RE: Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist
September 15, 2015 at 11:15 pm
(This post was last modified: September 15, 2015 at 11:27 pm by bennyboy.)
(September 15, 2015 at 10:42 pm)Rational AKD Wrote: so do you deny that we can't use information from our experience to explain how and why we are able to experience?
^
This is the essence of the problem of addressing mind in a physicalist world view. 100% of things we know about, including the physical universe, are known only through mind. And so physicalists have three choices:
1) select question-begging assumptions (I have a mind, so that thing with 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes and a brain, named "John," must have a mind too; therefore brain study = mind study);
2) fail due to circularity (I know the mind comes from the brain, because we've messed with brains and it changes mental function. I know brains are real because I can see them and think about them. . . with my mind)
3) completely redefine non-physicalist terms in physicalist terminology: ("Mind is the ability for a system to interact with the environment," for example, and then ask for "evidence" that it is anything else-- the caveat being that descriptions of subjective experience, not being sharable, do not count as evidence. This appeal to evidence therefore amounts to "physically show me the thing that you are arguing is not physical")
