To What Extent is the Mind/Body Problem a Question of Metaphysics?
I have been thinking about this recently and reading John Rawles, 'The Matter With Us'(2011), which looks at the way we consider and construct reality, especially in terms of opposites. This includes the mind and body division. It is our minds which make this separation. Going back to Descartes, the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself, but alongside this, was the exploration of the outer world, and empirical investigations.
Philosophy has explored subjectively, and objectively, as well as intersubjectively, in so much detail, and many various slants on the mind and body problem have been achieved. One of the aspects of this is qualia, which is about being able to consider the verge between subjectivity and metaphysics. It is also a question of whether the material world is seen as more real. The problem also links with phenomenology because that is the level of human perception and perspective of knowledge. So, my own framing of the mind and body problem is in to put it back to the area of metaphysics. I am interested to know what people on the forum think about this.
Philosophy has explored subjectively, and objectively, as well as intersubjectively, in so much detail, and many various slants on the mind and body problem have been achieved. One of the aspects of this is qualia, which is about being able to consider the verge between subjectivity and metaphysics. It is also a question of whether the material world is seen as more real. The problem also links with phenomenology because that is the level of human perception and perspective of knowledge. So, my own framing of the mind and body problem is in to put it back to the area of metaphysics. I am interested to know what people on the forum think about this.
Comments (98)
Are qualia about that? Arent qualia things like sound and vision (the personal experiences aspects). Consider the body as that between inner world (content of matter) and outer world (ouside aspect of matter). The body is the interface of both and cant be separated from these two worlds (the brain in a vat is an impossibility).
Another point is that the term ‘substance’ does not mean in philosophy what it means in ordinary language. Substance in philosophy means ‘the bearer of attributes’. ‘Substantia’ - ‘that which stands under’ - was the translation of Aristotle’s ‘ouisia’ but that term is nearer in meaning to ‘being’ than what we think of as ‘substance’ (which is a material with uniform properties). But that in turn requires an explanation of what ‘form’ and ‘substance’ mean in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics which is a deep and difficult subject in its own right. However something to bear in mind is that Aristotelian metaphysics is still kept alive in various forms of Thomism, that is, philosophy descending from the work of Aquinas. To that extent, it’s still a living tradition.
Phenomenology re-frames the question, by concentrating on the nature of lived experience, rather than on positing abstractions such as mind and matter. It offers a way out of the apparent dichotomy posed by Cartesian dualism. Specifically enactivism and embodied cognition offer a radical alternative, but again hard subjects to sum up in few words. The key book is The Embodied Mind by Varela Thomson and Rosch, revised edition 2015.
The only place you’ll ever read about ‘qualia’ is in discussions by a clique of mainly American academic philosophers. In my view it’s a nonsense word and best left alone unless you want to get drawn into the cul de sac that all those types are bogged down in.
I should also mention Bernardo Kastrup. There was a thread on him a few years back, but since then he’s published a shed-load of books. Look him up.
Yes, qualia are sight and sound, but I think that while it involves the brain it does raise the question of what is out there. Also, while disembodied consciousness is problematic it is also moving into other dimensions, or the realm of imagination. It is hard to know where mind and matter end or merge here, and which impacts most. The brain can damage experience but we could also ask whether the 'mind' can damage physical organs, on a psychosomatic level.
I am inclined to agree that it is possible to get bogged down by the idea of qualia. Thanks for your recommend reading and 'The Embodied Mind' sounds good, so I will try to find it. I have not read much Aristotle, but I do have his 'Collected Works', so I will have a read of this because I have probably read more of Plato.
And why confuse the scientific problem of explaining 'mind' with antiquated metaphysics of making up shit without evidence or sound reasoning about 'mind'?
Is it just because it's easier to speculate without empirical or naturalistic constraints – playing tennis without a net – than defeasibly reasoning about it?
In other words, why do you – many others too – assume that 'mind' is a metaphysical question and not a scientific problem?
Maybe you didn't follow my debate with Hanover in June and connect the arguments therein to the topic at hand. Maybe you should, and then explain what is wrong with my position against a 'metaphysics of mind' (re substance dualism) or, if you prefer, what is right with the opposing position against an 'epistemology of mind' (re: property dualism) which I'd defended.
The inner world (magic content of matter giving human consciousness), made possible by processes of matter, in neurons, analogue to the outside world.
The outside world made possible by matter and spacetime. Physical processes going on there relying on the innerworld's perception and vice-versa.
The in between world that is the you or me. This is the world of people. We are in constant contact with both at once. The both are shaped by one another and have there impact on the interface that we are. The intermedium flows through spacetime thereby experiencing processes of the inner as well as the outside world. We have, being the intermediate shells some control of both and are carried along at the same time.
Before human existence or creature existence in general, there was one world only. All three worlds were unseparated yet.
I read some but not all of your debate with Hanover. I think that it is relevant, but not sure that it covers my question entirely. However, I will have a look at that thread and see what I think after that.
What other dimensions do you mean? You presuppose that disembodied consciousnees is possible in the first place. Its impossible in principle.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Mind and matter merge in the body. The mind can alter the body and certainly influence it. By the very Nature of the mind its very unlikely that the brain can do damage to the body as the body can do to the brain. Though you can always automutulate.
I think that disembodied consciousness is not possible. The closest one could get to that is 'out of body experiences' but I am not saying that the separation between mind and body which is felt can be assumed in a literal sense. The experience can be seen as a state of dreaming consciousness, which is, of course, going into the realm of imagination.
Today, I have been reading, 'A Revolutionary Way of Thinking,' by Charles Kreb, which looks at the mind, body, spirit perspective of Chinese thought.It draws upon the Eastern perspective of there being 'subtle' bodies, and this makes sense to me, but I am sure that many people on this forum would not embrace such a view. This is an approach which underlies some thinking about healing, including the existence of meridian points in the energy body. It also involves a picture in which the subconscious pattern of thoughts are seen as interconnected to the physical body, as a complex feedback loop. In such a view thoughts can affect the body and vice versa. I am not saying that I am sure of this viewpoint, but I think that it is worth thinking about, even though I am aware that such a way of understanding is likely to be extremely unpopular by many within the Western philosophy tradition and on this site.
Im inline with the Chines view! Every night before sleeping I stimulate consciously the unconsciousness to take care of my body. Well, I used to. I have otber stuff to worry about these dsys.
I'm a bit of a broken record, but I believe Chomsky has provided ample evidence for what I'm arguing. The mind-body problem was a metaphysical concern - about the nature of the world - back in Descartes time, so 17th century. The reason Descartes postulated a "res cogitans" is because he could not use his materialism to explain certain mental phenomena.
But it turns out Descartes' (and other scientists and philosophers of the time) materialism is false, Newton showed this, that the world is not a machine (not mechanical which was what materialism meant, the universe was conceived like a giant clock based on direct contact). There is action at a distance without physical contact. So what we have is a ghostly world, not a mechanical one. The whole "ghost in the machine" is a complete reversal of what actually happened if you look at the people involved in this affair.
With no conception of body anymore, one can't formulate a metaphysical distinction - a distinction in the world - between body and anything else. At least not on these terms. So, whatever else anyone may say about this, I think it's clear that the problem is epistemic and not metaphysical.
We just don't understand how the stuff of the world could be so minded. But it is. We just have to accept it as a fact of our cognitive makeup that we can't make sense of this.
Saying: "the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself" makes it sound like a resource or a means of understanding only available to a person isolated from other persons. At least some part of Descartes' purpose was to oppose any view of subjectivity that did not accept the manifest quality of it.
That is a country mile from explaining where to find this "I" amongst what is not "I"
I think the mind/body problem as metaphysical consideration is soon going to be fully antiquated by quantum neuroscience. The essence of a percept simply emerges from material processes, namely quantum superposition e.g. the visible spectrum, basically a "color" or resonance amongst matter, the most accessible example of this being a mental image in the brain. These resonances are blended and projected by specially adapted molecules, cells, tissues, brain regions into extremely complex hybrids that we recognize as sights, sounds, thoughts etc., essentially the components of first person cognition, and are not constrained to the brain as we know it but can occur within many additional types of material substance, in association with quantumlike and nonlocal "coherence field" phenomena (comparable to quantum coherence) that have not yet been classified scientifically, though we have plenty of primal intuitions in this realm to guide introspective facets of the relevant research.
In my opinion, metaphysics is obsolete except for its historical significance and role in expansion of reasoning intuitions via novelty thought experiments. Many subsequent scientific models will be influenced by metaphysical conceiving, but metaphysics as fact is becoming obsolete.
Cataphatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively positing categories/universals), I completely agree, is obsolete but not apophatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively negating categories/universals) which has not yet been adequately explored. It's my preferred approach for acid testing impossible (self-contradictory) concepts or models used in defeasible discursive practices such as natural sciences, historical sciences, legal theory, formal systems, etc. Scientism, however, doesn't seem a viable, or coherent, alternative to speculatively creating 'new' concepts (metaphor-paradigms) adequate to our theoretical problems or interpreting their theoretical solutions accordingly. In other words, a nail (re: science) can't hammer itself.
I have to admit that I find Spinoza's writings a bit difficult to come to grips with, but at the same time I do think that in many ways, mind can be seen as a process. I think that such a perspective is probably compatible with the ideas of quantum physics and, probably, the neuroscientists. I guess what I am trying to argue against is a philosophy of mind which is too reductive.
In this respect, I do believe that Bergson's idea of the 'mind at large', which was drawn upon by Huxley, is useful. I am not necessarily trying to say that there is a hidden reality as such, although I do believe in the collective unconscious as an underlying source, even though I know that this concept is seen as outdated by many psychologists and philosophers. I think that they frame the idea a bit wrongly by seeing it as abstract and 'supernatural'. I see it more as an underlying aspect, or as Sheldrake suggests in his idea of morphic resonance, a memory inherent in nature, including mind itself.
It is interesting to think of the possibility of metaphysics being replaced by images. I am wondering where language would fit into this and whether it would involve a new way of mental processing.
As far as metaphysics being seen as obsolete, I think that since the time of Wittgenstein, we have been moving into a direction of it being seen as make it up as you go along speculative nonsense. However, while metaphysics as a focus may be fading, it is implicit in philosophies of mind and as assumptions underlying all psychological perspectives. In that sense, I think that it is important for it to be seen as worth discussing.
Yes, I think that the idea of the 'I' does convey some focus on the isolated individual. But, we do exist as aspects of a larger whole and as separate beings. Even the understanding of 'I' consciousness is constructed in the shared language of social meaning through language. We live in a world of other minds and we could ask to what extent an individual mind exist because minds operate on shared cultural meanings and discourse?
Can we ever know this larger whole? Or we just cant because we are not the larger whole?
I think that it is impossible to know the full extent of the larger whole because it is so large. We have to draw on anthropology and history. But the idea of knowledge of other minds is limited. We may draw upon shared assumption, but the question is to what extent are there similarities or differences, and, for this reason, I have always seen Kant's idea of the categorical imperative as a little bit problematic. We don't all want the same thing in life. So, it may come down to understand of the universal and the unique, but we can never know all these individual unique subjectivities.
One of the reasonable comments! :smile:
I expressed myself poorly.
Descartes argues that "I", the thinker, the one who can doubt what is understood, cannot doubt that such thinking is happening. To arrive at the necessity of the isolated thinker is not to view oneself as a resource or explain the necessity in any way:
How it came to be that such an "I" should exist amongst thoughts of what is not I is not explained nor can it be from this vantage point.
By "too reductive" do you mean philosophical analyses which conceptualize 'mind' as emergent (e.g. embodied cognition, functionalism) from non-mental processes and therefore not a fundamental feature of nature, or reality (like e.g. panpsychism or absolute idealism or neo/platonism)? If so, why is being "too reductive" in this sense problematic for you?
It is not that I really mind how the mind and body relationship is described and I do think that it is emergent. I am just not convinced that it is as clear cut as some philosophers have tried to explain it and I don't rule out the possibility of panpsychism because it may be that consciousness is not exclusive to sentient beings. For all we know, the stars may have some kind of consciousness. As human beings we judge the idea of consciousness with reference to our human experiences and it may be that presents a limitation. But, getting back to the metaphysical, I think that there is probably so much that is beyond our understanding. Science is taking us there, but if humanity exists, it may be that in several centuries time, our current conceptions will be seen as outdated.
I do agree that the 'I' is hard to explain as an entity rather than us being a mass of experience. I believe that it is this which lead to the idea of dualism in the first place, because even if it is illusory, it involves a certain sense of distance or separation from the body and experience itself, and it is this 'I' of consciousness which many believed to be an inner aspect of consciousness which could even survive death potentially. It may be that the 'I' has an inflated sense of ego consciousness, but the I sees itself as having some independent existence in many ways.
I do agree that the mechanical basis of the body has collapsed. I think that our own language of explaining it has broken down too. I am not sure really whether it makes any more sense to say that the physical or the material are more real. They could be seen like two sides of the same coin and, ultimately, it could be about not simply going beyond dualism but about going beyond duality. Opposites exist, but within the scheme of an underlying larger duality.
Now that our intuitive notion of body has collapsed, the rest remains terminological - which does not imply it is trivial, at least not to my eyes. "The physical" and "the material" are essentially the same thing in philosophical usage. As for what's "more real", that's a bit hard to navigate.
I think we can say what feels more intuitive or more immediate, such as our mental properties. But I wouldn't say (and I'm not implying that you do) that my mind is more real than my body. As far as we can tell, mind is the result of a certain configuration of matter. So it's not like we have the mental on the one hand and the physical on the other.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I was hoping to separate Descartes' project from any that would explain the difference between identity and experience. Rather than viewing the isolation as a desiderata, consider it as refuge from the churning struggle over what a person was and why they were here. Wars over religion, the Inquisition, the struggle to have a nice bath, it all gets too much after a while.
Descartes does not own the isolated self. Think of it as a studio apartment he is renting from who ever built the place. He has access 24/7 but is not permitted to furnish the place; And don't even think about having girls stay overnight.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I am suggesting that the duality of Descartes was, ironically, an attempt to escape the duality discussed for centuries regarding the soul.
I don't understand what you mean here. "Consciousness", I think, denotes sentience.
Okay. Do you mean a 'formal possibility'? a 'metaphysical possibility'? an 'empirical possibility'? In any case, panpsychism make no sense to me for reasons I've discussed elsewhere. For instance, if "consciousness" (i.e. sentience) is a fundamental property of nature (or reality) like spin, charge, fields, etc, then how is it that amputees consciously experience 'phantom limbs' (& phantom sensations, itching, pains, etc) or brain injuries can completely change someone's conscious self-identity (i.e. personality) as in dissociative disorders? Or psychotropic medications can 'regulate' self-awareness and subjective experience?
I think that consciousness does imply sentience, although some people seem to believe that machines can be conscious, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. I am not sure that the ideas of panpsychism really but I do think that it may be about energy fields. This would explain the experience of phantom limbs after amputations.I think that part of the issue about consciousness here is whether it involves self identity. That is what constitutes the 'I' of consciousness, although I would assume that animals don't have a sense of ego identity but have some continuity of memories. The apparent experience of 'dualism' seems to me to be bound up with ego identity and it is possible that the practice of mindfulness is important here in enabling people to understand embodiment through greater sensory awareness.
I think that Descartes would probably be rather distraught by all the debate on dualism he started. I think that his own thinking has been stretched out of shape. Strangely the aspect which is not considered much is how he saw the importance connection between the mind and body as involving the pineal gland, which is known to regulate the chemical melatonin, which is important for the regulation of sleep. Perhaps, this is a link because REM dream sleep and dreaming may be an important interface between mind and body.
I suppose in some ways we could ask what is a body or matter exactly? While it can be perceived by the senses and measured, in some ways it could be perceived as something which has an impermanent nature, and while it can be viewed as more 'real' than the mind in some ways, the record and interpretation of the material in memories gives a certain sense of reality over and above matter itself.
Consider them both as aspects of the combined stuff. Matter on the outside and metaphysical content inside.
Once upon a time, the stuf was one. When animals developed there was a division. The magic essence content part of that stuff became mind and the matter part became matter. Because the both are expressions of the combined potentiallity, the outer physical world are interdependent. The mind expression of that content stuff is still tied to matter and the expression of that matter stuff contains essence. It we eat stuff the mind quality gets expressed in our brain. This causes the matter to become visible. The body is the intermediate and can be considered the real self. Outside you can see the difference and inside you can feel the difference.
I'm afraid I don't follow.
Why would matter (or physical stuff) count as more real than mind? Mind is a configuration of physical stuff. So far as we can tell, all there is, is physical stuff. It suggests than the physical is much, much richer than what we initially suppose.
Of course, my view is naturalistic which claims that everything is a natural processes. If you think there are supernatural phenomena, then we probably won't agree.
Yes it is. It's essentially Strawson's Real Materialism (minus the panpsychism), the view that everything that exists is physical. But this does not mean that everything is physicSal. It takes consciousness to be the most immediate fact of which we are acquainted with. Thing is, consciousness is a wholly physical phenomena.
It basically ends up saying that EVERYTHING is physical. Which might make the term meaningless. I just take it to mean that physical stuff is baffling.
Yes - from a phenomenological perspective I guess we could say we are locked in...
Pretty much.
We are not locked in. We are locked in between.
If there is a part of the body that is considered to be where the mind hangs out, then Descartes' distinction challenges all the others, including yours.
If it cannot be relied upon to map out the terrain you wish to travel, is it a distinction without a difference?
Quoting Jack Cummins
People born without limbs also experience phantoms limbs, etc which shows that their brains are hardwired to generate 'phenomenal self models' that constitute 'mind' (awareness of self). Nothing exterior to, or independent of, genetically embodied cognition – not environment, not experience, certainly not "energy fields" – is required, and the phenomenon (and its experimental manipulation by neuroscientists, etc) is well documented.
Woo-of-the-gaps, my friend. Any "energy" that interacts with physical systems is also physical and therefore scientifically measurable. Which of these physical energy fields are you referring to? Analogizing nonphysical "energy fields" to physical energy fields is as incoherent as p-zombies analogized to sentient persons.
I may be wrong but I do think that many people do see the physical as far more real than mind. Of course, the two are interconnected in a very complex way and I do believe that embodied existence is central. If anything, I just believe that we may be going in a direction in which neuroscientists have all the answers, almost making philosophical thinking an aspect of the past. I believe that we still need to interpret, reflect and think deeply about all of these areas as part of our quest for knowledge and understanding.
I have to admit that I probably need to read Descartes again as he had such insights which probably go far beyond the Cartesian picture that developed after him.
I think that sometimes the focus in philosophy of mind is more upon labels rather than the intricate relationship of mind and body. I am not trying to say that it is simply mysterious, but it probably should not be put into boxes, with clear, neat categories and labels.
I mean, there are people who think consciousness is a kind of illusion. But there's no evidence for this at all besides appealing to the fact that neuroscience will one day show that red is not red or that it only seems we see qualities but we really don't. But that is irrational.
Saying that the physical is more real than the mental is kind of like saying red apples are more real than yellow apples. Or that water vapor is more real than liquid water. It highlights some set of properties other than some other set of properties.
I think it should be obvious that those physical properties we call mental properties are the one's we are directly acquainted with. But this doesn't oppose physical with mental, as mental properties are, again, configurations of physical stuff. Nor is one more real than the other, unless someone can tell me what "real" means in this case.
And thinking about these questions will likely remain with us for a long time.
I think that the question of the metaphysics underlying philosophies of mind is inevitably connected with those about whether consciousness is an illusion. The way of seeing it as an illusion stems from B F Skinner and the philosophy of Dennett. It is also interconnected to the whole question of will and free will, and in the most reductive philosophies human beings are often seen as mere robots. Also, I believe that an underlying rhetoric of such philosophies is a belief that the individual person does not matter, and that we are mere numbers and insignificant. So, on one hand, dualism may support the concerns of the individual ego, but the argument against it can be used to say that we do not have any intrinsic worth at all.
Gauge fields in quantum field theory represent the mediating, pure energy (not grounded in mass) the means of mass interacting. Mass can be seen as emerging from massless sub-quark rishon fields but these are fundamentally different from the massless mediating fields. Their spins differ. 1/2 vs 1. 1/2 for the particle fields, 1 for the energy particle gauge fields. There is a graviton spin 2 gauge field too. The graviton field. The reason why its spin is 2 is a bit more complicated but not important.
It's the question if you can say that gauge fields are measurable. They are the means for measurement.
My comment regarding the physical aspect of the mind was not really germane to the distinction I was making about the Cogitatio. The isolation and immediacy of the thinking "I" is separated from everything it is not. That is not equivalent to separating the "mind" from the "body" in the manner of Aristotle, for example.
The phenomenology that developed from the separation has gone along many different paths following different premises.
In the course of arguing with aspects of Husserl's phenomenology, Ortega y Gasset gives a very cogent view of Descartes in his What is Philosophy. I would quote some but I cannot find a free version online and I lent my copy to someone.
Maybe, it's possible. But I really don't see any reason to believe consciousness is an illusion at all. So although people may debate it, I don't see the point. If someone says it's an illusion, but it seems evident to most other people that it's not, then it's just a question of asserting one thing or the other. I doubt much people will be convinced.
The way legs are "far more real" than dancing ... if by real they mean things to the exclusion of events or activities which, of course, makes no sense since events and activities are, in fact, at least as real as things. Btw, the notion of "more real than" seems completely incoherent insofar as it's a binary concept like "pregnant" or "dead": something 'either is or is not' real and not 'more or less' so.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Oh no, it's a waaaaay older notion than that espoused in the late great twentieth. Off the top of my head Buddha, Zhuangzi, Democritus-Epicurus-Lucretius ... Spinoza, Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Zapffe, et al ... thought "consciousness is an illusion" (i.e. folk psychological concepts do not refer to what is actually going on in "subjective experience").
Did I say I have relevance? Thats what YOU make of it.The lack of it that is.
I cant help it that you fail to see the obvious. I like your comment though. Its nice to feel negative feelings once in a while. Thanks!
I definitely don't believe that consciousness is an illusion. Perhaps, I may have created more interest if I had created a thread on whether consciousness is an illusion. We could even ask what is an illusion, throwing the question about what is real. I am certainly not opposed to naturalism, and not looking to the view about abstractions, and I do believe that the idea of the supernatural often gets in the way. I am just looking for the deepest analysis of the mind within philosophy rather than just psychological theories, which draw upon philosophy in some respects.
Indeed!
I dont see how this comment says why consciousness is an illusion. Mh eyes can deceive and my eyes can tell me the truth. What has consciousness being an illusion gotta do with that?
The whole question of what is 'real' does come into the picture, including the issue of binary logic. In some ways, naturalism comes into play the picture in some ways. Thinking of the matter from an arts based point of view, I have an affinity with the movement of superrealism, which is about magnifying the elements of the real world as an aspect of perception. Translating this into philosophy, it would probably be about a kind of zooming as a way of analysing. I think that that many philosophers, including Shopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spinoza and others probably went down this pathway. Perhaps, the problem is that many of us see philosophy as a sideline pursuit, rather than as a central aspect of human existence.
That's fine. Supernaturalism is hard to even articulate, it seems to me. But there are all kinds of people in the world.
Good luck on that thread. It's going to be a tough semantic battle.
I think that phenomenology is an important way of connecting metaphysics with the philosophy of the mind/body problem. Also, I think that emotions are important because while they lie at the core of psychology, they do represent an important interface between mind and body.
Yes, I have probably created a tough thread question and it will probably be not particularly popular, but I am grateful that I have a few people engaging. I do believe that thinking about the individual problems in philosophy does require some kind of way of viewing them alongside others. I am not saying that I am concerned with building a system or world picture, but, on the other hand, I cannot make much sense of seeing the individual problems of philosophy in isolation, which is why I am trying to connect the mind and body problem with the idea of metaphysics.
I think this particular thread is doing fine. I was thinking that if you did begin another one on consciousness being an illusion, then I'd think one can already anticipate what disputes will arise and I doubt people would modify their positions.
I'm only saying that I think it doesn't make sense anymore to think of mind as separate from matter. So they must belong together.
Aaaaaeoeeeiiorgggghhrrfr?rrrrhum!!!
Clearly.
See that it can be done?
I amazed at the amount of comments and threads you have created in the last few days. So, in connection with my thread, I am interested in further elaboration on the spectrum of naturalism and supernature, with regard to the mind and body problem. I hope that I am not setting an impossible area of questioning but I am a bit taken aback by the nature of your interaction on the site in the last few days.
Yes, I can understand. But llease dont get me wrong. Its not the quantity that counts. And please dont get me wrong (Im not psychotic or anything like that; just wanna express myself; exercise for a book)
And dont get me wrong when saying that its like the universe has revealed itself. Finally. That MF universe...And its a beautiful sight. It feels as if I have full understanding. No knowledge but understanding (of course knowledge is involved; quantum fields, curved spacetime on a higher dimensional substrate, magic content of matter, information whirling around in my neoron network, etc. Seems there has fallen in place a cohierent whole. To be written up in a book, as one small part of it. :wink:
I figure Wayfarer and 180 have shown the "mind /body problem" as the child of metaphysics, so it is connected to it by default. I agree with 180 that Spinoza provides the most elegant surpassing of it. By emphasizing that there is more than one kind of phenomenology, I meant to wonder if the mind body problem exists outside of framing it as one. Is it a component of the human condition that needs to addressed like death and taxes?
Right where it belongs.
Whether or not there is an actual problem, the concept of mind, taken in its irreducible sense, is at least part of the question. That alone is sufficient to justify the claim the extent of the mind/body problem is entirely metaphysical.
For the time being.
You have probably written so much in the last few days that you could almost have written a book. I have only been writing on this thread in the last few days but in the last year I have written so many, and I am trying to slow down a bit.
I think that my own thread is intended to open up questions of the mind, including quantum fields and the widest spectrum of possible considerations of mind and body.
I agree that reading the importance philosophers is important and I do wish to put Spinoza on my agenda. You also ask about the framing of the mind and body problem and one aspect which I am thinking of is how dualism made it easier to think of life after death because it gives a division between the physical and material, with a view to the non material element being able to survive. I am not saying that I agree with this division and way of thinking, but I do believe that it has been prevalent in many Western philosophical approaches to life and death.
I think that an underlying problem of many perspectives on the psychology and philosophy of mind, is the vague and elastic nature of the concept. We could ask what is 'mind' exactly?
I found Spinoza addressed the problem as I was having it. It seems like your question regarding duality involves something else. Wondering if the fear of death shaped the divisions formed in metaphysics is a project of psychology and a formidable one at that.
That’s certainly half of it, and true enough in itself.
But the concept of mind can be unambiguous if the theory of which it is a constituent is logically consistent and internally complete. Then, of course, with respect to the other half, we have a plethora of theories, so we don’t gain much from a rational perspective, and gain not a damn thing from an empirical perspective.
Same as it ever was......
Well, I don't think it's controversial to begin with this fact: 'mind is what (primate, elephantidae, cetacean, cephalopod ...) CNS-brains do' – adaptively coordinate behaviors with perceptions of the environment by generating predictions and plans of action.
Do you have doubts about whether you're conscious or not? Do you think it's possible you might not be conscious?
In response to this:
It sounded like you were mocking Prishon's surety about being conscious.
Do you think it's possible you're not conscious when you're typing your reply to me?
Yes, I've often wondered about that.
As you've suggested, how one goes about answering this can lead directly to opposed forms of metaphysics and especially that hoary old conundrum of physicalism versus idealism.
It's interesting to me that amongst sophisticated religious scholars, like David Bentley Hart, the mind is still taken as a disproof of physicalism. There's a lot still at stake in this matter.
What to make of this distinction, depends on one's views of course.
Do you think it's possible you're not conscious when you're replying to people? Yes/no
There is still a lot at stake in the matter.
I don't want to suggest I have a greater understanding by wanting to approach the problem through specific arguments rather than accept it as a self explanatory condition. Perhaps the limitation is mine and mine alone.
intersubjectively?
Can a person have multiple consciousness? or share consciousness with other minds?
:heart:
Im not sure though that subjective reports sre notoriously irreliable. Should I trust your writings?
:broken:
Could it also mean "you have possible reason"?
"no apparent" sounds like suggesting possibility.
I can see you're having trouble with a very simple question. You are a conscious being. Doubting that you're conscious is silly and nonsensical and just serves to illustrate the absurdity of physicalism/materialism. It's like that one materialist I was talking to here who couldn't grok "what is it like to be me?" Seriously? Maybe focus less on mockery and more on shoring up your core beliefs.
If you have a thesis you think opposes another, state what that is.
Badgering other people to answer leading questions is juvenile.
My thesis couldn't be simpler: it's silly, nonsensical, and counterproductive to doubt one's own consciousness. Do you think you might not be conscious, Valentinus? Are you a P-zombie???
(no)
Valentinus smiled. Without knowing he opened his mouth and with gut hunger he devowered. Pure-zombie tears left his bloodshed eyes which blurred his P-zombie vision. His zombiedondy bud opened while stumbling away in searh for next fresh flesh. To leave a message: no shit?
No, seriously. The hard consciousness problem. How can it be solved by matter and information only?
It is pleasant to be cast in exciting movies that I will never appear in. I appreciate the attention.
I have no idea what you are talking about, however.
I meant to discourage rude behavior and now I am in a Fellini movie, riding with others in a car, wondering what the other passengers are on.
"Do you think it's possible you're not conscious when you're replying to people?" is a "leading question"? Lol.