The Brain=Mind Fallacy

[Angrboda]

It's over when he refuses to justify his initial assertion, effectively making his argument vacuous, and continues to blather on with what is an obvious example of the fallacy of division

Learn to read more carefully. I carefully avoided this fallacy by introducing scale. The fallacy presented in the Wikipedia article prevents a very ill-defined concept of thinking that fails to distinguish between high order mental phenomena, like memory, and lower levels like sensation.

I'd be more than happy to consider your justification for believing you have avoided the fallacy of division if you would care to point it out.

However you still haven't responded to my original complaint. You have provided no evidence to demonstrate that mental phenomenon have neither mass nor volume. Until you do, this is nothing more than a bare assertion. And it's eerily similar to your conclusion. Assumed: mental events are non-physical; therefore, mental events are non-physical. Wow. And you wonder why I'm not impressed whilst you attempt to evade a fallacy of division which it appears clear you committed.

Against my better judgement, I went back over every post of yours to try to understand what you meant by claiming your introduction of "scale" evaded the charge of the fallacy of division. I can only assume you meant the following, which doesn't actually help you.

Two theories are being presented to justify the material basis for mind. In the first case, various configurations and states of matter are said to produce mental phenomena that did not previously exist. The second position claims that brain-states are mental phenomena. Both theories try to get something for nothing and reveals how hollow materialist claims are, as I will explain.

As pointed out chickens produce eggs.Chickens and eggs both fall into the same category of being. Both are physical objects. The car/speed analogy is more complex but follows the same logic. Speed is the description of a material state, a relationship of physical objects in time and space. The parts share the same physical properties as the car, including speed. Each part also moves through physical space in time. At smaller scales you have Brownian motion and at still smaller scales atomic vibrations. Motion can be described by even more fundamental physical properties, like mass. Yet in this case you also see that atomic particles have mass, the car parts have mass, and the whole car has mass. The parts share the properties of the whole. They can interact because complex material states are aggregates of similar simple material states. Likewise, you can describe complex mental properties, like a memory, in terms of simpler mental properties like sensation.

The difficulties arise when you start to attribute one category of being, mental phenomena, to another categories of being, like physical objects. If you attribute complex mental properties like emotions to a complex physical object like the brain, then you must attribute simpler mental properties to parts of the physical brain, like the visual cortex. Just as the whole brain and its parts have mass, the whole brain and its parts share an experiential component. Followed to its logical extreme, you conclude that conscious experience is a fundamental property of reality on par with mass.

The problem for materialism is this. Materialism only accepts four fundamental forces associated with material properties. There are no mental ‘forces’ or basic properties of mind from which to build complex mental properties like conscious self awareness. The materialist perspective has no place to insert mind.

It’s attempts to explain consciousness are on par with magic.

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First off, as I've noted and you failed to acknowledge, unless you have some evidence of the non-material nature of mental phenomenon (mass and volume), your entire attempt at bringing up the question of division is moot. Mental phenomenon are physical phenomenon. QED. Until you overcome this basic hurdle, all your garbage about "scale" is just that. In the post referenced, despite your blinkered attempt to salvage it by reference to "scale", all you've done is shown that you don't understand the fallacy. The fallacy of division is that if the whole has some property, then the parts of necessity have that property. It is perfectly acceptable for the parts to contingently share properties of the whole (in this case, mental phenomenon and neurons both share the property of being material.) Scale is irrelevant. Again, I go back to your assertion that mental phenomenon are non-physical, an assertion you have yet to justify. Until then, all your ignorant talk about "scale" is irrelevant. Until then, your entire argument is nothing more than one long-winded example of begging the question. But then, I'm getting used to picking fallacies out of your thinking like picking fruit from a rather fecund tree. I find you a nice enough chap to deal with, but I'm becoming persuaded of the opinion that you're dumber than a sackful of hammers.