Modal Argument: The Mind is Not the Brain

[Angrboda]

Unlike you, Apo, who provides both background and clarification for your posts, Chas calls mind an emergent property as if he need only pronounce it so for it to be the case. If Chas, or any other forum member, wants to call mind an emergent property, then it’s only fair that they should be clear as to what they mean.

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Emergence comes in various stripes. You have emergent abilities like photosynthesis, emergent functions like bricks, emergent qualities like wetness, and emergent patterns like hurricanes. You could even argue that meaning emerges from complex arrangements of symbols.
Furthermore, even if mind is an emergent property, however vaguely defined, that status alone would not completely define the relationship between body and mind. Once mind appears does it have a downward causal role? Or is mind an epiphenomena? Perhaps the emergent property of the brain is its ability to receive, rather than generate, mental properties. Or perhaps, the mind operates simultaneously and parallel to the body, as proposed by Leibnitz. Not all forms of emergence lead to materialism.

Sorry to throw the bullshit flag on your "emergent properties" foul, Chas and company.

As for the idea that nothing mental happens without a brain, none of you have presented any way that signification, qualia, or intentionality can be properly attributed to any physical process nor any means for excluding it from simple physical systems, like thermostats. Oh right, emergent properties arising out of complex systems...that's the pixie dust to which you cling. Poor sods.

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You didn't answer the question. What does it mean for a mental property to have harmony, and to which mental properties does this apply?

[genkaus]

I accept your challenge. When you set a thermostat to 72, it intends to reach it. Explain to me how this is different from a hungry dog that intends to eat a rabbit. From a materialistic perspective both exhibit mental properties. Only the thermostat has no brain yet shows goal directed behaviour.

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You didn't answer the question. What does it mean for a mental property to have harmony, and to which mental properties does this apply?

I believe by referring to mental properties as being "received or having pre-existing harmony", Chad is referring to his preferred position of dualism. Assuming the existence of a soul separate from the body, one could argue that the soul does all the feeling and emoting and thinking etc. and the observed mental properties are the effect of these "soul" events. Similarly, by saying that there is preexisting harmony, what he means is that while soul and brain are two separate entities, their events act as reflections of each-other, i.e. every soul-event is in "harmony" with the corresponding mental property.

[Chas]

Unlike you, Apo, who provides both background and clarification for your posts, Chas calls mind an emergent property as if he need only pronounce it so for it to be the case. If Chas, or any other forum member, wants to call mind an emergent property, then it’s only fair that they should be clear as to what they mean.

Emergence comes in various stripes. You have emergent abilities like photosynthesis, emergent functions like bricks, emergent qualities like wetness, and emergent patterns like hurricanes. You could even argue that meaning emerges from complex arrangements of symbols.
Furthermore, even if mind is an emergent property, however vaguely defined, that status alone would not completely define the relationship between body and mind. Once mind appears does it have a downward causal role? Or is mind an epiphenomena? Perhaps the emergent property of the brain is its ability to receive, rather than generate, mental properties. Or perhaps, the mind operates simultaneously and parallel to the body, as proposed by Leibnitz. Not all forms of emergence lead to materialism.

Sorry to throw the bullshit flag on your "emergent properties" foul, Chas and company.

As for the idea that nothing mental happens without a brain, none of you have presented any way that signification, qualia, or intentionality can be properly attributed to any physical process nor any means for excluding it from simple physical systems, like thermostats. Oh right, emergent properties arising out of complex systems...that's the pixie dust to which you cling. Poor sods.

I thought it obvious that all of the evidence of neuroscience shows that there is no mind without brain, and that physical damage to the brain changes the properties of mind.

You have no actual evidence for your god, nor is there any evidence for dualism.

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I accept your challenge. When you set a thermostat to 72, it intends to reach it. Explain to me how this is different from a hungry dog that intends to eat a rabbit. From a materialistic perspective both exhibit mental properties. Only the thermostat has no brain yet shows goal directed behaviour.

A thermostat has no intention, there is no mechanism for intention there.

[pocaracas]

This again?
Look into artificial consciousness and how emergent it is...
Uneducated people always trying to keep others equally uneducated is just RUDE.

[Bucky Ball]

I accept your challenge. When you set a thermostat to 72, it intends to reach it. Explain to me how this is different from a hungry dog that intends to eat a rabbit. From a materialistic perspective both exhibit mental properties. Only the thermostat has no brain yet shows goal directed behaviour.

You're really THAT desperate ?
YOU set the thermometer. It did not set itself. YOU have a brain. It's YOUR goal, not the thermometer's goal.
Try try again.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I accept your challenge. When you set a thermostat to 72, it intends to reach it. Explain to me how this is different from a hungry dog that intends to eat a rabbit. From a materialistic perspective both exhibit mental properties. Only the thermostat has no brain yet shows goal directed behaviour.

You're really THAT desperate ?
YOU set the thermometer. It did not set itself. YOU have a brain. It's YOUR goal, not the thermometer's goal.
Try try again.

So you resort to special pleading? Your philosophy has no basis for assigning mentation to one physical process as opposed to another.

[Bucky Ball]

You're really THAT desperate ?
YOU set the thermometer. It did not set itself. YOU have a brain. It's YOUR goal, not the thermometer's goal.
Try try again.

So you resort to special pleading? Your philosophy has no basis for assigning mentation to one physical process as opposed to another.

Thanks for disproving free will.
I said NOTHING about "mentation".
Try harder.
Thanks also for reducing YOUR concept of "intentionality" to a "reductio ad absurdam", and demonstrating that ANY action following ANY antecedant (action), no matter how unrelated or distant can fit your definition of "intentionality, thus rendering it, utterly meaningless.

[Whateverist]

As for the idea that nothing mental happens without a brain, none of you have presented any way that signification, qualia, or intentionality can be properly attributed to any physical process nor any means for excluding it from simple physical systems, like thermostats. Oh right, emergent properties arising out of complex systems...that's the pixie dust to which you cling. Poor sods.

Says the pot to the kettle. Meanwhile I can point to plenty of instances of operative minds where living, functional brains are present. Kindly point to even one instance of mental qualia sans a brain. What significance should we attribute to your inability to present even one instance of a mind apart from a brain? I suppose you want to claim that concluding no mind without a brain is as unfounded as your claim that minds require no brain.

Would you prefer that we conclude instead "still no minds without a brain"? Shall I enter that in my diary beside "the sun came up again today"?

Is your motivation for leaving the door open for disembodied minds your way of leaving room for God? Frankly I don't think you have to sweat the details. If you have direct experience of the mind of God why not just go with that?

[Chas]

As for the idea that nothing mental happens without a brain, none of you have presented any way that signification, qualia, or intentionality can be properly attributed to any physical process nor any means for excluding it from simple physical systems, like thermostats. Oh right, emergent properties arising out of complex systems...that's the pixie dust to which you cling. Poor sods.

Says the pot to the kettle. Meanwhile I can point to plenty of instances of operative minds where living, functional brains are present. Kindly point to even one instance of mental qualia sans a brain. What significance should we attribute to your inability to present even one instance of a mind apart from a brain? I suppose you want to claim that concluding no mind without a brain is as unfounded as your claim that minds require no brain.

Would you prefer that we conclude instead "still no minds without a brain"? Shall I enter that in my diary beside "the sun came up again today"?

Is your motivation for leaving the door open for disembodied minds your way of leaving room for God? Frankly I don't think you have to sweat the details. If you have direct experience of the mind of God why not just go with that?

Dualism is required for the existence of souls. No dualism, no soul.

He must continue to deny that mind is a result of brain, that mind evolved.

[Walking Void]

P2: it is impossible for the brain to act independently of the brain.

I agree, it is impossible for the chicken not to cross the road when the chicken crosses the road.