David,
this question of mine is not within the ongoing discussion-details, just
'about' the ideas exposed in them.
"Mind is what brain does" (although I find it a pars pro toto)
I am questioning "does". Would we restrict it to our ongoing image of
physiology, meaning: the brain does physical 'energy' consuming electrical
changes by (physico/chemical) impact and by physiological changes (such as
diffeences in blood-stream performance, chemical syntheses and migration of
molecules) - or do we assign activities of some brain-image beyond today's
anatomical biology?
In the first case 'mind' is physical, memory, thought, mentality is as of
yesterday and we can stop perspective research. Slowly return to faithful
creationism.
If we believe in further enrichment of our cognitive inventory, I question:
1. What instigates the 'function' (called mindwork) - ostentibly with
connection to our 'material-figment' BRAIN,
2. What keeps it running (and please, save me from the marvel of physicists
the call 'energy' - but nobody knows what it is)
3. Who tells the process to buzz off, it is done, and
4. How does the 'product' incorporate into the rest of it?
(BTW these questions arise in 'functions','reactions',processes as well, if
we think beyond Physix Textbook 101).
5. Is a "thought" a product of the mind-process? if so, where does it settle
to become consciously acknowledged for us... (for WHOM???)
I really do not expect from you to give adequate replies to all these
questions - it would make the grandkids of our grandkits scientifically
unemployed but you have unusual solutions and ideas and it may be
interesting to tape your mind...
You mentioned below the 'mind-body' problem. Considering 'body' as part of
the figment of the 'physical world' and 'mind' something more than just
that, I see an old artifax of a problem, how to save obsolescence into
advancement.
I am not ready to go into that.
John Mikes
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
>
> > That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone
> claim that
> > the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what
> the
> > brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the
> idea that
> > functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain
> without any
> > untoward effects.
>
> Yes indeed. But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
> To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
> state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
> define them - of the material object in question. So now you have two
> options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
> material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
> ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
> non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
> I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
> different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
> dilemma).
>
> This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
> physics and mind as described in step 08 of his SANE2004 paper. It's
> aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
> the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
> argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
> Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
> substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
> be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.
>
> AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
> customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
> functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
> basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
> relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
> problem.
>
> David
>
> >
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> > >
> > > On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
> > >
> > >> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> > >> machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> > >> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> > >> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
> > >> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
> > >>
> > >> THE APHORISMS
> > >>
> > >> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
> > >>
> > >> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
> > >>
> > >> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> > >> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> > >> itself).
> > >>
> > >> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> > >> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> > >> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> > >> insight stands.
> >
> > It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain
> are
> > correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
> >
> > >>
> > >> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
> > >> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
> > >> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
> > >> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
> > >> correlative synthesis.
> > >>
> > >> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
> > >> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
> > >> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
> > >> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
> > >> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
> >
> > That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone
> claim that
> > the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what
> the
> > brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the
> idea that
> > functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain
> without any
> > untoward effects.
> >
> > Brent
> >
> >
> > >
>
> >
>
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Received on Tue Jul 28 2009 - 16:43:11 PDT