The Sixth Reliable Thing

There are reflexes.

I did some more searches before I left off the previous post's thoughts, simplified to 'reflexes dreams', and that brought up a lot of things! And will take some time to sort through! But there is a strong connection between reflexes and emotions, and somehow I see something of the Toon and Tooner in the connection, and the comedians' straight man and goofball...free will, one's conscious choice, is like 'straight', while reflexes, in their spontaneity, are 'goofy'!

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Popular science author Tor Nørretranders has called the delay "The User Illusion" implying that we only have the illusion of conscious control, most actions being controlled automatically by non-conscious parts of the brain with the conscious mind relegated to the role of spectator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism

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hmmph...happening upon reflexes and dreams, I was brought up against the philosophical thought that everything is reflexive...wiki's take on 'epiphenomenalism' came up in search: reflexes philosophy...I was looking too to see if Spinoza goes on about this...brb...

from same wiki

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During the seventeenth century, Rene Descartes argued that animals are subject to mechanical laws of nature. He defended the idea of automatic behavior, or the performance of actions without conscious thought. Descartes questioned how the immaterial mind and the material body can interact causally.[1] His interactionist model (1649) held that the body relates to the mind through the pineal gland.[2] La Mettrie, Leibniz and Spinoza all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).[3][4]

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lemesee if I can find more Spinoza...

a bread crumb...

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Spinoza proposed that mind and body were the manifestations of some third property--what he considered God. This is the theory of double-aspectism, another monist view.

http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/mindbody.htm

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following link to double-aspectism...

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Double Aspectism: Mind and body are distinguishable, but inseparable. Cognitive and experiential aspects can be distinguished from physical aspects, so there is a separate mind and body…sort of. The separate mind and body are two aspects of the state of being human. Spinoza explained it this way: "thinking substance (the mind) and extended substance (the body) are one and the same thing." For Spinoza, the single substance was God. This explanation of the Mind/Body connection may be the most difficult to understand, because it is perhaps the least clear.

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Spinoza came up in a Tree in the Door Fauna and Flora Post...see Spinoza's Cat