The primary question of our time: Is Mind Brain?

[Fred]

Group mind? Like Hive Mind? Its a Heuristic expression that can be observed from the outside as acting in the best interests of the colony as a whole. It is however, completely dependent upon each individual and a limited number of communicable ideas (especially in ants)

Please explain how group mind in a flock of birds or school of fish is wholly dependent on each individual in the group when those individuals are behaving in concert simultaneously?

Fred, have you ever considered that I do find awe in this stuff? Things don't have to be magical, or spiritual, or "otherworldly" for me to experience awe.

Glad to hear you won't be joining the "it's merely" chorus, then. Cool. I'm trying to think of the last thing I found awe in while dismissing it so cavalierly. Still haven't come up with anything. You?

Consciousness wasn't always something we had any answer for at all.

Still don't, at least to the hard problem of consciousness.

That the brain is required for the mind to exist is at this point beyond a doubt.

I'd go with the brain being required for the mind to be experienced, but those two links I provided re the hydrocephalus and the slime mold with no brain but the ability to memorize and anticipate even call that into question.

You guys throw around this "without a doubt" bullshit way too freely. It's a big reason why you get the faith-based tag thrown at ya so often. Bitch about it all ya want, but if you want it to go away, maybe you should stop inviting it with such vigor.

There is an explanation as to "why" it exists. Interaction of chemicals and nerves.

That doesn't at all explain the hard problem of consciousness, and it's really depressing to think that you would believe it does. Materialists have no clue as to why said interactions produce interior experience. Not. One. Fucking. Clue. And because of that lack, they reject interior experience as being really real, which is really funny when you stop and think that it is within that interior experience that they are operating, and in fact, the only experience they have ever known. But the only really real stuff is the stuff they can never experience unmediated by the unreal world they live in but deny as existing. Breathtaking leap of illogic there, wouldn't ya say?

"How" is a better question (and the one that we filthy materialists are pursuing).

It's not a better question, it's the only question ya filthy bastards have any traction on, and more power to ya. Really. I heartily encourage the furthest and finest research into finding as much a possible as fast as possible. However, what that research is doing is investigating and discovering the brain correlates of mind. That's invaluable information, but it doesn't begin to touch the hard problem of consciousness.

You just keep making statements about materialism without providing any substance for your argument. It's frustrating.

Hmm. Let's see. Just for starters, I've made the statement that materialism is an a priori conclusion to counter your choir book assertion that conclusions must follow observation. I even added an infamous admission of such by a celebrated and stalwart materialist saying exactly that. You deflected that by attacking Richard Lewontin as someone who didn't understand the basics of science, which made it seem that you didn't know who he is. Regardless, you neither addressed the point nor denied it, and went straight to pontificating about faith folk. Regardless of the veracity of any of that, it's still a dodge from the initial point.

But, hey, ya want more re the weakness of the materialistic stance, fine. Here's a slog through the problems with materialistic arguments. http://bit.ly/oZS6vc

Poke around if you need more, as they aren't hard to find. But in return, maybe I can get something in return beyond endless iterations of "is not" and "is too" and "it's merely."

Plenty can be explained without a survival advantage. Many things exist in ourselves that (as far as we know) do not confer a survival advantage. Who the hell have you been getting your info from?

I get my info from the evo-psych folks and their cheerleaders littered all over this and other forums. "It conferred a survival advantage" is the magic wand waved over virtually every trait they talk about. I'm not saying there's no truth to it, but it's also replete with assumptions and guesses and markers. That's way ok, except by the time it trickles down to this level, it's codified into law and sung faithfully by the "It's merely" chorus.