Problems with Identity theory
The title may be a bit misleading. I am not going to present problems with identity theory but rather, I am looking for the biggest problems with it.
For anyone who doesn't know: Identity theory in philosophy of mind is the theory that mental states are brain states. Your anger/love/pain/joy is, ontologically, exactly, the firing of certain neurons and the movement of certain chemicals.
I'd always treated this theory with suspicion off the bat, it just seemed ridiculous. But the more I read about it from SEP and other sources the more I was not convinced that it was as problematic as it first seemed. And it comes with a lot of merits, such as not having to deal with some of the most popular and glaring issues in Dualism, and not having to struggle at all with how "mental things" and "physical things" interact or cause each other, or what their relationship is. They are taken to be simply identical. Talk of emotions is really just talk of neural states. And you don't seem to need as many loops to get free will and moral responsibility out of it either.
I've also struggled to see the distinction between identity theory and some reductionist theories. What's the difference between saying "The mind is the brain" and "The mind reduces to the brain"? So any help there would be appreciated.
For anyone who doesn't know: Identity theory in philosophy of mind is the theory that mental states are brain states. Your anger/love/pain/joy is, ontologically, exactly, the firing of certain neurons and the movement of certain chemicals.
I'd always treated this theory with suspicion off the bat, it just seemed ridiculous. But the more I read about it from SEP and other sources the more I was not convinced that it was as problematic as it first seemed. And it comes with a lot of merits, such as not having to deal with some of the most popular and glaring issues in Dualism, and not having to struggle at all with how "mental things" and "physical things" interact or cause each other, or what their relationship is. They are taken to be simply identical. Talk of emotions is really just talk of neural states. And you don't seem to need as many loops to get free will and moral responsibility out of it either.
I've also struggled to see the distinction between identity theory and some reductionist theories. What's the difference between saying "The mind is the brain" and "The mind reduces to the brain"? So any help there would be appreciated.
Comments (79)
First things first, are there are any differences between the mind and the brain?
If the answer is no, then that would be "the mind is the brain".
On the other hand, if the answer is yes, then the task is to explain how "the mind reduces to the brain."
How are they different specifically? Different like in ontological dualism? Different how?
The latter makes sense and the former does not. "Mind" is predicate (processing), "brain" is subject (processor) like e.g. walk and legs, respiration and lungs, respectively. Mind(ing) is what a brain does.
Furthermore, we don't ever need to talk about minds if that's what they are. Just like talk of guts and stomach is sufficient anywhere you want to talk about digestion. "I am digesting a burrito" can be restated in terms of guts doing things, and so the concept of digestion itself is no more than a shorthand, and not really needed.
And besides, this doesn't tell me what the problems are with identity theory rather just asserts reductionism.
...digestion is not a side effect of one's guts. And isn't "mind' just a name for what the brain does?
But I don't see a reduction here. I don't see that a certain states of mind is exactly equal to a certain state of brain. Anomalous monism is a way around that... Khaled believing that the Pope is Catholic may "correspond" to various different brain states from one time to another.
This is, I think, the specific point on which @Isaac and I differ. If I understand him aright, he thinks that there must be one brain state for one mind state. I suspect this is something he assumes for methodological reasons: it makes the MRI scans more impressive.
I'm assuming you mean "of brain". And who said that it has to be one to one? The claim is that certain states of mind ARE certain states of brain. Anger IS a brain state, it is not "something caused by a brain state". What would be the issue with that claim.
Quoting Banno
Sure. I never said it is one to one. The claim is that Khaled's belief that the pope is catholic IS a brain state. Not some separate entity as the dualists would have it. And not “corresponds to” but IS.
Then again, I struggle to see how this isn't simply identity theory. Here is what Mind/Brain identity theory is according to SEP:
"The identity theory of mind holds that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Strictly speaking, it need not hold that the mind is identical to the brain."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
(I was using "the mind is the brain" as a shorthand I didn't literally mean it)
And here is what reductionism is according to the IEP (couldn't find an SEP article about it):
"The type of reductionism that is currently of most interest in metaphysics and philosophy of mind involves the claim that all sciences are reducible to physics. This is usually taken to entail that all phenomena (including mental phenomena like consciousness) are identical to physical phenomena."
https://iep.utm.edu/red-ism/#:~:text=The%20type%20of%20reductionism%20that,are%20identical%20to%20physical%20phenomena.
Quoting Banno
The more I looked into it the more it just seemed to really be reductionism or epiphenomenalism in disguise, though it claims to be neither.
Yeah, thanks - fixed.
As for the rest - sure. The difference between identity theory and anomalous monism is the rejection of a one-to-one correspondence between brain states and states of mind in favour of a many-to-many relation (very roughly). It rejects the notion that physics might come up with rigid causal links between states of a brain and our thoughts and actions. It fits well with the rejection of causation I expressed in Causality, Determination and such stuff. - Quoting Banno
Then what’s the difference between identity theory and reductionism? I don’t see a difference. Maybe there isn’t and I’m just getting hung up on words...
Also, for identity theory it’s not a “correspondence”. A mental state IS a brain state, it’s not that a mental state “corresponds” to a brain state (that seems to open the door for a dualism of some sort)
:up:
Reductionism would have it that psychology could be replaced by physics. The discussion of causation cited elsewhere shows that at no level of sophistication could physics actually predict your actions accurately.
The notion of a mental state has a certain immobility to it that gives me pause. Hence my hesitancy to say that a certain brain state is identical to a certain mental state. I don't think that pivotal, though. Thinking that the pope is catholic is a series of brain states, at the least.
The difference between "the mind is the brain" and "the mind reduces to the brain" is the same as that between pantheism and theism. That god is the universe itself is like "the mind is the brain" and that god is distinct from the universe is like "the mind reduces to the brain". The difference rests on whether mind is a distinct entity from the brain.
Quoting Banno
The problem with this is that we can observe the guts digesting, we cannot observe the brain minding. It's only one or the other - we can observe a brain, or we can observe our own mind. Brains only appear in minds - as mental models of other people's minds. We never observe minds in brains, like we do digesting in guts. Brains and minds are the same thing, just from different perspectives. Thinking that it's brains that are really "out there" is naive realism.
I think that the reductionist model of psychology developed by B F Skinner has played a critical role in the current thinking about mental states, because it was a view which saw mind as illusory. It is probably hard to see mind and body as separate because they are bound together in an intricate way.
Certainly, we know that mental states are altered by chemicals, and how medication can be the main way for treating affective and psychotic experiences. However, it would seem to me to be a problem if the slant is focused on the brain alone, with the subjective inner experience being left out of the picture. While mental states are affected by the brain, the subjective meanings of experience are also important too. Cognitive behavioral theory recognises this but, of course, cognition still involves brain processes.
However, the key issue is the capacity for reflection and it would seem to me that, while reflective consciousness is dependent on a brain it does calls for a less reductionist perspective on the understanding of mind. This would probably involving more of a holistic one, or a wider view, such as that advocated in the systems view of reality, such as that suggested by Fritjof Capra, who sought to go beyond the determinsm of the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm of reality.
The irony of this is that we have neuron connectors outside of the brain down at the gut level, which means a mind that's dislocated from the gut of that body might change into a different mental state. Our guts shape much of who we are as "part" of the mind. So calling someone an asshole might even be literal in some cases :rofl:
Other than that I think you are spot on with your allegory.
The mind is not a single entity, not singular nor "many". It's a result, a consequence of all processes going on. The problem is that we try to "view" our own mind from the outside, get a sense of where it is, but we can't because it is like viewing the inside of our own eyes. We can't invert our vision inwards to see how our vision works and even if we could we would only see details of what makes our eyes work, never grasp the entirety of it in a visual perceptive state.
I always find that talking about mind and perception works best in allegories of computers. In this case, think about a computer with all its components. We can examine each one of them, we know what the graphics card does, we know the power supply, the hard drives, processor, RAM, motherboard etc. But when we turn on the computer, there's this "magic" happening. We can see movies, play games, write philosophy posts online. What we see on the screen is the "mind". It is a consequence of all components working together, but we cannot find "where it is", we can only view it as a result of the components working. And if I were to rip out a RAM board or block the cooling fans, the computer will "get sick", it will not function well, even die completely. If I hit the hard drive with a hammer, I might see blocks of bad code corrupting the "mind" I see on the screen, but I don't know exactly why just that code gets corrupted, or why a part of the "mind" degrades while something else doesn't.
Thinking about our minds in the same way, we can both see how the brain works but not be certain of how the mind relates to all those functions. We just know that the mind and perception are a result of those components.
Our mind cannot view itself, because the mind is not something that can be viewed as a single entity. We have to think about it as a flow of consequence from our components functioning together. Our perception and rational reflection of this process get interrupted in a feedback loop of reacting to the thought of reacting.
We cannot view the inside of our own vision, but we know it is a result of the components linked to vision; the mind is just a bigger version of that same concept and because it's exponentially more complex as such a concept, we have a harder time grasping all of it.
One issue I’ve always had with identity theory is that all brain states are body states. Brains are only a part of much greater dynamic system. Brains are unable to survive, let alone think or feel, outside the rest of the organism.
Brain/body dualism. To avoid replacing one dualism with another, we should consider that mind states are body states.
Having read your delineation, I'm conjecturing that Identity Theory encapsulates the two, following meanings:
First and foremost, there'll always remain an indeterminacy at the heart of the mind-body problem. That's (perhaps) a precursor to several misgivings against Identity Theory; you can't assert the two propositions above, without being empirically speculative. With premeditated biological models, you can merely approximate a predictive model of cognition - as opposed to creating a satisfactory and infallible scheme, for deriving answers to unforeseen questions.
Personally, I adhere to Epiphenomenalism in this regard, insofar as there's no reciprocal determinism between mental and physical events; there's solely a one-way causation - that, in and of itself, is not exhaustive.
I had no idea you're a mysterian too ... :sweat:
"brain minding" :yikes:
And isn't that, in a very real sense, what we find when we look for the holy spirit of our lord Jesus Christ? Please turn now to Psalm 56 in your hymn books. Gladys, the organ.
Nope, certain mental states ARE neuronal states. It’s not that there exists “mental states” as separate from neuronal states, and the formal is caused by the latter no, they are literally the same thing. It’s not dualistic.
Quoting Aryamoy Mitra
There is no mind body problem in identity theory. How does your emotion of “anger” interact with your body? Confused question. Your emotion of “anger” IS a body state. It’s not something external that “interacts with” your body.
Quoting Aryamoy Mitra
Why not?
Quoting Aryamoy Mitra
I think epiphenomenalism is the only way out for a dualist who wants to respect the science.
Quoting khaled
I'm just responding to this without reading the rest of the thread so apologies in advance if I reiterate anything already said by others.
Firstly mental states are not identical to brain states; a state of happiness is a state of the person, not just a state of the brain. A brain state is a state of affairs of networks of neurons in the brain, a state of happiness is not such a neural state of affairs, but an emotional state, even if it could be correlated with a state of affairs of neural networks.
The mind is not the brain; if anything the mind is a process, not a thing; whereas the brain may be understood to be either thing or process, depending on the perspective of view.
So the mind is also not reducible to the brain; because to say this would be to say that the mind can be exhaustively understood in terms of brain processes, which it obviously cannot. 'Brain' makes sense as a noun, whereas 'mind' as a noun is misleading; better to think of it as a verb.
How about "A mental state is a bodily state"
Quoting Janus
Doesn't seem that obvious.
Quoting Janus
Agreed. The dualists don't seem to think so though.
I agree with most of this. I think the variability in perspective that enables us to understand ‘brain’ as either/both a thing and a process is important here, because there is a similar variability that enables us to understand ‘mind’ as either/both a process and a capacity.
I think we’re looking for a reductionist methodology that retains awareness of a qualitative complexity recognised as irreducible. I like to think of it as rendering, in the same way that we can render a three-dimensional quality in a two-dimensional drawing.
The problem is often with English language’s reliance on the the verb ‘to be’ as a lazy conjunctive. You can’t render a relation of qualitative complexity with a question of ‘is’ or ‘is not’.
In another thread, we’ve been discussing the Tao Te Ching in detail, and one thing that complicates the translations has been an insufficient quality in this particular relational verb. The Chinese language has so many qualitatively different ways ‘to be’, many of which describe an indirect relation, or the effect of rendering one idea in a certain qualitative relation to another.
In the English language, especially in scientific and technical writing or logic, we focus on clearly defining the terms and try to keep our verbs and conjunctives simple and straightforward. The less qualitative variability in our writing, the more precise it appears to be. But then we discuss an agreed upon statement in detail, and realise that almost every word in it has a different quality to it in your experience than it does in mine, and we’ve been talking across purposes, round and around for hours...
But I digress. The mind is not quantitatively reducible to the brain - there is a qualitative relation between ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ that can only be understood when we recognise their qualitative multi-dimensional structures, with all of the variability that entails. When I apply crosshatch shading to a circle on a page, this doesn’t mean the rendered two-dimensional circle is identical to a three-dimensional sphere, but that it irreducibly includes a third dimensional aspect.
This is more difficult to demonstrate in relation to the mind and the brain, but a similar relation applies. Mind is rendered in our understanding of the brain as a temporal quality that isn’t an aspect of what constitutes the brain. Mind is not identical to this ‘brain state’, but would include every potential state for that brain - just as the sphere is not identical to the shaded circle, but would need to include every possible shaded perspective.
To refer to a ‘mind state’ or mental state is to reduce mind to only one temporal aspect, but the mind isn’t structured that way - it’s more like a block universe. So a ‘mind state’ is a false construct that doesn’t correspond to reality.
Quoting khaled
What does 'are' mean? Superficially, it's not easy to unravel; if one is downtrodden, then is being downtrodden interchangeable with demonstrating a specific neurochemistry? Is the relation semantic, or metaphorical?
Is there an afterthought, that underlies the statement? Without one, this seems an absurd equivalence.
Quoting khaled
Since the two, preliminary statements were apparently inconsistent with Identity Theory, none of these conclusions (the ones you've questioned) bear any significance anymore.
You're conflating mental states with states of a person? Mental states are brain states, just from a different perspective. Is your big toe and pubic hair included in this happiness that your taking about? We all know that the same thing looks different from different perspectives. Why would it be any different for brains - (observing a brain that is part of you vs observing a brain that is not part of you)?
Quoting 180 Proof
Strange. You seem to believe that a processor can exist independent of its processing.
Idk why you'd pick "Downtrodden" out of everything. Do you mean it as an emotion or a financial state? If it is the former then, yes, according to identity theory it is interchangeable with a neurological state.
Quoting Aryamoy Mitra
semantic.
Quoting Aryamoy Mitra
Why? What problems arise when we replace all talk of minds and their emotions with talk of neurological states? If anything it seems to be more accurate and allows for more common sense usages.
"His anger made him punch the wall". According to you this statement is false. Since you're an epiphenomenalist, to you, the anger did nothing. Had no effect. Since you separate the mental from the physical dualistically, which coupled with the fact that physical systems seem self sufficient (no need for minds) leads you to the conclusion that minds exist, as a separate kind of things from physical stuff, but do nothing. Anger is "mental" and so causes no physical change.
But if "Anger" refers to a neurological state then the sentence actually makes sense. If that initial split is not made in the first place, if a mind is just a brain state and an emotion is just a brain state and so on... things becomes much simpler. And you can actually say "His anger made him punch the wall"
I do? Cite where I've given you that impression.
'Mental states', as the term is ordinarily used, refers to states of a person. I have no idea what you think big toes and pubic hair have to do with it.
Right, so a mind can be understood as the capacity to experience, feel, remember, question, consider, understand, judge and so on? I agree that those things are possible only for a being that is minded, capable of minding. But I would usually think of those capacities as belonging to the person, because they entail being embodied as well as being emminded.
Anyway all these considerations are about ways of thinking about things, about which ways seem most fruitful of insight.
Quoting Possibility
That's true: the notion of 'state' represents the idea of a hypostatized "snapshot" of a moment of process. There are no frozen moments in reality, but thinking that way can certainly yield insights that would be otherwise impossible.
I think of a person as having both body and mind. I agree that mental states are body states, but I also think they are more than that; narrative comes into it as well. So for me it seems best to speak of mental states as states of persons.
As to understanding human behavior in terms of brain processes: it seems obvious to me that it is not presently possible, at least. And then when you consider that human behavior cannot be understood without understanding first person experience, and that first person experience cannot be objectified without losing its sense, the difficulty seems insurmountable.
How so?
Quoting Janus
How so?
Regarding the narrative component of human life: it is obviously all-pervading. We are what we think we are; our selves are the stories we tell about our lives and who we are.
Regarding the irreducibility of first person experience, try this experiment; give an account of your first person experience in terms of brain processes, and then try to discover where you are in that description.
Sure but I don’t see how that makes mental states more than body states.
Quoting Janus
Doesn’t seem too challenging to someone who knows their neurology. Assuming this “you” is in any way a coherent concept we can mess with the brain enough to find out when it’s present and when it isn’t. The physical difference would be precisely this “you”
It's because there is a conceptual element there that is lacking in non-mental bodily states. So, it could be said that they are also bodily states, but are not just bodily states.
Quoting khaled
If you don't "know your neurology" then how could you know it is not "too challenging"? If you do, then you could present an example for scrutiny, and even if you don't, then you could present an example from someone who does "know their neurology" to support your case. Otherwise it just looks like an empty presumption.
There is no shortage of studies of self in neurology. Here is one:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292534980_The_Lost_Self_Pathologies_of_the_Brain_and_Identity
And as predicted what it does is: Look for cases where "you" isn't present and try to find what the significant variables are. Just like any other science.
Quoting Janus
I have.... no clue what this means. What's a "non-mental bodily state"?
Quoting Janus
But I explained why it isn't. If "You" is in any way a coherent concept then we should be able to find brain states where "You" is present and others when it isn't. Find the the difference between the two. That is "You".
And if it is empty presumption then its alternative (that we can never account for "You" neurologically) is also empty presumption.
Digestion, respiration, tendonitis, etc.,etc.,: the list is endless,
Quoting khaled
Right, in order to understand the self; eliminate it just as I said. That sounds like an intelligent idea! The self is best understood as a narrative construct, and narratives are not understandable in terms of neural processes, but in terms of the narrative itself, which entails becoming familiar with the narrative.
Quoting khaled
Of course 'you' is a coherent concept; it must be since we use it effectively all the time. The only way it could be determined if "you is present" would be to ask the person.being studied.
You seem to be alluding to someone being conscious of the mental state they are in at a time as a criterion for whether "you is present". Perhaps the self can be equated with reflexive consciousness, perhaps not. It would need to be established that there are no subconscious narratives going on in people; how are you going to do that?
Quoting Janus
Ok... What is the "conceptual element lacking in digestion". I still don't understand what the sentence means at all.
Quoting Janus
Well you didn't even say that. And I definitely didn't say that.
Quoting Janus
You keep asserting this with no evidence. What's your reasoning?
Quoting Janus
Non sequitor. Often people use the same word to mean a bunch of different things. I suspect "You" as you use it is one such word.
Quoting Janus
Wtf is a "subconscious narrative". And what does it mean for a narrative to "go on" inside someone. To have some sort of neurological impact? Because we CAN study that...
Are not big toes and public hairs part of a person? Are mental states of a person the same as the physical states of a person? If not, what is the difference between them?
Quoting Janus
So the body is composed of both mental and non-mental states? How do they interact? For instance, how do you know you have tendonitis when you have it?
Here:
Quoting 180 Proof
You said the former does not make sense and the latter does. If the former does not make sense and the latter is not saying the same as the former, then what else could you be saying?
Thought is a conceptual as well as a physical process. Digestion is just a physical process.
Quoting khaled
My reasoning is that I've never seen a narrative explained in terms of neural processes; I think they are different paradigms. But in any case show me one if you can find one.
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Are you claiming that in order to be coherent a concept must have just one determinate association or meaning? Humans are narrative oriented. What we think of as me is the story I tell myself about my life. So my identity is not really complete until I have died.
Quoting khaled
A subconscious narrative would be subconscious thought processes. It's not hard to understand. I haven't anywhere denied that thought processes have neural correlates, but a thought process is distinct from a neural process insofar as one is physical, whereas the other is conceptual. If you can't see that obvious distinction then I don't know what else to say.
Quoting khaled
I didn't express that very clearly. What I meant was that neurological so-called explanations of the self eliminate it, which was what I had said and which seemed to be exemplified by this:
Quoting khaled
The self cannot be found anywhere in a physical investigation of a neural process. That's because the self is a narrative. Neural processes don't have narratives that can be read off them like the physical script in books can.
Physical states (or better, processes) like digestion do not necessarily involve conceptual thought, whereas mental processes just are conceptual thought processes. It amazes me that you seem to find this difficult to understand.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't know what you are asking. I haven't said the body is "composed of both mental and non-mental states". The body is physically composed. I may have tendonitis, a physical condition, without knowing it. I know I have tendonitis, when it is demonstrated to me beyond reasonable doubt that I have it, just like I know anything else.
The hypothesis is that conceptual thought is a physical process. So I don’t see the difference.
Quoting Janus
That you’ve never seen one means it’s fundamentally impossible to achieve?
Quoting Janus
And this “telling” is not a neurological process? What is it then?
Quoting Janus
Well no because it’s a fabricated distinction. It’s dualistic. And dualism doesn’t have to be the case. I know you claim not to be a dualist but I see no way to interpret “One is physical whereas the other is conceptual” in non dualistic terms.
You’ve defined thought processes to be different from anything physical. That is a choice. That is not some metaphysical truth. And I consider it a bad choice.
What you may want to consider is what makes mental/cognitive states different than other processes. It would seem that the a priori mental representations of the mind/brain are what presupposes any other process including digestion, gravity, or whatever. I know it is a bit cliched to do the "If a tree falls in the woods.." but it is part of the inextricably intertwined and part of the equation for why this problem is not as straightforward as it might seem. It especially makes it harder to simply analogize mental states to digestion, as presumably, digestion isn't a presupposition for our very knowing, but mental states are. In other words, digestion on its own cannot induce "inner sensations and representations", but brain states can. There is something about brain states that allows the very knowing of all the other states and this is really what makes it unique.
So it is not just equivocating brain states with mental states, but what we are really asking in a philosophical sense is why is there an "inner feeling" at all with mental states?
The difference is that there is a clear conceptual difference between physical and conceptual processes. Think about logical entailment, for example: how do you explain that in physical terms?
Quoting khaled
I haven't claimed it is impossible to achieve; I have claimed that it has not been achieved and that given the different conceptual paradigms a way to achieve it cannot be envisaged, and thus we have no reason to believe that it must be possible, or even that it is possible.
Quoting khaled
It is a conceptual process. As I said I haven't denied that the conceptual process of narrative doesn't have its physical underpinnings or counterparts. The physical and the conceptual are just two modes of inquiry, just different perspectives on things.
Think of Sellar's idea of the distinction between the logical space of causes and the logical space of reasons.Here's an example question for you to chew on: metaphor is an integral part of narrative, so what is the physical equivalent of metaphor or how do explain metaphor in physicalist terms?
Quoting khaled
It's not a fabricated distinction, or at least not any more so than any other distinction. It's also not dualistic; I'm not proposing that there are two different substances. It's pluralistic; the claim is that since we cannot explain the conceptual in physical terms there is no good reason to think that the conceptual is reducible to the physical, Try to present a good reason if you think there is one.
Of course my advocating of the distinction is a choice, but it is a choice motivated by the fact that the distinction is a cogent one, despite any pretentious and incoherent physicalist claims to a reducibility which amounts to elimination. It's not a metaphysical claim either, because i am making no ontological claim about substances at all. It's just a semantic claim that says that valid distinctions should not be eliminated on the basis of some vague prejudice.
You haven't presented any worthy objections so far, just empty assertions. Can't you find anything to present other than that? I doubt you can, but I'm prepared to listen if you do.
If a processor processes, when it doesn't process does it still make sense to call it a processor? Is a brain still a brain without the activity, or just a lump of matter that takes up space? What's the difference between a brain that doesn't think and a leg that can't move besides their shape? They are both just lumps of biological matter.
Quoting Janus
You have this idea where logical entailment is a “thing out there”. Some law inherent in the universe or something. Whereas I think logical entailment is just another instinct. Something “makes sense” when it is logically entailed. And this “making sense” is a neural process. Logical entailment is a “local phenomena” so to speak.
We can explain logical entailment in the same way we can explain hunger.
You keep saying that you are saying nothing ontological but you keep splitting up the conceptual and physical ontologically as far as I can tell. That or you're just asserting that the conceptual cannot be explained in physical terms because...... idk.
Quoting Janus
Funny I was just about to say that.
Can’t think on an empty stomach!
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure but
Quoting schopenhauer1
But I don’t see how this follows. What is the problem with equivocating brain states with mental states?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I’m not sure if you’re alluding to the hard problem here. But if you are then I would say, if the problem makes sense, it’s not interesting anyways. It’s like asking “why is there gravity at all with matter”? Who cares? There just is.
Just a fly-by post this, not intending to join the discussion, but you might find this paper interesting in this regard. It's not so much about brain states, apparently, as functional processes. What's interesting about this approach is that it requires that the process itself be recognised somehow as distinct from the actual neurons firing...and how do we recognise 'that' particular pattern...?
We find what's common in the degenerate neuronal systems that produce the same cognitive function?
What about processes in the brain that do not involve conceptual thought? The information in your consciousness was processed in the brain before appearing in consciousness. Are those not mental processes?
Quoting Janus
Then you're saying that mental states are physical states -mind is the brain and vice versa? How is does the non-mental process of tendonitis become a mental conceptual thought?
Chickens and fish have minds, as they have brains and minds are what brains do, right? Jellyfish are an example of an organism that doesn't have a brain and therefore no mind, no? If not, then what is different between human and chicken brains such that one is minding and the other isn't?
A brain-dead brain may not have a mind as you think of it (do you really know what consciousness is?), but it still has information (and I assert that consciousness is just a type of information).
Brains are visual objects, or visual information of others mental processes. Believing that the world is as it appears visually is naive realism. Are you a naive realist?
Trouble is what's common is possibly only that they produce the same cognitive function. Other than that...
The problem with any neuronal representation (and I agree with your general approach here nonetheless), is that a neuron itself has only two options (fire/don't) and only one variable to determine this outcome (degree of potentiation). So the neuron itself is of little help. That we have a Halle Berry neuron (should we accept that we do) is obviously not a feature of the neuron itself, no data is contained therein, but a feature of all the constituent neurons it's connect to. To simplify massively - imagine that the neuron is connected to the ones which fire for 'heads', 'arms' etc such that it fires in response to those, and then connected to neurons which fire your your vocal muscles in such a way as to say "Halle Berry". We can normally use its location, but that's really just a shorthand for its degree of connectivity to other locations (there's nothing stopping all your auditory cortex being scattered randomly through the brain, they just aren't).
So 'pattern of potentiation' becomes the identifier. As I think I mentioned to you in one of our other conversations, we can trace a 'fuzzy-edged' casdcade of neural activity from an external stimuli to a behavioural response and usually see a similar looking cascade in other people in the same situation. The trouble is - seeing as identifying that cascade by location is only shorthand for connectivity, in situations like recovery from brain damage, the only way we had of identifying that cascade has gone.
What we need (and what both Friston and Tonini advocate in separate papers) is a computational model of the neural network, rather than our current locational model. In such a model mental states are relationships between nodes rather than just arrangements, this allows them to be (theoretically!) mapped, not to neurological states, but to neurological computational processes. Imagine, rather than 'hungry' being when some pattern of lights fixed to a board light up, it's more whenever a pattern of gates are open on a farm such as to allow cattle to get from barn to parlour. We name it by whether it allows cattle to get from barn to parour, not by which gates are open where. This then allows for the degeneracy we see in these rare cases of recovery from brain damage.
Of course, none of this undermines the incredible utility of the locational model since it covers 99.999% of the population using an easy and fairly robust model. It's only my more fanatical colleagues in the philosophy department who might concern themselves with the fact that it's not 'The Truth™'
Anyway, I don't mean to derail your thread with a discussion of neuroscientific models, I just thought the concepts of degeneracy and pluripotentiality might be useful in assuaging some of the more serious objections to identity theory - issues around the lack of one-to-one relationships between mental states and neurological ones.
Of course, as regards counter-arguments you've still got to contend with the classic "it just doesn't feel that way...". I can't help you with that. All I can suggest is the equally powerful "That's what you say..." as a retort.
I'd refer to the emic-etic distinction.
When talking about the mind, we talk about the emic.
When talking about the brain, we talk about the etic.
Are you?
You are imputing thoughts to me I haven't expressed or even suggested. Logical entailment is simply what seems self-evident to us. You say it is an instinct, whereas I might say it is grasped intuitively. On a basic level I have seen it manifested in the behavior of dogs.
Quoting khaled
I already said I am making a semantic claim based on the fact that there is a valid distinction between the physical and the conceptual. Say you are reading a poem and you feel moved by it; you cannot explain how it is that you are moved by the poem by simply examining the physical marks on the paper, the processes of visual perception involved in looking at them and the ensuing neural processes going on in the brain. You are moved by meaning, by the conceptual, and you can give some explanation of that in terms of semantic associations and allusions which, for some reason, are highly significant to you.
Quoting khaled
Neural processes are just neural processes; they are physical, not logical processes; so it is a category error to speak of them as "making sense". Another way to understand this categorical distinction is to consider the fact that if neural processes are invariably associated with thought processes then some neural processes must be associated with thought processes that are not logically valid. Do you believe it would be possible to examine two different neural processes associated with two different thought processes, one logically valid and the other not, and tell just from that physical examination which thought process was logically valid and which was not?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Are you claiming there are no subconscious thought processes?
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, I'm not saying that at all. In all I've said I've been arguing that the mind is not the brain simply because there is a valid distinction between the two concepts. The mind becomes aware of the pain caused by tendonitis. The tendonitis could have earlier been incipient and no pain felt, so there would have been no awareness of the tendonitis. To know (that is to come to believe under good authority) that I have tendonitis I have to research the symptoms or seek expert advice.
Right. And there is a neural difference between when something makes sense and when it doesn’t. That’s your logical entailment explained in physical terms.
Quoting Janus
You keep asserting this. It doesn’t get any more convincing when you keep insisting on it.
Quoting Janus
Yes. Except that the neural process IS the thought. Not “is associated with” the thought.
Quoting Janus
And again with the “I’m not making any ontological claims here, but thoughts ain’t physical and so they can’t be grasped by neurology”....
Nope.
I was the one that asked you the question because of what you claimed,, not me, and because you can't answer it without appearing naive, you just throw the question back at me. Pathetic.
So it appears that your immaturity doesn't just become apparent when you are shown to be inconsistent in politics, but also in metaphysics? So no one can have serious "conversation" with you unless they agree with everything you say?
I'm asking questions about what you have claimed. I'm trying to understand what you are claiming. You said that mental processes involve conceptual thought. I'm asking about those processes that occur in the brain stem, pituitary gland, basal ganglia, the lower brain, etc,. From what I know, those processes do not involve conceptual thought, so I'm basically asking if you know something that the neurologists don't.
Are you saying that all mental processes are conscious processes - from sub-conscious to full-fledged consciousness? Would there be parts of the brain that you would point to to show which parts are sub-conscious and fully conscious? Would that not indicate that the physical parts correspond to the conscious parts?
Then you're saying that mental states are physical states -mind is the brain and vice versa? How is does the non-mental process of tendonitis become a mental conceptual thought?
— Harry Hindu
Quoting Janus
Then we are talking past each other. You're talking about a difference in concepts (conceptual thoughts), which are mental processes and I'm talking about a difference mind vs brain. Are you saying that everything is mind and brains are just another idea, or concept, not a actual "physical" thing?
Quoting Janus
I'm asking how do you become mentally aware of a physical state.
It seems to me that to assert that the mind and brain are not one and the same, or at least the mind is at least part of the brain and there are other non-conscious processes in the brain, is dualistic and dualism's problem is in explaining how two different things can interact.
Quoting Janus
Here you seem to be saying that processes (like mind) are the same as the physical state (brain).
What I am saying is that they are the same, just from different perspectives - being the state vs observing the state.
Thank you for linking to this distinction, it seems quite useful. :up:
[quote= from Wiki]
…Emic knowledge and interpretations are those existing within a culture, that are ‘determined by local custom, meaning, and belief’ (Ager and Loughry, 2004: n.p.) and best described by a 'native' of the culture. Etic knowledge refers to generalizations about human behavior that are considered universally true, and commonly links cultural practices to factors of interest to the researcher, such as economic or ecological conditions, that cultural insiders may not consider very relevant (Morris et al., 1999).
[/quote]
I understand the temptation to make this point, but consider this pronoun we. Perfectly private 'observation' is (or seems to be) scientifically irrelevant. What I'm questioning is this starting point of the private dream. This makes the brain a mere part of the dream, so then so is the dream a part of the dream. (?)
There's presumably a neural difference between all different thought processes, so what you've said explains nothing. To count as an exexplanation you would need to describe the general physical differences between logically valid and logically invalid thought processes.
Quoting khaled
OK then show the explanation that you claim can be given.
I'm saying I've never seen such an explanation, so it's not an empty assertion.
Quoting khaled
That's just a baseless assertion rejecting the distinction between the semantic and the physical.
Your level of argumentation is so poor that I'm done trying to reason with you.
I'm not advocating dualism, but semantic pluralism. You don't seem to be able to get out of your own dualistic framework of thinking in order to understand what I'm saying, so there's no point continuing.
It is empty. "I've never seen one therefore they're not possible" doesn't follow. It could very well be that we cannot, and will never be able to, neurologically account for things like logical entailment. But you have no evidence to conclude that. You keep reasserting it for no reason.
Quoting Janus
It has just as much basis as the assertion that that distinction is there. Your "evidence" for the distinction is "I haven't seen logical entailment explained physically yet". That's not evidence.
And the quote was intended as the hypothesis in question. I'm trying to find issues with identity theory. You have provided none. All you've said is effectively "Well, I think there is a distinction here". That wasn't what was being asked.
You don't respond to the topic, and are incapable of supporting your own position. And then accuse me of being unable to argue... Funny.
Coming from a guy that doesn't know me and can only create a fictitious image of me to help him sleep at night. :roll:
You're confused again. I'm not the dualist. If you had been reading my posts, youd understand that I'm arguing against dualism.
Again, we're talking past each other. Your taking about the meaning of scribbles and sounds (semantic pluralism), and I'm talking about the ontological "distinction" between mind and brain - what exists independent of language and how we use scribbles and sounds to refer to things.
Science Identifies and integrates sensory evidence which is the nature of reason. Science is essentially based, not on experiment, but on observation and logic. Looking under a rock or into a telescope are both scientific acts. So is the act of observing and thinking about your own mental processes - a scientific act is private. Proof of one's conclusions to others comes later, but that is argumentative, not inquisitive.
Brains are just information in minds. Some might call this idealism or panpsychism, but I reject the idea that information is inherently mental (or physical). Information is fundamental and mental and physical are both information.
And I'm saying you're kidding yourself if you think the "ontological distinction between mind and brain" is independent of language..
I think I understand what you are saying, but IMV thinking itself is (counter-intuitively) not a private act. I say this because we think in and through a public language and through the 'lens' of an education. Also consider that any interest in trust seems to reference some reality that transcends the individual. The goal is true-for-anyone and not just true-for-me. To find these true-for-all propositions is also to work in a shared language. I do see that we can quietly talk to ourselves and have insights that lead scientific revolutions.
[quote=Peirce]
A person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man’s circle of society, (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism. It is these two things alone that render it possible for you—but only in the abstract, and in a Pickwickian sense,—to distinguish between absolute truth and what you do not doubt.
[/quote]
https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/bycsp/whatis/whatpragis.htm
You're fooling yourself if you think that the distinction between how you observe your own mind vs. other minds is a difference in the scribbles and sound you make. Is the distinction between scribbles and sounds also dependent on language? Hearing is distinctly different than seeing, without using words.
This simply can't be the case. Newborn infants have to learn the language and learning anything requires an ability to reason. The ability to reason exists prior to learning a language. Language is just visual scribbles and sounds, like most everything else, and we interpret our visual and auditory sensations individually. Actions speak louder than words because actions are visual, like words, and can be interpreted, and provide more accurate information than words can. It's more difficult to lie with your actions than with your words.
I agree that individually we are born with the ability to (pre-)reason and learn a language. I can't agree that language is just scribbles and sounds. Language is something like a set of conventions.
While the individual brain processes what it gets from that same person's sense-organs, it does so (in any higher, human sense) through and with inherited habits of using linguistic conventions.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm not sure about this. But I don't think lying is really the issue in the first place. Honest, earnest error is probably a larger concern. To be reasonable and scientific is something like an ethical ideal. While eschewing deceiving others is part of that, the less trivial task is eschewing self-deceit. This is where IMO the idea of peer review comes in. Science is a task for a community of inquirers aware of their idiosyncratic biases and blind-spots.
It is just scribbles and sounds that children learn to imitate. Using language is a behavior, and just like all other behaviors we learn to interpret them.
I agree that language is a behavior, a skill with using sounds and scribbles. So the issue is the nature of this skill. Note that you again invoke 'we.' To learn to use these sounds and scribbles is to manifest and develop a participation in the 'we' of the community. For Dreyfus this is the 'one,' and in 'one uses a fork this way' or as 'one says thank you when a favor is done for one. (This is the 'who' of everyday existence.) I also agree with Peirce when he says something like rationality is ultimately ethical. A scientific hypothesis is future oriented from the perspective of a community. 'If one does X in context Y, then one should expect Z.'