(June 1, 2012 at 12:37 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(June 1, 2012 at 8:10 am)StatCrux Wrote: Where is the physical point of attachment between thoughts and the brain?

Where is the physical point of attachment between speed and a car?

Erm, that's my point..There isn't one...It was the other party that claimed speed was attached to the car, thats why the analogy is false, unless you concede that thoughts have no physical attachment to the brain.

Speed is an abstract concept used to describe the physical behavior of the car, and thought is an abstract concept used to describe physical behavior of the brain.

Neither speed nor though have material presence because they are CONCEPTS describing behavior of material objects, not because they exist in some for of a-material panspeedfreak dimension nor some pan psychic existence without existence.

Got it? I suppose it is too much to expect a person without a brain to grasp by analogy a concept about the brain.

(June 1, 2012 at 1:00 pm)StatCrux Wrote:

(June 1, 2012 at 12:37 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Where is the physical point of attachment between speed and a car?

Erm, that's my point..There isn't one...It was the other party that claimed speed was attached to the car, thats why the analogy is false, unless you concede that thoughts have no physical attachment to the brain.

The analogy is fine. Speed is 'attached' to the whole car, not any particular part of it. Thoughts are 'attached' to the whole brain (or at least many parts of it), not to one part in particular.

(June 1, 2012 at 1:03 pm)Chuck Wrote: thought is an abstract concept used to describe physical behavior of the brain.

Don't you get it? The car does not somehow contain speed of have an attachment to it. You are claiming that thought is contained or somehow attached to the brain. If you are claiming that the relationship of speed to the car is analogous to the relationship of thought to the brain, it follows that thought is not contained in the brain just as speed is not contained in the car.

I see you would be on thin ice whenever the concept of "concept" is broached.

(June 1, 2012 at 3:09 pm)Chuck Wrote: I see you would be on thin ice whenever the concept of "concept" is broached.

Thought is an abstract concept

So are concepts physical in nature? You tell me following your own logic,

Thought = abstract concept, a = b
abstract concept = physical or non-physical (you choose) b = c

therefore it follows

thought = physical or non-physical (you choose) a = c

You are not even bark up a tree, much less the right tree.

Responces to Specific People:

(May 31, 2012 at 9:37 pm)FallentoReason Wrote: …isn't the memory of your grandmother physical in the sense that the memory has been stored…So is your point beyond that and you're asking how the brain effectively makes use of these neurons and physical data to experience consciousness?

Basicly yes, and more specificly how a materialist perspective allows it. What I offer is not a solution, but rather a critique of the dominant view expressed on AF. My contention is this. Materialism, as a paradigm, has no place for mental phenomena. I further state that it cannot even justify or support ideas like emergence.

(June 1, 2012 at 1:01 am)Tempus Wrote: You're saying that view that the mind is the brain, in the sense of it being physically identical to the brain, is flawed, right? I don't currently agree with the sentiment either; I don't see thoughts as being physically represented in the sense that they can be damaged, rather that the ability to produce them can be damaged…

My OP is a critique of materialist theories of consciousness. I do not doubt that minds and brains are intimately related. My point is that describing mental phenonmena as a purely physical processes is incomplete.

(June 1, 2012 at 3:35 am)Panglossian Wrote: The mind is a product of the brain. Nobody's claiming them to be the same object.[emphais added]

A product is a physical thing. Show me this product.

(June 1, 2012 at 7:00 am)Brian37 Wrote: …We are nothing but our brains in motion… they might as well argue that a hurricane can be separated from the atmosphere. IT IS A STUPID ARGUMENT… once our brain dies, we die….Woo is woo is woo.

Agreed. There is no free lunch. Woo is woo. I am merely showing you the woo to which you are willfully blind. Nor am I arguing that consciousness self-awareness is separate from the brain. It may or may not be.You are claiming that physical processes are the same as mental processes. The properties of one are the properties of the other. If you limit reality to four fundamental forces and their associated properties you have nothing out of which to build mental properties. Your brain=you statement fails.

(June 1, 2012 at 8:17 am)Bravo Wrote: If this is a way to try and demonstrate the existence of the soul I think is a wrong path.

No one is trying to prove the existence of soul or an afterlife, at least I’m not. Just as there are threads in which atheists argue that God is illogical, here I assert that a purely physical basis for consciousness and subjective experience has no explanitory capacity. It’s an empty theory. Materialists bear the burden of proof for showing causation or some other type of relationship distinguishes between sentient objects and non-sentient ones.

(June 1, 2012 at 8:28 am)StatCrux Wrote: …whether materialism or dualism is true etc.

Dualism suffers from the same problem. How can a non-material spiritual substances interact with physical substances? Some kind of interface between the two is needed.

(June 1, 2012 at 11:08 am)Ace Otana Wrote: (Gif image of man slapping head)…You know, there are times where I've been tempted to just add every religious nut to ignore.

No one is stopping you from failing to examine the logical conclutions of your philosophy. Bye. Bye.

(June 1, 2012 at 12:53 pm)apophenia Wrote: It's over when he refuses to justify his initial assertion, effectively making his argument vacuous, and continues to blather on with what is an obvious example of the fallacy of division

Learn to read more carefully. I carefully avoided this fallacy by introducing scale. The fallacy presented in the Wikipedia article prevents a very ill-defined concept of thinking that fails to distinguish between high order mental phenomena, like memory, and lower levels like sensation.

(June 1, 2012 at 12:53 pm)apophenia Wrote: Like a creationist with nothing to say, he simply repeats prior errors without correction, and refuses to answer basic questions.

The error that continues to be repeated is mind=brain state, mind=brain state, mind=brain state. My critique still stands.

(June 1, 2012 at 12:18 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Well here is an article where scientists using MRIs read thoughts by looking at their PHYSICAL PROPERTIES.

So where exactly in this observed process does subjective experiece happen as compared to other observable brain states not associated with subjective experiences?

(June 1, 2012 at 3:40 pm)Chuck Wrote: You are not even bark up a tree, much less the right tree.

The problem is that you're equating the concept of thought with the process of thought. Going back to the analogy, the process of thought cannot be seen in same way as speed with a car, speed is not a process occurring in the car.

(June 1, 2012 at 3:40 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Bye. Bye.

Bye bye to you to.

*Adds to ignore*