Question

Does neuroscience explain everything? Are we just machines in that case? Or do we build our personalities and thoughts ourselves?

Answer 1

We build our personalities and thoughts ourselves! We learnt that justthe other day

Answer 2

does that answer you question

Answer 3

But neuroscience says that everything IS biology. I asked that in class and the class laughed at me, idk why.. sure, what's your question?

Answer 4

Hmmm an interesting question. While we do not know everything about the human body, nor will we ever (probably). I do believe that humans are just a set of chemical reactions occurring together. But! That is not to say we are machines, those chemical reactions are so complex that in reality we forming personality..

Does that make sense? Anyway I hope someone will be able to describe the relationship between chemical reactions and how thoughts/personality works... (mainly because I don't know!).

Answer 5

neuroscience explains how the nervous system works, and with that the brain. I think that since it is a science, it is based on pure evidence and theories about functioning in a physical sense. Neuroscience is about organic organisms such as humans, so I think that what made people laugh at your question was the "machines" part of your question. Neuroscience does not explain everything, because there are still unanswered questions which will take years of research to determine. In the case of personality, that is a mix of genetics and environment. In the case of thoughts, that is a unique thing which not a lot is known of.

Answer 6

once neuroscience can exactly pinpoint mental illnesses then we can incur more on does it truly explain behavior/everything. right now that thought is like descartes (soul-body problem) connect in the pineal gland, yada yada. there is so much to look into before one can truly say one neuron controls an action, or a consortium of neurons work for an action. cohorts i work with daily ask this question daily. millions of theories. all have counter-arguments.

Answer 7

An excellent question and one that I have pondered for many years, with no clear answer in sight. I am a first year PhD student in neuroscience and computational biology and my opinion by no means is the most complete.
There are many systems levels that you can look at the body, including:
-how organ systems function together
-how organs function alone
-how tissue gives the emergent properties of organs
-how cells group together functionally to form tissue
-how cells work individually
-how small molecules signal larger transduction pathways (i.e. endocrine/exocrine)
-how neurotramitters change behavior, either indirectly modulate or directly excite/inhibit other nervous pathways.
-there are many more examples

The key is how the different levels and systems interact and give rise to non-trivial (and not very predictable) emergent properties

The nervous system itself can be looked at from many different perspectives as well!
-how individual cells fire
-how groups of cells fire
-how populations of cells fire and give rise to brain waves
-how 'rate-coding' may contribute to information storage
-how genetic expression modulates systems behavior
-how synaptic plasticity contributes to systems behavior
-how do glial cells modulate the development of neurons
-and many MANY more.

A critical ability of our amazing brains is being aware. I am a big proponent of Dr. Douglas Hofstadter's work and I do believe our brain gives rise to consciousness by being aware of itself and its surroundings. You are not just deterministically reacting to your surroundings (which I think is your position and definitely on some level very true), but you are also reacting to the immediate awareness of that very surrounding, giving rise to quite a random process that may look and actually be what we call free-will (or at least some primitive). It is a beautiful iterative (at times continuous) "Strange Loop". At this point you can begin some tangents on philosophical arguments, but I prefer to stay in the realm of theoretical scientific approximations to the sources of consciousness and to the amazing capacity of the human body and mind!

Let me know what you think!