Mind or body? Or both?
What are you? A body made up of cells that is somehow able to 'think' ?
A mind that creates the illusion of a body, and everything around it, which raises a lot of questions of course.
Or a body with a mind?
The third one seems the most compelling to most people, but is it true?
Neuroscience has been trying to work out the intricate mechanism of thinking, but we haven't quite grasped it, not to say that it won't be explained in the next few decades.This to many, is a scary thought. It means that I am just a collection of cells, and nothing more, which means I am insignificant! This does not scare me though, because if we are a collection of cells, and nothing matters, then how does this matter?
Another thing that pushes me towards thinking we are, indeed just a body is things like OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder), where one isn't in complete control of their thoughts, due to some difference in the structure of the brain.
So what do you think? What are you?
A mind that creates the illusion of a body, and everything around it, which raises a lot of questions of course.
Or a body with a mind?
The third one seems the most compelling to most people, but is it true?
Neuroscience has been trying to work out the intricate mechanism of thinking, but we haven't quite grasped it, not to say that it won't be explained in the next few decades.This to many, is a scary thought. It means that I am just a collection of cells, and nothing more, which means I am insignificant! This does not scare me though, because if we are a collection of cells, and nothing matters, then how does this matter?
Another thing that pushes me towards thinking we are, indeed just a body is things like OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder), where one isn't in complete control of their thoughts, due to some difference in the structure of the brain.
So what do you think? What are you?
Comments (78)
I am an embodied mind, with autism and some OCD-like behaviour.
For example if I were to die, and if you to take a look at my cells a minute after I died, you would find that my cells are alive. But I am dead because the functions of those cells are not functioning.
Well what if you think of it this way, your brain which most likely controls thought and who we are as a person,is dependent on other essential parts of your body. Therefore,if you for example suffer cardiac arrest,your brain will,in fact die after a while.So i suppose we can narrow it down to to the brain. You are right in saying, that if the brain dies, it is the the communication between the cells that has ended,the cells are still alive by themselves.Which implies that maybe your consciousness is merely an illusion created by a mass of cells,and nothing significant.But i have doubts about this interpretation. What are your 'thoughts' ?
Yes that is what i am compelled to think, and what the first option i gave means actually. So what to you is 'thinking'?
What are the figures btw? Is it something like 1000 bacteria for every human cell or am I vastly over/under-rememberingguessimating?
That is what i am most compelled to think. a body producing a mind, but that makes my 'mind' 'wander' over questions that largely concern biology, which is probably where the answer lies.
Seriously though, I don’t think we’ve formed - or simply attended to - concepts that are universal enough to discuss what “consciousness” means and how we’re to hold a metre up to the phenomenon.
In terms of our day-to-day choices the bacteria in our gut and bowels is likely going to lead to drastic changes in how we approach pharmaceutical medicines (that’s my rough-shod prediction at least!)
Consciousness somsciousness! You’re best bet is to read up on the vast array of neurological studies out there and be content with a mere gist of what it’s all about until some future day genius sorts it all out into conceptualized little morsels some of can chew on with more satisfaction than our current lack of understanding. In the mean time just enjoy the ignorance and theory craft! ;)
This.
It doesn't imply anything about significance.
There's no such thing as mind, it's a label for an illusion of being we don't understand, what we perceive as a space where thoughts happen but is actually not.
Being self-aware doesn't seem insignificant and very likely isn't.
What in the world? You've got thinking, self-awareness and illusions but no mind?
Correct. All evolutionary tools.
Thinking, awareness and illusions are mental phenomena.
How is that necessary? It is equally possible that the "bunch of cells" is merely a conceptual fabrication created by conscioussness.
So from the brain then. That's what I said.
But you said "There's no such thing as mind." There is if we're saying there are thoughts, awareness and illusions. Those are mental phenomena.
A Reductive Physicalist view upon it would not call it phenomena. For the reasons for thinking can be justified and reinforced with reactions in the brain; hence why it is physical.
I am having a few difficulties to choose a side. I think it will all just remain unsolved.
I think its generally agreed that the internal voice makes use of the same brain structures that allows you to hear external voices. Technically, only you hear your version of the external stuff. An interpretation of the oscillation. Phenomenally its different to each individual.
Contemporary Philosopher and Mentalist ColinMcginn argued for what he calls 'Mysterianism' — Which states the Physicalism will never be proven and the Mental states cannot be comprehensive to our Mental Capacity.
If people didn't have such thick skulls, we would be able to hear each other's mental voice very clearly.
:lol:
Care to elucidate the skepticism?
The sensation of "mind" is a series of chemical and energetic processes that result in self awareness, felt similarly to how a ghost limb can be felt after limb loss. We have evolved to adapt and tolerate many things, the "mind" is an evolutionary adaptation whereby the body tells itself that it exists.
My view is that it's nature's way of leading a complex organism toward replicating itself non-organically.
All the processes of this organism in interaction with each other and the universe, including but not limited to the brain, are essential to this process of information in and out. But at the end of the day, I am a temporary collection of processes, and it is only the unique wealth and complexity of information I can acquire, process and, more importantly, contribute to the overall achievement of the universe and life in general that matters in the end.
What I do with my life should then amount to maximising awareness, interconnection and overall achievement external to this temporary sense of ‘self’, insofar as I am currently aware of the universe as an ongoing and complex series of processes and interaction in spacetime.
Any positive contributions I make will amount to my ‘eternal life’, and whatever I hold onto or take with me to the grave is wasted effort.
If we are to assess what is primary in regard to existence, it is obvious that subjectivity comes into contact with it well before any objectivity (i.e. speculative truth) can be extracted from it.
And thoughts and illusions, etc. So how does it make sense to say those processes don't exist?
They do exist--as physical and energetic processes. They don't exist as ethereal or non-material or whatever other fantasy could be thrown at them. Fantasy is a defective but sometimes useful computation. It is useful because it appeals to useful but defective processes such as emotion.
Right, but just say that, then. "There is no mind a la ridiculous, confused notions such as it being nonphysical. There is mind, but it's physical, just a set of brain processes, etc."
No. Mind is an illusion. Take for example one of the many sensations of "mind"--that it can be perceived as vast internal space. Do you believe that vast space exists within the human brain, or is it more likely that such a sensation results from something happening within the material of the brain? Or would you believe that it's some other plane of existence where "mind" or "spirit" exists apart from all material things, which can't be demonstrated even to the self?
By all accounts I'm a reductive physicalist. I call it phenomena.
"Illusion"? "Nothing significant"? Maybe your consciousness is not a feature of your cells, but of their interconnections? It's the network that does what we're considering here. A reductionist view - that the brain is merely a collection of individual cells - fails to even see the real actor here, the nexus.
Reductionists can say that relations and processes are parts that have to be accounted for.
You have a sensation of mind, and through that mind you experience phenomena that you call chemical and energetic processes, now how can you conclude that your sensation of mind is nothing more than these processes you experience using your mind?
Quoting whollyrolling
If the "mind" is nothing more than a series of chemical and energetic processes, what survival purpose does it serve if we're just spectators and our experiences do not act on anything? Why did evolution select for it if it offers zero survival advantage? Why doesn't our body act in the exact same way without us experiencing anything, what is the use of the experience itself?
While I accept most of this, I find myself wondering what would be accomplished by “....superimposing rational concepts upon existence...” given “...the notion that existence is irrational.”
What logical aspect would arise from superimposing rational concepts on an irrational notion?
Even granting “....it is obvious that subjectivity comes into contact with it (“it” being the so-called irrational notion of existence)...”, there still seems to be some indication a theory incorporating this tenet relegates subjectivity itself to irrational grounds. I don’t think a worthy epistemological theory can afford to do that.
I suppose reductionists can say what they like. But their chosen method is a divide-and-conquer approach. We can't understand a whole human in one bite, so we divide it into smaller and smaller pieces, in the hope that we can understand them individually, and somehow assemble all the little understandings until we can understand the big thing we started with. This works where the functionality that concerns us is intrinsic to the parts, but not where the functionality depends on the interconnections between the parts, that we break without thinking as we divide the big thing up. Reductionists don't even notice this interconnection functionality, because their method cannot examine or even expose it. It's as if it doesn't exist.
If relations and processes are something that has to be accounted for, we'll need a different investigative technique. One to which the interconnection-functionality is actually detectable!
Just one of many possibilities: evolution selected for something else, and your "it" just happened to be connected to the thing that's being selected-for by evolution. This is very common. Ask an applied evolutionist.
We overlay all of our mapping-ideas onto reality. The ones that fit, we use. But, as you say, they are our overlays, and not part of the real world. When we look for rationality in the world, and in humans, we sometimes find it; more often we don't. Logic and rationality are just human ideas, ambitions and aspirations: wishful thinking. "Ought" not "is".
Think about it this way:
We have a map that is a shortcut representation of the world that includes some life history (memories) - this is our mind. This map is how we access the world. We represent our selves as bodies on this map.
Whenever we act, we act in the world, not in the map. The map updates itself as we act providing us with near-real-time sensory feedback. How it updates is a causal process that is an interaction between the new state-of-affairs in the world and your body.
We can only ever get at the map, which is a more causally processed state-of-affairs than the state-of-affairs that isn't the map (the world). We explain things on the map, not in the world, so when we get things wrong or incoherent, (QM) it may be because we didn't take into account how our sensory interaction with the world affects how the world appears as the map.
Most people confuse the map with the world (naive realists, idealists (who believe the world is only maps) and those that don't have a clear understanding of the distinction between "subjective" and "objective" (are they referring to the map or the world when they talk about the world as it is?))
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics
It doesn't exclude the interconnections between the parts if it includes relations and processes.
And it doesn't reduce anything more than it can be reduced.
So in this case the mind would be connected to the motions of electrons and molecules, which leads to panpsychism.
But still, the problem with assuming that the mind is an epiphenomenon that doesn't cause anything, that it is in principle completely described by the motions of particles (so-called 'chemical' or 'energetic' processes), is that why does it feel good to eat, to drink, to win, to have sex, to be safe, and why does it feel bad to eat too much, drink too much, lose, be threatened, ..., why do most of the things that help us survive feel good and most of the things that threaten our survival feel bad? If our experiences didn't cause anything then that would be a cosmic coincidence, if we were just spectators then it might as well feel good to burn or cut our skin and it might feel bad to drink or have sex and supposedly it would make zero difference to what we do, and I find that highly implausible.
Nothing is experienced through the mind or by the the mind--it doesn't experience processes. The brain stores and transmits information--everything is experienced through the senses or by the senses. Things that you perceive as in your mind are information stored in your brain after experiences, from fractions of a second after an experience to years later, plus a memory or an awareness of self, which is a process that serves numerous functions in the body and outside it. It is directly linked to survival.
But if it includes relations and processes, it can't be reductionism. :chin: Dividing the Big Thing into many Little Things - necessarily destroying and losing all of the interconnections between those Little Things - is central to the technique of reductionism.
How do you come to that conclusion? Of all the things that could have been related to the mind, you have identified one, and jumped straight to a conclusion. Admirable brevity, for sure, but I can't see the reasoning?
You classify a part of your experiences as coming from a world filtered through what you call your senses, then at some point you come to assume that everything that exists is attainable through these senses, which leads to a material view of the world and to the belief that the mind is nothing more than matter and in principle can be described entirely from matter, or from what you call chemical and energetic processes.
The idea of these processes that you have comes from your experiences (which make up what we call the mind). Now how can you trust that these experiences tell you the whole story on what these experiences are, on what they can be reduced to?
That we can find some fuzzy correlation between measured electrical activity in the brain and reports of experiences, does not imply that these experiences can be completely described by the measurable processes within the brain that we see through our senses. Saying that all our experiences reduce to that rests on a lot of assumptions, and one could equally pick different assumptions and conclude that the mind is more than brain processes and cannot be completely reduced to that.
As one example of a difficulty arising from equating the mind with brain processes observable in principle through the senses, is that no amount of analysis will allow to say how such or such process gives rise to such or such experience, you could describe all the measurable processes going on and that still wouldn't say why this gives rise to experiences at all.
Non-reductionists are supposed to be saying that things are more than the stuff, relations and processes that are the "parts." That somehow there's something "emergent" in a "transcendent" sense above that.
Just a thought...?
Doesn't it seem like a pretty obvious straw man to say that reductionists have to be talking about parts without relations/processes, though? I mean, who would say something like that?
Do you have a hypothetical example of something that evolution selected for, that could be connected to the existence of the mind (the existence of our experiences), but that would be unrelated to brain processes? (which in the common materialist view reduce to chemical processes, which themselves reduce to motions of particles)
Someone who thinks division is an intrinsic part of reductionism?
You're misconstruing what I'm trying to communicate. I haven't classified any experience as coming through or filtered by anything. I've classified experience as something that only happens to senses.
I haven't assumed that anything that exists is attainable, I've posited that it is sensed, or experienced at a sensory level. I'm more inclined to assert that the mind is nothing than that it's matter or that it can be described because obviously the mind can't be described.
If the mind is nothing, then the perceiver of the mind is not experiencing anything. If I've eliminated the mind as the experiencer and limited experience to the senses, what's left is the notion that after experiencing something, the senses send information to the brain, and the brain constructs a memory of the experience of the senses. This is not an experience, it's a data sequence, a memory of past experience.
I can't trust anything while senses are incapable of experiencing everything that exists because there will always be something that evades them.
I'm not "equating the mind with brain processes", that's a gross generalization. I'm saying that the mind is a subset of processes within a broader spectrum of processes in the brain.
We don't need to measure or comprehend these processes, and we're in fact incapable of doing so. It's the compulsion to measure and comprehend ourselves that drives us toward ironically replacing ourselves with something non-organic that does understand us. Life on this planet is incapable of outlasting or escaping the death of the solar system and is motivated by necessity to imprint itself on something that has potential to do so.
I may be assuming a lot, but I'm not doing so without reason.
Phenomena, by what I would know, is an unexplained occurrence. And neuro-scientists from around the world have proposed research findings that our thoughts are maneuvered and fueled by our daily experiences and partly of our genetic material. They have deconstructed and made that process to detail, henceforth reaching a conclusion where it is explained. Meanwhile, the mind is a transcendent substance external to our physical states, and therefore unknowable — to this point of time at least. So, some would assume that the mind is beyond the brain; that there is disparity between the two substances, which is for a dualist point of view.
I don't understand how it must be labelled 'phenomena'.
I use "phenomena" to refer to any occurrences, especially as they appear or would appear experientially.
The mind is the body, they both matter and are co-dependent. Oversimplified, the conscious mind can be seen as an evolved mechanism for survival and optimal living that utilises the decision making process. It will take a long time for science to clearly explain how consciousness works but it is clear that our psychological state is linked to our physiology (psychophysiology).
Even if science explains our behaviour and the process of evolution, this doesn’t mean that our existence is meaningless. It is rational to look for a reason to serve the world when the world gives you suffering. The real question should be does life have any positive meaning? Do you really get something out of your efforts? In most cases, suffering is the consequence of malevolence and this may suggest that malevolence should be ameliorated in order for life to have a positive meaning. To ameliorate malevolence, we must voluntarily take responsibility for our own being and the suffering that comes with it. We must live a life that manifests itself as meaningful and to do that we need to discover goals that bring us joy.
“Arguments like what difference is it going to make 10 billion years in the future when the Earth is destroyed, aren’t hyper-rational objections to the nature of being itself but hyper-rationalistic excuses for failing to bear the responsibility of living properly moment to moment, hour to hour.”
WHAT ARE WE? We are some configuration of energy. We call us human beings, for now. Anyway, as far as we are aware, part of how that energy expresses itself is the body, and another is the mind. There may be other expressions, more or less, largely depending on characterisation of what is recognised.
We don't seem to have a problem characterising the body but we seem a bit unsure as to what the mind is. I would explain it as the faculty of reason, and which employs certain mechanisms/means to organise and direct certain energies according to logic (nature's laws) or as best as possible. It is a faculty in a manner akin to perception, or even emotions, in that, it is not separate from the physical counterpart and works in conjunct with it.
On a personal note, I've been (for a while) working on a theory where the mind is a faculty or mechanism which operates within another faculty or mechanism. It is analogous to software which operates within hardware. And while the software is not material, the processes of its creation, management, operation, etc, are material and thus sensible (impacts the senses) and even empirical. I believe the same applies to mind.
Neither the body nor the mind can be distinct and separate from what we refer to as a human being. Therefore, they are defined by their relation to the human energies and the activities they manifest. The same also applies to spirit, consciousness, ego, etc.
Yeah, I think I read something close to that. The idea is that, when the voice in our head (our constant monologue and maybe even conscience) is active (talking), they are accompanied by corresponding micro-vibrations in our voice-box. So perhaps if we were attuned to hearing higher rates of vibrations (much higher than animals), other peoples 'consciences' could carry to our ears and thus hear what they were thinking.
All neuroscience can show is that there is a correlation between brain activity and thought. But correlation is not causation. The brain is involved with thought but that does not mean the brain is the source of thought. The analogy of the television is often used. The sound and vision from the tv are processed by the television's components and those components are certainly correlated with the film on view. But does that mean the television is the source of the film? That the television created the script and the music score? These are broadcast to the tv from a remote station. Likewise with the brain, it processes thought but that does not mean it creates thought.
E.G. I am particularly interested in the idea of phantom limbs, that is a severed limb having a 'sense' of being there. This has been used by materialist proponents to argue the illusion of consciousness and self whilst more idealist proponents have used it to argue for their own position as well. I am a bigger fan of the computational and informational theory model of biology coming out that more or less assumes phenomenal experience is physically contingent. I have plenty of evidence for this like being blind removes conscious experience of vision and dementia makes one very much less conscious. This burden of proof of a 1:1 correlation is just bogus.
The question of the reducibility of consciousness to pure materialism can be equally applied to a piece of paper with words on it, wherein one must argue there is discreet information written on it let's say "the cat sat on the mat" purely in terms of the atoms with paper and ink. Below I put a link highlighting the difference in terms of 'phantom limbs' that elucidates that I think framed in the right way means we could argue the self is a reference for an internalized information system of self-regulation produced by our biology. In that sense, we have an integral dimension of the psyche, conscious processes, non-conscious processes, and physical biology that within the experience of a phenomenon and our environment.
Below I put a ted talk which talks about the advanced prosthesis but the lecture hints at two different types of amputation, one with the nerve endings severed and one without and the differentiated results.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_how_we_ll_become_cyborgs_and_extend_human_potential
A side-point, which is worth mentioning but not debating here, in this topic (IMO :smile: ), is that no-one is in "complete control of their thoughts". Much of our mental activity takes place unconsciously; out of our own awareness. It is not in our control.
I, a stranger and afraid. In a world I never made.
:sweat:
I suspect you are much more than that. (Or much little? :halo: )
But that is true with all living beings and all of them have cells. Isn't there more than just that? (interesting as that physical dimension view is). Are you also not your conscious experience or your mind?
I too doubt that the brain controls all the cells of the body. I think many cells must work independently and not everything is controlled by the central nervous system, no?. Perhaps many organs. But every individual cell? I'm guessing there are many cells (if not most?) that function through genetic information only and not rely on signals from the brain to do their job.
If no, then that begs the question are your vital organs you? You don't have direct control over them and they just do their complex set of tasks without you even knowing about it most of the time.
If yes, then are you a combination of your body, the part of your mind that you're unconscious about but has important jobs (like the part which instructs your heart to beat or liver to work), and the part of your mind that is conscious of the world through its senses and memory? What about your natural instincts and your habits? Are they you or not?
Or are they "part of you"?
Something being you and something being part of you are different things.
The cat tore the newspaper, not the paws of the cat tore the newspaper.
Ron knocked the door, not Ron's knuckles knocked the door.
But your heart started beating faster, not you started beating your heart faster.
Your hair grows fast, not you grow your hair fast.
I'm not sure these three items are mutually exclusive alternatives, at least the way you've framed them here.
To all appearances, I am a human animal, and a human animal is a sort of living thing, a sort of sentient thing, a sort of cultural thing, and a sort of discursive thing.
I have some idea what it means to say a sentient animal "has a mind". But I'm not sure what it might mean to say a sentient animal "is a mind", or in what discursive contexts I should be inclined to speak accordingly.
Likewise, I see no reason to suppose the thing we call "my mind" can exist apart from some physical system in which mental operations are instantiated, as they are grounded in the body of this animal here.
Quoting Anirudh Sharma
What is the scary thought here? That it may take more than a few decades to explain some things?
I see no reason to expect there's a determinate end to explanation. Explanation will continue, as long as we continue.
I may find this thought hopeful, not frightening.
Quoting Anirudh Sharma
How does a delay in pending empirical knowledge imply anything about what sort of thing you are? I suppose it implies you are thing complex enough to require more than a few decades to sort out.
Doesn't this strike you as another rosy outlook? And so much for your claims of insignificance -- you baffler of 21st century science!
Quoting Anirudh Sharma
I admire your courage. Nevertheless, I hope you'll agree, there's nothing here to fear.
To say that I am a collection of cells is not to say I am "merely" a collection of cells. Some biological organisms are sentient biological organisms.
It seems a great many things matter to sentient animals like us, whether we want them to or not. There is no escape from meaning and significance in this life.
None of us is a blank slate.
Quoting Anirudh Sharma
Perhaps you anticipate that I see no problem here. For on the sort of account I favor, the mind of the animal is rooted in the body.
Much more (or less) than what?
Definitely worth mentioning. I'd also point out, that in terms of what we can know is true about ourselves, the only real difference between those with say an OCD or Autism diagnosis: Is that some people have sat in front of a psychiatrist and been open and honest about how they think and feel. People who have not done this are operating under what I call The Fallacy of Normality. Even with an autism diagnosis it can feel as if you are normal whilst everyone else is disordered. I don't think people want to hear the argument that with neurological diversity, it is entirely possible that not even all humans have minds while some do. Some impulsive psychopaths, particularly the rare breed that is born with no Amygdala at all have been theorised to have no internal dialogue, only impulses, no way to differentiate between friend or foe, no self reflection what so ever. However, I think the ethical ramifications for espousing this view are to dangerous to warrant arguing for it really.
Cohen with his modern interpretation of Logic, would probably say that mind logically exists as an abstraction in the very least. The concept definitely exists on paper as a word and exists as a phenomenon. Finding the true sentence meaning of mind however is difficult.