(March 17, 2016 at 8:14 am)little_monkey Wrote: My point is:I still don't really understand your point (1). Are you defining mindfulness as something that smiles or breathes, or saying that if something smiles or breathes, it must be mindful?
(1) observable (smiling, breathing... etc) → mindful
(2) observable (smiling, breathing... etc) → brain activities
Therefore I have to conclude that,
(3) mindful = brain activities
That correlation does not depend on someone defining "qualia". My point is that the mind IS brain activities. I'm taken that you are saying that there is more to mind than just brain activities, or am I mistaken about your position?
Yes, if you do not defind mind in terms of qualia, your (3) holds true. However, in this case equating mind with brain function isn't really an observation, but a begging of the question, IMO (I mean that in logical terms, not an insulting one). If mind is not defined in subjective terms, then you're just talking about brain function, and you can drop the term "mind" altogether. Why don't behaviorists do this? Because the elephant in the room is that we have minds, and whether the reality of mind is that it supervenes on the brain, or IS the brain, or is of or part of the brain, or something else, attempting to treat something so purely subjective as an objective fact is terrible semantics. Rhythm, for example, is trying to say, "Mind is data processing, therefore data processing is mind," which to me is epic in its disregard for what the word means to almost anybody alive.
