The Brain=Mind Fallacy

[Reforged]

To sprout this garbage wooters must think this is still the 18th century, where the big powdered wig in his avatar would overawe the hoi palloi, and confer upon him a certain respectability inspite of the utter nonsense he habitually confuse with evidence of thought.

Can't say I disagree but I think we should all leave the poor man alone, pretend this never happened and walk away with a new found respect for one of our newest members for such an incredibly well thought out retort.
All hail Brian!

[Zen Badger]

We can do a very simple experiment to verify your claim Chad.
We'll drill a hole in your head, suck your brain out though a straw and see if your mind is still there afterwards.
If it is you win.

[FallentoReason]

Mental phenomena have no mass or volume, so whatever is happening, must be happening outside of classical physics.

What is the observable difference between neural activity that produces pain versus neural activity that produces the memory of your grandmother?

I'm trying to get a better sense of your argument here. I take it you're talking about consciousness itself and not the things that are most likely involved with consciousness? So, for example answering the above, isn't the memory of your grandmother physical in the sense that the memory has been stored in the brain much like a harddrive's memory is made up of electrons (I think it's electrons.. I'm not very well read up on the finer details of technology, but you get what I mean). Intelligent people such as Einstein had a brain considerably larger and thus heavier than most people and I think that's a direct correlation to the information stored in it. So is your point beyond that and you're asking how the brain effectively makes use of these neurons and physical data to experience consciousness?

[Brian37]

I HATE THE WORD "MIND" it is a bullshit word. We are merely literally our brains. What you call "mind" is not what we are claiming.

Begging the question. You assert as fact the question at hand. Correlation is not causation.

For those stuck on See Spot Run and suffering from A.D.D.

Brain=you

Cant dumb it down any more than that for you. Sorry if I am using too many big words for you.

---

"Thoughts" don't do anything, the word "thought" is a place card word to an abstraction. You are accusing the "speed" of the car as being the car itself.

"thoughts" are merely the outcome of our material processes, much like 55mph is the observation of "speed" of the car. Speed is not a thing, but a description of the material process of the car moving faster.

We do have reactions to thoughts when we have them or express them in physical communication. Just like if we were crossing the street and we would react to the "speed" of the physical car if it were headed at us.

We have neurons that can be measured and we have brain activity that can be measured. Doctors can hook electrodes to your head, or put you in a CT tube, and measure your brain activity when you think about certain things. Just like we cant trap speed without a car, but we can use a speed gun to determine how fast the car is going.

This is the misconception even atheists can have about science is strictly about the material. No, science is about anything that can be observed. Just like we don't know what is in the center of a black whole, but we can see what it does to light when it gets to the event horizon.

To understand the mistake you are making. I would suggest reading both Victor Stenger's "God The Failed Hypothesis" and "The New Atheism".

Oh, before I forget:

First time I've ever awarded a flawless victory jpg.
Savor it Brian, savor it. -.-

Awe man, couldn't I get a "Sonja Wins". The blond in the original game was H AND O AND T. But thanks in any case.

[Tempus]

Most of the atheists on this forum make a habit of dodging their burden of proof when it comes to defending the material basis for subjective experiences.

I have my opinions, but I don't assert them as true.

Second, a car shares basic physical properties with its parts.

In the car / driving analogy, to my understanding, the car = brain, the driving = thoughts, rather than the car = thoughts and the parts = brain. With that in mind, a car sharing "basic physical properties with its parts" would be analogous to saying "a brain shares basic physical properties with its parts". Since both brains and cars literally are their parts it's sort of a truism, isn't it? Granted, you can remove parts of each and still have them function though. My point is cars necessarily have relationships to their parts because they are their parts, likewise with brains. I don't see how this particular point in anyway exposes a flaw in the analogy. I'm not suggesting that the analogy is, therefore, correct - merely that this point makes no sense to me.

Physical trauma to the brain may alter the contents of consciousness, but it doesn’t make any sense to describe a thought as being physically damaged.

To continue that car / driving analogy, it also doesn't make sense to say that a car's speed has been damaged. It would make more sense to say something like "the component(s) of the car which enabled it to achieve a particular speed (or drive at all) have been damaged." Similarly with the brain, "the part(s) of the brain which enabled it to store and/or recall particular memories, to process information, or otherwise function in a capacity as a 'person' have been damaged - hampering thought or terminating it altogether."

For example, you could dye the brain green and it wouldn't make the thoughts green.

You could also paint a car green and not have the driving turn out green.

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Actually I think I just got what you're saying, haha. I've left my responses above unedited regardless. You're saying that view that the mind is the brain, in the sense of it being physically identical to the brain, is flawed, right? I don't currently agree with the sentiment either; I don't see thoughts as being physically represented in the sense that they can be damaged, rather that the ability to produce them can be damaged, as above.

I guess I'm really just pointing out the things I disagree with here, I'm no expert and have quite a bit of reading I'd like to do on the subject.

[Angrboda]

Mental phenomena have no mass or volume, so whatever is happening, must be happening outside of classical physics.

Please explain how you have measured the mass/volume of mental phenomenon to allow you to objectively conclude that they have no mass or volume.

What instrument(s) did you use to measure their mass?

What instrument(s) did you use to measure their volume?

If your assessment of these measurements is a side-effect of a basic theory, as, I believe the mass of the photon is, please share what theory requires mental phenomenon to have no mass or volume to explain other empirical observations. Does this theory disagree with either quantum theory or relativity?

[Panglossian]

The mind is a product of the brain. Nobody's claiming them to be the same object.

[Bravo]

Although they are functionally related, what we call mind and the brain have no shared physical properties. Physical trauma to the brain may alter the contents of consciousness, but it doesn’t make any sense to describe a thought as being physically damaged. For example, you could dye the brain green and it wouldn't make the thoughts green.

Let me get this straight, you are claiming that regardless what happens to your brain "you" stay the same? Your personality, memories, everything that makes you being you does not change regardless? What about people that become violent or simply mad as a result of brain injury? Where is their original self gone?

So are you now saying that Linux causes subjective experience?

Is your Linux machine the same complexity as a human brain? Or at least a fish brain? You are comparing the speed of a snail with the speed of light. When the hardware will be measurably close to a brain in terms of complexity maybe machine feelings will be a reality.

[Brian37]

The mind is a product of the brain. Nobody's claiming them to be the same object.

Holy batman on stick! I know you disagree with the OP but don't feed the woo mongers. I merely get a lip twitch when you use language like that, thats all. Not mad at you at all.

TO THE OP........ONCE AGAIN

"Speed" is the product of the car going faster. "speed" is not a thing but an abstract word to describe a motion.

I HATE THE WORD "MIND" it is a stupid word. We are nothing but our brains in motion.

Speed cannot exist outside the car. Thoughts cannot occur without a brain.

This is nothing but woo in attempt to claim that the "MIND" can be separated from the brain. A bullshit argument. It is a stupid woo attempt to claim that we are more than a biological process, we are not.

If someone wants to argue that "we" are separate from our brains, or can be separated from our brains, they might as well argue that a hurricane can be separated from the atmosphere. IT IS A STUPID ARGUMENT.

Don't feed the woo mongers.

---

I want to put an end to this stupid argument. NOW FOR THE RECORD, DON'T DO WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SUGGEST, YOU WILL DIE.

If someone really thinks that we are separate from biology and that we can outlive our bodies, then decapitate your head, or blow it off with a shotgun.

What? Come on, your thoughts are not your brain, so you don't need it right?

THIS IS WHY IT IS A STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT!

I don't care if you are a Taoist, Buddhist, Christian or pantheist. WE are only nature, there is no such thing as super natural, we do not exist outside biology, and once our brain dies, we die.

Woo is woo is woo. Fantasy will never replace reality no matter who postulates that credulity or how badly they want it to be true.

[StatCrux]

"Thoughts" don't do anything, the word "thought" is a place card word to an abstraction. You are accusing the "speed" of the car as being the car itself.

"thoughts" are merely the outcome of our material processes, much like 55mph is the observation of "speed" of the car. Speed is not a thing, but a description of the material process of the car moving faster.

Where exactly are these thoughts physically? Speed is not a physical entity, you can't touch speed, it can be observed, but has no physical nature. You use speed as an analogy to thought, are you therefore admitting that thought is non-physical? Also speed isn't self aware..

Are you saying that thought is a non-physical outcome of material processes?

Would you say that a computer has thoughts? Does an electrical distribution network have thoughts?