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The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior

Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris

It's not intelligent "design," rather it's intelligent "perception"

September 15, 2005

The existence of consistent mathematical formulas that explain most anything in our universe is evidence of the nature of how our brains and nervous systems work. The way our brains learn and therefore grow, as a partner to all experience and function, involves factors that will explain these perceptions of the nature of our worlds.

Everything the brain does involves the recognition of patterns, so the body of known mathematics is just the observation of patterns as can be represented in the forms of language. But the particular kind of mathematics used by the nervous system does not involve language (other than that, after the evolution of a complex arrangement of cells, this mathematics of the brain can serve as the “machine language” for the different kind of logic used in language).

There are flaws in this kind of nervous system logic, but the flaws are a side effect of factors that provide for survival/success of life forms. Those who develop an understanding of nervous system logic will eventually begin to be able to perceive that other kinds of logic or math beyond the perceptive ability of nervous systems will always be a possibility. One implication of what I am hinting at in this paragraph is that there is a law that I will put forth that the greater the complexity of any task of cognition engaged, the greater the chance that a flaw in logic will occur that will appear as true in the same way that a delusion will appear as true to the psychotic. Several factors make this inevitable such as that the brain is unable to completely isolate thinking away from the memories of subject matter that is similar but unrelated to the topic in mind including emotional associations and such as the difference between logic that can be represented in language and logic that can’t. This has implications about guesses that have been put forth about the cutting edge ideas of theoretical physics, for instance. (Eventually an understanding of the logic of perception will help those on the frontier of new ideas in mathematics and physics.)

In this essay I will try to walk you through a metaphoric representation of how the logic progresses from the cells to the person. The nervous system is really a kind of society of metaphors, in effect. The individual firings of cells are one simple progression of “experience” that has a simple meaning for that cell, but as a collective becomes representative of all in the realm of life and experience. Throughout this website I attempt various ways of making the case for this concept. There will be endless ways of explaining the concept behind the nervous system and its functions and experiences just as the nervous system represents endless realms.

One concept that you need to grasp is that the evolution from single-celled life forms to multi-celled life forms involves the appearance of a flaw in those cells in a collective arrangement. The single-cell life is able to seek its own survival and succeed. The cell in the multi-cellular life is evolved to seek its own survival but unable to survive without the influences of the collective of cells that are designed in a similar way. There is a math to this kind of survival based on cells that all change or act in ways that create an effect on other cells in a way that makes possible a chance of survival for the individual cells dependent on such a collective. The rate of activity required for survival of the independent single-cell creature is self-generated. The rate of activity required for survival of the various cells of the multi-cellular creature requires signaling and other kinds of support of the other cells. This intelligence that grows the organism (and teaches the organism because learning is the same thing as growth) is a form of math much like economics in that the collective benefits from individuals seeking benefits for the individual (self) although current economic theory has not yet considered the importance of the nervous system characteristic that too much pleasure/benefit becomes a pain/damage and how that might create responses in the marketplace, for instance.

In the singular firing of a nerve cell or any cell are the “units” of experience felt by any organism. The unity of thought is an illusion. The functions and the experiences of the organism are split up into extremely small units that are shared by every living cell in the body. The discovery of what that unit might be requires a lot of logic and evidence (which is everywhere) because it is impossible for a collective experience or feeling to directly experience or feel the individual cell’s experience or feeling. (That was an ugly sentence, but I’ll let it stay for now as it represents the confusion caused by trying to argue with many people the possibility that a cell or even any non-human animal might have “experiences.”)

As a graphic on a page can have meaning in its representation but really consist only of many white and black dots, the brain gives meaning represented by many individual cycles between pleasure and pain. That graphic represents nothing when the page is completely black or completely white. The person experiences no understanding or concentration or facility to accomplish anything is in the greatest confusion when in a state of either the greatest pain or the greatest pleasure (as both extremes interfere with function, although in different ways).

There is no realm of function or experience that is absent of pleasure and pain, but because those units are able to represent so much so quickly with so much repetition and consistency, the truth about such representation is practically invisible. That which is repeated too often will disappear from your awareness.

Because the assignments of representation are basic and consistent in various animals, and because a great deal of information that is processed is repetitive and consistent for all animals experiencing that information, and because the kind of logic being used by the nervous system is consistent, there will be great consistency in the organization of the wiring of various animal brains. These complex structures were not created by the micro-management of genetic instructions but by the consistent application of the mathematics behind brain function to consistent factors of the world we experience in common (but with some tinkering by genetics that can cause great changes in how that logic grows the organism). Very simple factors can cause a great variety of things to happen. (My essays explaining the explicit nature of short-term and long-term stress in various forms and the effect of stress in growing the body and changing function go into a great variety of effects caused by something very simple at the cellular level of scale.)

Here goes:

In the eye a cell responds with the frequency most representative of pleasure in response to darkness. Different types of light responsive cells create change away from that frequency in response to different frequencies of light that become the visible range. In the uterus, the network of cells connected to the eye grow extensively because the darkness is good for the cells and the cells connected to that ideal frequency, but because cells organize in response to nearby cells firing at desired frequencies, this organization (throughout the brain in every realm) is the pattern recognition in partner with seeking pleasure. After birth the eyes get information with different light hitting each cell and the eye bouncing around seeking darkness for different cells avoiding the most intense light from being kept in any spot on the eye to avoid damage. This becomes pattern recognition, which eventually becomes sight. In the higher processing parts of the brain dealing with vision, the logic changes with the development of sight in that pleasures of the recognition of patterns becomes associated with the existence of light (there are no patterns in the darkness). (This is the reason behind SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder.) Cells network together when the ideal frequency is reached. Combinations of other frequencies will result on some cells at a higher level of processing to find the ideal frequency. Colors that go together involve convergences of frequencies with easy divisions or multiplications of frequencies so that more cells find the ideal frequency. Such convergences occur with easy divisions of space and shape as well. (Reasons behind beauty including the existence of The Golden Ratio.)

Pattern recognition is the seeking of pleasure and therefore understanding or comprehension in all ways. The same occurs in the ear for sounds. (Converging frequencies giving pleasure with sounds that go together harmony.) Pattern recognition eventually becomes the awareness that a sound goes with a sight. What you experience in your senses is associated with cells that have recorded memories that make sense of such information. Recognition is pleasure confusion is pain.

If the production of a particular chemical in the liver causes imbalance, then a greater number of cells in the body experience disharmony collectively and then the automatic changes in the collective seeking health and pleasure cause changes in the signaling until that chemical is regulated for better health of the collective. Hunger is pain, having eaten is pleasure.

Flexion of muscle cells is pain, relaxation of those cells is pleasure. Muscle groups oppose each other and the patterns required to take the body closer to pleasures and farther from pains becomes the coordination of movement through the world.

The first words you learn as a baby are basic to the function of the nervous system in regards to pleasure and pain: “yes” is pleasure, “no” is pain; “good” is pleasure, “bad” is pain. The logic of language builds just like the mixing of pleasure and pain becomes other kinds of pattern recognition in other realms of the senses or function.

Your emotions are the collective of all these various pleasures and pains cycling at great speed dealing with many subjects at the same time. Emotions are often unexplainable because they calculate according to this collective pleasure/pain logic across many realms of information that are being represented at the same time and beyond what can be explained according to the limited subject matter that language can handle in the same time. The emotions are the collective “economics” of the health/happiness of the system and are always either “good” or “bad” emotions (pleasure or pain). Emotions are not an evolved higher senseÉ they are the evidence for the basic units at the level of the cell. (Emotions exist in all animals, but without the application of feelings to subject matter created by language and the knowledge that comes with language and culture and memes.

The rhythms at the level of the cellular firings become events that cause different experiences at the perceptive level of the complete organism. A portion of the brain will respond to patterns recognized when pain exists in the organism. (Those cells actually find the ideal frequency of pleasure when pain exists, and so they enlist other cells into that frequency but those cells are interfering with the function of the majority of cells so that the minority of pain cells cause a collective increase in pain, unless the pain cells enlist enough cells to actually cause death or get very close to death when the majority of cells are experiencing greater pleasure before they quickly die off as the functions of support of the body have been compromised.)

There is much more to explain. This is the system of the body.

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