Mind is the brain?

[bennyboy]

If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain. Otherwise, you are grasping at straws.

This isn't about what I think or don't think. It's what I know or don't know, and why. You say that smiling is an activity of the mind; however, some robots can smile, and nobody thinks they have minds as far as I know. It's one thing to have correlates of mind, but how will you show your correlation, being unable to observe a mind?

Either you will have to beg the question by defining mind in terms of the correlates themselves, or you will have to make a philosophical assumption. The problem with this is that people are willing to make philosophical assumptions about God, as well. If people start saying that God's presence is stronger when I play flute music, can I then establish a correlation between God's presence and flute music? No-- first you will ask them to demonstrate the existence of God's presence, and you will not accept the presence of flute music as sufficiently (or at all) establishing that fact.

So if we are trying to show that mind indeed causes smiling, you'll need to demonstrate the existence of mind before you assert that correlation as one of meaning.

[The Grand Nudger]

The state of an electron in its orbit IS changeable, and on multiple but discrete levels.  And a galaxy is also processing, since the events that transpire in it affect what light leaves it: its intensity, its direction, etc.

-that's all well and good but meeting one criteria for processing no more makes a processor out of an electron that being able to fly makes a bird out of a plane.  It doesn't even -begin- to approach a comp system. The galaxy doesn't appear to be a processor either.  If you insist on these grand equivocations you are unlikely to find knowledge at their terminus.

But you are going to special plead, I'm sure, and argue that only those changes in state and resultant behaviors that YOU consider meaningful are actually computation.

  Am I seeing the beginning of a tq defense?  I think I am.

Even the distinction between a rock and a PC is one of degree.  A rock inputs light and outputs heat.  It exactly calculates (by which I mean takes an input, processes through chemistry or physics, and ouputs something related but different) the right amount of heat to put out precisely.

That would make a rock a gate, not a pc.  Nothing I find objectionable there, of course rocks can be used as gates, most things can.  

A PC processes in a much more complex way, but in the end, it's all just physics and chemistry, and the meaning you imbue in one system over the other is arbitrary.  In fact, since all things in the universe are related by gravity, you could say that motion is itself a kind of processing.

Yet another relevance fallacy combined with a misunderstanding of computation.  OFC it's physics and chemistry, and.....? PCs don't process things differently, the principles are the same. It's the architecture of the PC that is more complex, not the process . Did you type up your response to my post on a rock?  Clearly there's a difference.

You wouldn't.  But I don't think you will provide a non-arbitrary definition for what IS to be called processing, either.

I use the meaning of the term in comp sci when referring to comp sci explanations of mind.  You can equivocate upon other uses of the term all you like. My butcher processes meat, does that make his knife a computer? I think not.

As to post above, because I just can't help but comment; The evidence we have, and the system we have for asessing that evidence, leaves us no room but to conclude that brain accounts for mind. You're unsatisfied, and OFC you can be unsatisfied, but there it is. I wish we could actually discuss your objections for what they are..because I feel that we might learn something, if only about each other. Then I might at least understand your position even if I don't agree with it.

[little_monkey]

If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain. Otherwise, you are grasping at straws.

This isn't about what I think or don't think.  It's what I know or don't know, and why.  You say that smiling is an activity of the mind; however, some robots can smile, and nobody thinks they have minds as far as I know.  It's one thing to have correlates of mind, but how will you show your correlation, being unable to observe a mind?

I've already addressed that issue: it's not just smiling you need to consider but ALL activities. For instance just to name one activity:  when android can create new ideas, like humans have done from Plato to Heisenberg, then you can say maybe these androids have a "mind". Until then android proves nothing about what the mind is. (hint: bringing androids to defeat my argument isn't going to work). 

Either you will have to beg the question by defining mind in terms of the correlates themselves, or you will have to make a philosophical assumption.  

What begging? This is how science is done, has been done since Galileo. We correlate things: in math, it's called mapping. All math is mapping. If we can correlate in a one-to-one mapping between mind activities with brain activities, you have no choice but to say that mind = brain activity. You can't change the rules just because YOU don't like it.

And you haven't answered my point: If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain.

[bennyboy]

The state of an electron in its orbit IS changeable, and on multiple but discrete levels.  And a galaxy is also processing, since the events that transpire in it affect what light leaves it: its intensity, its direction, etc.

-that's all well and good but meeting one criteria for processing no more makes a processor out of an electron that being able to fly makes a bird out of a plane.  It doesn't even -begin- to approach a comp system.  The galaxy doesn't appear to be a processor either.  If you insist on these grand equivocations you are unlikely to find knowledge at their terminus.

This game's fun but I'm a little busy to keep playing. I could keep listing things that involve change of states that persist over time and have effects, aka processing, and you can keep saying that your comp mind is a special snowflake. So why don't you say what's special about it in terms that cannot be applied to anything that doesn't for sure have mind, and be done with it?

I use the meaning of the term in comp sci when referring to comp sci explanations of mind.  You can equivocate upon other uses of the term all you like.  My butcher processes meat, does that make his knife a computer?  I think not.

Still waiting for that non-arbitrary distinction.

As to post above, because I just can't help but comment;  The evidence we have, and the system we have for asessing that evidence, leaves us no room but to conclude that brain accounts for mind.

What about the brain? That's always been the question.

[bennyboy]

I've already addressed that issue: it's not just smiling you need to consider but ALL activities. For instance just to name one activity:  when android can create new ideas, like humans have done from Plato to Heisenberg, then you can say maybe these androids have a "mind". Until then android proves nothing about what the mind is. (hint: bringing androids to defeat my argument isn't going to work). 

Are you sure that computers haven't generated new ideas? (1) I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that and (2) it still doesn't show that computers can experience what things are like.

Either you will have to beg the question by defining mind in terms of the correlates themselves, or you will have to make a philosophical assumption.  

What begging? This is how science is done, has been done since Galileo. We correlate things: in math, it's called mapping. All math is mapping. If we can correlate in a one-to-one mapping between mind activities with brain activities, you have no choice but to say that mind = brain activity. You can't change the rules just because YOU don't like it.

You can't make a correlation, because you haven't demonstrated that any physical system HAS a mind without reference to those correlates. You're correlating brain function (or smiles or idea-making or whatever physical correlates you assume must serve as evidence of mind) with mystery magic, not with anything which is known to exist. You are saying "Mind is brain function, smiles, and idea-making, and look, there it is. Told ya!" That is pretty much the definition of begging the question.

And you haven't answered my point: If you believe that MIND = BRAIN ACTIVITIES + something else, then it's upon you to show that you can perform a mindful activity without any activity in the brain.

I'm not asserting anything. It is my intent to show that material monists do not, and cannot, have a sufficient philosophical basis for their claims about mind. That being said, I'm also the only one here who has suggested an experiment by which we might try to get around the problem of our inability to directly observe mind.

[Jehanne]

I'm not asserting anything.  It is my intent to show that material monists do not, and cannot, have a sufficient philosophical basis for their claims about mind.  That being said, I'm also the only one here who has suggested an experiment by which we might try to get around the problem of our inability to directly observe mind.

Conservation of Energy?  It applies to everything that science has observed in the Universe; why not to the brain?

[bennyboy]

I'm not asserting anything.  It is my intent to show that material monists do not, and cannot, have a sufficient philosophical basis for their claims about mind.  That being said, I'm also the only one here who has suggested an experiment by which we might try to get around the problem of our inability to directly observe mind.

Conservation of Energy?  It applies to everything that science has observed in the Universe; why not to the brain?

I don't see the connection between what you quoted and what you said.  Could you elaborate?

[Jehanne]

Conservation of Energy?  It applies to everything that science has observed in the Universe; why not to the brain?

I don't see the connection between what you quoted and what you said.  Could you elaborate?

If a immaterial soul/spirit existed and was the foundation of human consciousness, then that soul/spirit would have to "push" electrons, that is, impart energy to them, because that is what brain activity is, electrochemical.  However, if electrical charge is a conserved quantity, along with momentum and angular momentum, how would a soul or spirit cause an electron to go from a ground state to a higher state without violating the conservation laws?

[bennyboy]

I don't see the connection between what you quoted and what you said.  Could you elaborate?

If a immaterial soul/spirit existed and was the foundation of human consciousness, then that soul/spirit would have to "push" electrons, that is, impart energy to them, because that is what brain activity is, electrochemical.  However, if electrical charge is a conserved quantity, along with momentum and angular momentum, how would a soul or spirit cause an electron to go from a ground state to a higher state without violating the conservation laws?

I don't know anything about immaterial soul or spirits, so I can't comment on that much.  My issue, at least the one I want to discuss in this thread, is one about locality vs. universality: specifically, at what level of organization does "mind" happen?  I don't think it's likely that there's a "critical mass" of organization at any level, like the brain or a computer, but that it must be something very elemental in the Universe; specifically, that if it is material, it is intrinsic to matter at the quantum level, rather than supervening on those particular structures that we arbitrarily say are "processing."

Full disclosure: in terms of a material world view, I'd go with a kind of panpsychism, but I prefer a kind of idealism. I don't want to talk about that right now, but just so you can see where Rhythm and little_monkey are coming from with some of the comments they direct at me.

[Jehanne]

Full disclosure: in terms of a material world view, I'd go with a kind of panpsychism, but I prefer a kind of idealism.  I don't want to talk about that right now, but just so you can see where Rhythm and little_monkey are coming from with some of the comments they direct at me.

No scientific evidence exists for panpsychism; it is an unproductive hypothesis.