Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[LadyForCamus]

I intend to be clear, not annoying (this time).

Jackson’s thought problem tacitly appeals to Leibnitz’s law, “The Identity of Indiscernables.” Basically, if someone can say something about one thing that cannot be said about the other, then those two things are not identical. Everything true of Clemens is also true of Twain, hence they are identical. If brain and mind are identical then every true statement about the physical system of the brain is true about the mental experiences and vice versa. (Brain is a Clemens. Mind is a Twain.)

Thank you for taking the time to reform your response for me. You could have just as easily said "if she's too thick to figure it out, then forget it." I appreciate it. [emoji41]

I understand -why- you are trying to apply the "identity of indiscernibles" to the brain and mind, and to the hypothesis of Mary's Room, but I think your application here is contrived in that you are arbitrarily separating the human brain from its biological function (of generating consciousness) for the purpose of being able to hold them up next to each other and say, "look! They are different! The brain is not the same as the mind! There must be a metaphysical explanation!"

But we could do this with -any- organ in the human body. Let's take the human pancreas, and the insulin it produces as its biological function. All the true statements we can say about the human pancreas are not all true statements we can say about insulin, and vise versa. ...So...what? What's the point exactly? That insulin and the pancreas are two distinct things? Well, of course they are. This is not revelatory in any way. Maybe scientists haven't yet mapped out every detail about how the brain generates consciousness, but to declare it "metaphysical" on that count is an argument from ignorance. I don't understand why you think sensory/sensual experience is NOT a physical process, or how you could ever possibly justify that point of view.

A physical reduction would mean that a complete description of something’s material composition and observable changes would exhaust all possible knowledge about that thing. Jackson’s initial claim was that conscious experiences are not identical to physical facts because a complete knowledge of the physical facts associated with consciousness does not include knowledge of what it is like to experience consciousness. To me, it shows that mental properties are not identical to brain states. This not to say that mental properties and physical brain states can exist independently, only that the existence of each should be considered distinct.

Sure, and a human kidney is distinct from the urine it produces, but it's not magic, it's biology. And by the way, Jackson later reneged on his conclusions regarding the non-physical knowledge Mary supposedly learned, and declared the set up of his thought experiment flawed.