What God is to the Universe is what your mind is to your body

[bennyboy]

You're going to need to get sound propositions from -something-, though, if you insist that we're having a rational discussion.  I use the word seem to allow for us being wrong, but the possibility that we might be is not a sufficient demonstration that -we are-.  Particularly in light of what you were responding to with those comments.

I don't think you can distinguish between "seems" and "fits into my world view." Let's start with how it seems there's an objective universe, how it seems some objects have mind as I do, how it seems that people experience as I do. But why does it seem that way? If I poke a person's brain with an electrode, he/she might say something like, "Hmmmmm, I smell smoke." This is our entire criteria for determining that we are studying a system with mind: that it makes a smiley face when we think it should smile, and a pouty face when we think it should be sad.

That's fine, if you are trying to determine if something is acceptably human enough to go bowling with. It's does not serve as very good evidence for what physical systems do/do not have anything like a mind.

 

Look, my response to the question at hand is honest and straightforward: we do not know what allows for qualia, and cannot therefore say whether it supervenes on the brain, or on more simple systems which need not be so organized as the brain.  Conflating X-ology with X-ogony is a pretty fundamental error in logic, but this is much how these arguments go: "We study the brain and the mind, and stuff happens, so the brain creates (or simply is) mind.  So far, that's how it seems to be."

This is a horrible misapplication of concept  of evidence.

Your question may be honest, but it's neither straightforward nor rational....and I'm not going to listen to someone who calls nuerology "brainwaving" lecture -anyone- about a misapplication of the concept of evidence.  The question of what allows for qualia, and the question of a full description of qualia...are simply not the same question.    The ability of matter to interact is sufficient to -allow- for qualia...even if our qualia is somehow created or expressed some other way.  Further...if there's some point at which you expect -anyone- to exceed what we do know and can infer...from evidence, and just start making shit up to satisfy you....or if you think that someones inability to satisfy you regarding the one is meaningful,  relevant to the other, or helps you to establish some position of your own....you've totally lost your shit.  

Stop saying I call neurology "brainwaving." I do not. Neurology is not the science of establishing the details of psychogony, and does not / cannot say at what level of organization the elements of mind supervene. I've already said that neuropsychology is very useful, and tells us a lot about how the brain is involved in our qualitative experiences.

What it does NOT do is say where mind comes from, why there is such a thing, why it supervenes somewhere/somehow in the brain. If I'm wrong about that, then go ahead to imright.com, and provide links or studies in which neuropsychologists attempt to answer philosophical questions using science. Otherwise, you are not only brainwaving but appealing to the authority of scientists whose studies don't address the issues of mind in the way you are pretending they do.

You talk about things seeming a certain way, about "best evidence" etc. etc. Fine. Explain why they seem that way. Produce your evidence.

See, right now, I'm agnostic. I consider IIT a perfectly valid theory, and panpsychism a perfectly valid theory, and I see the merits in both physical monism, idealistic monism, and even pluralism. But you are skewed toward a particular view of psychogony, and I do not think your evidence for that view is sufficient.