Mind is the brain?

[ignoramus]

Benny boy, I keep saying that it's all part of the sandbox wall algorithm, but nobody believes me, except Rob of course...
He's a smart guy, that Rob....

[The Atheist]

Yeh.  To be honest, modern physics has a lot to do with my agnosticism.  I mean, I "know" my desk is 99.999999% empty space, and that .0000000001% is so mysterious.  Then you look at double-slit experiments, read a little about entanglement, and what?  I think a lot of people just spout the stuff out as rote memory without thinking about it: "A photon is a particle with no volume or rest mass."  Those words make sense until you try to imagine what they mean.

Obviously, you're the physics expert, and maybe my IQ just isn't up to the job of modern physics, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the Universe is run by Loki, and that reality is constantly fucking with us.

Maybe we should all be solipsists.

[LadyForCamus]

Rob! The Atheist is calling youuuuu! [emoji41]

[bennyboy]

Maybe we should all be solipsists.

What's this "we" stuff, voice-in-my-head?

[Mudhammam]

Maybe we should all be solipsists.

What's this "we" stuff, voice-in-my-head?

"We" is just a different order of "I" ... I mean "I" who what?

[chasbanner]

Solipsism is grand but how do you deal with the world until you find the big red "end simulation" button?

[bennyboy]

Solipsism is grand but how do you deal with the world until you find the big red "end simulation" button?

Mutter to yourself a lot and masturbate on buses.

[little_monkey]

So it seems you're basically saying what I'm saying with different words. Remind me why we disagree?

I think the difference is in what assumptions we make, and the degree to which we are willing to extend them.  I'd say I'm at one end-- I'm very suspicious of extending givens about mind into general rules, especially at the scientific level-- it smacks of begging the question.  You're in the middle it seems-- acknowledging the philosophical difficulties but asking what else we are going to do if we want to move forward in a sensible way.  Rhythm's at the other end-- he's willing to make philosophical assumptions about mind based on a computational model, and define terms in such a way that extending them into non-human systems is not only acceptable, but pretty much a given.

That science is in its infancy. It's like at the time of Galileo running his inclined plane experiments. To most people, that might have looked like either childish, useless or profaned. Yet Galileo put physics on the map. And as a result,  here we are today capable of communicating from the ends of the world, as if that technology always existed.

[bennyboy]

It's a little different, since we're talking about subjective experience. Maybe we will discover that the mind is a kind of field and we can manipulate that field directly or create one electronically or something. But the philosophical difficulties of studying mind are much harder, IMO, than those in starting astronomy or physics.

That being said, there has been a lot of very interesting science going on around mind in the last 20 years, so I certainly don't want you guys to think I don't value that. The problem I have is when it comes to assertions about exactly what causes mind and why-- I don't find any current views, physical or otherwise, very convincing.

[Angrboda]

That being said, there has been a lot of very interesting science going on around mind in the last 20 years, so I certainly don't want you guys to think I don't value that.  The problem I have is when it comes to assertions about exactly what causes mind and why-- I don't find any current views, physical or otherwise, very convincing.

I think the consensus that the mind is the brain is more of a pragmatic result than a theoretical one. We assign the identity because for the most part it works as an explanation of the phenomenon, including its evolution, whereas most other theories are non-starters. It doesn't mean we couldn't be wrong, but I think you hold the mind-brain paradigm to an unusually high standard of evidence. Things like the closure of induction and the philosophical understanding of the link between cause and effect pose similarly insurmountable hurdles, yet I don't think you place those problems in the same category. In short, I think you make an exception of the mind-brain problem in your standards.