Mind/matter duality

[little_monkey]

re: medical experiment
That's all perfectly true. In reality, we make the necessary pragmatic assumption that when a person-looking object says "I smell smoke," there's an actual mind having the experience of smelling smoke. And yet, you cannot interact directly with someone else's mind-- you are forced to go through intermediary steps-- either communicating with them verbally to get a report of what they're experiencing, or messing with their brain to change what that mind is experiencing. At no point in this process is it ever provable that there even IS a mind there.

It's a strange situation. Everyone (I'm willing to believe) knows about mind, and knows that mind exists. And yet while you can locate brain functions, you cannot locate (for example) a dream unicorn and give him an apple. In a sense, it's like each mind IS a Matrix environment of its own.

re: minds in vats
This is a good point. I'd argue that shared experience is (by definition more than proof) our reality as human beings. But that doesn't prove it's THE reality-- i.e. that we're not BIJ, or in the Matrix, or the mind of God, or whatever.

The fact that if someone puts an axe through your brain, and that your mind won't be functioning very well after proves in every way that there is a deep connection between the two. We're just beginning to explore scientifically that deep connection. The MRI was only invented 20 years ago, and was used primarily for medical purposes. Actual research has been scant. But the remarkable thing is that this used to be the domain of philosophy, the mind/matter thing. It isn't anymore.