(October 8, 2013 at 2:29 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Whateverist, I can accept that you find my dualist perspective less than compelling when I have presented it in other threads. That does not prevent me from showing that claims about emergent properties are incoherent nonsense. Nor should it bar me from asking my materialist counterparts to explain and support the theories they put forward. Let’s assume that I am wrong. That does not make the materialist position correct.
Nor should materialism be considered the default position. Any strongly counter-intuitive philosophy that undermines the attributes that make us human requires close scrutiny. Especially since the arguments against dualism are not as strong as many here suppose, as presented in the paper title “Giving Dualism its Due” by William Lycan.
NDE’s exemplify mental activity in the absence of a functioning brain. Some of these have been very well documented. It seems the only reason for dismissing them is because they do not fit the current materialist paradigm. There is also the strange case of John Lorber. Lorber had a measured IQ of 126, yet CAT scans revealed that he had only 10% of normal brain volume. Sure he still had a brain, but not much of one.
Of course my thermostat example is absurd. That’s the point. Materialist theories devolve into just these sorts of absurd equivalencies…the kind that makes concepts like intentionality meaningless.
Apo, I thought I already addressed Leibnitz’s idea of pre-existing harmony. In it, the correspondence between mental events and brain states is accidental and not causative. It just so happens that they align, for whatever reason. That was his solution to the interaction problem, but not one that I share. As for what constitutes a mental property as opposed to a physical one, I agree with the position that their “aboutness”, or intentionality, and qualitative aspects differentiate them from purely physical processes.
Quote:NDE’s exemplify mental activity in the absence of a functioning brain. Some of these have been very well documented.
We have "documentation" of Egyptians believing that the sun was a god. That does not mean because they could point to the sun, that they had one fucking clue what it actually was.
If we are separate from our brains then blow your head off with a shotgun(I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THAT), then see if you can still think and come back.
We don't doubt that people claim this type of crap. We do doubt their perceptions of what they are "experiencing".
The reality of NDE is nothing more than a lack of understanding of what happens when the brain shuts down. Once the structure is beyond repair(not a misdiagnosis, or flying under the radar), but physically dead beyond any medically detected window, you are dead. PERIOD!
NDE is is your brain dumping out all its files mixing with your other cognitive and unconscious senses. People come back from that yes, but all that means is the process did not get beyond repair.
People survive "seeming" death, but no one survives death beyond repair.
