(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: Agree or disagree: the mind is not "real."
Disagree. The mind is self-evident...to everyone but you, it seems.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: A mind is the delusion the brain has that it exists somewhere that is not purely physical.
Speak for yourself. My mind is quite aware of its location.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: We are all sacks of meat, with no more inherent value than a side of bacon or a beef patty on a hamburger.
Nothing has inherent value. Value is relational. Something has value only if someone values it. Normal humans can distinguish value in themselves and other humans greater than hamburgers on other foundations than magic; life, consciousness, moral agency, social ties, character, intellect, human rights, and so on. It would require moral idiocy to not be able to comprehend why a living human being has more value than a hamburger, immortal soul or not.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: All we have to do to change a mind is pump the brain up with the proper chemicals and neurological impulses.
That is an experimentally-verified fact.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: Even personality can be changed with the right drugs and electrical inputs.
Or injury. Or disease.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: So "we" (our minds) don't exist.
You could have said 'so, rutabegas' and your conclusion would be equally justified. You can't change something that doesn't exist.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: Our emotions aren't real.
Of course they are. They're just not magic.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: Everything we think, feel, love, hate isn't real.
You think you're imagining all that? Can you not perceive the inherent issue with claiming that you think you don't really think?
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: Nothing is real, other than the material world.
Everything that exists, is real. Some real things are processes, some are abstractions. If materialism is correct, it only means those things depend on matter and energy and the laws of phyics, chemistry, and biology to exist. It doesn't mean they're not real.
(September 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm)Blackrook Wrote: And since our experience of the material world is processed through a "mind" that is a delusion, we can't even be sure of that.
Mind isn't a delusion and it doesn't need to be put in scare quotes. Mind is what a reasonably functional human brain does.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
