actually m8 can I take that back, I re-read and can see the relevance of the linguistic dissection,,, sorry m8, my bad!
  I have got a kind of stage fright tho', even when I play live I hide behind anybody I can find and draw as little attention to myself as poss

but the fact remains that i still don't understand it.  consequently, i don't feel confident enough to agree with entheon and say that chemical imbalances are fake.

all I said was that it's not prooven, or perhaps I called some nasty names like "fake" or "stupid" or "slut" but what I mean, which is more important is that it's not been prooven. No proof is not proof of nothing as I pointed out earlier. So I'm not totally claiming they are fake.

then it would mean that the knowledge we have is farily misunderstood.

and I would agree that much of our knowlege is misunderstood.

science emulates what we understand to be truth.

my philosophy exactly... it's a representation of true physical nuts and bolts grains of sand atoms and molecules real existence as we experience it. IS it the SAME thing? no only a representation. anyway, i find myself repeating

there's always a section labled "Known Bugs."

wonderful way to put it!

this is no fault of my own, it's simply a fact.  it is impossible to just sit a group of people down, play a song, and make everyone to walk out in complete understanding.  that is where music might be considered "broken."

this I am in total understanding of and fundamental agreement with except for the semantics of it, and in this case semantics matters because the connotations of the words imply a different conceptual and emotional framework on which the comprehension of this idea rests. So in the end essentially you point out that this is ultimately one of the great things about music... so lets call it that...

"that's not a bug it's a feature!"
- Random Software Developer

all too often I hear this phrase hah! anyway, lets not call it broken. calling it broken implies a little bit of sadness for the fact that it is of no more use. I beleive this is a "feature" of the musical language which instead of impairing the original functionality of music in fact enhances it. This is what ALLOWS us to each walk away with a different meaning after fully digesting the perceptics of an artistic composition. It allows us to walk away with something meaningful to us. If we always had to follow the strict intepretation of what the artist meant then we might care a whole lot less. Usually there's gotta be something that "speaks to" the individual and has relation to their lives. So how the hell do I write a song to which millions of people can all find something to relate? Well, I'm working on that, but in the meantime lets be glad that this is possible and so lets call it a "feature"

Anyway, I'm saying I actually fully agree with what I perceive to be your concept, but I just think that a re-wording is in order to lift that concept up out of the mud of sadness and into the light of joy. It makes a difference to me at least. Its the exact same concept looked at from the other angle: is the glass half full or is it half empty?

i want to make a complete u-turn for just a minute and tell you that i don't believe that previous paragraph very much at all.

well and I think you do beleive that last paragraph because even I find a lot of truth in it. I just think that you too realized the untruth of the way in which you expressed it and the connotaions of your defining terms i.e. broken.

if we had cheat-codes for music, it wouldn't be any fun

fully

we look retarded jumping through hoops for prizes

LOL! Hell yeah!

it is my firm belief that my life is in existance for it's own sake.

Ahhh, good ol Existentialism. Wonderful philosophy. Perhaps you would enjoy reading some philosophy by the existentialists then? Jean Paul Sarte is the father of existentialism, and while others may suggest Neitche or Kant or Heiddegger, I don't like any of them, they were all to long winded, mysogonistic or depressed. Sarte was wicked cool, and one of his introductory books is rather short.

i may very well assist others, but ultimately, it's my "buddha-complex" per-say that matters.  and so i attempt to recover and break down my preformed complexes that life and "beaten-paths" create.

"*GASP* Ohhh how sad... he thinks he's..."

very interesting... you know you should be taking meds for that... people with buddha-complexes generally have what is known as acute-borderline-bipolar-paranoid-schizophrenic-multiple-personality-disorer so you might wanna think about checking into a mental hospital and getting some electric shock therapy. (did he just say that? omg!) yup I think I did

to quote entheon's song now, in a new context:  break down "the wall" that stops you from achieving that which you deisre.  if that "wall" is obtaining more scientific knowledge, then so be it.  but for me, it is something i can't put into words, much more grand than science.

See? that to me is a feature... when a song can bring new truth to an area where it never was specifically intended. yet the intention was just that, to be that universal.

(read a paper called "The Loss of the Creature"  by a person named "Percy".

I most certainly will

Read a document called "Psycho Politics"

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics.html

so wait... why don't I like psychology or psychiatry... why is "mental health" bullsh*t? oh yeah read that document...

peace
-entheon

that's known as Acute Paranoid A Good Little Slave Should Live His Life In Fear So He Doesn't Rock The Cradle Syndrome. Take some viagra, that can help... all you need to overcome that is some big balls my friend!

"I got big balls! Big 'ol balls!"
- Dan Bern

awesome.  now i wanna write a song called "Acute Paranoid: A-Good-Little-Slave-Should-Live-His-Life-in-Fear-So-He-Doesn't-Rock-the-Cradle Syndrome"

you've given me inspiration.

it won't be about anybody on here though 

oh, and--

"that's not a bug it's a feature!"
- Random Software Developer

i believe that was a comment about the Chrono Cross menu screen resolution change, was it not?    though, if it isn't what you intended to quote, i'm sure there are many other instances where that was said

i'm still in the process of reading your posted link---very interesting so far

perhaps "broken" was a little bit strong to use as a term to describe music.  i don't mean it in the traditional sense anyway, for sure

i liked your take on my idea:

(quoting myself first, then entheon)

it is impossible to just sit a group of people down, play a song, and make everyone to walk out in complete understanding.

This is what ALLOWS us to each walk away with a different meaning after fully digesting the perceptics of an artistic composition. It allows us to walk away with something meaningful to us.

this was an idea i had, but failed to express.  it is true that it is impossible to have everyone walk away with your intended feeling, though-- if your intention was to have others walk away with their own feeling (like many of us do, even if by accident, or without realization), then we have achieved our goal anyway, yet managed to avoid becoming the "God" of music, wherein we have discussed:  it becomes plain and boring.

... i think that was a run-on sentence, let me simplify:

we can't make everyone come away with an identical feeling, but if that wasn't our intention, then we've "beaten" the idea of creating a homogenous emotion across the people, yet we have not become bored with music.

ah, here was the quote i was searching for, by entheon:

the intention was just that, to be that universal.

even simpler:  that means you've won, if that's what you were after

well and I think you do beleive that last paragraph

i began writing the paragraph trying to express my belief, but then i realized my deeper outlook upon it.  it isn't that i don't believe it at all, it is simply that i find it to be a flawed way of thinking to be taken as a whole.

i have never fully considered myself an existentialist, though i do feel there are parallels

you might wanna think about checking into a mental hospital and getting some electric shock therapy

been there.  done that.  hated that.

though i take no offense whatsoever.  i believe that my ideas of phsycotherapy and whathaveyou share some common ground with your own.

i'm out.  laterz everybody

i've just seen this thread and thought it looked interesting.  havent actually read any of the posts yet though - i'll put a side a couple of days next week to have another look at it!!

You guys all get the prize for the LOOOOOOOOOONGEST posts EVER!!

so, does this sound like the movie good will hunting to anyone else?

well, i just wanna clarify a few things that seem to be misunderstood throught most of the posts.  this is strictly fact and not my opinion for the most part.

starting with brain anatomy and physiology:

you are both incorrect on the hindbrain/forebrain discussion.  the hindbrain, forebrain, and midbrain are classifications of areas in the brain, not specific to any on lobe.  the occipital lobe is in the back of the brain and is responsible for vision yes, but it is included in the forebrain classification. heres how it is:

forebrain - this is the largest part of the human brain.  it produces behaviors such as thinking, creating, eating, speaking, and EMOTIONS. 

midbrain - this is the smallest of the 3 parts.  it consists of 2 major parts, the superior colliculi, and inferior colliculi.  the superior colliculi is important for processing visual information.  the inferior colliculi is involved in relaying auditory information to the cerebullum and forebrain.  there is also the tegmentum, which plays a vital rle in attention, pain control, emotions, and sensory processing.

hindbrain - this portion of the brain contains the medulla, pons, and cerebellum.  basically together these realy information to higher brain centers, regulate life-support functions such as breathing...

so from all of this, you both have severely misunderstood the basic anatomy of the brain and have linked some of your discussion to incorrect information.


now....to even begin to try and formulate your own theories, you must first understand music perception:

melody consists of various sequences or patterns of certain frequencies.  rhythm is the temporal componenet that dictates the length of time that these individual frequences are heard as well as the length they pause.  from the cochlea to the cerebral cortex, neurons in the auditory system are organized in such a way that they respond only to specific frequencies.

now for the fun stuff, which is taken directly from a reliable source.

as with the perception of language, perception of music involves many different parts of the brain and appears to be lateralized.  however, the localization of music functions in the brain appears to be different for musicians and non-musicians.  for nonmusicians, music is divided between the left and right hemispheres, with melody being processed on the right, and rhythm on the left.  musicians tend to use the left hemisphere almost exclusievely when playing or listening to music.  in musicians, large areas of the cerebral cortex are involved in processing music.  in general, the earlier the age at which musical training begins, the larger the music processing areas in the brain.  for example, MRI studies have revealed that the corpus collosum is 10-15% thicker in musicians who began studying music before the age of 7, compared to nonmusicians and people who study music later in life.  a thicker corpus collosum would allow abundant communication between the two hemispheres to coordinate movements that produce intricate musical compositions.

now, to prove this, when certain areas of the brain are damaged, people have shown impairments in musical perception, called amusia.  damage to the frontal areas of the cortex result in expressive amusia, which is the inability to produce music, and damge the a more posterior region in the temporal lobe results in receptive amusia, which effects different things based on which hemisphere is damaged.


now, with fight or flight:

no, fight or flight does not have an effect on music.  fight or flight is a result of the sympathetic nervous system.  this basically can speed up heart rate, speed up sweat glands, etc.  to do this, there must be a severe emotional response such as fear.  this then changes certain chemical balances to speed heart rate and so on.  and as far as i know, ive never heard of music bringing on that kind of emotion in someone.  fight or flight is not the increase of endorphines.  yes it does that, but many more things come with it, none of which i would ever relate to sound or music.  fight or flight is much more intense then that.


now there was some discussion on stimulus response, conditioning, and pavlovian conditioning.  id like to get into that, but theres just not enough time.  yes pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate to a bell, but that was just his INITIAL experiment.  it went much much further than that and there are so many more factors that i dont think any of us would have the time to get into.  as for the work example, i dont feel that applies.  yea there are certain reward and punishment factors, but there are also so many more facturs that play an underlying role in that, so its impossible to sum that up.  but in short, the work example is not just a reward/punishment example. 

now emotions:

to even begin to undersand emotions, you have to know the 3 parts in the definition of emotion.
    1.  cognitive experience
    2.  affective reaction
    3.  physioligical response

so by saying this, an emotion involves a thought process, which then alters ones mood, and then is followed by a bodily reaction.  now back to the sympathetic nervous system, this is activated when you experience an emotion.  however, it takes a very strong emotion to elicit signficant chemical release, in which music is not a strong enough stimulus.  of course i could go on, because there are other theories of emotion, such as the james-lange theory, the shachter-singer theory, and the cannon-bard theory.  but again i dont have the time.

now teh comments about "memories are stored as energy mass and if we had 3 months of memories they wouldnt fit" or something like that.

yea, obviously if memories were stored that way theres just no way it would fit.  good thing its not.  its pretty commonly known that learning and memories form new connections in the brain, not stored as any form of mass.  the brain is capable of storing billions upon billiions of new connections throught the whole brain.  thats how we form memories and learn, not by storing energy in the form of mass.

as for geniouses with disorders:

biologically, depression can be explaned.  it was explained biologically since ancient times.  if you recall ancient theories regarding body fluids, youll know that an excess of what was thought to be black bile, caused for depression, or melancholy.  this however we know now is not true, but still shows how certain disorders are in fact biological.  now we know of certain monoamines, such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin are found in the brain.  a shortage of these chemicals has been shown, through chemical and imaging techniques, to lead to certain disorders, such as depression.  other disorders, like biploar, can also be explained through biology.

also, it is not that hard to determine through passages that famous people themselves have written, and also what others have written about them that they do have disorders.  as a psyhologist, it is easy to rate people through reading.  its pretty widely known and used.  so yes, i can prove it because it has been proven by those who are able to rate personalities, thus finding imbalances in people in history. 

now for my 2 cents on the discussion:

forget about all the chemicals and whatnot.  people are different.  yes, people have chemical inbalances and thast what causes people to be different.  if you say people are the same chemically, then everyone would be the same, all the same chemical make up, and there would be no difference.  truth is there are chemical inbalances.  now im very surprised no one has brought up PERSONALITY in any of this discussion.  its a pretty big thing with this stuff.  personality too can be said to be chemical inbalances which differe between people.  this can completely related to music, and what i base my theory of music on.  for example, take one of the 5 factors of personality, introversion extraversion.  this difference between these to has been proven to be chemical varations...extroverts having too little, introverts too much.  when it comes to music, studies have shown that introverts prefer quiter, less intense music, because there level of sensation is higher, due to higher levels of chemical balances.  extroverts prefer louder, mor intsense music because they have a higher level of sensation seeking, because they have a lower level of chemicals.  this has all been proven in studies, and can be measured through various equipment.  and this can also be shown in the other 4 main personality groups.

so basically, my theory is that music preference comes mainly from ones personality.  yea, it has some to do with the fact that this comes from different level in chemcial production in the body.  but overall, forgetting all that stuff, people are different.  so people enjoy different things.  and i say this is based on personality, not fight or flight, or your presence in space and time.  thast like saying i enjoy drinking a beer because the movement of my hand through space, grabbing the beer, and tilting it, then the beer going down through my throat is the reason i enjoy beer.  thats nonsense.

but hey, you can disagree with the last part...but the earlier statements...purely facts, please consider them and alter your theories based on the correct anatomy and physiology, and not your own stubborn views on what you like or dislike about what others have discovered.

ok... so if it can be prooven... proove it... show me the lab tests and show me the written published repots and who did them and give me more than one example in which each of these tests was repeated and concluded with the exact same results. You're making the claim, so in this case for me to beleive you the burden of proof rests on you my friend. I often try to stay away from claims that "can be prooven" and if I do make such claims I always try to have my studies at hand ready to show anyone who should care to ask. So I ask you... show me the proof. When you start speaking about proof you'd better have it.

I'd like to state for the record that despite what blundered attempts I may have made to state something regarding the structure of the brain, I think it's clear that I have been, but I will make it clear now, that I am not attempting to relate anything here in regards to brain structure. If I am incorrect it is of little consequence in my view because brain structure was not the hinge of my argument. WIthout re-reading the posts the only thing I recall addressing concerning brain structure was the fact that I didn't think that Orlando's appraisal of brain structure was very accurate. That's all I intended to express. If I went further or too far and offered my thoughts on what I know about brain structure and they were wrong... well I'm admitting I was wrong. So what?

I continue to maintain that music has nothing to do with brain structure except in the very superficial aspect wherin our brains are responsible for the translation of the real essence of what music is, into the medium of physical space... i.e. coordinated motor movements and theoretical conceptual frameworks such as scales, which may be used.

As far as chemical imbalance, I'd LOVE to see your lab tests prooving the theory of chemical imbalance. That is my challenge. Show me the lab tests prooving the theory of chemical imbalance and the theory that chemical imbalance causes mental disorders. Not just lab tests suggesting, but lab tests with unequivocal proof.

There are over 300 documented psychiatric diagnoses for mental disorders. Yet the sciences which proclaim to have discovered these diseases still do not know how to cure any of them. The best they've got is more chemical bandaids, electric shocks and lobotomies. This is just going from bad to worse in my view. A lobotomy doesn't fix anything. It just takes something that is percieved as broken - which by the way is probably NOT broken, I'll get into the inherent flaws in this type of value judgement in a moment - and "breaks it further" to the point that it cannot but function except to the lowest possible meanial controllable standards. Psychotherapy has an admittedly poor rate of progress and, what little it does, generally only works on those currently "sane" enough to engage in standard linguistic communication in the first place.

One of the problems I've found with psychology and psychiatry is that they do not provide a standard picture of what IS mentally healthy. The only thing they consider is what is NOT mentally healthy. That's an approach which just begs to declare the entire world insane, or as you've already pointed out: something to the effect of "everyone is chemically imbalanced"...

I do and don't beleive that just as I do and don't beleive what TLS had to say about the broken state of musical interpretation. Even if differences exist in the relative amounts of chemical levels within people's brains, that does not imply to me imbalance. Imbalance means that there is a state of balance. And if everyone is imbalanced, well the there is no one who is balanced. So if there is no one who is balanced in the first place, it's impossible for there to be the reverse of the state of balance... thus it would be impossible for an imbalance to exist.

This is all very semantic I know. But my point is that I would simply call it differences. Putting a value judgement on it like "imbalance" is the beginnings of what has spawned such practices as ethnic cleansing and created people like Hitler. I'm not saying we cannot be discerning or judgmental in proper circumstances. I am saying we should remember where we needn't and thus ought not to be. We can just call it differences and that suffices. Adding the value judgements inherent in the word "imbalanced" creates a problem regarding a mapping of new data - a value judgement - onto an otherwise very neutral concept. This leads to false data and this in turn leads to false actions and this in turn leads to more problems in society.

These are hefty claims, but I'm also not claiming to be able to proove this last sentence. I am claiming it as truth because it's statement is self evident to me and I hope to others. One merely has to look at history, life and the current existing infrastructure in the world to see this pattern played out. What we don't know can hurt us. What we speculate beyond what is real can hurt us. This is not to say we should stiffle imagination or creativity or speculations. Can does not mean will. We must use our better judgement to tell use how to reserve our judgement for only that which needs it.

Oh and by the way... no one has yet offered any other theory than meat. So far, where we stand, music comes from meat. I don't beleive that could ever be true. Again I ask you brain scientists and psychologists... where and what is a person. I don't mean the meat. We can see the meat. We can dissect the meat. Where is the PERSON. No, my brain is not me any more than my toe-nail is me. By the same token my body is not me any more than my posessions are me. Where and what is the force which drives living oranisms. What is it that makes a person struggle against the immense force of gravity, every day, to pull himself off the ground and into an upright position. What is that life force which animates the little puppet doll of a body you are so fond of prodding and probing with your needles and MRI machines. You haven't found it yet. In all your searches you still don't know. You can kill it and you can stop it and you can look straight at it without seeing it. There is only one problem. You still don't know how to put humpty back together again.

well, to me it looks like most of your claims come strictly from your own opinion.  i just pulled out facts from what ive learned over the past few years.  if you really want my sources...

fifth edition: social psychology.  elliot aronson, timothy wilson, robin akert

psychology of learning and behavior fifth edition.  barry schwartz, edward wasserman, steven robins.

biological foundations of human behavior.  joesphine wilson.

human physiology: the mechanism of body functions.  eric widmaier, hershel raff, kevin strang.

human anatomy.  martini, timmons, talltsch

those are my sources, if you wanna go ahead and read, be my guest.  but mine come from sources, everything you say is opinion.  so to me what im saying is more credible then you, because im recalling from sources and you are rambling off the top of your head.

i just cannot undersatnd how little credit you are willing to give to brain physiology in music.  if it wasnt for those unimportant chemicals in your brain, you wouldnt know what music was.

yes we are all meat.  we are all made up of various chemicals.  and if you challenge the question of what makes us who we are, well you are asking a question that has been asked since existance.  and the way you talk, you talk as if you know and have some higher intellect that researchers and brilliant scientists have not even come across.  so whether you are willing to believe it or not, much of our make up is indeed those chemicals you deem unimportant and irrelevant. 

and for one thing, who ever said and imbalance is a bad thing?  no one ever said having a slight imbalance in chemicals was frowned upon or anything in a negative light.  youre takin the ball and running with it in your own direction here.  there are stable environments which are seen as just that "stable".  any variance from that can be called an imbalance, whether good or bad.  you only see it in a negative light, but infact imbalances can alter in a good way too.

now, if you really want to get into the aspect of music beyond the perception of music and what we hear and why we hear it which you so strongly refuse to believe, we can get into the philosophy of it.  philosophy can be one of the soul factors in music.  there is a great quote from a book ive read by musician oh the philosophy of drumming that goes "there are, of course, thousands of useful drum methods that deal with every aspect of the technical side of the art form; but there are very few books that consider the drummer as a HUMAN BEING FIRST, rather then merely a coordination machine."  and this entitles that everything matters, those techniques and the way music is percieved, your so called "meat", and the person as a being.  i know you are completely against it, but have you ever thought that it might just be both?  you can then go into objectivism (things have a nature, things are, things exist, there is a reality outside of yourself, outside of the mind) or relativism (there are no fixed principles, everything is in constand flux).  and then there is also the theories of natural order, and that everything is a result of this so called natural order.  of course people have dedicated their lives to all of this, and you demand that everyone else and people that devoted their lives to things im saying is false.  i call that selfishness.

your sources were just rambling too. i don't care what they've done or what they've documented, simply because you can rehash someones ideas doesn't make them any more credible than the ideas which I propose. Simply because I can quote einstein doesn't make einstein smarter or any more true than I am. I think the credibility of an idea is iherent upon it's analyzation with respect to normal application. Authority is a rather weak support for an argument.

And when I said proove it I was suggesting you point me to exact references. In the bibliography of a research paper you wouldn't be able to get away with just listing each book and assuming that the reader would go pick up each book and read the whole thing now would you? If you did that on a paper in school the teacher would give you an F most likely because she probably wouldn't have beleived that you actually read them given the fact that you didn't take the time to point out the fact that you knew where the exact proof occurred in the reference material. So... if you please, page numbers, exact study titles, theses, names, dates, results and how it relates to and prooves the theory of chemical imbalance. I know you hardly intended this to be a research paper... but again... i refer to the concept of burden of proof. The cursory "RTFM" style of proof you have provided me is much less than satisfactory. All it has told me is that you study something resembling the subject of neuropsychology. So what? You still haven't actually given me what I've actually requested.

Also as far as the semantics of "Imbalance" the fact is that there is a negative connotation to the word whether you would regard it or not. These connotations can insidiously seep into our thought patterns whether we like it or not. This is the fundamental basis of Politically Correct speech. If we all called african americans the N word to this day, there would still be a lot of cultural baggage attached to it. Regardless of how jokingly you intended it - in calling a woman a bitch, the connotations and implications of that label have a high degree of effect upon the human conciousness and can affect the resultant outcomes of decisions and actions. Call her a bitch in jest enough times and soon you'll be calling her a bitch for real... and perhaps treating her like one. I know this because I've experienced it. I don't expect you'll accept that as proof and I don't intend it as such. But it is true to the extent that I've witnessed this mechanism in action.

I do grant that we have bodies. I do grant that the meat exists. I just don't think it's enough. If the meat is all there is... then by that token (yes this is hyperbole folks) you could stick some electrodes into a steak, send 50,000 volts through it and produce a symphony. Or perhaps by some of the arguments here-in that all the greats were mentall ill or chemically imbalanced, then you could medicate a person so highly as to tip the chemical scales causing him to spiral into a depression and thus if he were a musician you would immediately yeild from him a great work of art.

Yes. There is a lot about brains and their chemistry that is amazing and useful. But explaining music by that alone is not capturing the whole picture. And yes, I've got the balls to say I think I know something you don't. I've got the - what's known to Freud as - ego to beleive that I am smarter than you in some way. Am I spouting opinions? Or am I delivering truth? How do you estimate truth? Truth is that which is true for you. If you evaluate something and it works in your life and it brings you success, then it is true. If you evaluate something and use it and it destroys your life and brings you failure, it's rather obviously false. Theories are not self evident. Truth is self evident. Theories need proof. Truth needs no proof.

Even socrates had to admit that all of the laws of logic could not create truth. Validity of logic can be debated, but if all the validity of logic is sound, then the only thing left to debate is truth. Is abortion right or wrong? That's an issue that trancends logical validity. I will not express any views on that because it would be a gross mistake to turn this into an abortion debate thread.

I'm not challenging the question of who we are. I'm challengin you about who we are. I know who we are. Consider that two people can hold equally opposite truths and each is still true though they yet oppose each other. I look at my clock and say it is midnight, someone in Asia looks at a clock and says it is noon. For each person these are both truths. Yet they oppose each other.

I'm also not completely against anything. That is a gross logical blunder and a childsplay falacy of logic. Generality my friend... yes I understand that this too is hyperbole. I think you misunderstand my point, or perhaps I have misrepresented it. Either way it has been misunderstood through no fault of anyone in particular. I'll re-iterate for the sake of clairty. Meat and meat only does not compute. It's more than that. Meat is a part of the equation, but only a part. How large a part? I don't know. I obviously grant it much less importance than others. This is certainly an area of opinion. To me, however, it is truth that meat is not the whole equation. And as for whether I'm objectivism-inclined or relativism-inclined, that's yet another falacy of logic. The classic either or falacy. Almost never do we find either or situations. Other options are possible. Consider that I may be both or neither or something else entirely.

I don't demand that anything is false. I demand that we re-evaluate the usefulness of that feild of human endeavor known as "psychology" and also as "psychiatry" as a science considering that in it's 100+ year history it has only found only diseases and no cures. As for me invalidating the lives of those who pursue these subjects: tough... bite the bullet. We routinely tell scores of people their lives are incorrect by labeling them as criminals. The theory that 1,000,000 cannot be wrong is a poor one.

Interesting to note that in the end, there is one common quotation on which we agree. And I'll end with that:

"there are, of course, thousands of useful drum methods that deal with every aspect of the technical side of the art form; but there are very few books that consider the drummer as a HUMAN BEING FIRST, rather then merely a coordination machine."

Funny that you should acccept the exact overall concept I've been expressing from this "Authority" but not from me. Oh well I guess when I say it it's not true.

all i am gonna say is...no this is not a research paper and honestly...i dont care enough to point to you exact references because its not worth it to me.  like you said, i know it is truth, so i dont need to walk you through all of my research.  you are not a teacher, you are not grading me, so its unimportant to me.  if you care enough, you could thumb through and find anything you want to in any of those sources. 

also, i never said anything about not thinking its both the human as a being and the human as meat.  you jumped to that conclusion on your own as i was backing up things that had been previously said.  i never once argued the point of not being something else there.  i just made my claim of the importance of the so called "meat" in the whole equation.  of course i think theres somethin else there.  i have been studying psychology, neurospychology, anatamy and physiology long enough to know most of the angles in which people study.  ive seen the holes in research, and ive seen research that has come out succseful.  you may be ignoring some of the smaller sides to things that have worked and going over the top to say not everything works.  of course not everything we do will work.  there have been tons of studies in psychology particularly that have lead to some pretty brilliant things, and whether or not you believe that is your own deal.  as for modern medicine, yea a lot of the stuff out on the market is complete crap, and yea people are completely overmedicated.  but dont say all of its unnecessary.  you are starting to sound like a scientologist.  and to me, they are completely unrealistic.

oh well... looks like we've degenerated to name calling... that's fine...

for the record: i've been pissed at the institutions of mental health since before I ever heard that scientology was pissed at them and before Tom Cruise ever went on TV ranting and raving about it.

I've had friends unjustly, I guarantee you fully unjustly, imprisoned in mental wards. They perpetrate some horrible crimes in the name of "mental heath" and it's total BS and I've known it for a long time. It's the politics that get me. I'm not opposed to anyone studying the brain just as I'm not opposed to someone studying how to heal the brain and the mind. But the field of mental health has an admittedly horrible track record especially given all the other technological advancements we've made to date. So my beef with psychology is more political than anything else... it's how it gets used. I quite enjoy the concept of psychology - that we might be able to understand some things about the brain and how it works... in practice though the subjects have ended up being the stomping grounds for some rather attrocious crimes of humanity.

Refer to the document Psycho Politics if you don't beleive me.

obviously we have some critial misunderstood communications... so we'll let tired dogs sleep or whatever the phrase is... and we'll see if anyone else has anything to say...

btw... why is that it seems to be only the neuro-scientists and psychologists who have anything to say on this thread? i mean... the bulk of what has been said at least...

any normal people out there?

oh and by the way... does that make christians and buddhists and hindu's completely unrealistic... because by that standard, then the entire world is one big hoax...

i was out for most of the weekend, and i had to do some catch-up reading   i apologize, hehe.

i support entheon completely in his recoil from the comment:

mine come from sources, everything you say is opinion.  so to me what im saying is more credible then you, because im recalling from sources and you are rambling off the top of your head.

i want to second the motion entheon made about knowing people that have been unjustly made to be part of a mental institution.  i do not care to think of my own experiences, because i know the way they treat you.  they render you useless and try to convince you that you've got a problem, and that they are fixing "with" you.

nightmares that never die come from mental insitutions.  they never die.  what's worse is that the fact that i've said that is going to make people look at me and say "well, OBVIOUSLY, he's not alright, otherwise he wouldn't have those nightmares."  but such things DON'T just die.

i believe that overcoming such personal obstacles such as "depression" or other "imbalances" from the norm is something that our meat cannot fix for us.  I define "us" as the part this is NOT the meat.  the meat alone can't survive without the pilot, and consequently, another seperate piece of meat cannot just fix my pilot.  i believe that there are internal struggles that we go through (in a mental perspective) that cause us to tweak ourselves.

(by the way, i support the ideas that nicu24 suggests, that the importance of the meat is very monumental.  it's a miracle to be honest with you, i think)

because certain "bandaids" exist, and because we DO have brains that handle information, these bandaids may phsycologically help us, but not because of the direct application of such a bandaid.  i believe that it comes back to analyzing that one's "pilot" makes, and the consequent adaptations that s/he tries to make.

this is all well and good, but as you both have somewhat pointed out, there hasn't been an offered idea for what this "pilot" or "person" is.  i cannot just offer a source, as that would get us nowhere.  i would like to take the liberty to point out that this thread is about philosophy, and as such, shouldn't depend on sources to do the talking for us.  such sources as brought up by nicu24 are somewhat applicable, but that is only because that was about the Meat.

so as for the Person, i offer this... (though it may not be significantly original)

i define the "soul" to be a pair of things:  the body and the spirit.  i do not know how to effectively convey what i think this spirit is "made" of, other than an intelligence that provides our bodies with a power source, if you want to think of it that way.  i'm not going to say that a spirit carries the same appearance as our actual body, because that's not the way i see it.  i believe though that as human beings that try to emulate life with science, we have a limited ability to understand.  i believe that there are more than just the typical dimensions of existance that we can percieve... more than the typical ideas of coordinate plane movement or time our however you define "typical" dimensions.  in an attempt to use the emulating terms of science, i trust in a higher dimension that our spirits exist in us.  this means that there is no solid matter that is literal overlayed on the inside of our bodies.  i mean that such spirits exist on a plane of movement that is higher than the one our brains are currently percieving.

or ... perhaps they DO percieve it, but not as directly as we may think... for instance, our EYEs don't just "see" a spirit.  that thought is very ambiguous, but that is what theories are all about sometimes, especially when dealing with philosophy.

i believe in a higher being, a God, that possibly dwells in such a higher dimension that we can't even begin to understand "where" he is.  "where" is a word relative to position.  if there are more dimensions that we are capable of taking advantage of with our limited bodies, then how can we possibly make an accusation as to "where" and "how" a being such as a God could exist?  we cannot, despite all the science we gather, it is limited to our current state of existance, which is limited to what our bodies can percieve.

all we know how to percieve is (excuse any little technicalities with the rest of my sentence, as i do not wish to argue it) our three dimensions of movement.  heck, we can't even manage to live past 90 years of age most of the time... how can we expect to just "understand" (once again, i define understand to mean complete comprehension) the workings of a universe that has been in an ever-changing state for as long as it has been existing itself??

science enables us to understand bits of it, but not the whole picture.  what i suggest is that "We" are beings of more dimension that we seem to understand by terms of an XYZ plane's coordinates.  i can't give an specifics as to what sort of dimension this may be, but we exist in more ways (or "axies", to be painfully scientific) than that.

as for "personality"... i believe that this resides with such a spirit.  i can't say how, because i can't, by grace of my own arguement.  but no matter how, i believe that our sould is much more than just a piece of meat that is responding to local stimuli.

i feel that i've left something out, though this may just be because i can't effectively convey my thoughts.

i hate words.  they're too linear in process.

there was a comment i meant to say something about, made by nicu24:

no, fight or flight does not have an effect on music.  fight or flight is a result of the sympathetic nervous system.

uh... the comment WE made was not that fight or flight had an effect on music.  the idea that was brought up was that music has an effect on fight or flight.  you got it backwards.

beyond that, what you said about the heart rate speeding up and yada yada is all true, but the point that was being made was that music can trigger strong emotions like fear (the emotion that YOU brought up), thus music can have a direct effect on fight or flight.

just wanted to clarify.

Thanks to TonightsLastSong for being bold enough to go where no atheist has gone before. LOL!

I too have a rather similar outlook being that I consider concepts such as Divinity and Spirits to be actual tangible realistically explored concepts. After all, probably over half the worlds population seems to ascribe truth to theses concepts and their existence. Again the theory that millions of people can't be wrong is a bad one, however... the theory that something which millions of people are interested is worth studying is a good one.

I for one, rather not directly in relation to the topic of this thready which is "your theory of music" propose that we need another field of study in the sciences. The science of spirituality. What would such a science look like? Well, perhaps very much like currently existing sciences, except that it would study questions like "what is a soul" and "what is divinity"... and it would perhaps be able to conduct actual lab test style studies to conclude various hypotheses regarding these questions. This as opposed to the current studies of Theology and Religion, where-in one simply studies the current cultural conclusions, biases, agreements and pre-conceived notions.

Anyway, I think this field of study would illuminate many areas in all the sciences here-to-for left as quagmires and paradoxes. This includes music, though I think that those already "in the know" don't need a science such as the one I am proposing to help them figure it out. Those of us that know just know and it comes from our own experience. We don't need proof because we have our own understanding which is complete unto itself and effectively functions as truth. This is usually called "belief" or "faith" and those of us who have it often look silly to the other side. From what I've observed, the other side simply desires proof... it's the "believe it when I see it" state of mind. Their current paradigms in thinking function as truth for them as well but as they have no proof yet they simply do not consider the other side.

I am waiting for the day when science and spirituality once again become the same subject as I beleive they were meant to be long ago. Note that I do understand for example that scientists exist who also follow a particular religion, just as any profession in the human field often crosses over between all different religions. There are scientists who are Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish etc. What I mean though is that there should be an actual field of study in this world dedicated to the exploration of these spiritual concepts in a scientific manner - which is not particularly dominated by any one religion and is not particularly interested in prooving any one religion wrong. In fact, I think those people who are agnostic in this world would perhaps be the best folks to lead such a mission. Atheists, I'm sorry to say are perhaps a little too biased, but agnostics would be perfect because I think they would acheive the highest level of objectivity in this endeavor. Actually I'm sure it would be wise to include members from all realms of beleif, atheist agnostic, sprititualist and fundamentalist alike.

I'll end off with a simple illustrative note.

Often times when we see performing, those musicians who have an extraordinary amount of emotional passion and who play the tastiest licks around, people are often heard to remark that the musician has "a lot of soul"...

do the math

As far as what nicu said: my point about the references, is that unless you point me directly to the exact studies and lab tests within the book, then you are no more prooving your point than if you told me that the proof was on the surface of Uranus and that I had to go there to see it myself. If you don't point me to the exact references then you are simply spouting someone elses opinions, which I think portrays you to be much less intelligent than you really are because it implies that you cannot even form your own opinions, much less think for yourself. So don't try to make a false argument that you are somehow more correct than I am and that I am only spouting opinions. You too have yet to do more than spout opinions. None of your so called "facts" are common knowlege whatsoever so you as of yet still have to proove them.

I know I'm not a teacher. I was simply pointing out that your approach to proving your statments doesn't fly with anyone except yourself, and to "proove" it I pointed to a certain common knowlege circumstance in which the consequences of your "I don't give a f8ck" based actions would be highly negative and would have actual repercussions in your own life. You insult my intelligence when you participate to the degree you have and then claim that you don't care. You insult my humanity when you say (yes this is not explicitly stated but it is implied) that you do not care enough about me as an intelligent being to actually put forth the correct and required effort to proove the things you are saying. There are obviously no repercussions on this thread aside from name-calling and thus there are perhaps (by Orlando's argument) not enough endorphins pumping through your blood pushing you to back up your argument correctly. As they said in Mental Wards: Empire Strikes Back "May the catecholamine and a phenethylamine be with you."

I said it and I'll say it again, because this time I know I am right. If you don't point me to exact studies then you are simply spouting someone elses opinions (WARNING: end knowlege begin name calling) and that, to me, is lame.