Mind is the brain?

[bennyboy]

You've consistently ignored the fact that localized brain function pairs up with reported subjective experiences, meaning that those subjective reports may well be accurate. You've completely ignored the point put to you about the correlation between brain trauma and impaired mental functions.

Not only have I not ignored this, I have even suggested a practical experiment which we might do to bridge the gap between the mysterious nature of subjective mind involving 2 brains and an electric mechanism.

I mean, if your only point is that we cannot know for sure what another human being is thinking, then surely we didn't need the thread highjacked for such a banal observation. If your only point is that we cannot know that other humans even think at all, then who are you talking to, and why? If you're the only percipient here, then this rather makes your posting masturbatory, don't you, ahem, think?

If it pleases you to think that you've been watching me masturbate, then that's on you.

I've pretty clearly, and pretty often, said that my interest in this thread is talking about how to establish on what scale of function in the brain mind ultimately supervenes: something at the quantum or chemical level, something at the neural level, something at the whole-brain level, etc. I'd want to know also if say Google can or could be thought of as a mind, and what the implications would be for a theory of qualia: does Google "experience" the world, given that it has billions of videos and pictures, and that it can process them to output behaviors (for example by targeting ads)?

As for who I am talking to, and why? I've in fact addressed this several times. I've said that even if I suspected an android wasn't actually able to experience qualia, I would interact with it socially anyway. I might even establish an emotional attachment to it, because of my nature as a human being. And that is I we see other people as mindful-- not because it can be established to be true, but because it makes for a more enriched experience in living life. So a gnostic position isn't necessary for me to act as though someone/something has mind.

It IS necessary, however, if I want a sufficiently robust theory of mind to start looking at non-animal systems in the universe and establish whether they are likely to experience or not.