RE: Mind is the brain?
March 17, 2016 at 8:36 pm
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 8:42 pm by bennyboy.)
(March 17, 2016 at 3:09 pm)little_monkey Wrote: I've already addressed that issue: it's not just smiling you need to consider but ALL activities. For instance just to name one activity: when android can create new ideas, like humans have done from Plato to Heisenberg, then you can say maybe these androids have a "mind". Until then android proves nothing about what the mind is. (hint: bringing androids to defeat my argument isn't going to work).Are you sure that computers haven't generated new ideas? (1) I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that and (2) it still doesn't show that computers can experience what things are like.
Quote:You can't make a correlation, because you haven't demonstrated that any physical system HAS a mind without reference to those correlates. You're correlating brain function (or smiles or idea-making or whatever physical correlates you assume must serve as evidence of mind) with mystery magic, not with anything which is known to exist. You are saying "Mind is brain function, smiles, and idea-making, and look, there it is. Told ya!" That is pretty much the definition of begging the question.Quote:Either you will have to beg the question by defining mind in terms of the correlates themselves, or you will have to make a philosophical assumption.
What begging? This is how science is done, has been done since Galileo. We correlate things: in math, it's called mapping. All math is mapping. If we can correlate in a one-to-one mapping between mind activities with brain activities, you have no choice but to say that mind = brain activity. You can't change the rules just because YOU don't like it.
Quote:And you haven't answered my point: If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain.I'm not asserting anything. It is my intent to show that material monists do not, and cannot, have a sufficient philosophical basis for their claims about mind. That being said, I'm also the only one here who has suggested an experiment by which we might try to get around the problem of our inability to directly observe mind.