Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Mind, making sense of chaos.

The mythical "non-fundamentalist atheist" - Discuss Atheism - Beliefnet Community: "The conscious mind evolved or emerged if you wish, to make sense of the chaotic material input presented to the brain by the senses. To take a simple example, at a large cocktail party with many conversations going on with perhaps music and other random noises are presented to the brain by the auditory nerve complex. The mind needs to separate out the important noises, like the conversation one is engaged in. It can even sort out ones name mentioned in a conversation across the room. Visual stimuli are even more chaotic. Reality is much too messy to deal with in its unfiltered existence. Hence the mind to make sense of the data overload."

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