Every time I run across the term 'conceivably possible' is an otherwise well constructed argument, I can't help but feel that the arguer is desperately trying to find a justification - any justification - to hold onto some cherished notion that the real world continually grinds into a fine powder.
There has never been any evidence whatsoever that minds function independently of brains, so Alvin asserts that it is 'conceivably possible' that they do, and Alvin doesn't have to cry himself to sleep at night. Modal logic is the philosopher's equivalent of a security blanket.
As mentioned above, the mind is an emergent property of the brain. By way of analogy, I have a motorcycle ('68 Electraglide - envy me) that is sitting quietly in my garage. At the moment, it has no emergent properties, only quiescent ones. Yet I can start it up and so create the emergent property of 70 kph. But the 70 kph doesn't exist until and unless the bike functions. You can do any tests you like around a non-operant motorcycle and you'll never detect 70 kph. But if it makes you uncomfortable, all you need do is declare that it is 'conceivably possible' that a motorbike which is sitting still, not moving, not operating in any detectable way, is somehow generating 70 kph.
Tonnes of things are 'conceivably possible'. For all you lot know, I'm an eight-foot tall trillionaire with fully functioning wings and corkscrew-shaped genitalia. It is 'conceivably possible', isn't it?
What Alvin has given us isn't so much an argument for mind-brain separation as a dolled-up way of saying, 'C'mon, guys...'
Boru
There has never been any evidence whatsoever that minds function independently of brains, so Alvin asserts that it is 'conceivably possible' that they do, and Alvin doesn't have to cry himself to sleep at night. Modal logic is the philosopher's equivalent of a security blanket.
As mentioned above, the mind is an emergent property of the brain. By way of analogy, I have a motorcycle ('68 Electraglide - envy me) that is sitting quietly in my garage. At the moment, it has no emergent properties, only quiescent ones. Yet I can start it up and so create the emergent property of 70 kph. But the 70 kph doesn't exist until and unless the bike functions. You can do any tests you like around a non-operant motorcycle and you'll never detect 70 kph. But if it makes you uncomfortable, all you need do is declare that it is 'conceivably possible' that a motorbike which is sitting still, not moving, not operating in any detectable way, is somehow generating 70 kph.
Tonnes of things are 'conceivably possible'. For all you lot know, I'm an eight-foot tall trillionaire with fully functioning wings and corkscrew-shaped genitalia. It is 'conceivably possible', isn't it?
What Alvin has given us isn't so much an argument for mind-brain separation as a dolled-up way of saying, 'C'mon, guys...'
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
