Mind Has No Mass, Physicalism Is False
If the mind is material, how can I explain the following simple arithmetic?
I weigh around 80 Kg. So
When I'm alive: My Mind + My Body = 80 Kg
When I die: My Body = 80 Kg
My Mind + My Body (when alive) = My Body (when dead) = 80 Kg
A little algebra and...
My Mind = 0 Kg, implies my mind has no mass/weight
1. All things that don't have mass are not physical
2. My Mind has no mass
Ergo,
My Mind is not physical.
I weigh around 80 Kg. So
When I'm alive: My Mind + My Body = 80 Kg
When I die: My Body = 80 Kg
My Mind + My Body (when alive) = My Body (when dead) = 80 Kg
A little algebra and...
My Mind = 0 Kg, implies my mind has no mass/weight
1. All things that don't have mass are not physical
2. My Mind has no mass
Ergo,
My Mind is not physical.
Comments (187)
I have an etherial cake mixer.
My cake mixer has a mass of 1.5 kg when it is turned on.
When turned off, it has a mass of 1.5kg.
my cake mixer being turned on has no mass.
Ergo, my cake mixer being turned on is not physical.
Yes, the on/off state of the cake mixer is not physical. The mind, likewise, is not physical. The mind appears to be a state of the body and not the body itself. Does it remind you of the notion of brain-states? If so, just like the on/off state of your cake mixer can be duplicated onto other cake mixers, the mind too, its various brain states, can be transferred to another body. Soul?
When you disassemble a lego house into just lego bricks, the house isn't there anymore, but the bricks still weigh the same as the house did. Does that make the lego house non-physical? No, it's just the physical arrangement of physical things, not a thing unto itself; the house hasn't been removed from the bricks, it isn't somewhere else, it's just been transformed from that arrangement that it was, into a different arrangement.
Think on that. Take your time.
All I wanted to establish is that the mind isn't physical. Did I succeed?
That's just one possibility. In my hasty reply to Banno I forgot to mention that my objective was to show that the mind can't be physical. Please go through the arithmetic in my OP. Also, the other, more intriguing, possibility is that the mind could be an immaterial "substance", if that makes sense.
Suppose a transcendental aspect of the cake mixer - we might call it mixing. Mixing is something that can happen when a mixer is turned on. Sometimes the mixer is turned on, and yet mixing doesn't happen - the batter is missing, perhaps; or is too thick. Arguably mixing doesn't happen when the mixer is turned off.
Have we shown that mixing is transcendental or non-physical?
Suppose a transcendental aspect of the brain - we might call it mind. mind is something that can happen when a brain is turned on. Sometimes the brain is turned on, and yet mind doesn't happen - sleep, or anaesthetic. Arguably mind doesn't happen when the brain is turned off.
Have we shown that mind is transcendental or non-physical?
Ok. There's a physical difference but I'd like you to look at the math.
Between a dead me and an alive me there's something missing which doesn't have mass. The same can't be said of an on/off cake mixer - the states on/off are physical states and there definitely will be a change in mass as there's a current of electrons flowing through the cake mixer when it's on - electrons have mass. Right?
Could be confirmation bias (look a few posts down)
Wrong. There would be a corresponding change in the mass between a living brain, which itself includes electrical current, and a dead brain, which does not.
Your OP was a distracting thought, but I don't see that it can be carried far.
Electrical current and electrons are not quite the same, electrical current is the movement of electrons.
The electrons would still be in the body but static instead of flowing.
Hence the only difference between a dead mind and a live one would be the bio-chemical-electrical actions and reactions of the life body. The dead mind would have none of them.
Movement of electrons does not cause change to weight, to which the OP refers.
It does possibly cause change to volume through the chemical reactions, but weight and volume are not the same.
The "current", if you could even call it that, in a human nervous system is, if you'll allow me a little freedom, chemical in nature as in there's no flow of electrons in the nerves but what's actually going on is a chemical process involving biomolecules that aren't electrons. In short there's nothing occuring at a relativistic level in the garden variety nervous system.
In contrast, a current flowing in a wire in a machine, like your cake mixer, consists of actual electrons which the link I provided claims travels at relativistic velocities causing a change in the mass of the appliance like your cake mixer.
I have read that scientists have measured human bodies at the moment before and after death, and can't detect the soul or spirit. I'm not sure this proves that there isn't one, or that it isn't somehow a product or at least byproduct of a physical process.
What's an analogy? A bunch of people get together and form a bowling team. A bowling team exists in the world. It's part of a league, it pays its entrance fee, it shows up together at tournaments. See the film The Big Lebowski for a fuller discussion of these matters.
Yet if we weigh the bowlers individually; and we weigh the team; we will find that no matter how finely we take our measurements, we will always find that the "team" has no weight other than what can be accounted for by the individual bowlers.
So there are abstractions that are real, and have existence and import in the world, but that are not physical. The the law is only the weight of the lawbooks. But the books are not the law. The law is a weightless, nonphysical abstraction.
Likewise perhaps the mind. Still, I agree that the mind is special in some way and your argument's not bad.
Electrical current flowing in the brain? And the electrons are firing along at relativistic speed while we are still awake and alive?
:rofl:
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Photons, for instance, are usually considered to not have mass. The mind is probably not made of photons, of course, but the idea of a massless physical entity--or at the very least one with mass so small that it hardly affects your mass--doesn't seem illogical.
But I don't know what physicalists claim the mind is made of, and whether that substance is massive enough to validate your argument.
Sure. What goes missing is entropy dissipation at the organismic level. You no longer turn any food shoved in your mouth into useful work.
But leave your dead body a few hours. It can become a feast for other hungry "minds".
Weigh a well-rotted corpse, along with its oozing and vapourous losses due to decomposition. The total biomass might well be more for a time before it leaches away into the ground. All that extra "mind" might actually add mass.
One way to spend your Saturdays.
This begs the question. You have to already assume the mind and body are separate things in order to be able to subtract the body from the mind.
The brain before death = 1.5 Kg.
The brain after death = 1.5 Kg.
The brain when awake = 1.5 Kg.
The brain when asleep = 1.5 Kg.
There is no problem when the mind is part of the brain. Sometimes the brain is online, and sometimes it is not.
The solution to the mysterious mind-body psuedo-problem is not to separate mind and matter, but to redefine what matter/mind are so one becomes the other.
The brain is always "online" if you are alive. All neurons are firing all the time even in your deepest sleep. They have to as otherwise all the biological structure would fall apart. Functioning holds it together.
What gets shut down is the integrative coherence of what is going on. An awake state depends on the precise modulation of neural firing rates. It all has to come together like an orchestra playing a tune. Deep sleep is then more like an orchestra disjointedly tuning up for a few hours.
The weight of the brain is always a wrong measure to discriminate anything useful. The right physical measure - the meaningful one - is entropy dissipation.
And even a sleeping brain runs pretty hot - just as an orchestra tuning up still makes an energetic racket.
So an awake brain has to be measured in even more subtle entropic terms - the Bayesian Brain approach that measures its global level of integrative coherence in terms of a free energy principle.
What gets measured here is the brain's ability to resist the world's surprises. While sleeping, we have limited awareness and thus a limited ability to predict the events of the world. While awake, that is what the brain is doing. Trying to out-predict reality. And then having to stop and learn - attend and think - when the predictions fail.
He said, knowing the right way to spend a Saturday was, of course, relieving the growing pressure of a system-in-a-vacuum, by compulsively describing it to others. Scan the available threads and choose a receptive one. Saturdays. He was on the wrong side of 1/mounting-irritability-due-to-others-incorrigibly-failing-to-properly-contextualize-according-to-the-triadic-system and the storm clouds looked real bad this time. Past memories of having the wrong vibe at barbecues howled at his heels. Could people sense it? The system shuddered in its casing 'why aren't you explaining me online!!' He imagined a gallery of Peirce and people he knew in biosemiotics being like hey man why were you in on this if you weren't ready to post about it on the forums. He looked at the rose in the glass cake-case: wilting. It was time to come back.
You have to start the listener on one path and then reframe things in a way that shows it can be understood in quite another. The aha! of a rapid reorientation tickles the pleasure spot of the brain.
Of course if you want to mock, that's a different exercise. Similar, but you want to produce an aha! realisation that connects to fear and anxiety instead. Your desire is to enforce your social norm.
Ask Banno for tips. He has mocking down to an art. As evidenced a couple of posts back.
The way I see it is that everything in the universe moves towards a more stable state and increase entropy. The initial big bang triggered this motion based on a set of laws/forces/constants (The billion dollar question is why did this happen n etc.). Anyways, after the initial start we have all these particles which found stability to form atoms and then molecules. Fast forward and we have nebulae/stars/planets and in the soup of oceans on early earth, a particular chemical reaction(s) resulted in more stability/entropy. On that path the environment naturally moves towards repeating this reaction - the initial roots of replication or reproduction. Continuing further we have the first cell animals and then it is the story of evolution as Darwin discovered.
So from this viewpoint, all actions by living beings are simply a very complex process trying to simply move towards a stable state and increase entropy. The depth of the process can be seen to the level that these organism (or structures) evolved to have 'self consciousness' which is very interesting. We can think on our own existence with this power.
The complexity of the process is indeed astonishing - a slow but steady constant process over the 4 billion years of earth's life and ~13 billion years of the universe.
Would like to hear what others think about this.
Well, after doing some research it appears that electrons don't travel at relativistic speeds in an electrical appliance as I thought. My bad.
Nevertheless, as you agreed when you said "my cake mixer being turned on is not physical", the mind is also not physical.
Having said that, the mind must be some kind of pattern in matter (the body/the brain) and a pattern is most definitely not physical, right?
Comparing the mind to your cake mixer's on state, the mind could be a function of the brain just as the cake mixer starts operating when it's switched on. Here I'd like to ask a question: take your cake mixer, the mind (brain if you like), and the muscles. Which organ system, the muscles or the brain, would you say is a better match for your cake mixer? The muscles are a better match for your cake mixer right? They're, unequivocally, physical - there's no doubt at all on that issue. However, when it comes to the brain, the mind has a distinct quality of being something other than just physical - we can't see/touch/hear/weigh our thoughts. This, in my humble opinion, demonstrates, quite clearly, that since your cake mixer is better compared to our muscles rather than our brains for the reasons I gave above, you're guilty of a false analogy. You're aiming too high with your cake mixer, my friend.
Quoting csalisbury Fail!
Quoting csalisbury Troll!
Quoting csalisbury Hyperbole!
Quoting csalisbury
Alternatively I have put in the work and know what I'm talking about. And I am up for well-crafted counter-arguments. Are you up to providing them though?
Your parody only illustrates your own confusion about anything I have said. And I've said it all so extremely simply for your benefit too. :wink:
Quoting apokrisis
But I learned my craft at @csalisbury's feet!
Ok. Let's look at it from another angle.
What's the difference between me dead and me alive? There's a difference, right? It can't be the body since the body is, in death, as it was in life. Something gets taken away when we die and that's obviously our consciousness, our mind. So assuming a physicalist stance on the mind, if something physical gets taken away, it must have a physical effect, right?
A tried and tested method for checking physical effects is to measure mass which is a primary physical property.
So, we must measure the body's mass before and after death to detect physical changes in order to come to the conclusion that death is indeed a purely physical change.
Thus my equation with myself as an example:
My Body + My Mind (when alive) = My Body (when dead) = 80 Kg (my mass/weight)
Ergo,
My Mind = 0 Kg (my mind is immaterial)
As you can see, that the mind is different to the body follows from the difference between the living and dead, to wit the loss of consciousness (the mind) when one dies. No begging the question.
What's the difference between the mixer off and the mixer on? There's a difference, right? It can't be the mixer since the mixer is, when off, as it was when on. Something gets taken away when we turn it off and that's obviously the mixing. So assuming a physicalist stance on the mixing, if something physical gets taken away, it must have a physical effect, right?
Nah, a dead body is not the same as a living body, it's no longer alive.
- Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger
What if the mind is the brain, or vice versa? In this sense the mind weighs as much as the brain. By measuring the weight of your brain and nervous system, you are measuring the weight of your mind.
When I look at you I don't see a mind. I see a body with a brain. Does this mean that other minds don't exist?
Mind has a causal effect on the body, therefore the mind is physical. If not then how does a non-physical thing interact with a physical thing?
At the quantum level?
It is not the same, at least from a biological perspective. It can no longer grow, reproduce, or respond; and of course it decays. The possession of a mind may be one way to define life, but it is not universal one, and definitely not a physicalist one.
[quote=Steve Talbot, The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings] Think first of a living dog, then of a decomposing corpse. At the moment of death, all the living processes normally studied by the biologist rapidly disintegrate. The corpse remains subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry as the live dog, but now, with the cessation of life, we see those laws strictly in their own terms, without anything the life scientist is distinctively concerned about. The dramatic change in his descriptive language as he moves between the living and the dead tells us just about everything we need to know.
No biologist who had been speaking of the behavior of the living dog will now speak in the same way of the corpse’s “behavior.” Nor will he refer to certain physical changes in the corpse as reflexes, just as he will never mention the corpse’s responses to stimuli, or the functions of its organs, or the processes of development being undergone by the decomposing tissues.
Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary.
The corpse will not produce errors in chromosome replication or in any other processes, and neither will it attempt error correction or the repair of damaged parts. More generally, the ideas of injury and healing will be absent. Molecules will not recruit other molecules in order to achieve particular tasks. No structures will inherit features from parent structures in the way that daughter cells inherit traits or tendencies from their parents, and no one will cite the plasticity or context-dependence of the corpse’s adaptation to its environment.[/quote]
All of this is now pretty well understood by biology, but what exactly it is that animates is still an open question in my view. ‘Vital spirit’ there may not be, but the assertion of ‘vitality’ seems uncontroversial. And I don’t know if we know what imparts that.
Is the quantum level physical, non-physical, or something else?
When the brain is "on", its constantly sending chemical reactions and electricity all over the place. Matter is being lost and replaced by the food you've eaten. It is not a rock, but a battery zapping electricity around your entire body.
"the brain uses roughly 300 calories (a day)". https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/science/02qna.html#:~:text=Studies%20show%20that%20it%20is,brain%20uses%20roughly%20300%20calories.
So with that, we know that there is a physical mass that is consumed each day for you to have a mind. Once the mind leaves, so does the consumption of calories. Therefore according to your premise, the mind is indeed an expression of physicality. The mind is not physical like the firewood of a campfire, it is the flame itself.
What's the difference between a dead body and a living body?
The mind can't be the brain because when I die, my brain doesn't go anywhere but my consciousness (mind) is missing.
But, everything about a circulation can be measured physically - the flow rate, the physical appearance of the blood, the chemical content of the blood, etc. but can you measure thought - what is it's color? how much does each thought weigh?
Quoting Philosophim
See my reply to Daniel
If I'm correct, life/death is defined in terms of brain function given that materialism is true. The diagnosis of death requires, in most cases I suppose, the demonstration of permanent cessation of brain function with an electroencephalogram. The physical processes don't matter, do they? There is such a thing as a vegetative state in which the body can perform normal physical functions like growing, reproducing, eating, etc. but a person in this state lacks consciousness and is considered closer to being dead than alive.
What's the difference between a broken dishwasher and a functional dishwasher?
A dead body is one that is not alive, ya know, doing stuff that living things do.
Give me something more to go on than that...
It's not complicated, I don't think. What's the difference between a normal leg and a broken leg? One is whole, the other fractured. One holds weight, the other doesn't.
What's the difference between a living body and a dead body? A dead body by the definition of clinical death does not circulate blood or breathe. The same body can be alive one minute and dead the next, because of a change in its components.
There are two clear aspects to human life. 1. the body (sex, feeding, etc) and 2) the consciousness. What is the current medical definition of death?
If the circulation and respiration are functioning and the brain is not then?
If I give you a choice between my body and my consciousness, which would you say is me?
A straightforward question.
Once rhe brain is deprived of oxygen cell death occurs.
Then where does your consciousness go when you're asleep? And how does it come back when you wake up?
Quoting TheMadFool
When you ask how much each thought weighs or what is the colour of thought, you are asking how much each circulation weighs or what is the colour of circulation. In the case of blood circulation, you can measure its features (flow rate, pressure, cellular content, gaseous content, ionic content, protein content, etc) which, individually, are not the circulation of blood itself. Same with thought. Like blood circulation, thought is a process which occurs in a defined space (the brain or certain areas of the brain) and which is determined by the molecular properties of the medium in which it occurs (the brain or certain areas of the brain).
Too many cells in blood plasma and blood circulation is going to slow down; too many proteins and the same thing is going to happen. Too many cells in the brain (i.e., a tumour) and you are not going to be the normal you. Too much THC in your brain and you are not going to be the normal you, either; not enough oxygen in your brain and you will feel its effects. You have a stroke, blood gets inside areas of you brain where it should not be, a short circuit occurs, and you loose consciousness not because consciousness decided to go but because the conditions required for there to be consciousness are not there anymore.
That the self changes when the chemical composition of the brain changes I think is a strong indicator of the self's dependency on the brain and of the self's physicality.
When you die, oxygen stops flowing to the brain (the heart stops pumping blood). Oxygen is a requirement for the production of ATP, which is in turn required to maintain chemical gradients across cell membranes; these chemical gradients are then used to do work.
No oxygen, no ATP, no chemical gradients, no work. A cell does work to maintain a state of low entropy which is compatible with life. If a cell is unable to do work, entropy does its part. Decomposition of the body (or cells) is entropy in action. If the brain is unable to maintain the molecular conditions required to generate thought (unable to maintain their ordered state), thought does not occur (or deviates from normal).
The question is: why the state of entropy maintained by living cells allows life?
I am not a neurologist nor am I studying neurology (I haven't even finished my degree), so please take my words with caution. There's a book called Molecular Biology of the Cell (6th Edition) which I think is available for free online (maybe at the NCBI's website) which explains quite neatly a lot of the processes which maintain cells alive. I think that understanding these processes gives insight into phenomena such as the mind, free will, etc. There is also a book called Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach (7th Edition), which talks more about systems biology, and which might be easier to digest if one does not have a background in cell biology (I think you could also find it for free online). The books are very well written so I'd recommend anyone one to give them a look.
I think that's a relatively easy one Harry. The answer is more non-physical/something else. The atom has no real physical structure. Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter. Kind of like light energy.
Light is not [really] matter. Light is just light --- it has its own qualities. Light is made up of "things" called photons, and these photons can possess some of the properties of matter. For example, they are always moving, and when they move, they can exert a (usually very small) force on an object (just like moving matter can).
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=512#:~:text=Light%20is%20not%20matter.%20Light%20is%20just%20light,on%20an%20object%20%28just%20like%20moving%20matter%20can%29.
But there's a problem with this view. I find it hard to believe that each thought is associated with a particular weight or other physical characteristics of the circulation. I agree that the blood flow to the brain is variable but I have serious doubts that particular physical characteristics of this flow represents particular thoughts. Like you I'm not a neurologist myself but I can imagine a particular set of physical characteristics of brain circulation associated with more than one thought i.e. it can't be the properties of circulation that determine which thoughts are occurring inside a brain. :chin:
There lies the rub. The mind seems to be independent of the brain because when we sleep, the brain is still intact inside the head and yet we're not conscious. :chin:
What else do thoughts/minds depend on then?
Yet drugs and damage to the brain causes a change in consciousness.
Why do we need a brain then, or even a body?
When you look at others, why is the only way to perceive their mind is by observing their body?
Sums up your entire arguments in all of your most recent posts. Your confusion about the fact that what seems to you to be the case has no bearing at all on what actually is the case.
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that we don't need a body/brain. I guess I'd be happy with the view that the mind, although being associated with a physical brain, is some kind of pattern of brain activity - patterns are abstractions and are, in my humble opinion, not physical. For instance, the laws of nature, although patterns in the way matter interact, are themselves not physical, are they?
That said, I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around the notion of the mind being a pattern for the simple reason that patterns are not exactly all out there in the sense that it, to me, has a subjective component. Take the phenomenon of pareidolia (seeing patterns where none actually exist, in stuff that are actually random). I take this phenomenon as evidence of patterns not necessarily being an objective property of that in which they're perceived. This puts us in a peculiar position - the mind may not be a pattern of brain activity and yet it sees itself as one.
The mind depends on the molecular composition (chemical properties, absolute quantities, and ratios) of the brain, the relative position of the component molecules with respect to each other* (including those molecules which make cells), and the allowed/permitted** change in both the composition and relative position of such molecules.
*this describes their interactions, in a broad sense.
**there is a limit to how much the composition or the relative position of the molecules which make a brain can be changed. (AND THIS I THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF MINDS, THEIR LIMIT). What determines how much these features can change before the mind stops being that?
Off course, all this characteristics of the mind (the molecules, their composition, and their spatial organization inside the brain) are influenced by the environment external to the body. In addition, they are in constant change.
Every molecule in your brain is different/unique. Every molecule in your brain occupies a unique position in your brain at any given time (no molecule can occupy the space other molecule occupies). Every molecule in your brain does not occupy the same position relative to other molecules in your brain at two consecutive times (molecules are in constant motion). Since every molecule is in constant motion, the interactions of a given molecule change with time (a molecule will never have the same set of interactions). Assuming all molecules in the brain are directly involved in the generation of thoughts, a particular thought would be represented by a set of molecular spatial organizations (a set of molecular interactions). As the molecules assume the spatial organizations associated with a thought, a thought develops. For every thought, there is a particular set of molecular spatial organizations (two thoughts are never the same nor can a thought arise from a static/non-changing molecular spatial organization). The totality of molecular spatial organizations (the total set of molecular interactions) which occur throughout an individual's lifetime determines the totality of thoughts that an individual has. The total possible set of molecular spatial organizations depends on the molecules, their absolute quantities, their ratios, and environmental cues.
This makes no sense. If the brain is physical, then why wouldn't patterns of brain activity not be physical? What is the difference between physical and non-physical? Is the pattern of the TV show on your TV screen physical or not?
If pareidolia is false then patterns are objective properties of physical objects but then you'd have to believe this pattern is real and whatever it entails:
A real pattern on a pancake. What's the problem? Every pancake is unique- meaning they have unique patterns, just like fingerprints and neural wiring. Is the pattern on the tip of your fingers not physical?
Is this a real face (on Mars)?
I think all you need to do is show how a mind can exist independently of anything physical.
Be the first person ever to define matter
So when certain parts of the brain are damaged and it affects your ability to recognize faces, speak, etc., but when the whole brain dies you are able to rise off the physical brain and see Grandma and speak English?
At this juncture we must take note of the fact that in dualism, the mind is distinct from thoughts. Minds in dualism do the thinking and are not the thoughts themselves.
Since the consensus seems to be that patterns of brain activity are just thoughts, minds can't be brain patterns at all.
Of course one could then say that the brain is the mind - its pattern of activity representing individual thoughts. The problem with this physicalistic position is REM sleep, which somnologists have given the interesting name paradoxical sleep, a big clue in this puzzle.
[quote=wikipedia]REM sleep is "paradoxical" because of its similarities to wakefulness. Although the body is paralyzed, the brain acts somewhat awake, with cerebral neurons firing with the same overall intensity as in wakefulness[/quote]
REM sleep is a state in which the brain is as active as it is when we're awake and fully conscious but we're not conscious. If the mind is the brain then why aren't we conscious during REM sleep? After all brain activity in REM sleep resembles brain activity when awake. :chin:
Quoting Gregory
I only know the basic scientific definition of matter.
Quoting Daniel
In the case of the face on Mars, there is no pattern at all - there is no face on Mars and the face is entirely subjective.
Quoting Harry Hindu
See my reply to praxis.
The reason that the brain patterns are similar during REM and being awake is because you are dreaming. Where does dreaming take place - if not in your brain? When you are dreaming it is really difficult to tell the difference between dreaming and being awake, or being conscious. It is only after the fact that you realize that you were dreaming.
If the mind is not the thoughts, then what exactly is the mind and how would you know that it exists if not for some thought? "I think, therefore I am" is asserting that thinking is the evidence for the existence of the mind.
I'm mainly concerned about the brain activity being the same between awake and REM sleep states. If the mind is the brain, we should be conscious on both occasions but we're not.
I thought your concern was the matter of the mind being physical or not. I don't see the connection to dream sleep and being awake.
Have you heard of lucid dreaming?
To show that the mind is not physical, all you have to do is show how it can be independent of the physical. That will be difficult to show. It would be like showing that you can have a conversation with someone in a vacuum, and neither of you can read lips. Sound wave patterns are weightless but require the medium of air to carry them.
It seems there are two dimensions to this problem. There are thoughts and then there is consciousness. REM sleep (dreaming) clearly demonstrates that there can be thoughts without us being conscious/aware of them. However, this type of thinking is not what we usually mean by mind - self-awareness has a very big role in the concept of mind.
The fact that in REM sleep we're not conscious of ourselves, like we are when awake, means that the defining characteristic of mind, self-awareness, is missing in it. Ergo, this ability to recognize our own existence can't be a brain-activity phenomenon.
Quoting praxis
This, I've come to believe, is a self-refuting concept. If one is conscious, one can't be dreaming - imagining maybe but definitely not dreaming.
Read my reply to praxis
Your reply to Daniel did not answer my point at all. The mind is like a flame in a campfire. You do not measure it in terms of logs, you measure its heat and energy.
Yes, thoughts can be measured! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6644101/Machine-read-mind-convert-THOUGHTS-speech-developed-scientists.html#:~:text=A%20machine%20that%20can%20read,built%20and%20tested%20by%20scientists.&text=The%20pioneering%20system%20combines%20the,brain%20activity%20into%20intelligible%20sentences.
Again, you are looking at the logs of the fire and saying, "Where is the fire?" A living brain is zipping chemicals and electricity all over the place, its fire in motion. An unliving brain does not have this. Would you look at a pile of logs that did not have a fire and say, "See, we cannot measure the fire of this campfire!".
All measurement is a representation of matter into another medium of expression. I can look at a brain, I can then say "It weighs 20 lbs". I can then BE a brain. I can also read a brain.
These are all very real, physical, and observable things. Can you show otherwise?
For one thing, self-awareness isn't missing in REM sleep. When I'm flying in a dream, for instance, I know that it's me flying. The same neurons for self-awareness are firing awake or dreaming. Also, I don't believe that self-awareness is the defining characteristic of a mind.
Yes, fire is energy. And the mind is a result of electricity and chemical reactions zipping around the brain matter. A non-living mind does not have these measurable physical reactions and energy.
According to physics, matter and energy are interchangeable. Arguably, they are the same thing. Electricity for example is the zipping of electrons extremely quickly into adjacent atoms in an orderly fashion.
Our philosophy must be grounded first upon the knowledge of today. The men of centuries ago did the same. We cannot postulate ideas without first knowing what we can about our modern day truths of the world. It is a nice conjecture that the mind is somehow not physical, but everything in science shows us that the mind is very measurable, physical, and within this world.
Really? You remember your dreams. That seems to contradict the well known fact that to remember dreams one has to be woken up in the middle of it.
Quoting praxis
Then what's the defining characteristic of mind?
If the engine is running, but the gearstick is in neutral, is it a puzzle the car is not going anywhere?
Consciousness isn't something separate from the physical fact of being in the world. It is all about that way of being in the world. It is controlling a car in motion that makes one a driver, not merely sitting in the driver's seat.
When we are awake, the difference is that the brain has physical stimulation that it is responding to in terms of its "pattern fitting". There is a real world problem getting constantly solved.
Your Matrix simulation could only work as it mimics some kind of real physical stimulation, even if you have reduced that to winking LED lights in a set of VR googles, or whatever. And in a VR simulation, you change the view "realistically" by physically moving your head in space. A Matrix world is only convincing to the degree it provides this normal seeming level of interaction with its "physics".
So your arguments rely on your failure to be realistic about what is actually involved in a brain forming a working relationship with the world.
The whole point of the mind is to provide a way of regulating the physics of the world. And it does this by implementing a modelling interaction. Remove the physical half of the equation - as happens when the brain shuts off the normal flow of sensation from the senses at the brainstem level - and we get the confused states of sleep where the brain is just riffing off its own memory patterns.
It is revving the engine, stomping on the accelerator, for sure. But there is no physical response - no challenge of actually having to drive. And hence no feedback to structure the resulting states of experience.
Here is how thoughts are generally measured. https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/how-are-thoughts-measured/
Mri's and dopamine are one level. In studies, they'll ask a person a few questions, record when a person thinks an answer, then can repeat the process. From the first article I linked you:
"So his team turned to a computer algorithm known as a 'vocoder' that can synthesise speech after being trained on recordings of people talking.
Professor Mesgarani said: 'This is the same technology used by Amazon Echo and Apple Siri to give verbal responses to our questions.'
He taught it to interpret brain activity by teaming up with US neurosurgeon Dr Ashesh Mehta whose epileptic patients have allowed him to implant their brains with electrodes to find the source of their seizures.
Explained Prof Mesgarani: 'Working with Dr. Mehta, we asked epilepsy patients already undergoing brain surgery to listen to sentences spoken by different people, while we measured patterns of brain activity. These neural patterns trained the vocoder.'"
Feel free to go and read more. Its neat stuff.
You didn't answer my question. Right now I'm thinking about the brain. What are the physical properties of this thought of mine?
But that is not what I said. I said the mind is an informational model of the entropic world. It is a pattern that exists to the degree it can regulate that world as something "external" to it.
But by the same token, it only exists to the degree the world is actually being regulated. So without a physically effective impact, there is no consciousness happening.
Quoting TheMadFool
They would be the physical results of those thoughts (plus the general but small constant cost of keeping the brain running as the pattern generator).
So did a skyscraper get built on the corner lot? Some architect's vision had a physical impact on the world then.
Quoting TheMadFool
The thought results are their physical consequences. The thought process has its standard brain metabolic cost.
The only reason you see no physics here is because you refuse to look. Where is the evidence that thoughts aren't physical "at all" when they are "all about" information patterns that need to be able to manage the physics of the world in real-time?
So yes, there is a division. There is this biological thing of information regulating physical entropy flows.
But you are just re-running the old vitalist argument about living organisms being some great unphysical mystery.
Life and mind are the same kind of deal. One models the world it wants - the metabolic flows that constitute living - using the information held by genes. The other also models the world it wants - the thoughts that regulate the wider environment - using the information held by neurons.
I'm not sure what else to tell you sir. I've pointed to two articles which have shown physical properties we can track to measure thoughts.
Here is an in depth article on neurotransmiters, and how the brain functions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234149/
Now can we see your thoughts exactly as you do? Well, no. But that applies to anything. I cannot experience what it is to be a fire, or a duck, or a dog, but I can measure that they exist. Science has proven time and time again the chemical workings of a living brain. How it can be disrupted, damaged, improved, and affect a person's thoughts. If you're genuinely curious, google a few more articles afterwards. I'm not sure what else I can say on the matter. It is incontrovertible at this time in our scientific advancement that the active mind is a physical reality.
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting Philosophim
Those are physical correlates of thinking and not thoughts themselves.
I ask tne two of you again the simple question: what are the physical properties of thoughts?
I've answered your questions. If you want me to add further answers, you're going to have to do more then just repeat the same question.
You have only pointed to articles by scientists that correlate particular physical brain phenomena with thinking but you haven't demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that thoughts themselves are physical. Sorry.
The thoughts are causal. The productive interaction is what physically exists as "a self".
Quoting TheMadFool
You simply ask an incoherent question if your notion of physics is as limited as your notion of mind.
Do you think "physics" is the easy part of the problem here? There is a lot to unlearn on that score as well then.
You maybe correct but here's what I'd like you to do: List 4 things that are physical starting with 1. thought. What would your list look like? I'm curious.
Then what do you mean by "consciousness"?
1. Mind
2. The trajectory a water molecule makes in a drop of water. And the set of all possible trajectories.
3. The trajectory a planet follows around its star. And the set of all celestial trajectories.
4. The trajectory this comment follows to go from my screen to your screen. And all trajectories that information follows in the www*.
*edit: internet
You have only pointed to articles by scientists that correlate particular physical brain phenomena with thinking but you haven't demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that thoughts themselves are physical. Sorry.
Oh, is this just a semantics issue of what physical means? Physical is matter and energy (really the same thing). Thoughts are more on the energy and process side of things. If you mean your own personal experience of having a thought? That too is physical. You are a physical being and brain. If your brain is damaged, your thoughts are as well. We know there are certain areas of the brain that if damaged, prevent a person from hearing, seeing, or sensing in any way. Damage to the frontal lobe prevents higher level thought and awareness.
All of this is a physical result from physical things. This is the evidence before us. When I mean you'll need more than to just ask the same question, why don't you argue how thoughts are not physical, and give your evidence? How are they something different from matter and energy, when that is how we detect them, understand them, and the only substances we know of in the universe?
Why are you avoiding a simple question? I only asked you to provide 4 physical items that includes thoughts as one. :chin:
Quoting Daniel
You can measure the length of a trajectory. Can we do something similar with thoughts? :chin:
I did. You seem to have missed it. For your reference: Physical Properties Do thoughts possess any of these properties?
That's the million dollar question. Is it just thinking understood as data processing? Computers and flies can do that as inferrable from the way they handle data but we don't consider them conscious.
The only difference between humans, computers and flies seems to be that humans are self-aware while flies and computers don't seem to be. However, referring to Descartes, self-awareness is, at the end of the day, an inference - just an instance of data processing.
Is breathing material? How heavy is ones breathing?
Ok, so it IS semantics then. Using their vocabulary, thoughts are supervenient, just like their description of color. I've noted that thoughts are the combination of matter and energy, or physical and chemical processes according to their vocabulary.
2 physical properties of thought are:
1. Thoughts generate emissions of electricity and chemical reactions which can be monitored.
2. The intensity of waves localized in areas of the brain associating with types of thoughts.
But largely these are physical measurements of the chemical reaction. Thoughts generally happen when neurons receive electrical and chemical impulses. Again, thoughts are like a fire on logs. You need the logs, or the fire cannot burn. The fire itself is energy, or a chemical reaction. In your definition, physical and chemical reactions are still matter and energy, meaning what I'm saying is still holding true.
Most of the old questions of philosophy of mind has largely been outdated due to advancement in science. Neuroscience is where many of the questions about mind are now answered. If you want to have a serious discussion, or figure out new questions and answers about the mind, I would start there. Philosophy of mind is fun to examine as a precursor to neuroscience, but it is largely primitive and out of date with today's knowledge.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, if you were able to measure the trajectories that brain molecules follow inside the brain throughout a given thought, then I think these trajectories would not be the same for every thought and similar thoughts would be represented by similar trajectories (given that molecular composition is held constant). Thus, every thought would be represented by a set of molecular trajectories particular to such thought.
Keep in mind that I am oversimplifying the matter since the composition of the molecules and environmental factors would also determine the nature of thoughts. The set of possible molecular trajectories would change with molecular composition, and, for example, with internal temperature (which in turn changes throughout the day-night cycle).
Interesting theory of mind. You should work on it but I'm not really concerned about molecules in the brain. There's a difference between molecules and thoughts - the former, molecules, have physical properties like mass, charge, etc. but the latter, thoughts, don't. Reminds of the concept of category mistake - to think thoughts possess physical properties like mass, charge, etc. is to not know that they're completely different categories of things. Mind and matter, apples and oranges.
Ok. That's how it looks and I won't disagree but if given to categorize a list of items, say, "thoughts", "water", "iron", "number", you surely wouldn't put "thoughts" in the same class as "water" and "iron". The question is, why not?
Quoting Philosophim
:smile: :up:
The self is the "I" that the mind infers to from what is essentially the Cartesian I think, therefore I am.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well for one, they aren't supervenient. You would need to compare thoughts to sight, sound, fire, chemical reactions, etc. If you agree that thoughts are supervenient, then I think we are on some level of agreement. Do you have anything to add to the proposal of thoughts? Do you think they are something different from matter and energy? If so, what are they, and can you demonstrate this in some way?
I woke up last night in the middle of a dream. I was chitchating with an attractive woman while waiting for an impromptu salsa dance competition to start. At one point in the conversation she called me a creep because of something that I said. It was unjustified, I felt, though I don’t remember what I said, and upsetting. It seems pretty clear from that that I had a sense of self while dreaming, as well as an ego to bruise.
Not sure.
The self is a letter of the alphabet? Or are you saying that the self is but another thought? Are thoughts about stuff that aren"t thoughts?
I’ve explained why it is a poor question. But....
1) cognition
2) traffic
3) cities
4) weather
5) ecosystems
Every experience we have is mediated by judgement, and judgement can’t be said to be a physical process, as it comprises the relationship of ideas - if this, then that, because this is so, then that must be so. That has no analogy in the physical world, it is wholly in the domain of ideas.
Schopenhauer of course saw all of this, although since his day philosophy has regressed.
Actually your weight fluctuates all the time. You weigh around 80 kg when alive and when you die you weigh around 80 kg; so what does that show if you don't make the unwarranted and erroneous assumption that you weigh exactly 80 kg alive and dead?
Can you use "I" in a sentence Harry Hindu? If you can then what that "I" refers to is Harry HIndu's self. If you can't then that'd be interesting.
Quoting apokrisis
Thank you. Bear with me, I'm not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. You've listed these five items as being physical. Ergo, there must be a common thread that runs through all five of them that justifies them being listed under the same category, the physical. What is this common property that unites these five items?
Quoting Wayfarer
:up:
Do you accept them all as physical? Or even just the four listed after cognition?
I have no idea but if you ask me, I can, for instance, see everything listed after 1. cognition.
Then you haven't told me what the self is, only what refers to the self. Harry Hindu and TheMadFool are just another scribble that refers to some self. So I'll ask again, what is a self?
What does "purely physical" even mean? Are you saying that the universe is partly physical and partly something else? How can the physical interact with something else that isn't physical? This is the problem with dualism.
There is only one "substance". If someone were to assert that the "substance" is mental, then that would be projecting your mental properties onto the world, as if the world was like the mind, and is anthropomorphic.
If someone were to assert that the "substance" is physical, then what exactly does that mean when our perceptions of the world are not how the world is. Perceptions and the world are not the same thing. Perceptions are only part of the world. So perceiving "physical" objects would be similar to projecting your perceptions onto the world and also be anthropomorphic.
So which is it, or is it something else? I think that it is something else. I often use the terms, "information", "process" or "relationships" to refer to the primary "substance". And I think a proper explanation of consciousness will shed the light necessary to understand our minds' relationship with the world.
Maybe that is the problem - we are arguing about which scribble to use when referring to the primary "substance" (trivial), rather than trying to explain how minds and the world interact (not trivial).
I’m not sure I know either, but I’m pretty sure that to a physicalist, ‘the physical’ refers to the only real entities. That is what physicalism means. The most thorough physicalist I have interacted with, on another forum, said it is defined in terms of matter-energy-space-time which in his philosophy comprises everything that is real. Within that ensemble, the brain is an evolved organ and the mind an epiphenomenon of the brain. That is the view of mainstream materialists such as Daniel Dennett.
As to how perceptions can be mistaken, that is not a hard thing for a materialist to account for. It’s something like a misconfiguration or flaw in perception.
As to why I am arguing that nothing is purely physical, it is because I argue that whatever is received by the senses, is then incorporated or synthesised by the mind. The human brain is the most complex phenomenon known to science, with more neural connection than stars in the known universe (that’s not hyperbole). So the brain generates reality, or rather, the only reality that we will ever know. Although even that is wrong, because it’s not as if ‘the brain’ is one thing, and ‘reality’ is another. It is a seamless process of perception, apperception, judgement, and action. Within that matrix, ‘the physical’ has a specific meaning, but the matrix of conscious experience is not in itself physical - it is prior to any definition or judgement about what ‘the physical’ consists of.
As to how something non-physical can react with something physical - well, a dualist could say that is exactly what organisms are, this is why they are capable of spontaneous movement and have many other attributes that can’t be found in non organisms. Not that this means that ‘mind’ and ‘body’ can strictly be separated - that idea is more like a model or an idealisation. But let’s say the mind is what is capable of grasping meaning and initiating intentional action. That is compatible with Aristotelian (as distinct from Cartesian) dualism, in that it sees the mind (nous) as intellect.
Indeed. You're correct, if I catch your drift, about this whole self issue. The fluid nature of our persona precludes the identification of anything fixed and unchanging about us. Everything about us changes - bodies age, worldviews are discarded and new ones adopted - and the problem is that the notion of self is tied to something that remains constant throughout life.
However, and this seems critical, the self in the Cartesian sense, the "I" in "I think, therefore I am" is the "thinking thing" or "that which thinks". In this view, the self is simply the thinker - just as running requires a runner and speaking implies a speaker.
It looks like this thinker or thinking thing lacks properties that can give it a distinct identity i.e., if you don't mind me saying, the thinker in Harry Hindu is indistinugishable from, is identical to, the thinker in TheMadFool so long as we ignore mathematics. In a mathematical sense, you and I make two and ergo, we must be numerically distinguishable from each other. Right?
That Harry Hindu is not the same as TheMadFool is based not on the nature of thinking things/thinkers, which are indistinguishable, but on what is thought - the contents of our minds determines our identities as two different individuals, Harry Hindu and TheMadFool. Let's not forget to mention that the two of us are also physically distinct.
I think I went off on a tangent there but I think it's time to ask, what we mean by self?
I did accept, and I guess you believe it to be the case, that there's nothing that remains constant in our lives and if that's true it makes it impossible to find a referent for self - the same word/term can't apply to two different things and have the same meaning.
However, notice one thing - throughout our journey through life, there is something - the thinker - that's constant and unifies the sum total of a person's experience. Given that and that thinkers are mathematically distinct, I think it's not wrong to say that the thinker = the self. :chin:
You say the mind is not physical. When you say the mind, you can only be referring to two things, either the brain or consciousness. The brain is physical and by definition has mass. You can examine a brain, weigh it, etc. Consciousness is a process, more specifically the brain's process. A process has no mass.
Put another way, a wheel has mass. The motion of spin a wheel experiences has no mass.
Nothing you've stated refutes physicalism.
You say that we are different from each other both physically and in the contents of our minds. You also say that the contents of each mind determine its identity and that that which thinks has no distinct identity. Therefore, there is a mind, there is a that which thinks and there is a body, and all these make an individual. In addition, you say that that which thinks is common to all individuals; however, that the body and the mind are unique to each individual. Thus, an individual is made of a body which is unique to the individual, a mind which is also unique to the individual, and a that which thinks which is the same for all individuals. That is, there are many minds, many bodies, and only one that which things in the known universe. Is this interpretation of what you said correct?
So you have no idea if you would classify cities or the weather as physical phenomena?
Sounds legit.
You might think "zero" is used in mathematics all the time and it is "nothing", well, nothing is in relation to what is being quantified. If there are no attainable coins in someone's coin pouch, they have zero, but that doesn't mean there are zero coins, or that there is nothing to make the coins with, or that there isn't mass in relation to what a coin is. It just means there are zero coins from an arbitrated point of view of what is and isn't valuable.
Well, I would've liked to say "exactly" but then your last statement prevents me from doing that.
The mind/consciousness/psyche, whatever you want to call it, is a complex subject. Perhaps what I've been saying in this thread makes sense if we make the assumption that there's something, call it x, that does the thinking in us.
Yes, admittedly, this x could be the brain but how does one explain sleep/death? In both these states we have an intact brain but no consciousness - in sleep it's a temporary absence but in death it's permanent.
The reasonable response to the above question is to say that consciousness is just a process that occurs in the brain. All that's going on in sleep/death is the brain shutting down the putative process and we lose consciousness.
This is the right time to consider the nature of consciousness and we come to the realization that it deals exclusively with thoughts. Consciousness is all about thoughts - ideas/concepts - and thoughts are clearly not physical like brains, and neurons are.
The human body has, at any one time, multiple physical processes in action - the heart, the kidneys, etc. but all of them remain, so to speak, within the realm of the physical - blood flow, urine, etc. all physical. Given physicalism, how do we explain the peculiar fact of the immaterial/nonphysical nature of thoughts?
:smile: You're barking up the wrong tree.
Quantity is secondary to physicality. First there must exist something physical and quantity follows.
a conscious mind is a process, not an object for it to be disproven like so, just like a cake mixer being turned on is a process with electricity passing through it, all still falls under the physical realm.
Ok :up:
It’s complex, I agree. Your last paragraph here is interesting. Let’s separate sleep and death. In my eyes, during sleep you still possess consciousness, you’re just unaware of it. We say you’re “unconscious”. Death on the other hand is a matter of physical decay. You don’t possess consciousness nor the potentiality of consciousness because the physical brain decays. Science has not yet clearly identified what level of decay results in consciousness being unsustainable.
Using my previous wheel example, in sleep the wheel is still intact and CAN spin. In death, the wheel itself is no more, the ability for it to spin is no more. The physical state (brain / wheel) results in the process (consciousness / spin) being possible or not.
Quoting TheMadFool
I disagree with your premise here. We don’t actually know whether or not consciousness is physical. To say “thoughts are clearly not physical” seems like a stretch. It certainly appears non-physical but we may simply lack the understanding to describe it in physical terms (currently). As a species, we have overcome our lack of understanding regarding all sorts of topics (for example how one becomes sick through bacterial and viral infections). Given our (mostly recent) successful history of explaining previously misunderstood topics in physical terms, I see no compelling reason why consciousness could also not be explained in such terms.
Here's where the meat of the issue is: "it certainly appears non-physical".
What appears to us as physical or non-physical has no bearing on rational discourse. There are plenty of things that we interpret or wish to be that are wrong. Neuroscience has shown very clearly that the mind is tied to the brain, and is a result of its chemical processes. This isn't really a debate anymore. It doesn't matter what anything appears to be, when we have the facts and studies to show what it is.
Its like looking at the sun across the sky and saying, "Huh, the Sun goes around the Earth." By appearance, that's the only conclusion one can make. But we've studied it, gone into space, and realized that WE go around the Sun. Its an absolute shock to our common sense conclusion, but that is reality, not our personal perception of it.
Quoting avalon
We moved from Identity type theory to identity token theory. From identity token theory to functionalism. From functionalism to emergentism. We seem to be moving closer towards the mind not being material
I would argue at this time Alex that philosophy of mind has now been merged with neuroscience. The days of postulating on what a mind are without reference to science are now over. This is the natural course of philosophy. Philosophy asks questions about things we have no defined concept of until it can become a science. Mind is now science. Mind is a physical reality we can study and learn about in a lab. To say the mind is not physical, is to say it cannot be tested. I have cited a few articles that show very much, that thoughts can be read, memories can altered, and tested on.
But that could be misleading. How do you record information without something physical? How does functionality arise without a physical system of circuits? The mind itself may not be physical, but it always needs something physical to host it.
The mind can also be suspended. If you have a complete image of a consciousness, you could stop the functioning of the mind and then resume the functioning later. During that dormant period, did the mind cease to exist? Or was it still there?
But I can safely infer that if something isn't mass quantifiable, it can't be material.
Interesting but don't forget that light has other measurable physical properties like wavelength, frequency, intensity, pressure, etc. but thoughts don't.
Quoting ep3265
The fact that the mind lacks quantifiable (mathematical) properties is the proof of its immaterial nature. In other words the non-mathematical nature is the proof.
I think you're confusing thoughts with feelings.
Thoughts do have duration and intensity.
The separation of thoughts and feelings is similiar to the difference between slow running and fast running. Legit,but both still a type of movement running.
Duration/time is not a legitimate physical property. Physical Properties
Yes, but duration alone isn't a physical property.
All things have duration. And living beings perceive duration.
Quoting Asif
:chin:
The fact that it can't be measured shows that it doesn't exist, not that it does.
At this point, you've said there's no evidence for it existing outside of reality, so therefore it's an argument from assertion, and also an unfalsifiable claim.
What's your definition of mind? It can't be the same as mine.
You've said there's no physical representation of thought? Then what's neuroscience about? Why does the prefrontal cortex light up when people are figuring out what others think or feel?
What measuring tape are you using?
First off, my post was a misstep. I thought physicalism implied that mind, itself, must be material. It doesn't actually - the mind is just the functional aspect of, as a physicalist would put it, the the brain. In this view, the mind is just the brain doing its thing and needn't have mass.
However, it can be directly appreciated that thoughts are not physical, not even in the sense that light/energy is for thoughts are not measurable in the same way as light/energy is. At the very least, thoughts are, if you insist they're physical, are in a different category of physical than, say, a block of concrete or light or energy.
It may be true that there are physical correlates to thoughts e.g. activity in neurons and synapses and whatnot, these being measurable with instruments but that doesn't diminish the fact that thoughts are, as evidenced by experiencing them, not the same as what are familiar to us as physical. Even if it were possible to exactly match each thought to something physical in the brain, it would still be true that what's directly perceivable in thinking/thoughts is, unquestionably, nonphysical.
Good point but that's presupposing physicalism.
That being said, I don't 'believe' that anything exists or can be discussed which is not a direct result of some physical process, and physically linked, physically dependent in some way.
Quoting Asif
No, if it can't be measured using mathematics, then using mathematics to prove its existence isn't going to work. I get what you mean and I will retract my statement of lack of measurement being reason for nonexistence.
Quoting TheMadFool
Good point.
However, using mathematics to prove something non-mathematical isn't going to solve your problem.
The nonmathematical (unquantifiable) nature of mind is the proof.
1. All physical things are quantifiable (mathematical) things
Ergo,
2. All non-quantifiable things are nonphysical things
3. All minds are non-quantifiable things
Ergo
4. All minds are nonphysical things
I wouldn't necessarily assert that, but sure.
Quoting TheMadFool
I definitely disagree with this premise. You mean to tell me we cannot quantify the firing of neurons, or the lighting up of the brain? These are clearly linked to thoughts correct?
What about color? Can we quantify color? Actually, yes. We can show which parts of the brain light up when one color is shown. We can also take a biometric look at the lenses associated with the eyes.
My stating of it being "non-quantifiable" is using your definition of mind. We can quantify "thoughts", but you and I are committing an equivocation fallacy. Mind is the thoughts and the brain matter, as well as the neurons and perception of the host, from my definition. You're using thoughts as your metric, but aren't thoughts created in conjunction with brain matter? Aren't thoughts ACTUALLY brain matter?
My question, I guess, is what is your definition of mind?
Are you thinking about something right now?
Of course you are.
Kindly quantify whatever it is that you're thinking about?
Note that I'm not denying the reality of physical correlates like nueronal activation that can be quantified; what I'm asking for is some physical interpretation of thought itself.
Information cannot be destroyed. If, given we know in which way the brain interpreted information, then the physical representation can therefore be translated to us. Feelings, factual information, philosophical thoughts, all can be interpreted to an experience in some sense.
Simply because we lack a tool of which to interpret feelings to another's experience, doesn't therefore mean it is outside our universe. It just means we don't know how to quantify qualities, or we know how to quantify it, but not quantify it to a universal metric, then reinterpret it to someone's personal experience.
Agreed!
This suggests, rather strongly, that the entirety of existence is interpretive. And interpretation applies as much to human science as every other aspect of human perception. Since everything is a product of interpretation, how can we presume that ANYTHING is absolute?
“Evidence” and subsequent “inductive reasoning” are dependent upon perception, even if apparatus is used (we have to perceive what the equipment tells us). Everything EVER recorded by humans had to have been as such, so quantity is irrelevant. Still, our reasoning certainly has value if only to exercise our capacity to think.
However, unless thought creates, thinking alone cannot reveal to us what may or may not be absolute. It is merely a guess. Again, to paraphrase Obi Wan, “Your perceptions can deceive you. Don’t trust them”.
Huh? Can the same not be said for a stack of dominos. They all weigh the same together but when ordered a certain way they all fall on top of each other and can cause a chain reaction that could result in turning on a switch or whatever.
Unless you're going to get into the Achilles/Tortoise idea that action is not physical/quantifiable I can't see how it's true.
Quoting ep3265
The mind could be the brain so no issue there with physicalism. However, thoughts are evidently very different to brains - we can't touch them, we can't weigh them, we can't measure their dimensions, and so on.
There are two kinds of the physical - matter and waves - we have to take into account. There's matter, things like the brain, which has mass (and occupies space) - thoughts don't have mass so, that's that. Then there are waves, which are considered physical like light or electromagnetic waves but are massless but the difference between waves and thoughts is that the former are measurable in terms of frequency, wavelength, etc. and the latter, thoughts, have no (known) similarly quantifiable properties.
Read above
What about brainwaves?
Define brainwaves.
Neural oscillations, like alpha, beta, gamma, delta and then you have evoked potentials. These seem describable as a continuous wave form.
“The only argument for the validity of inductive reasoning assumes what is to be established, and is thus logically not valid.”
-Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, physics professors and co-authors of “Quantum Enigma”
The experience is generated by a physical thing and it exist. I don’t know if you can call it physical or not. Maybe it’s ok to say it’s not physical but it is sustained by the physical things. I don’t see how it can survive outside a physical world I can’t even imagine such a possibility.