(March 14, 2012 at 9:22 am)Rhythm Wrote: I'm not searching for entity within, am I? I am accepting that the adder is the entity. Again, this sort of argument is precisely why I am frustrated. "You" are all of the things which comprise you (speaking generally). Toenails to split ends. They are all natural, all material, and in each and every part, completely in thrall to determinism as far as we can tell in every particular. Now what? Is there some particular that you feel has been left out, has some part of us escaped what no other part of us has, is some part of us, this "entity" separate from the rest? Over, above, or around those processes which constrain the rest. Care to demonstrate which part? How this might be accomplished? Perhaps even though each and every part can be shown to act in accordance to these laws that we have described, the whole is somehow able to transcend these laws? Where? When? How?
The idea of the brain being the "self", specifically when we refer to our thoughts is not the product of fuzzy thinking, and definitely doesn't lead us to souls or spirits. It is the product of observation, experimentation, and replication. It is one of the largest factors that went into making the idea of a soul, or spirit untenable, so I'm not entirely sure why you would choose to blather on about such a hard won insight as being essentially interchangeable with superstition. I'm guessing that there is something else attached that you would like to believe in which would severely compromised by these, demonstrable, insights.
I don't think that I have found a single part of this argument which is inconsistent with my beliefs except for the bolded part. If you look back, this was the content of my argument while replying to apophenia's comment about simply equating a human being to a brain and hand-waving it away. You entered the discussion when you misunderstood the point of my analogy as referring to complexity rather than emergent entity.
