Mind is the brain?

[bennyboy]

If you already knew you were wrong, why present a counterfactual proposition as though it were my own?  I think that mind -is- brain.  Not in brain or of brain.  Is brain.  I think that brain, is comp.  

There are brains in jars in labs. What, exactly, do you suppose they are thinking about right now?

Sure, but a failure to answer it, or answer it to your satisfaction, won't help you to establish the validity or importance of your objections regarding any specific attempt.

That's a strange thing to post right after I just speculated on a scientific experiment that might help bridge the philosophical gap between science and subjectivism.

Are there...which things are unique to the brain?

Organic nerves and neurotransimtters.

 In any case, data processing or comp is -not- specific to any specific architecture..it is -itself- a system of abstraction.  That's why we called computers "universal machines".  It's entirely conceivable that the underlying architecture of qualia is a series of logical propositions very literally made out of biota which could in one instance calculate numbers, and in another, experience.  That's why comp or data processing is so useful in the first place.  There are different ways of realizing the same principles, different material compositions and structures that achieve, for example, a full adder in different ways...but the reason they all work is that each system equates to any other -as- a full adder...regardless of what it is made of or the arrangement of it's parts.  This tiny comment here betrays a vast misunderstanding of comp and processing..both in principle and in practice.  Buttressing those objections you've made with mistakes isn't likely to produce knowledge.

That is a lot of words to say, "Screw qualia, I'll define mind in mechanical terms and pretend I'm not begging the question when I say machines think."

Your objections are illogical, and anti-science.  But go ahead and change the subject of my comments in your response again, and again, and again.

 We already know that comp is capable of providing the contents of your qualia...everytime you and I LOL together a machine is putting you into a fantasy world where little girls drop flaming bears on peoples heads.  Human qualia can interface with machine language in ways that human qualia can;t even interface with other human qualia.  All you need is a little translation and your screen is capable of transmitting a message to you in ways that I simply cannot.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  I mention this in response to your postulate up above.  Your qualia is -already- taking up residence in that machine...it reduces at least on some level, to the state of digital levers.  If you weren;t provided with those zeros and ones, and a translation for interface, you would not have that qualia.  I think it;s going to be awhile before we can match the scale of architecture in the brain, but if or when we do..as a hypothetical, it would take a hefty amount of special pleading to imagine that an arrangement which is -already- ongoing would somehow stop or cease..particularly in that we imagine, in the hypothetical, a machine that's much better at doing what machines already, demonstrably, do.

More of the above. Qualia isn't information about what things are: it's the "what it's like" of experiencing them. I'm pretty sure nothing about my computer, or my monitor, is doing that. Nor, for that matter, is most of my brain.

Show me something in all this process that ISN'T an interface with something else. Where does the buck stop, and we can say: "Here. This is where a bunch of electro-chemical signals is experienced"? What is the principle by which all the hundreds or thousands of separate circuits firing in the brain are coordinated into a single sense of agency? In what "space" are processes in different parts of the brains brought together in this way?

To me "comp mind" sounds like more of a catch phrase than an explanation-- but why don't we get some links and quotes going from outside and see if anything we haven't spun at least 100 times before? To be frank, at this point, I'm more interested in studying the issue with new sources than in throwing debatey terms at each other. Why don't you dig up good stuff on comp mind, joseph can maybe dig up brain experiments to talk about, and I'll see if I can find links between theories of mind and neurology?