(May 19, 2015 at 3:01 am)robvalue Wrote: Well, if we are going to call the mind supernatural, that is a statement that we will never be able to measure it, we will never find out it doesn't really "exist", and we will never find out it's in some way natural.
Do you think it is possible to be so confident as that? I'm not so sure.
Well, let's look at the nature of evidence and of mind. Evidence is objective, and mind (at least as we normally mean it) refers to something subjective. So the question is really: can anything objective prove for sure the existence of the subjective?
The answer to that question depends not so much on what we discover, but on how we allow (or push) the meanings of terms to change in order to accommodate it. For example, if you accept that mind is brain function, then you can obviously find brain function everywhere in human brains. If you define "mind" as processing information and outputting a meaningful behavior, then you can find mind in machines.
But when I talk about mind, and most people I think define things as I do, I'm talking about qualia-- the ability to experience, rather than simply to process. And right now, the only way to know something experiences qualia is to determine whether it SEEMS to, and then accept that seeming is sufficient evidence of being.
My point is that ANY physical observations of mind require accepting SEEMS as IS. Without knowing what observations we'll make in the future, I can pretty confidently say that SEEMS vs. IS cannot be solved by objective observation, and that we are left with a fog of war which is only cleared by our willingness to make assumptions.
