(March 14, 2016 at 3:12 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Too special to be material, and too special to be anything other than unique to gear you possess if it happens to be material. I agree here, sort of...it's far too special.
No, not necessarily too special to be material. The brain has many layers of function, from the most elemental (the passage of photons an electrons among atoms for example), to the chemical cascades in neurons, to nerve bundles, to the coordination of brain parts involving sound and sight, complex processing, accessing of memories, etc.
Now, you can say that mind is brain function-- but unless you know exactly what it is about the brain that allows us to experience the "what it's like," there are some serious philosophical questions-- and that's EVEN IF I accept a physical monist position.
For example, does an atom have a primitive awareness of "what it's like" to receive a photon? Does a single nerve have an awareness of "what it's like" to be triggered by activity at the dendrites? Or is there a critical mass of complexity where there's any "what it's like" at all-- say, at least an input, a processor, and an output? In the first case, there is literally mind everywhere in the universe, and it is no less intrinsic to material than any other physical property. In the latter, it may be that you need something VERY similar to the human brain to have any awareness at all.
So waving at the brain and saying "It's clearly in there somewhere" won't really resolve the question of mind/matter, at least not in a very useful way. It's more an ontology than a conclusion.