(March 17, 2016 at 8:36 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(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.
A programmer can input a software by which the android could generate any idea, so under the possibility of every combinations of known ideas, the android could generate "new" ideas, but that's the reason why I said " like humans have done from Plato to Heisenberg" - new ideas that have advanced our knowledge of the world, not just any new idea. When Androids have that capacity, which entails a form of self-consciousness, then I will be the first to ask such androids to be treated like every humans with the same rights. But then it would prove Mind = "brain activities under different physical configuration", and then there would be hope that life could develop on a different planet and produce intelligent life with different physical configuration.
Quote:That's mumbo-jumbo, and you know it. There is no law in nature that says I can't correlate. The question is what does the correlation show? And that leads to the next point below that I've made before...Quote: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.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:You can't answer that point because it defeats your argument. Scientific experiments points in one direction, MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES, but you refuse to accept that reality.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.