The God Hypothesis

Interesting.You are not talking about reflex reactions, I don't think. And I don't think you're talking about physics in action where you push the wrong way on the ice and no matter how hard you wish end up on your butt anyway.Care to share?

This is totally off topic, but, hey ... Most of the reflex reactions, like the doctor hitting your knee with that little rubber hatchet of his or accidentally touching a hot stove, are short circuited in the spinal column, if I recall. There is a threshold of signal that just passes up the cord to the brain, but over that threshold the spinal wiring will loop back part of the signal to some muscles to twitch away from the danger. The brain doesn't find out about it till after the fact.Muscle spasms and cramps are not brain directed and are mostly chemical screw-ups in the tissue or nerves from over use, under use or injury.So, yeah, I can see where you would say these things are "body" vs brain controlled.Some of the other incidents you cite, however, I'm not so sure .The reason I found this interesting is because a few articles I read some months ago (wish I could find them) covered a number of studies with some strange implications. Some Neurologists and Psyrinks are starting to suggest that the conscious mind is just an input/output interface between the universe and the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is where all the analysis and the decision-making take place and the conscious mind carries out those commands that require an outside interface. All the senses are wired into the brain and are shared by the subconscious and conscious, but the subconscious decides what to do about it all. They also speculated that the conscious mind’s realization of the actions may precede or lag behind the actual action as well as serving as memory of intent already decided by the subconscious.So in your lighter-catching scenario the story goes that the subconscious calculates the path of the lighter using the input from the senses and commands quick movement. The conscious mind was told to move so quickly that it takes a few micro-seconds for the realization of the act to catch up. Presto, instant Jedi.Something similar with the piano scene. Your realization of the movements of your fingers are ahead of the commanded action and open to distraction from both the rest of the universe and thoughts bubbling up from your subconscious. But for the harder parts (the quicker more complex parts) there is less time between command and action thus realization within the conscious lags behind the subconscious commands.
You go on auto-pilot. Practice, practice, practice is strengthening the subconscious auto-pilot program to the point where you sit at the keys and go on auto-pilot for the entire performance.I could speculate that in the driving scenario the route to work is more familiar than the store to the subconscious through repetition. So when your conscious mind fiddle-farts around with distractions (maybe you’re tired and let your mind wonder) instead of giving the subconscious the intent reminders the subconscious mind falls back on the most familiar auto-pilot route in the map.No idea if there is any efficacy to this stuff but I found it interesting.Thanks, CS.Now, back to your regularly scheduled topic.Edited by AZPaul3, : Had to add QS so's y'all know what we're talking about.

I can agree to that. Your body, your brain, your conscious awareness, your unconscious processing/decision making, your deep animalistic agression, all of Maslow's Hierarchy, etc, is all you.Sensation, instinct, sentience, awareness, intellect are all emergent properties of complex chemistry in continuous action.The conscious awareness is just one module, the outward interface to the universe, while the rest of "you" does the heavy lifting in the background.But, then, to get really dawkinsesque, "you" are just a survival vessel "designed" and built by your genes. And these special emergent properties are just survival strategies to enhance the mission of the vessel. So the real you is your suite of genes. How droll.

Which are ... ?