RE: Mind is the brain?
March 14, 2016 at 7:27 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2016 at 7:36 am by bennyboy.)
(March 13, 2016 at 7:46 pm)mh.brewer Wrote:(March 13, 2016 at 3:35 pm)bennyboy Wrote: You are stating as fact something which you assume. Tell me, by what criteria will you establish an actually sentient being from a philosophical zombie?
Before you tell me that mind is altered, you have to tell me how you know that there IS a mind to be altered. Cuz I say it can't be done.
Quote from you: " Qualia are the "what it's like" of experience-- what it's like to taste pineapple, for example, cannot be explained by any observations outside the direct experience of tasting pineapple."
So, have a person eat a pineapple for the first time (removing every other sense beside taste) and have them describe the "what it's like". Then (hypothetically) destroy the portion of the brain primarily responsible for taste. Have them eat pineapple again and get the description. The "what it's like" will have changed. This is seen in brain injury victims. Loss of taste, smell, touch, ability to understand speech, ability to speak, ability to recognize shapes/people/places. Their "what it's like" has changed.
You are then correlating not mind and brain, but words and brain. You are relying on sounds coming out of a physical system to stand in lieu of mind. Normally, this is perfectly sensible-- it's one of the more pragmatic assumptions that I've made, and makes communicating with people much more enjoyable. However, it's still an assumption and not actually an observable fact.
Consider the case of a robot. If you damage its language processor, or it's cameras, or whatever, it also will lose at least part of its function. It also will describe things differently. But does this mean that a robot experiences qualia?
I don't know the answer to that, but my hunch is that there's something unique to me that allows me to really experience what things are like, where a robot is just doing a bunch of processing 'n' stuff. Whether a robot of equal or greater complexity could be said to have a mind is another issue-- Bladerunner being a perfect example of the philosophical implications of that.
Even if you look to the brain as the "source" of mind, or the system on which it supervenes or whatever, there are still layers of organization which are NOT unique to the brain, but happen to be contained within all brains. For example, the transmission of information, chemically or electrically or through the emission and absorption of photons, happens all over the place. It could be that a primitive "atomic qualia" is the most elemental unit of mind, and that ANY system of coordinated data flow will have some spark of mind. OR it could be that something specific about the organic process of the brain-- the chemicals involved, the way the systems are intertwined, is absolutely necessary, and no other system would be sufficient to actually experience qualia rather than just seeming to.
So even in a physical monist position, saying mind IS brain, or IS brain function, might be too simple a view to be useful. Then, bring in dualism or idealist viewpoints, and consider how many assumptions were required to start the process, and I don't think anyone should be very confident in their views about mind and brain.