Hate, vengeance, revenge, feeling offended, intention, satisfaction and so on are experiences. These experiences are based in and coordinated by the brain. The brain is an organ of experiences not just one of cells and molecules. It is the brain that gives what is experienced, to the degree and when. It may correspond with the external or not, but conceptually, the brain is where all experiences are made and maintained.
As investigations continue into the recent mass shooting, with questions on motivation and lapses, it is important to seek out the role of the build of the [cells and molecules of the] brain, in following through with intention.
How does the brain decide any experience? What is the mechanism, pathway or rules of experiences in the brain? What does it mean to experience something? What works in the brain like experiences, but not termed experience?
If this is understood, how can experiences be used to better understand how mass shootings can be prevented in future, even from people who don’t seem at risk?
There are different things that refer to experiences. Cold can be felt when cold to mean experiencing cold. There could also be the sight or sound of someone experiencing something and what it is, is understood, which itself is an experience but to a lower degree.
Experiences are also thoughts. The thought of some bodily sensation could make it appear to be felt. There can also be the thought of something wrong that causes the experience of panic, accompanied by fast heart rate and breathing. Thoughts can germinate experiences. Thoughts are also experiences.
The rules of thoughts in the brain are the rules of experiences. Some of the factors [hate, vengeance, revenge, feeling offended, intention, satisfaction] at play in a mass shooting are conveyed by thought. The assumption about a situation and the subsequent reaction are all thought [property] processes.
In brain science, it is established that all incoming senses, or sensory inputs converge at the thalamus, except for smell that does at the olfactory bulb. It is where they are processed or integrated before relay to the cerebral cortex for interpretation.
This means that when things are sensed [seen, touched, smelled, tasted and heard], they have meeting points in the brain, where they are initially processed or integrated, before they get relayed elsewhere for interpretation.
It is theorized that sensory processing or integration at those meeting points [thalamus and olfactory bulb] in the brain is into a uniform unit, quantity or identity. This means that senses become collected into a similar currency, language, or uniform, before they are relayed elsewhere in the brain for use. More or less like at the border or entry port, change then transport.
Smell, sight, sound, taste and touch are no longer in their prior differentiated unit, but as an integrated quantity, that goes on to be usable in the brain. This unit is proposed to be thought or its form. So whatever is external is in a form of thought to the brain. It is in that form that things are stored in the brain and that thinking, imagination, dreams, subvocalization and so forth are made.
Interpretation in the cerebral cortex is postulated to be into knowing, feeling and reaction. Knowing is memory, dominating and deciding how the rest goes.
Interpretation can be said to be properties, where the integrated quantity [thought] visits to acquire. This means that it is the transport of the quantity to destinations of properties that determines what becomes of experiences at any moment. It may match with the external or not, but it is what goes on there that says.
Hate, delight, cold, heat, anger, cravings, laughter, panic, fear, trauma, anxiety, thirst, appetite, sleep, wakefulness, extremism, violence, vengefulness, lethargy, liveliness, love, interest, calm, pleasure, reward, restlessness and so forth are all properties in the brain that quantities can relay to acquire, to degrees.
There are cellular and molecular mechanisms that build or construct quantities and properties for experiences, but they are on different layers. Fear is widely studied, but no one experiences the fear centers, cells or molecules in the brain. Also, neuroimaging does not see or measure experience, it measures cells, activities and molecules.
It is what property that a quantity acquires at any moment that decides and this is what should be explored about the mind, so that those who may offend others or take offense to warrant vengefulness, are able to understand how the mind works and are able to seek help, or get noticed, in a prevention drive against causing pain.
Mass shootings are too frequent, with blames on guns, mental illness and so forth, but the experience of mental illness, with delusion and hallucination are different from the cells and molecules of delusion.
Displaying this experiential pathway could provide a more secured future, away from complexity of the present.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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