Icarus, I do indeed have some kind of scientific background. To lay my cards on the table - I have a PhD in experimental psychology and have done teaching in neuropsychology, neuroanatomy, sociobiology and cognitive neuroscience. So yes – I’ve been trained in the “current paradigm” which you seem to believe is so misguided.
KFIS, is neuronal activity is a requirement for thought? Well, thought tends to be restricted to things that possess neurons - i.e. humans, dogs, cats, mice etc. Rocks, tables and bowls of soup don't do much thinking. Moreover the processes involved in thought tend to be localised within those parts of an organism that contain bundles of neurons. Chopping off someone’s leg doesn’t tend to impair their ability to think all that much – but circumscribed lesions to specific areas of the human brain tend to produce specific cognitive deficits. Experimentally if you chop out chunks of an organism's brain this will tend to restrict its ability to think in fairly predictable ways – i.e. there is a certain amount of functional localisation within the central nervous system. Finally, by blocking specific aspects of neuronal functioning at the cellular level it is possible to interfere with specific aspects of cognitive functioning. All in all there’s pretty compelling evidence that neurons are a requirement for thought.
[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: stagger ]