then that might result in the experience of thought insertion (ie that there are thoughts in ones mind that are not initiated by oneself)
Lots of work to be done...
;-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:569769
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20051021/msgs/570580.html