(July 5, 2013 at 10:10 am)bennyboy Wrote:It is a weird universe.... but the universe would be there, even if no minds were in it...(July 5, 2013 at 5:04 am)pocaracas Wrote: Why do ask a why question here?I ask why because all the other parts of physics that I know about are interrelated: if you remove one of them, the whole thing crumbles. However, mind neither contributes to, nor at least on a subjective level, is contributed to by, the rest of the mechanical model.
Had you asked a how question, how brain function is experienced as sentience, I'd reply with something along the lines of highly complex neural network, bla bla bla... we can't determine that with present tools bla bla bla...
But you ask "why"...
And a why in here, presupposes that some entity had some reason to do it like that... you can see where such a question leads, right?
It's a weird universe in which something so unnecessary is also so important.
(July 5, 2013 at 10:10 am)bennyboy Wrote:Yes, it's also what I said before: no one has ever measured a mind, an energy whatnot flowing independently from the brain.(July 4, 2013 at 10:19 pm)bennyboy Wrote: No brain scan has detected the existence of mind, either. You show me a magic Mind-o-meter 2000 that beeps when it detects "mind," and I'll show you a machine that measures brain function, and accepts the philosophical assumption that where function X occurs, mind has occured.Quote:fMRI.Exactly as I said. No mind is being measured here. We aren't measuring sentience. We are measuring blood flow in the brain. It is a philosophical choice that physical monists make in equating them, and then saying: "Sure we are measuring sentience. See, look at all that blood flow."
What is measured is a brain working. And it works differently when the person is doing different tasks. So your mind is then correlated with brain activity.
(July 5, 2013 at 10:10 am)bennyboy Wrote:Quote:That's why, if you lose a piece of the brain, you lose a piece of your mind, right?...Nobody denies that the mind is supervenient on the brain (unless we get into idealism, solipsism, etc), or that there's a connection between brain function and mind. What is in dispute is whether it's possible to show that mind is ONLY brain function, and is therefore deterministic (assuming that a physical monism must be deterministic, which isn't guaranteed), or whether mind actually contributes something that pure mechanism can't. And if mind does NOT contribute something beyond pure mechanism, then why does it exist?
OH, so you want to postulate that mind is brain activity and something else?
Feel free to do so... but do bear in mind that there's no evidence to support it.... only wishful thinking... and since we're wishing for it, I'd like my mind to do some magic! Telekinesis, teletransport, etc...
Why does a mind exist, when it's just electrical wiring? Because you need high-order functionality to interpret the world, evade predators, mate, eat, survive...
Don't you think you'd be a bit overwhelmed if you had to somehow keep track of each and every neuron firing in your brain?
