The Brain=Mind Fallacy

[LastPoet]

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Thats not my point. People who post garbage like this want there to be a "beyond nature". The Op's goal is to create a comic book and treat it like reality.

Again consciousness is an outcome, not a starting point. Just like if a car is stationary "speed" cannot occur in context to that object, and even if the car was in motion,. "speed" still would not be a thing, but an observation.

I get riled by the way people conflate the mundane reality and want everyone to buy their own personal fantasy and project it on everyone else.

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I know little about the OP's intentions, its hard to grasp them trough this ambiguous medium. But I guess you are taking it from previous posts in miscellaneous threads. I guess its consistent with his logical path.

About being riled up, I may be getting old, but I really don't get as such about it as much anymore. I have come to realize that personal certainties, ego and pig ignorant fuckwittery, play a much higher role in human retardation than simple religiosity.

[Brian37]

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Thats not my point. People who post garbage like this want there to be a "beyond nature". The Op's goal is to create a comic book and treat it like reality.

Again consciousness is an outcome, not a starting point. Just like if a car is stationary "speed" cannot occur in context to that object, and even if the car was in motion,. "speed" still would not be a thing, but an observation.

I get riled by the way people conflate the mundane reality and want everyone to buy their own personal fantasy and project it on everyone else.

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I know little about the OP's intentions, its hard to grasp them trough this ambiguous medium. But I guess you are taking it from previous posts in miscellaneous threads. I guess its consistent with his logical path.

About being riled up, I may be getting old, but I really don't get as such about it as much anymore. I have come to realize that personal certainties, ego and pig ignorant fuckwittery, play a much higher role in human retardation than simple religiosity.

The majority of the time our species takes something simple and fucks it up the ass to comic book status.

I don't have to know how to build a car from the ground up to know that it does not run on pixy dust.

You don't have to know shit about his "intent". When you have something real you can take it to the patient office and people can make use of it no mater what their personal fantasies are.

Woo is merely the art of mental masturbation with the sloth of intellectual laziness and the skill of marketing of PT Barnum. "There is a sucker born every minute".

[Mister Agenda]

Indeed science may figure it out once we recognize that the materialist paradigm presents an insurmountable barrier to better understanding.

Mere assertion.

Yeah, but so what. Let's take that as a given. You die period. Okay. Now explain where sensations come from.

If we can't explain where sensations come from, does that make you right?

[Brian37]

This is such a dead horse of a pony loaf argument!

This is the same bullshit argument people with religion and woo pull no mater what the subject matter is.

"You don't know everything so letting your brains fall out should be the default position"

I don't know what I am going to eat tomorrow but I am pretty damned sure it wont be dog poo.

[fr0d0]

This is the same bullshit argument people with religion and woo pull no mater what the subject matter is.

Damn straight. Well said.

[Reforged]

I can't believe this thread is still being humored.
It already had its coffin nailed down, set alite and pissed on.
Anything more is just teabagging soggy ashes.

[genkaus]

This is a burden of proof challenge. The materialist must justify the reduction.

The materialist has provided the justification. Certain emotions have been mapped and observed as quantifiable physical phenomena occurring inside the mind. Further, it has been shown that by interfering with or altering those physical phenomena, it is possible to alter those qualitative experiences as well (such as with mood altering drugs). This is very strong evidence for the hypothesis that these experiences are reducible to physical phenomena. Your choice to point at gaps in the theory as evidence for pan-psychism is no better than pointing to gaps in evolution as evidence for creationism.

Electro-magnetism is a fundamental force, like gravity, and the weak and strong interactions. It was already present, just manifest in a stronger, more measurable form.

That is a positive claim. Care to meet the burden of proof.

The materialist claim is that something not previously present, qualia, emerges out of thin air under certain conditions. That is the extraordinary claim. Is some kind of qualia already present in a light bulb and that we only become aware of its presence in complex aggregates like brains? If not, where did it come from and when?

No one says it emerges out of thin air. Everyone says it emerges out of complex brain mechanisms. So, no, there is no qualia present in the light bulbs. It comes from the complex neural activity of the brain and exactly when it becomes complex enough to give rise to it is a question we don't know the answer to - yet.

Actually I borrowed the analogy you used elsewhere to present the idea of emergence (sorry, I should have given you a hat tip). Showing that the analogy does not hold shows that emergence is not a viable option for materialism.

I don't think that I've ever used the car parts vs drivability analogy - ever. Further, even if it were a good analogy, proof or disproof by analogy is a fallacy. It can only be used to demonstrate a concept the concept of emergence, not prove or disprove that the concept is applicable in case of consciousness. Therefore, your argument that the analogy is incorrect only shows that the analogy is incorrect.

Thought is a concept a thought is the thing to which the concept applies. The word can be used as both a noun and a verb. You want to confine thought to a function. Functions are indeed descriptions of a process. The job of the materialist is to justify the belief that some physical functions have qualia and while others do not.

Simple enough - Qualia refers to the class of physical functions specific to the complex brain mechanisms which have the effect of giving rise to and/or affecting the consciousness.

Functions, like motor skills, can cease. That is not the issue. Not all brain function are associated with qualia. Many are unconscious. If the ability to experience qualia is a function, then what is the difference between a qualia function and a non-qualia function? Within the materialist paradigm, why is it reasonable to assume that brain states give rise to qualia when only some do and some do not.

That is your smoking gun? The fact that not all brain functions give rise to qualia? You realize that this argument is a fallacy of composition, i.e. assuming that since some of the brain functions are capable of giving rise to qualia, then either all should be of none should be.

Exactly at which point we can differentiate between the two is not known, since the functionality is not completely understood. However, it is reasonable in the materialist paradigm to assume that the some brain states give rise to qualia while others don't, because we have observed a strong correlation and causation between the said brain states and the experience.

You have not shown that it reduces to physical processes although I can accept the idea that if thought is a physical process technological advances may be able to explain it. But there is no place to look. The real error is trying to insert a very real and visceral feature of reality into a paradigm (materialism) that has no place for it.

You contradict yourself. You state that "if thought is a physical process", thereby implying that it is atleast possible, even if you do not consider it probable. Which means that the paradigm (materialism) very much has a place for the real and visceral feature of reality.

[downbeatplumb]

You have yet to show that the immaterila realm exists at all and claim that we have the burden of proof.

Actually it has already been pointed out by someone that immaterial stuff exists, such as electromagnetism.

Ah forces. I was lumping them with in with material because at the quantum level forces are all there is.

E=mc2 and all that.

However i can see where your coming from.

Replace immaterial with supernatual in my above statement.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I prefer a simplier analogy, the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software.

All forms of software are algorithmic You must prove that brain processing is algorithmic to justify this assertion.

...We can map and see different emotions, reactions, mind statuses, with devices capable of measuring electrical currents on the brain, or chemical coumpound presence..We have many documented brain injuries with dire effects on who the individual is, and we are able to pinpoint what those injuries in that specific point of the brain do...We are able to drastically change people personalities and behaviour by adding a chemical (AKA Drugs). The same with electroshocks

I do not deny that physical changes to the brain can alter how we experience reality. Physical changes to the brain like trauma and drug use effect our ability to have certain feelings and thoughts.That does not bridge the generalgap between physical process and the experence of it. The distinction I make is between the abilities, described in terms of physics, and subjective experiences, described in qualitative terms. Functions, behaviors and observable facts are not feelings. Functions describe the operations of a physical process not the phenomenal content of the physical process. These are two very clear and distinct forms of knowledge.The felt quality of experience cannot be deduced from any physical or functional description of it. You can know all the physical and functional facts about a certain type of experience and still not “know what it's like” to have it.

For example, you can know everything physical about vinegar, from its chemical composition to the exact electro-chemical changes is causes in the brain, and still not know what vinegar smells like. The smell of vinegar cannot be predicted or described physically unless it has already been experienced. Another example, you have never tasted a pineapple. You know everything about pineapples, its chemical compositions, how others describe its taste, and you observed the MRIs of people eating them. You can know all this and still not know what a pineapple tastes like. There is a clear distinction between physical events and the experiencial content of those events.

The fact that two people act the same does not mean they feel the same, given that radically different physical systems can produce similar behaviour. For example, if you played a game of chess by mail you could not know if the game you played was against a program or against another player. A chess program and a chess player are functionally equivilent yet have a have a different physical basis. Brain functions, like those that allow humans to play chess, are not dependent on a unique physical basis, like the human brain, or the experiencial content of that event (since presumablly chess programs and human players do not have similar subjective experiences).

Now Chad, present your evidence, so we can test it or shut the fuck up.

It's your job, not mine, to justify the belief that mental phenomena do not exist at lower levels (light bulbs) and pops into existence at higher levels (brains).

[genkaus]

I prefer a simplier analogy, the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software.

All forms of software are algorithmic You must prove that brain processing is algorithmic to justify this assertion.

You are making the same mistake again. Analogous does not mean equivalent.

...The smell of vinegar cannot be predicted or described physically unless it has already been experienced....

I believe you are mistaken here. First of all, understand that humans predominantly rely on sight and sound, which results in our concepts relating to other senses to be severely limited. Consider something that you have never seen in your life. Another person is still able to describe it physically and you are still able to create a mental construct to visualize it - in effect experience that object it being present. Similarly, for sounds, you have notes that are conceptual representations and artists can play entire symphonies in their heads without an actual note being struck. This shows us that it is possible to have conceptual development of other sensory experiences as well - to the extent that we may one day be able to correctly identify what vinegar smells like or what a pineapple tastes like without actually smelling or tasting them.