Are Minds Confined to Brains?
So, I've been reading Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake, who attempts to refute what he calls the ten dogmatic assumptions of science. When I got to chapter eight, Are Minds Confined to Brains? (the core question of the author's entire book) the skeptic in me stood up and began shaking his head. The author wrote, "When we look at a bird, we see the bird, not the activity in our brain." That is contrary to my understanding of how we see things. Light reflected from the object enters my eyes, then travels through the optic nerve to my brain where the image is interpreted as, in this case, a bird. If I am experiencing the bird, not the activity in my brain, why does my dog see a different image than the image I see? Something is amiss here. Seems like my dog and I should see the same thing if we are both experiencing the bird, not the electrochemical activity of our brains when they are processing the image from our optic nerves. Several websites showed the difference between human and canine eyes. Here's the one I liked best... https://www.sciencealert.com/how-dogs-see-the-world-compared-to-humans
Am I seeing this correctly, or is the author seeing something I do not see?
Am I seeing this correctly, or is the author seeing something I do not see?
Comments (39)
Do you think minds can exist on other stuff than a working brain in a living body?
Quoting Qwertyportne
Vision indeed originates in your brain. That's why your dog sees the bird differently than you. Do you think you see the brain activity when seeing a bird?
Quoting Qwertyportne
Isn't that question-begging? Do you have to assume that either of you sees an image? Couldn't it be that you are reminded of images, and start preparing to compare them; while the dog is reminded of chasing routines, and starts preparing to execute them?
this is called NAIVE realism
no
brains are confined to minds
machines dont exist
machines are just a hallucination ghosts are having
bodies cant exist without minds
dog doesnt see a bird
bird is something in your mind
youll never know what a dog sees
the only thing that exists is god and his eternal dream
The way the dog sees the bird is different. Since the biology of a dog is different than ours, it interacts with the world differently than we do. We do not need to insert some image between that which sees and that which is seen.
Can mind exist without bodies? They can't be separated as far as I know. You can't extract a working brain from a working body. Neither can a body walk around without a working brain, although prof. Frankenstein or his modern day successors might claim the contrary.
That's why conscious machines are impossible to construct.
You mean an image of how the vision occurs? The image of the so-called real bird, photons scattering from it, retinal meeting, nerve signals, etc?
We do not need to evoke images to describe the difference between how the dog sees and how the human sees, is what I meant.
Then why was the neighbor's cat, chasing a bird, chased by a dog?
Can one do it with sound? You have to evoke something in describing it.
Am I a part of the Almighty's dream?
The only thing we know that exists for sure is our own mind. If minds come from brains, how do brains produce minds?
3 things here: (1) what I see, (2) what the dog sees, (3) the bird.
Describe each for me so I know what you're talking about. Tell me about the sort of feathers each has.
It's a scientific fact that we experience an image as the result of some sort of stimuli. I don't understand your use of the phrase "we do not need to." Need to for what? In order to offer a coherent explanation of the bird even if that means denying an obvious scientific fact?
Plotinus, the last of the pagan philisophers, was of the opinion that the body (includes the brain) was in the soul rather than the other way round. I'm using soul and mind interchangeably.
What image? If someone is to proclaim that an image exists between the perceiver and that which is perceived he should be able to produce this image, or at least describe the medium it is appears upon. But he cannot.
So why should we insert this image into our discourse it those who assert it is there are unable to produce it or even point to it?
Every experience arises from stimuli, whether that be the bird you experience or the freedom you feel.
Where is the freedom you experience? Point to it, since you've taken the impossible stance that every experience is equivalent to its referent, even though it is not a necessary property of nouns that they have a referent.
Vision is just one sense that informs us of reality and it happens to be a human being's primary sense, but my visual stimuli received of the bird is no more the bird than the sound of the rustling of its feathers is to my cat, who goes into attack mode when she hears a small animal scurrying about.
Images are a type of information and is what is evoked to describe the difference.
Is there really that much of a difference if TV screens with images of birds can trigger the same type of behaviors in dogs as if they had seen a real bird? If we can use a trick of light to make humans and dogs see birds that aren't there, then isnt there some similarity between how we both see birds?
So there is no image, no medium upon which it appears, and no little perceiver to look at it. None of that exists when we physically examine the biology. Upon further examination we find that the biology is in direct contact with its environment, the perceiver in direct contact with perceived, no gap between them.
There is a gap between the perceived and perceiver. You can take out a measuring stick and determine how big a gap there is between the flower and your eye. You can then measure the length of the eyeball, the neural networks, and get a final measurement back to the brain. Over the course of that 10 feet, there are all sort of things happening, from variations in light, curvatures of lenses, to reduction of stimuli into electrical impulses. The evidence is that those mediating influences impact the images (or smells or sounds or whatever) as we can see that other organisms perceive objects differently than we do. In fact, variations in perception occur even among humans.
I am certain there is an image of the flower. It is indubitable. My certainty that I am experiencing an image I believe to be a flower greatly exceeds my belief that there is a flower.
THE BIRD
Baby bird asks mama bird:
"Why did dog chase baby bird, mama?"
Mama bird answers:
"Because you are a tasty meal tweetly."
Baby bird is scared by this reply. It crawls under mama's wings.
"Baby bird no nice mean bird, mama bird!"
After a while, baby bird seems relaxed.
"Mama bird, why some people wanna put baby bird in a cage?"
With a smiling beak mama bird pets her tweety over the head.
"Because you gonna be an excellent singer, and are good company, birdy little."
Baby bird joyfuly attempts to sing a song.
"Baby bird is a songbird mama bird!"
Baby bird shines. A new question pops up.
"Mama bird, why is there so many skies up there?"
Mama bird rises up, spreads her wings, and takes of. Out of the air, circling the nest, mama screams excited:
"BECAUSE YOU GONNA BE A GREAT FLYYYYYER, YAHOOOOOO!"
Baby bird watches in awe how mama bird shows off a fine piece of dazzle flying.
"MAMA MAMA! BABY BIRD WANNA LEARN, BABY BIRD WANNA LEARN!"
Mama bird rises up high, after which she return to the nest. She shakes her feathers, then her head, and settles down.
"That was great mama!"
Baby bird tries to imitate the movements mama bird made.
"I wanna learn how to be a FlYAAAAR! Baby bird is a flyyyyer bird!"
Rest returns.
"Mama, where has sister bird gone? I miss her. When she comes back?"
Mama bird sits in silence for a while. Then she says:
"Look here son. Like all other animals, like you, like me, sister bird was a little child animal of the big God Animal, you remember? That big animal behind the sky. God Animal made us all mortal. Sister bird, me, and and also you."
Baby bird looks confused and then decisely asks:
"But why she doesn't return? Because she's a moatel?"
Mama bird is slightly amused.
"A MORtal. That just means you can never return."
Baby bird looks even more confused and thinks back.
"Is that because the people took her? Did they put her in a cage to sing and be good company?"
Mama bird laughs sadly.
"No son. The people didn't take her to put her in a cage. She would have returned already if they did that. Sister bird was smart. She could have escaped from the cage. No, the people who took her away were mean people. They made sure she can never return by stuffing her. She never can fly again."
"Was sister bird that hungry? Did they stuff too many foods in her? Is that why sister bird can't fly no more? Why didn't the people bring her back?"
Mama bird wants to laugh and cry at the same time. How can she make it clear? She decides to tell the truth, shocking as that might be.
"Listen son. Bad people made sure she can never move again. She stands silently in a room of a house the people made. Sister bird can't fly, can't speak, can't hear, can't look, can't eat, and can't sing anymore. The bad people took stuff out of sister bird and put other stuff inside her. She is good company now for the people who took her. Sister bird stands still forever in a house they built where all people can see her. People call her a bird."
"But sister bird is sister bird!"
The camera moves away from the nest and magically appears in a quiet street in Barstow, directs itself at a dirty window, and enters the space behind.
And behold! Sister bird stands motionless in the striking light of a soft-tone economy bulb, her stagnated eyes fixed at a collection of static, mutually transfixed brother and sister animals.
An agitated person moves around the platform on which she has placed sister bird in company with different dead brother and sister animals. There is something she can't seem to grasp. She walks around the macabre group, increasingly nervous, bending her knees to look from below, walking around to look from all sides.
Then she curses, repositiones the animals around sister bird, and redirects the light shining on the set scene. And again she walks around the set. And again she gets agitated.
"God damned, bloody animals! Just show me your right positions! I gave you the right light already!"
Sister bird and the brother and sister animals are not disturbed, nor amused. They keep staring passed one another.
The woman looks at the bunch from all sides, deliberating and questioning. Then she stands still and seems to have grasped something from where she stands. She looks a part of the silenced set while her eyes are fixed on sister bird who just keeps staring in the dark. The woman then sighs relieved and calmly starts to remove all brother and sister animals until sister bird is the only one left. Again, she redirects the light falling on sister bird. When she's done the artist moves to her easel, smiles contented, and start to paint the scene.
The camera moves away, to enter the Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024. We find ourselves in the middle of the Science Sense Tour: Hall of Planet Earth. There's a whole lot to be seen. I'll not bother to go into details. But there is one item in particular in which the camera seems interested. It floats through the busy crowd and countless museum items to stay put in front of a painting hanging on the wall. The hustle bustle of the crowed grows numb. And look who's there on the wall! As fully stuffed she once was, so flat is she's now. Majestically sister bird radiates from the painting.
The camera moves to the small slide next to the painting. Below the artist's name, the title reads: "BIRD".
The first is Sheldrake's general approach, which is one of inappropriately radical skepticism. To engage in a reductio ad absurm - one might as well ask if the rules of logic are dogmatic, reasonably conclude that in some sense they are, and then intimate that on those grounds we should feel free to selectively reject the rules of logic if they are inconvenient to us, missing the fact that what they are concluding will be illogical. Sheldrake's approach is fundamentally unscientific, but he wants the stink of science on his work.
The second is confusing speaking of experience as if it we an object and not an event. There is no thing that is "the experience of seeing a bird", having the experience is something that happened. The experience doesn't happen in my brain (or mind, doesn't matter) or in the world, it happens when my brain interacts with the world. Without both things, you don't have an experience.
We perceive as much of the environment that is available to our periphery, including the flower. This environment is in direct contact with the perceiver. We can touch the flower, we can taste it, even passing the flower through our digestion system. You cannot get much more direct than that.
And once you start measuring the eyeball and neural networks, you’re measuring the perceiver, not any sort of space between perceiver and perceived.
You're referencing how the brain is stimulated, which can occur by touch, but also by light or sound waves, so it's not direct, and differing senses provide inconsistent input. Lightening strikes are visible well before you hear their thunder.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course I am because a closed mouth doesn't taste, so I must assume you accept we don't taste until the food passes the teeth and at least reaches the tongue, although it is later than that because it has to get to your brain first. If we sever the nerves from your tongue, you won't taste, so I can assume the stimuli was traveling through my tongue but blocked before it reached the perception faculty of my brain.
How is what I'm saying at all controversial?
I’m simply referencing how the perceiver is in direct contact with the environment. Light hits the eyes directly; sound waves hit the ears directly; we touch and taste things directly. It’s all direct contact. Without it we wouldn’t perceive anything.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that if you sever nerves or otherwise mess with the biology of the perceiver he will perceive things differently. To me, the act of perception is performed as much by the taste receptors and nerves as it is by the brain.
It's direct contact with the lightwave, not the flower.Quoting NOS4A2
What about your ankles, are they part of the perception?
The light wave is something in the environment. If we wanted to, we could touch the flower to our eyeball, though I don't think it's necessary.
You can perceive with your ankle, I believe. If I tap my ankle with a finger I can feel it.
You can't see the flower without light. The eye detects light. That's just how it works.
Quoting NOS4A2
Not sure why you're telling me this. I said you don't taste with your ankle, which you don't.
I never said we see a flower without light. In fact, I clearly said light hits the eyes directly.
You asked me if ankles were a part of perception. I answered accordingly.
I am confident that I have never seen the activity in my brain. I see no synapses firing or anything of that nature. Way too ghost in the machine like.
Though one could certainly argue that whatever it is I do see is related to the activity in my brain. But then one can argue that activity in my brain is related to the bird whose presence may have had a causal effect upon the activity in my brain.
So the presence of the bird is related to the activity in my brain which is related to the image I have of the bird and suddenly the notion the image must be related to only to either/or strikes me us unnecessarily binary.
So yes, I suspect the image of the bird is the product of the birds affect upon my brain and I have no problem with the notion that the product of the birds affect upon my brain may differ from the product of the birds affect upon my dog's brain.