The Brain=Mind Fallacy
May 31, 2012 at 4:03 pm
(This post was last modified: May 31, 2012 at 4:07 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Most of the atheists on this forum make a habit of dodging their burden of proof when it comes to defending the material basis for subjective experiences.
The typical atheist claim is that material processes, at the level of classical physics, i.e. elecro-chemical reations, produce non-physical subjective experiences. That is a very extraordinary, though common, claim. The theory that subjective experience = brain state is so woefully inadequate as to be on the same level as creationism. And here is why.
Mental phenomena have no mass or volume, so whatever is happening, must be happening outside of classical physics. Explaining consciousness as an emergent property of matter at the scale of classical physics defies logic. The most common example of emergence is the relationship between a car and its parts. Drivability for example is a property of the car but not any of the parts. This analogy is flawed. First, it only describes a functional relationship. Functional relationships describe what thoughts do, not what a thoughts are, how they feel, or why they occur at all. Second, a car shares basic physical properties with its parts. Parts respond to heat and collisions in the same way that the car as a whole does. Not so with brain matter and thought. Although they are functionally related, what we call mind and the brain have no shared physical properties. Physical trauma to the brain may alter the contents of consciousness, but it doesn’t make any sense to describe a thought as being physically damaged. For example, you could dye the brain green and it wouldn't make the thoughts green.
In previous threads I have defended a panpsychic philosophy. However, this time I want to see you, materialist atheist, defend the claim that mental experiences reduce to physical processes.
The typical atheist claim is that material processes, at the level of classical physics, i.e. elecro-chemical reations, produce non-physical subjective experiences. That is a very extraordinary, though common, claim. The theory that subjective experience = brain state is so woefully inadequate as to be on the same level as creationism. And here is why.
Mental phenomena have no mass or volume, so whatever is happening, must be happening outside of classical physics. Explaining consciousness as an emergent property of matter at the scale of classical physics defies logic. The most common example of emergence is the relationship between a car and its parts. Drivability for example is a property of the car but not any of the parts. This analogy is flawed. First, it only describes a functional relationship. Functional relationships describe what thoughts do, not what a thoughts are, how they feel, or why they occur at all. Second, a car shares basic physical properties with its parts. Parts respond to heat and collisions in the same way that the car as a whole does. Not so with brain matter and thought. Although they are functionally related, what we call mind and the brain have no shared physical properties. Physical trauma to the brain may alter the contents of consciousness, but it doesn’t make any sense to describe a thought as being physically damaged. For example, you could dye the brain green and it wouldn't make the thoughts green.
In previous threads I have defended a panpsychic philosophy. However, this time I want to see you, materialist atheist, defend the claim that mental experiences reduce to physical processes.
