Questions about immaterial minds
If the mind is immaterial:
• how can a brain (with all the various properties of material objects), be caused to do something by something that lacks all material properties (no mass, no energy, no charge, and no location in space)? Or does the mind actually have some material properties? If so, which ones?
• If minds occupy a specific location in space, where is this? Does it occupy the same space as the brain?
• How does the brain deliver sights and sounds to the mind? For example, does every neuron connect to the mind, or only certain ones, or combinations?
• If a mind can become detached from a body (as in an OBE), how is it able to perceive what is happening in the absence of being connected to sense organs? If sense organs aren’t needed when disembodied, why are they needed when paired with the body?
• Do minds pre-exist bodies, or do they come into existence with the body? If the latter, when? At fertilization? Does it develop in parallel with the brain?
• What ties a specific mind to a specific body? E.g. if a mind causes me to raise my arm, why can’t my mind cause you to raise your arm?
• If my mind causes me to raise my arm, and simultaneously your mind causes you to raise your arm, how do we know it wasn’t my arm causing your arm to raise, and your mind causing my arm to raise?
• Memories are lost when brains are damaged from trauma or disease, suggesting memories are encoded in the brain. If memories are physical, and destroyed as the brain decomposes at death, but your mind survives, in what sense is that mind still YOU? i.e. what aspects of YOU is your disembodied mind?
• how can a brain (with all the various properties of material objects), be caused to do something by something that lacks all material properties (no mass, no energy, no charge, and no location in space)? Or does the mind actually have some material properties? If so, which ones?
• If minds occupy a specific location in space, where is this? Does it occupy the same space as the brain?
• How does the brain deliver sights and sounds to the mind? For example, does every neuron connect to the mind, or only certain ones, or combinations?
• If a mind can become detached from a body (as in an OBE), how is it able to perceive what is happening in the absence of being connected to sense organs? If sense organs aren’t needed when disembodied, why are they needed when paired with the body?
• Do minds pre-exist bodies, or do they come into existence with the body? If the latter, when? At fertilization? Does it develop in parallel with the brain?
• What ties a specific mind to a specific body? E.g. if a mind causes me to raise my arm, why can’t my mind cause you to raise your arm?
• If my mind causes me to raise my arm, and simultaneously your mind causes you to raise your arm, how do we know it wasn’t my arm causing your arm to raise, and your mind causing my arm to raise?
• Memories are lost when brains are damaged from trauma or disease, suggesting memories are encoded in the brain. If memories are physical, and destroyed as the brain decomposes at death, but your mind survives, in what sense is that mind still YOU? i.e. what aspects of YOU is your disembodied mind?
Comments (71)
.. it's not.
Physicalism is often dismissed based on the inability to answer some hard questions. I wanted to show there are also challenging questions for immaterialism.
I actually don't think "the mind" is a thing; rather, its an abstraction of all the processes that we categorize as mental.
What are these 'hard questions'?
There may well be mysteries surrounding consciousness, but they will not be answered by posing that consciousness is immaterial or can be disembodied from the brain.
The hard problrm of consciousness.
These are really good questions, Relativist. Let me think about them and I’ll get back to you later.
Fair?
Presumably, I could write something here which might cause you anxiety, which would produce an adrenal response, among other things. Auto-suggestion, the placebo effect, and many other aspects of 'mind-body' medicine, all suggest that mind influences the body in ways which are hard to account for in physical terms.
Quoting Relativist
Asking how 'the brain' does such things is what has been described as 'the mereological fallacy' i.e. attributing to parts that which are the proper activities of wholes.
Furthermore, this question touches on an outstanding question in neurobiology, which is the 'neural binding problem'. This refers to the fact that neuroscience can find no area of the brain which corresponds with our unified sense of subjective experience:
From Jerome S. Feldman, The Neural Binding Problem.
There are many other such conundrums suggested by your post, which I would sidestep or subvert by pointing out that the mind is never itself an object of perception (unlike the body and brain, which clearly are). The mind is not something which we can stand outside of, and therefore objectify. That's why eliminative materialists believe it must be eliminated.
Philosohers conceptually "objectify the mind", and my questions are directed at those who believe the mind is an immaterial object.
quote="Wayfarer;390265"]many other aspects of 'mind-body' medicine, all suggest that mind influences the body in ways which are hard to account for in physical terms[/quote]
I'm aware of that, but the difficulty of answering those questions doesn't imply dualism is true. My questions demonstrate there are at least as many questions that dualists can't answer. Should we therefore take both those possibilities off the table?
Mind dependence of body is well attested. There is no need to abandon materialism.
I don't understand how anyone can deny that, other than through blind faith.
[Quote]In my opinion it is a problem related to emergence. Different levels of matter cannot be explained by the "lower" ones.[/quote]
Assuming you're referring to ontological emergence, not just epistemological, how can you justify believing this? Every conceivable case of ontological emergence is explainable as a function of previously unknown properties of the underlying substance.
The problem is certainly obvious between the macrophysical and microphysical (quantum mechanics) world, but this could simply be ascribed to our ignorance. We could just be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle (the role minds play?).
The "levels" are actually mental viewpoints/snapshots from different size scopes. The "levels" would just be a digital representation of an analog variation in size scopes of reality. The different vantage points within the Milky Way galaxy and outside of it lend us to think about reality as different "levels" where there are none - just different vantage points of the same thing.
And then you've still got three ducks but now you've got a row as well. Assume the ducks are material.
Is the row material or immaterial?
Such is the apparatus for confounding philosophers. Solve this one first, before tackling mind, brain, self, and world.
Those 'problems' are no harder for physicalism than they are for immaterialism. In any case I prefer to think of them as mysteries rather than problems.
It was Cartesian dualism that posited 'mind' as 'res cogitans', meaning 'thinking substance'. I think that's where the concept of mind as an 'immaterial object' comes from. and that the way it was framed by Descartes has introduced a false dichotomy.
One of the consequences is that scientific philosophies obviously tended to frame their questions in terms of matter, because it is objectively measurable and apparently intelligible.
Idealists and religious philosophers tended to gravitate towards the reality of mind.
Forgive the rather lengthy quote, but I think it helps clarify many of the issues.
[quote=Dan Lusthaus]The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating it as the primary substance while reducing the remaining substance to derivative status.
Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley's esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.). Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant "idea-ism," frequently in the sense Plato's notion of "ideas" (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure. Before long there were many types of materialism and idealism.
Idealism, in its broadest sense, came to encompass everything that was not materialism, which included so many different types of positions that the term lost any hope of univocality. Most forms of theistic and theological thought were, by this definition, types of idealism, even if they accepted matter as real, since they also asserted something as more real than matter, either as the creator of matter (in monotheism) or as the reality behind matter (in pantheism). Extreme empiricists who only accepted their own experience and sensations as real were also idealists. Thus the term "idealism" united monotheists, pantheists and atheists. At one extreme were various forms of metaphysical idealism which posited a mind (or minds) as the only ultimate reality. The physical world was either an unreal illusion or not as real as the mind that created it. To avoid solipsism (which is a subjectivized version of metaphysical idealism) metaphysical idealists posited an overarching mind that envisions and creates the universe.
A more limited type of idealism is epistemological idealism, which argues that since knowledge of the world only exists in the mental realm, we cannot know actual physical objects as they truly are, but only as they appear in our mental representations of them. Epistemological idealists could be ontological materialists, accepting that matter exists substantially; they could even accept that mental states derived at least in part from material processes. What they denied was that matter could be known in itself directly, without the mediation of mental representations. Though unknowable in itself, matter's existence and properties could be known through inference based on certain consistencies in the way material things are represented in perception.
Transcendental idealism contends that not only matter but also the self remains transcendental in an act of cognition. Kant and Husserl, who were both transcendental idealists, defined "transcendental" as "that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience." A mundane example would be the eye, which is the condition for seeing even though the eye does not see itself. By applying vision and drawing inferences from it, one can come to know the role eyes play in seeing, even though one never sees one's own eyes. Similarly,things in themselves and the transcendental self could be known if the proper methods were applied for uncovering the conditions that constitute experience, even though such conditions do not themselves appear in experience [the paradigmatic example being Kant's Critiques.] [/quote]
What I'd like to say about that, is that both mind and matter are idealisations or abstractions. There is neither mind as a 'substance' (in the philosophical sense), nor matter per se because all matter has particular attributes and characteristics which define its type.
So whilst I agree that there is no 'immaterial object', I'm also inclined to believe that there are no 'purely material' objects either. My view is closer to Kant & Schopenhauer, who point out that whatever we know about matter has first of all been absorbed through the senses and then recognised by the mind, and that we don't know anything about 'matter' outside that perceptual process.
Whereas, what the questions in the OP seek to do, is to ask what kind of 'thing' or object an 'immaterial mind' can be, presumably to argue that, as it can't be meaningfully defined, then it must be 'taken off the table'. In my view, those questions cannot be answered, but that doesn't mean that mind is not real, nor that it's a product of matter or something that can be explained in materialist terms. However, if the question is posed in those terms, then that is the conclusion it seems to point inevitably towards.
:up:
By my reckoning, an actual row of 3 actual ducks is a material state of affairs (a thing). It is more than its parts (duck, duck, duck) because it includes the spatial relations among the ducks.
We can abstractly consider rows; many states of affairs have the properties of "row". We can even abstractly consider rows of ducks - hypothetically, any actual collection of 3 ducks could be arranged in a row.
Abstractions are mental objects formed by considering states of affairs with some common properties, and mentally subtracting the properties thatv distinguish them.
I'm not convinced mind is a thing, an existent. There are mental activities, and the phenomenon of consciousness. What we lack is a pardigm for analyzing the phenomena.
Ignorance may be due to epistemological limitations or ontological differences. When the ignorance is deep -as in the case of the mind-brain relation- it is not possible to know if the problem is epistemological or ontological. It is the classic problem of determinism and freedom. The only thing we can see is that there is a difference that is expressed in different languages. The future will tell about the rest. Or it won't.
Yes indeed, a row of ducks is more than the ducks, but you haven't come out and said that the more is material, because it sounds odd to say that. In fact it sounds stupid. The trouble is, it sounds just as stupid to start talking about immaterial rows.
This is physicalim for dummies:
1. There is stuff.
2. Stuff is arranged.
3. Arrangements are not more stuff.
4. The ranges of arrangement include space and time, which are also not stuff.
So I think a physicalist can perfectly well say something like that a mind is the arrangement of a brain in space and time. I'm not saying that all problems are thereby dissolved, but the rigidity of material/immaterial is at least weakened enough to allow other ways of talking and thinking. So, for instance it is no mystery that the arrangement of stuff affects stuff (and vice versa), whereas how an immaterial mind affects a material brain (and vice versa), is entirely inexplicable.
Now if you are into quantum mechanics and fundamental physics, you may decide that stuff is just arrangements of probability, or something, but happily, we don't have to go there to explain things on the human scale, and to do so is just to obscure what ought to be clear.
You're making a mereological error. Do you exist? Are you a thing? After all, you're just a collection of particles arranged a certain way (actually, a loose collection since particles come and go). A complex object is something in addition to its component parts.
You interact with the world as a functional entity. That you exist, and function as you do, is due to the properties and relations of the components that comprise you (i.e. there's no magic involved).
Does a row exist?
My thesis is that this is a foolish question Of course I exist and rows exist and arrangements exist. But these arrangements are arranged stuff not more stuff or immaterial stuff. I exist, I am an arrangement, or a complex relationship analogous to a whirlpool. Is a whirlpool material? does a whirlpool exist? Nobody needs to ask. But folks want to get bogged down in complex physics and psychology as if that is easier to understand. Get your ducks in a row first.
Which line?
Yes, but not as abstract objects. States of affairs (i.e. complex objects) exist that have the properties we associate with rows.
Quoting unenlightened
The ones that use the term "stuff", because it's vague and ambiguous. I disagree with this:
Quoting unenlightened
Assume that materialism is true (for the sake of discussion). This implies that every THING that exists is material. A row of ducks is a thing, and therefore it is a material object. It is a type of object distinct from a stack of ducks, or a row of goats. If things that exist are "stuff" than a row of ducks is stuff, and it's not identical to its constituent ducks; the internal relations between them is as much a part of the duck-row as the ducks themselves.
Internal relations = arrangement of ducks.
Ducks + row-arrangement = row of ducks.
Internal relations are not the same kind of thing as ducks. Rows are not the same kind of thing as ducks.
The reason I use vague terms is to bypass the physics and associated or conflicting philosophy, of what is a constituent and what is a relation of constituents, because they are intertwined to the point of radical uncertainty. It is precisely to escape mereology. Relations, internal and external to some scheme of identification as duck or row-of-ducks.
Quoting Relativist
But each duck exists, and the relation between them exists. We agree about this. But the relation is not another material the way a duck is material - clay or flesh and feather. The whirlpool has an identity; it is composed of water, but it is more than water. The 'more' is not more water, it is relation and process. So already in the simplicity of everyday objects, we have a dual aspect of what used to be called "form and substance", and I am calling "stuff and arrangements" and you are calling "constituents and internal relations."
And in the case of the topic, here, I think we actually agree that there is no magic immaterial mind, but that mind is the relations and processes of a brain. Get the ducks in a row, and the mind and brain line up in parallel.
I consider materialism to be possibly true, or at least that it's the case to beat. A materialist can't countenance "forms" existing on their own, because they are not material. However, it's perfectly reasonable to note that everything that exists (every particular) has relations and properties. There are no propertyless particulars, and no properties (including relational properties) that exist uninstantiated in a particular. So the relations among the ducks are just as essential to a row of ducks as are the ducks.Quoting unenlightened
It is a bit off topic, but it helps to have a common language. We have mental processes, but I think "mind" is just an abstraction. Treating it as a thing may be part of the paradigm problem with understanding mental activities.
Do you not see that this policing the language doesn't get you anywhere? "Row" is just an abstraction until you get your ducks lined up straight, and then you have realised it. Just an abstraction is what is just in your mind, and I can assure you that my mind is not in your mind but a real thing that writes posts.
I'm not policing, I'm giving you my perspective, just as you're giving me yours. I just happen to think abstract objects should not be considered existents in their own right. Ontologically speaking, they're excess baggage.
As I see it when we contemplate a row abstractly, we are engaging in a mental process - thinking about the properties that make something a row. The fact we can do that doesn't (IMO) imply that the abstraction "row" exists independently of the things that are arranged in rows. This seems a simpler ontology. You are certainly free to disagree.
I happen to agree. They are however existent in the world. 'Row' does not exist 'in its own right', wherever that might be. but I can get my ducks in a row. and then a row of ducks exists.
Nevertheless, the discussion seems to have turned to how materialism explains itself, and the original purpose of the OP seems to have been lost.
I think most of the relevant replies came from Wayfarer, but much of that was dropped. The Lusthaus quote was interesting but does not seem to address the question at hand. OK, it seems that it is a mistake to model the relationship as 'mind as an object'. We instead work with ideas and purpose, and the physical world is derivative from it. But then suppose it was my idea to take my purpose of needing an vehicle to animate my need for getting around and experiencing the world. Given that purpose, why would I imagine a vehicle with zero controls, that goes where it wants, when it wants. That's pretty useless for my purposes. I'd give it pedals and a steering wheel so that I could exert my will upon it. A physical being seems to have no pedals and such. It doesn't seem to be the product of the sort of purposeful ideas posited by this non-primary-material model.
Quoting WayfarerI actually agree with this. On that point:
Quoting unenlightenedIf the row isn't 'new stuff', then neither are the ducks, being themselves just more arrangement of stuff that was already there. At what point is there actually stuff? It seems the scientists have never found it, and hence the unstable foundation of what is typically exemplified as 'materialism'.
Anyway, I was hoping to see more discussion on this original intent of this thread.
The "stuff" is relationships, or information.
Several of the questions presuppose the idea that minds can exist separated from the body. I ask, "What is the point of a mind separated from a body?" and "Why would I have a (faulty) copy of myself?"
The mind is working memory containing information about the relationship between body and environment. It is how the body tracks the state of the body/environment relationship, relative to a conceptual body/environment relationship (homeostasis). Humans (and dolphins) have the neocortex, which is associated with conscious thought and self-awareness, and may be where the mind resides. Or maybe the mind isn't a result of the activity of just part of the brain, but all of the brain in sync when the evolutionary add-on, the neocortex, evolves. If it is the former, then there could be multiple "minds" in one brain - each being the processing of one particular module in the brain added by natural selection, and could be the cause of our conflicting mental states and urges. If the latter, then there would only be one mind per brain where internal conflict would be the result of having conflicting goals in one mind.
The post asks to explore the viability of the alternate POV where there are two separate things, or where matter supervenes on mind. Given the wording of the post, I'd say more the former of those two.
Or the point of a mind not consisting of a body?
All the above post seems to be about the mind being a function/process of the brain (or larger self), and sure, I am on that side of the fence, but I think the OP was asking about the opposite, where the body is a byproduct/purposeful-extension of the mind. The body seems to poorly implement such a purpose.
FWIW : These are just a few personal opinions on the brain/mind paradox :
# The brain is not caused by the mind. The brain causes the mind. The causal power of the brain is energy, which produces functional outputs (i.e. mind, thought, ideas, reasoning, behavior).
# The mind is a metaphysical process, not a physical thing. The mind is a system of relationships. Relationships over time form a process.
# The mind is what the brain does, its function. The mind is located in the body, in the same sense that all functions are associated with their interrelated system . Computation is the function of the integrated system we call a computer.
# The mind has one material property : the brain. Brain and Mind together are a whole system. Brain alone is a piece of meat. Mind alone is nothing. Together, they produce the effect we call "Thought".
# We can imagine a disembodied Mind/Soul, because our thinking brains have the ability to generate images of things that are not currently perceivable to the senses (e.g. the future). The mental image of the mind is an idea. It has no causal power, unless it is translated into physical action.
# We can imagine a First Cause, which is the power (energy, EnFormAction) to produce all of the effects (forms) in reality, including material physical Brains and immaterial metaphysical Minds. Is the existence of a First Cause reasonable? That depends on values in the mind doing the reasoning. The chain (web) of causation over time has produced localized Body/Minds, that in turn cause behaviors that affect the real world. One of those behaviors is to ask philosophical questions about material objects, and immaterial functions.
Function : In mathematics, a function is a relation between sets that associates to every element of a first set exactly one element of the second set. . . . a relation from a set of inputs to a set of possible outputs. https://mathinsight.org/definition/function
In other words, function is holistic in that it is related to all members of the set that causes a specific effect (e.g. patterns of action, output, work, behavior)
For example, the computer programs enabling this conversation are themselves not material, although they operate within computer processors that are composed entirely of matter.
An additional distinction might clarify the confusion. Matter is an obvious component of the physical universe. However, there are many components of the physical universe that are NOT MATERIAL-- light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, gravitational force, electric charge, magnetic fields, nuclear binding energy, etc.
The "mind" is necessarily immaterial. It is, of course a function of some physical mechanism. That may be the brain, but I think not. More likely, mind is a function of brain interacting with a physical (and immaterial) version of the traditional soul, according to principles of physics that we've yet to discover.
Perhaps the important point to integrate into your mind's beliefs is that the terms "physical" and "material" are not synonyms.
The mind is certainly not material, but it must be physical.
GL
Not so much energy, as meaning. Energy and matter are interchangeable, but as Norbert Weiner, founder of cybernetics, said 'Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.' (Quoted here.)
And the principles which govern meaning are much more like semantics than like physics. The rules of semantics operate quite independently to those of physics, comprising, as they do, the relationship between ideas, not between mass, energy, velocity, and the various other parameters which define the entities of physics.
Quoting Greylorn Ell
...we hope!
Granted that materialism is true and the mind is nothing more than the brain doing its thing, what concerns me is our tendency to identify ourselves and others with the beliefs and ideas (mind-stuff) that we hold. We seem to completely ignore that we're physical beings - our bodies being considered simply as loci of ideas and beliefs, the mind-stuff. More people have died for their beliefs than their physical appearance; it gives me the impression that people consider identity and being as more mind than body.
I can't dismiss a word you wrote. All valid, but not really pertinent to anything I wrote. I'm a physicist of sorts, not a philosopher. Here's what I know about the subject I addressed.
"Meaning" is philosophical BS. Until philosophical pinheads can explain why using the wrong vowel in a noun entirely changes the meaning of a statement voiced in Russian, but why anyone speaking conventional US English in a Chinese laundry will easily understand, "No tickee, no shirtee,," the entire subject of "semantics" will remain a useless, padded foil for intellectual pinheads who are incapable of addressing any serious subject.
If semantics is your thing, enjoy it. I'm not interested in wading in that mud.
I've not heard of or directly studied N. Weiner, although most of my really nasty courses in EE must have been derived from some of his work in energy transmission;. Not an authority to be dismissed, although he was, like many pioneers in idea development, not widely recognized.
I think a bit differently, or perhaps express myself poorly.. Information is not energy or matter-- however, it is encoded and transmitted (conventionally) using matter or forms of energy. Any physical mechanism that has access to and is capable of interpreting lots of sensory information has the potential to host, or become, a mind.
However, only if it is also capable of violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics, can it persist.
GL
well, I would hope that you can see that, if this were true, then it would be pointless for you to write anything whatever, as the only point of writing in this context is to convey meaning. You may not, as you say, be a philosopher, but one would hope that in joining a philosophy forum, you might actually be interested in the subject.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors/
I don't follow how an arrangement of physical matter is at all like a phenomenological state. The former is an empirically identifiable description of physical objects located in clearly defined time and space. The latter is unidentifiable empirically and the subjective experience is to some degree ineffable. It's not even fully clear where it exists in space.
The solution isn't just about defining the self in terms of it being a descriptor of the various arrangements (as you say) of the mental activity going on inside the mind, but in explaining what the mental states ( whether arranged or not) are ( i.e. can they be meaningfully defined with physical descriptors).
:up: :smile: Wayfarer, always great to read your posts.
Someone is having a difficult time in isolation.
Most people are not materialists, so you can't say they're ignoring it. It seems to me it's natural to think of ourselves in mental terms. It's reasonable on cold, objective terms: at distinguishes us from one another. But more importantly, mental processes motivate us to act - we act intentionally, and we do (or try to do) what we want to do.
It seems to me that it is correct to view ourselves in this way. I am not JUST physical - I am process. A corpse is not a human person because there's an absence of process. Process is produced by the physical, but it is not identical to the physical.
It's unfortunate we die for reasons associated with brain processes, but that consequence is not a reason to abandon our natural tendency.
Quoting Relativist
A state of affairs is not a thing that exists, it is a relation that is real--either between different concrete things or between a concrete thing and an abstract quality. Predicate terms denote such qualities or relations (form/essence), subject terms denote things (matter/existence), and propositions signify states of affairs by attributing predicates to subjects (entelechy/reality).
Wayfarer,
Good point, fairly taken, and a perfect example of the worthlessness of the "meaning" concept, in that here we are whining about the meaning of "meaning." Can we please discuss something (that I think is) interesting?
My intention here is to convey ideas and concepts, perhaps in the context of valid information. Everyone who reads and examines anything I (and most others) write will interpret it in the context of their beliefs, which are almost always wrong, and they will come away with their own "meaning." I cannot be responsible for that. The best I can do is propose what seem to me to be solutions to problems.
My interests are simply the nature of consciousness and whatever potential it might have. I solved Chalmer's "Hard Problem" about 30 years before he formalized it, but have had little success at presenting it, because my solution is well outside any currently accepted paradigms, religious or materialist. I would prefer to kick ideas around on a good physics forum, but those guys have become rather stuffy and offer no place for unconventional ideas.
Philosophers may not have the kind of background as physicists, but they are generally more tolerant.
I actually studied some philosophy and took a post-grad course. I appreciated Descartes (more mathematician than philosopher) and my ideas would fit into the "dualistic" category of conventional thinkers if not for several significant divergences.
After considerable experience, I regard philosophers as people dumb enough to believe that they can understand anything about the nature of the universe, and of the humans populating a tiny part of it, without understanding basic physics. Scientists are dogmatic thinkers who insist that if they cannot explain something, it does not exist; thus they are always right.
GL
Wayfarer,
You'll get no argument on this from me. I've studied neuro-anatomy and some of Wilder Penfield's open-brain research from 80-odd years ago, plus the Phineas Gage "crowbar" incident. But that stuff is third-party and anecdotal. More to the point, I've gotten falling-down drunk. The brain does not need to be overtly damaged to become severely dysfunctional.
Physical Dualism explains the issue effectively. Suppose that to some extent, Descartes was right, and that a soul-like entity is indeed connected to the human brain. If so, consider "mind" as the effect of brain and "soul" working together.
By analogy, consider a car and its driver-- imagine the brain as the car, a reasonably complex machine going nowhere without a driver to guide it. They are, to some extent, interdependent.
What happens if the car is damaged? Once, driving 85 on a desert interstate road, a coyote chose a poor time to cross. The beast died, and my car's left front suspension assembly was warped. I finished my 240 mile journey with screwed up steering in a vehicle that wanted to go sideways and off the road.
Impair the brain, and naturally, any "soul" connected to it will have a more difficult time.
I've not done much research of late and was unaware of the "tiny brain" phenomenon or Cotard's syndrome. Thank you for the excellent and pertinent reference! I must consider the implications.
You seem to be well and diversely read, more so than myself. I welcome further input.
GL
When you say "phenomenological state" it sounds like a thing, but it isn't a thing, it's a relationship. Specifically its the relationship of a life-form to it's environment, where its environment includes its own state. Just as "in a row" is the relationship of the ducks to each other.
So when one hears, "...the mind is nothing more than the brain doing its thing, ..." it sounds wrong, and it is wrong, because it leaves out half of what the mind is - the mind is nothing less than the brain doing the world.
We contemplate all sorts of ways the world is not.
A brain is not caused to do something by the mind, and the mind is not caused to do something by the brain. The two (brain and mind) exist parallel with eachother.
Minds do occupy a specific location in space, that is, the location of the matter which they are parallel with.
The brain does not deliver sights and sounds to the mind. The mind is parallel to the brain which is impinged in certain ways in which a parallel process happens in the mind.
A mind cannot become detached from a body. All bodies have a corresponding mind, and vice versa.
Minds do not pre-exist bodies, or vice versa, bodies pre-exist minds. The two are parallel with eachother, and any unfolding/"new-existing"/change in one is parallel with the unfolding in the other.
That the mind "causes you" to raise your arm is nothing but an interpretation in your mind parallel to some body.
The idea of ME is itself just a part of my mind parallel with my body. When you lose the ability to identify "I", then your body/mind is no longer "yours".
I believe this answers your questions clearly. Have a nice day.
So the brain is in a relationship of denial with the world, or a relationship of what-if, or ... the mind is not - and this is the point - in the brain, any more than the world is in the brain. Any more than the row is in the ducks
And then we bring about the way the world is not in our minds, to the world. Our imaginings can become reality. How does that happen if the world is material and the mind isn't?
I'd be interested to hear a proposed solution. I'm pretty familiar with Chalmers but none the proposed solutions that I've encountered have come to grips with it; most of them are clearly a failure to comprehend it. But if you've got one, I'll be more than happy to give it a read.
Quoting Greylorn Ell
I don't buy that. I think Wilder Penfield had a very large data-set to work with, spanning decades. He was a careful and meticulous scientist. And Phineas Gage's case was not simply an 'incident' - he had a crowbar blown right through his cranium by a stick of dynamite, and didn't die. He should have. That's an empirical fact.
Clearly there's an 'upward causation' of the material form of the brain to cognitive ability. That much is clear from myriad of injury and drug studies, and the like. But what of 'downward causation' - the cases where injured brains re-route all of their activities to compensate for damage to a particular area? Like where the parts of the brain usually associated with one function are re-purpose to execute another function? (This is associated with the discovery, thought revolutionary at the time, of neuroplasticity.) What drives that, other than something purpose-directed, and therefore teleological, in some sense? And where does 'downward causation' begin? Who says it doesn't begin in the very simplest forms of organic life?
Quoting Greylorn Ell
Well, Galileo showed that if you throw a philosopher and a piano from the sixth floor of an apartment building, they'll both hit the ground at the same time. But I'm at a loss to understand how understanding such 'basic physics' has anything to say about the problems of philosophy whatever. Rather than 'dumb philosophers', it's more likely the case that philosophy itself is very poorly understood by today's presumptive materialism.
I'll try and unpack that. If you study the history of ideas, you will become acquainted with what has been called by some critics 'Galileo's error'. It's a very deep and difficult issue which I couldn't do justice to in a forum post. But suffice to say it revolves around the fateful division of nature into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities, according to Galileo, were just those properties that lent themselves to quantization by the methods of Galileo's 'new science' - velocity, mass, acceleration and so on. (How convenient!) Whereas secondary qualities, usually given as taste, smell, color and so on, were relegated to the subjective domain of the observing mind. They were, in other words, subjectivised. This also coincided, in early modern history, with the ascendancy of the protestant emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual conscience, and also with Descartes' division of nature into res extensia and res cogitans.
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36)[/quote]
That, I suggest, is your paradigm or model; it's the basic model of the 'secular intelligentsia' - what 'reality' is thought to consist of, when the superstitious overlay of belief in the soul and so on have been scraped off it. Isn't that it?
The upward/downward distinction in causation is a little misleading. The problem with an appeal to downward causation is that the capacity for such causation is only provided for by complex organized structures. Then we need to account for the existence of such organized structures, and so we can only turn to upward causation. The route of downward causation is really a dead end, just leading us back to upward causation, because we cannot account for the way that downward causation could spontaneously appear when upward causation reaches some critical degree of organization.
Therefore I believe that we really ought to look for what appears to us as downward causation, existing inherently within upward causation. In other words, it's a distinct form of upward causation which gives the appearance of downward causation in its physical manifestations.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, this is the issue here, the source of teleological, purpose-directed activity. It cannot be a downward causation, because it's evident in even the simplest life forms, while downward causation requires complex forms. So downward causation is a bit of a materialist ruse, requiring complex material structures, but not capable of accounting for the purpose-directed activity required to create those organized structures. This is why we need to turn to what might be called the immanency of such purpose-directed activity, what is inherent within such material existence, as the source of that type of activity.
This reversal, inversion, is the "reflection" referred to in Plato's cave analogy. Once we flip everything around, from the way that it appears to us cave-dwellers (as downward causation), and place "the good" in its proper location, as the initial cause (final cause, from the perspective of ending the regressive chain of efficient causation), then we see that the immaterial, at the very bottom, is the base, or foundation, for all material existence, through upward causation.
There's no conservation involved, like there is with the food we eat.
My supper is movable, my experiences thereof are interruptible.
And it so happens that my mind is uniquely associated with my body when occurring.
Consistent with evidence:
I would actually argue it's not a thing either, but that's because I'm probably more sympathetic to the classic substance dualist approach than most, which would hold that mental states are not "things" to the extent they are non-physical. That's not your position I understand, though.
The arrangement of ducks is a physical thing to the extent we are discussing the ducks' location. Location in space and time is part of what it means to be physical. The white pawns on a chess board are in the starting position a2, b2, c2... h2 (if you're familiar with chess notation). The row is located at a2 through h2. Their location in space and their relationship to one another strikes me as a physical attribute no different from other physical attributes. The duck similarly is a duck because its molecules are ordered in such a way as to make it a duck. The duck, according to you, is a thing and it's in the lake, despite the fact that the duck is nothing more than an arrangement of molecules. But I ask: how do you draw a distinction between ducks and rows in terms of the former being a thing and the other being an arrangement? Under analysis, it appears that if rows are simply non-thing/arrangements, then ducks would be that as well, considering the word "duck" simply describes how certain molecules are arranged in relation to other ones.
A phenomenological state, on the other hand, is an actual perception of something that is separate from the duck and it's separate from the brain. It's not just a row inside the brain, but if it is, show me where it is. Why can you point to rows and ducks but not phenomenological states if they are just different examples of the same thing?
Try having thoughts when you havent eaten or slept for days.
If the mind is causally connected with the rest of the world that does practice some form of conservation, then why wouldnt the mind? Thinking is hard work. Responding without thinking is easier.
I'm sorry, that looks like a word salad. For a first step, can you give me maybe an example of a non actual perception of something? My understanding has always been that the whole business of speaking of phenomena and perceptions is to bracket off 'actuality' as something problematic. As in an oasis-perception that might be of an actual oasis or of a mirage, but is always an 'actual' perception that is separate from the oasis in the sense that there might not be an oasis. A 'phenomenological state' is also problematic, but in a more vague way ... a state of phenomena? A state that consists of phenomena -
You see, when I get my ducks in a row, or my pawns if you like, I don't have to talk about phenomena or perceptions or brains, I don't see these things, I see a row of ducks. I think you are confusing yourself with all this terminology - you're certainly confusing me. I say my seeing a duck involves me and a duck.
Quoting Hanover
This is also a very confusing thing to suggest. I thought that was where the pawns were. A row of squares and a row of pawns - eight pawns in a row, not eight pawns and a row
The row is not located because it is the location - of the pawns. Why do philosophers do this shit all the time - whenever the cat is on the mat, some philosopher will get all agitated looking for 'on'. How can the cat be on the mat unless there is an on? Where is it?
But that begs the question of where order arises in the first place. It's natural to assume that the mind is the product of the high degree of material organisation which has developed over the course of evolutionary history. But what is the source of order? Without there being order, then nothing complex, or actually nothing whatever, could have arisen in the first place. That is not a question I presume to have an answer to, but it is one of the basic questions of metaphysics nonetheless. Even big bang theory itself can't account for the order of nature; and I don't want to argue on that account for any kind of natural theology, other than to make the observation.
Downward causation doesn't necessarily act in the same way as upwards in any case. I think, in classical philosophy, the idea of a final cause, 'that towards which a thing tends', is not 'causal' in the material or efficient sense. It's the reason for something to exist in the sense of the purpose it intends. IN that sense, fire is the cause of the match, in that matches are only made in order to generate fire; but from the perspective of efficient causes, then matches obviously cause fire.
Quoting Hanover
Chess can be realised physically, but it is not itself physical. It’s a set of rules which can be represented by many different physical forms - but change one rule, and it’s no longer chess. And chess can be played with no pieces whatever; I read once that the Arabs used to play chess without boards whilst crossing the desert on camels, although I can't imagine ever pulling off such a feat myself.
Obviously chess is the product of the human mind, but the point about the nature of the order that it represents can be taken as an analogy for many other forms of symbolic order.
The point about the rational mind, in particular, is that it is the instrument which grasps relationships. And those relationships again may be represented physically, but it's senseless to say that they are physical.
I would be inclined to go even further, and offer that the rational mind grasps relationships because such relationships are merely the product of its efforts. The rational mind always reasons to a conclusion from that which antecedes, that standing as the simplest and most complete form of relationship.
But then, inclinations are a dime a dozen, so.....
How are a priori truths the product of the mind? If they were produced, they would be a posteriori as a matter of definition. Instead, they’re recognised.
Production of a truth, which must always be in accordance with principles, is necessarily a priori; the production of the proof of a truth, which must always be in accordance with empirical conditions alone, is a posteriori.
What I thought I explained, in the rest of that post, is that the order must come from within, in the sense of immanent within the material existence. This is bottom up causation, rather than top down. Top down doesn't work, because it requires something surrounding the object, or being, acting from the external, inward, and this is inconsistent with empirical observations, which show us that as we divide (reduce) the object, or being, to its most fundamental constituents, the acting force which accounts for its existence as a whole, is always within. So reduction is the proper way to go, but when we get to the most fundamental "particle of matter", or "primary being", we find that the immaterial is necessarily prior to this, as necessary to account for the existence of that most fundamental material thing. So, when that fundamental material body, or object, comes into existence, it is already "designed" to behave in a specific way, and this is inherent, intrinsic to that thing itself, as property of it.
In the case of a living being, the immaterial "soul" is already intrinsic within the most simple living body. That simple body could not come into existence as the specific body which it is, unless the parts are ordered to exist in that way, and the ordering must come from within each part itself, such that the part is ordered to be a part of a whole. Therefore the ordering comes from within the whole, and anything which we can apprehend as a thing, body, or object, is a whole, and it must have an inherent immaterial ordering which is prior in time to it, accounting for its existence as the whole which it is. The immaterial ordering is necessarily within the whole, as the attributes of each of the internal parts of that whole.
The idea of a fundamental material whole, which has no parts (prime matter), has been demonstrated by Aristotle to be illogical. And this "prime matter", as the fundamental building block, the "atom" in ancient science, is the grounding for top down causation. What is assumed is that there are fundamental, indivisible particles of "matter", which are acted upon by external forces, to produce structures. But this is the mistaken presupposition of materialism, which Aristotle demonstrates is untenable. So, we must turn this around, and apprehend the causation required to produce a whole, an object, or body, as coming from within the whole, thereby creating the parts required for the whole, from within. Therefore a true whole always consists of parts, and any apparent indivisibility of a whole is a function of the divider's inability to divide, not an inherent feature of the whole. So a part cannot itself be truthfully represented as a whole. Materialist reduction fails in its representation of parts as wholes.
I'd submit that I've not presented a word salad, but that you're simply requesting a better definition of the word "actual" as I've used it, perhaps suggesting it was superfluous within the sentence. Your example of a mirage presents a question not of whether a phenomenological state is actual, but whether a physical state is actual, as opposed to imagined. So, yes, all phenomenological states are actual in that the exist in some capacity, regardless of whether there is a corresponding physical entity causing the mental state.
If you are experiencing a duck, you are in the phenomenological state of having that experience. That's how I use the term. I just use the term to describe the experience your are having while you're having it.
Quoting unenlightened
Sure, and when I talk about ducks, I don't talk about their molecular construction or their cellular structure, or whether the color of the duck is something my brain imposes on the duck, or whether it has other inherent qualities, nor do I discuss what is matter, unless the conversation somehow deals with that, and then I do.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't know the limits of this holism you're presenting. If the entity we're speaking of is "eight pawns in a row," such that we cannot say there is a definable separately existing row, then I'm not following how we can say there are separately existing pawns either, as the "pawn" is simply a description of the arrangement of the molecules. Where is the row? It's nowhere because it's an arrangement. Where is the pawn? It's nowhere because it's an arrangement. Where are the eight pawns in a row? It's nowhere because it's an arrangement. Have I missed something?
Intentions aren't always realized. What one intends does not always come to fruition, so a final cause, or an effect in the future is not the cause of the present behavior. What one intends exists in the present and drives behavior forward in time. What one intends is not in the future pulling the behavior forward towards it. Intentions are simply ideas in the present about a possible future, not a given future.
I can intend to become Superman, but if there is no Harry Hindu Superman final cause in the future, then my cause, or intent is in the present driving me forward to a final cause that doesn't exist, except in my mind in the present.
Quoting WayfarerIt's neither physical or non-physical. The "non-physical" rules apply to moving "physical" pieces on a "physical" board. It would have been impossible for a human being to realize chess without some kind of interaction with the world. "Physical" and "non-physical" become incoherent in a reality where mind and world interact causally.
The two are different categories.
Conservation is a temporal invariance in the first place.
Where does seeing your food go after supper?
The experience thereof came and went, the occurrence started and ended, was interruptible.
Temporal and process-like.
The conservation of the food isn't interruptible, and the food persisted throughout your experiences thereof, much like body persists sufficiently (structurally) throughout mind.
Spatial and object-like (left to right, top to bottom, front to back; we eat food, not experiences thereof).
I guess it's all interrelated in whatever ways, and the synthesis is where we might infer that, say, your mind depends on your body.
Are you asking where the actual food went after supper, or where your experience of the food went after supper? Your experience of seeing food left the same time the actual food left. So it seems to me that they are both (the thought of eating food and the actual eating the food) come and go at the same time, or else you would be hallucinating when there isn't any actual food. But your thoughts come and go just like eaten food.
The way I see it, a duck is more than an arrangement of molecules: it’s an arrangement of temporal relations between molecular, chemical and atomic relations. A ‘row of ducks’ is an arrangement of value/potential relations between temporal arrangements. When we point to a row of ducks, we’re pointing to a physical manifestation of these value/potential relations, or a collapse of potential information. And when we physically move three ducks into a row, the value/potential we perceive in our own temporal arrangement relates to the value/potential we perceive in these three temporal arrangements to manifest an event which results in an observable row.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, if you want, you can talk about a pawn of molecules, a molecule of atoms, an atom of quarks. Take the holism or the atomism as far as you like according to convenience. What I seek to forbid is talk of a definably separately existent pawn in addition to, or district from, the molecules. Likewise with rows. the pawn is where the atoms are located and how they are arranged. It really isn't that onerous a stipulation, you just have to keep tabs on where the abstractions are abstracted from and put them back where they belong. As in physics class, you have to state your units, and not mix them up. If we are saying pawns are for this purpose the units of existence, then we can talk about lines or diamonds or whatever pattern of pawns, or we can have a different conversation about ducks and pawns of molecules. But don't have the both kinds of talk at once.
If "arrangement" is just a way of describing location, how does that respond to the question of this thread, which is to determine what are immaterial minds? The fact that we cannot describe matter without reference to spatial coordinates is a definitional truth, but I don't see how we can then say that somehow explains how my brain makes me conscious of external events.
I agree that it's incoherent to speak of matter without reference to it being in space and it having location, but what you seem to be urging here (if I'm following) is that since location cannot be defined without reference to some physical object, that location itself is an emergent property of matter. And since we've now identified this particular emergent property, we can now bootstrap a more complex emergence theory as it pertains to phenomenological states and say they arise from brain states.
Is this a correct understanding?
If it is, my objection is as noted, which is that location isn't as much an emergent property as it is definitional because, among other things, it is not possible to even conceive of an object occurring in the absence of location.