Mind/matter duality

[little_monkey]

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.

Okay, this is the conversation to be had, I think. I agree that brain and mind seem to be strongly connected. However, brain function viewed from the outside is not the same as experience. One is the interchange of massive numbers of electrons, photons, NTs, etc., viewable under fMRI and other devices; the other is a subjective space full of feeling, color, and symbolism, and cannot be directly manipulated, or even proven to exist.

Sorry for breaking up your long paragraph here, but that we don't know yet. In the future we might know exactly what configurations in your brain corresponds exactly to you seeing the color red, or to the feeling of being satiated after eating a good meal. In fact I see a future when a surgeon will implant a signal and you won't have any other choice but to think you see red or your feeling of being satiated after eating a good meal. And that might very well happen in our lifetime.

You will argue (without being able to totally prove it. . . "yet") that every experience is just one's awareness of some part of brain function: that they are one and the same. But how, other than a plausible consensus with other people (who from your perspective are really just more experiences), would you go about providing proof of this?

See above answer.

You'd have to either prove or assume all of the following:
1) the things you perceive represent an objective reality;

The things in themselves are real-- trees, cats, the clouds in the sky. However, your perception of those can be distorted -- I give you loads of alcohol or grass. Assuming a sound and healthy brain, then the apparatus doing the perception ( brains + senses) is objective.

2) the people you communicate with are not only real, but are really sentient beings like you;

Same answer as in 1.

3) you and the other people (now assumed real) consulting with each other on issues of mind do not have some common trait (for example, a genetic predisposition to be unaware of certain kinds of information) which makes it physically impossible for you to know the "truth";

We're not in the business of finding truth values to a statement. Our main goal is to accurately describe the reality in front of us. Some people are blind color. I know one fellow who can't distinguish different shades of red. But we also know that this is connected to a gene which he inherited from his grand-father. So to him, he sees a different reality than we do, but guess what, we know about it.

4) the fact that all ideas about an objective physical world are derived from subjective experiences-- perception of light, sound, etc.-- doesn't lead to a nasty circularity; for example, you aren't in the Matrix, where all available perceptions point falsely to the existence of the brain, rather than the Matrix, as the source of all your experiences.

I'm not sure what is your point here. Perhaps some clarification would help.

The problem is that since these are the questions we're trying to investigate, we are not allowed to assume any of them, or else we are begging the question. So how are we to go about proving them?

Ha, invoking Godel's theorem won't help you. You show know by now I'm fairly steep in my knowledge of physics and math.