What is it that I have to do in order to make my body do something? I mean, it’s easy to say “you just do it” but what is it that we do?
To shut my mouth, or open it, or move my hands or run faster… i guess there must be a preceding thought? I sit here looking at my finger and it doesn’t move… till I do something that moves it. What is this something that I am doing? Of course my brain is firing a signal down to my finger but if the signal is a compared to a bullet, and the brain represents a gun, something still has to pull the trigger in the first place.
??
I would say that the root, primary thing you do to make your finger move is decide that you want to move it. Choosing is what converts possibilities into actualities in this case.
What moves your finger is one of those non-verbal thoughts, as it were. It is, by its very nature, difficult to talk about in common speech or even in the high speech of philosophy.
On the other hand the bio-chemical activity of your brain sending a signal for a muscle to move has been well observed and described in studies of neuroanatomy and physiology.
Well, if we limited all discusions to just that which is universally known to be absolutely, verifiably, objectively true the list would be this long
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if you give sufficient electrical charge to the proper group of neurons in your brain, your mouth will close… moreover, if you stimulate the particular muscle directly with an electrical charge, your mouth will likewise close… or you could take an even simpler route, and put your head in a vice…
Every definate answer (is there such a thing?) came as a result of people thinking and discussing… like this. If we only discuss things that are already known as definate, what’s the point of discussing them I just like sharing other peoples ideas and adding them to my own picture of “what is”.
Seems like in all cases, thoughts precedes result.
Every action comes from a reaction. When someone hits you (for example) you react. A true master can react without thinking about it. “And when it is time to hit, I do not hit…it hits all by itself.”
If there was no action would you react? huh…let me go ponder