The Brain=Mind Fallacy

[Tempus]

Most of the atheists on this forum make a habit of dodging their burden of proof when it comes to defending the material basis for subjective experiences.

I have my opinions, but I don't assert them as true.

Second, a car shares basic physical properties with its parts.

In the car / driving analogy, to my understanding, the car = brain, the driving = thoughts, rather than the car = thoughts and the parts = brain. With that in mind, a car sharing "basic physical properties with its parts" would be analogous to saying "a brain shares basic physical properties with its parts". Since both brains and cars literally are their parts it's sort of a truism, isn't it? Granted, you can remove parts of each and still have them function though. My point is cars necessarily have relationships to their parts because they are their parts, likewise with brains. I don't see how this particular point in anyway exposes a flaw in the analogy. I'm not suggesting that the analogy is, therefore, correct - merely that this point makes no sense to me.

Physical trauma to the brain may alter the contents of consciousness, but it doesn’t make any sense to describe a thought as being physically damaged.

To continue that car / driving analogy, it also doesn't make sense to say that a car's speed has been damaged. It would make more sense to say something like "the component(s) of the car which enabled it to achieve a particular speed (or drive at all) have been damaged." Similarly with the brain, "the part(s) of the brain which enabled it to store and/or recall particular memories, to process information, or otherwise function in a capacity as a 'person' have been damaged - hampering thought or terminating it altogether."

For example, you could dye the brain green and it wouldn't make the thoughts green.

You could also paint a car green and not have the driving turn out green.

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Actually I think I just got what you're saying, haha. I've left my responses above unedited regardless. You're saying that view that the mind is the brain, in the sense of it being physically identical to the brain, is flawed, right? I don't currently agree with the sentiment either; I don't see thoughts as being physically represented in the sense that they can be damaged, rather that the ability to produce them can be damaged, as above.

I guess I'm really just pointing out the things I disagree with here, I'm no expert and have quite a bit of reading I'd like to do on the subject.