Worst Arguments For Christianity

[Neo-Scholastic]

I also think trying to make one the same as the other violates the Leibniz's Law of Identity.

Please explain how you think making physical states the same as mental states violates Liebniz' law.

Two things are identical if the share all the same properties, for example Samael Clemens is identical to Mark Twain. For something mental, like a thought, to be identical something physical, like cascade of firing neurons, they must share all the same properties. They do not.

The medium is not the message. What Rush Limbaugh says is distinct from the radio waves that carry his show. For the reductionist, the show just is the electromagnetic waves. That position is clearly false since a transcript of that show carries the same meaning even though it has a completely different physicality. Even different signs can carry the same meaning. The English word ‘dog’ has the same meaning as ‘chien’ in French.

These examples show that meaning has features distinct from the various physical mediums that support it. It may be that meaning must always instantiate in some material way, from electromagnetic waves to scratches on stone. The simplistic belief that the mind is identical to the brain is woefully incomplete. Explaining the relationship between signs and their significance requires more kinds of cause than reductionism allows. At least formal and final causes provides a more complete model for that relationship.