The Brain=Mind Fallacy

[Neo-Scholastic]

Why do you assume those experiences are non-physical?

This is a burden of proof challenge. The materialist must justify the reduction.

… electromagnetism, also have no mass or volume and still lie within classical physics… [&]…Magnetism in this case is an emergent property.

Electro-magnetism is a fundamental force, like gravity, and the weak and strong interactions. It was already present, just manifest in a stronger, more measurable form. The materialist claim is that something not previously present, qualia, emerges out of thin air under certain conditions. That is the extraordinary claim. Is some kind of qualia already present in a light bulb and that we only become aware of its presence in complex aggregates like brains? If not, where did it come from and when?

…giving an analogy [car and parts] and then showing the analogy to be false actually says nothing about the actual position?...All you have done here is show that why the analogy is not applicable. You have not given a reason as to why that position is incorrect in itself.

Actually I borrowed the analogy you used elsewhere to present the idea of emergence (sorry, I should have given you a hat tip). Showing that the analogy does not hold shows that emergence is not a viable option for materialism

… What you are ignoring is the distinction between physical and conceptual. "Thought" is a word denoting and describing a particular process - a mechanism.

Thought is a concept a thought is the thing to which the concept applies. The word can be used as both a noun and a verb. You want to confine thought to a function. Functions are indeed descriptions of a process. The job of the materialist is to justify the belief that some physical functions have qualia and while others do not.

… Even if one physical process giving rise to the mechanism is damaged, mechanism itself is still not damaged - it simply ceases to exist.

Functions, like motor skills, can cease. That is not the issue. Not all brain function are associated with qualia. Many are unconscious. If the ability to experience qualia is a function, then what is the difference between a qualia function and a non-qualia function? Within the materialist paradigm, why is it reasonable to assume that brain states give rise to qualia when only some do and some do not.

… Your error here is thinking that just because it reduces to physical processes, it can be described by the sum of its parts.

You have not shown that it reduces to physical processes although I can accept the idea that if thought is a physical process technological advances may be able to explain it. But there is no place to look. The real error is trying to insert a very real and visceral feature of reality into a paradigm (materialism) that has no place for it.

BTW to the mockers, threads end when people stop posting. Brian is a moron because he wants the thread to end yet keeps posting. I still see value in the thread and continue to post. My posting is consistent with my desire. His is not. Your failure to understand that basic distinction makes you just as stupid as he is.