Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[vulcanlogician]

^It was a good read. And yes, a little technical in places, but nothing we can't unpack and clarify. It's not overly technical.

@Neo-Scholastic

So let's discuss this. One point I thought was salient was Lycan's defense of the interaction problem, namely that we don't fully understand causality-- period. And that comes to bear when considering how minds causally interact with bodies. That's an excellent point. And I think he's correct here.

One objection that I came up with (not featured in the paper) concerns Lycan's suggestion that the Cartesian abandon nonspaciality.

Why not suppose that minds are located where it feels as if they are located, in the head behind the eyes?... If it be protested that our heads are already entirely full of physical stuff and that two things cannot occupy the same region of space at the same time: ... Immaterial minds are not physical. And what is true is only that two physical things cannot occupy the same region of space at the same time. For that matter, ... our heads are not entirely full of physical stuff. Physically, they are mostly empty space, with minuscule particles zipping through them at very high speeds.

But let's think about what Lycan is saying here: there is some kind of immaterial, airy-fairy stuff hovering around our heads. There is a reason we think ordinary objects (like tables) are located in space. We see them. We look at them and perceive them occupying space. Therefore we are justified in believing that ordinary objects, like tables, occupy space. What is Lycan's justification? There is none. His postulation is simply a way to make the argument easier for him.

Of course, it may be true that there is some kind of airy-fairy mind floating about in our headspace. But the dualist has all his work ahead of him to prove this. We needn't spend any time wondering if tables occupy space. That's a safe assumption. There is a reason Descartes postulated that the mind lacks extension. We can directly observe our minds (in fact, that's all we can observe... we only observe physical objects as contents of our minds). But when we observe the mind itself, and not specifically its contents, we see no extension of it in space. We don't "see" it floating around our headspace.

Are you interested in breaking down the syllogism Neo, or @DLJ ?

I didn't give it careful study, but if I do, I wonder if I'll share Lycan's conclusion that both premises are false. And (even if they are false) I wonder if the materialist can't construct a less ambitious argument with true premises.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yeah, I would not mind a more close reading of his assumptions about causality. The mind-body relationship wasnt a problem until Dcartes abandoned the Scholastic causality of "whatness" for a modern causality of "howness". Whereas to a 11th century monk natural science was more about describing the preconditions for "being" a flower, a modern biologist might be more interested in the preconditions for a flower to come into being, "becoming".

[DLJ]

...
Are you interested in breaking down the syllogism Neo, or @DLJ ?

I didn't give it careful study, but if I do, I wonder if I'll share Lycan's conclusion that both premises are false. And (even if they are false) I wonder if the materialist can't construct a less ambitious argument with true premises.

Did you mean the Pain-related sillygism?  That's one of bits I couldn't fathom.

So yes, I'm certainly interested in being educated.

...
So let's discuss this. One point I thought was salient was Lycan's defense of the interaction problem, namely that we don't fully understand causality-- period. And that comes to bear when considering how minds causally interact with bodies. That's an excellent point. And I think he's correct here.

One objection that I came up with (not featured in the paper) concerns Lycan's suggestion that the Cartesian abandon nonspaciality.
...

My main objection is that there doesn't seem to be an adequate explanation anywhere of what 'the mind' actually is.  
Which is why I've come to the conclusion that it does not exist - which does make it non-spatial, now I think about it

Definitions I've found put it in the Pragmatic Information Layer (I can elaborate on Info Layers if asked)... hence above mentioning that it exists in the same way that 'the sky' exists i.e. it doesn't.

But I'm still in the dualist camp - although not in the way Descartes meant it, I think.  

(I've got a lot on next week so I might be tardy in replying).

[vulcanlogician]

@Neo-Scholastic

Dude, there is a wonderful series of Oxford lectures being posted to YouTube on Philosophy Overdose. I highly recommend subscribing to the channel.

This is the first lecture. There are many more. The lectures are great, but I recommend skipping the parts when the class asks her questions. For some reason, a great many of the students present insist on wasting the lecturer's time rather than asking relevant questions. It's SO annoying, and as the series goes on, it really becomes agitating. Trust me. It may not bother you at first, but it soon will.

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The series really gets into the nitty gritty of causality. It demonstrates that, while causality is present in all of our ordinary experiences, we really don't understand jack shit about it. This makes Lycan's defense of mind-body causality quite valid.

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Did you mean the Pain-related sillygism?  That's one of bits I couldn't fathom.

That's the one. Here it is:

1. Pain = Whatever state of a person plays role P (being typically caused by
tissue damage, and in turn causing wincing, crying out, withdrawal,
favouring, etc.) [We know this a priori; we have all got the concept of
pain.]
2. The occupant of role P = the firing of c-fibres (i.e., it is c-fibre firings that
are typically caused by tissue damage, etc.).10 [Discovered empirically by
neuroscientists.]

[therefore]

3. Pain = the firing of c-fibres. QED

It is rather difficult. But not impossible to parse out.

[DLJ]

...

It is rather difficult. But not impossible to parse out.

I'm having trouble, I think, with the terms 'role' and 'occupant'.

[vulcanlogician]

...

It is rather difficult. But not impossible to parse out.

I'm having trouble, I think, with the terms 'role' and 'occupant'.  

I'm not 100% on it, but I think we can figure something out by looking at premise 1 to gather what role P is.

We know from premise 1 that role P is the sensation of pain (or state of pain, to be more precise). So if I prick you on the finger with a pin, you will enter a certain conscious state (pain). Without any knowledge of neuroscience, anyone is familiar with what premise 1 says. So role P isn't a technical term. It's just a variable. 

Role P, in premise 1, refers to the state of pain (with which we are all familiar).

Premise 2 tells us about the same event (a state of pain)... but it explains it from a neuroscientists perspective. Let's stick with the pin prick to the finger example. If I prick your finger with a pin, a neuroscientist would observe that slight tissue damage in your finger would cause the firing of your c-fibers. These c-fibers would carry the signal caused by the pin prick from your peripheral to your central nervous system.

So we have two "stories" about the pin prick. In one story, (from the first-person vantagepoint) you see me prick your finger and you experience pain. In the other "story" (gleaned from a third-person view) the pin prick caused the firing of neurons. The firing of neurons is not involved in the first story. Nor is the sensation of pain (as it is felt) involved in the second story.

So I think "occupant" means that the firing of neurons "occupies" the place where the pain state is in the first story. (Because the pain state, or sensation of pain, doesn't feature in the second story)

Let's put that in terms of "role P." In the first story (from premise 1), role P is played by the sensation of pain. In the second story, role P is played by the firing of neurons. So that (seemingly) leads to the conclusion that the sensation of pain *IS* the firing of neurons... a conclusion with which the author disagrees.

[AFTT47]

Mind is an emergent property of the brain's neuron activity.

So it would seem. But by what mechanism? This is where the great mystery lays.

If the mind is an emergent property of the physical activity of the brain, it is produced in accordance with a set of physical laws.

But what laws are those? We have absolutely SQUAT! NOTHING! ZILCH!

Imagine telling a scientist from the year 1800 that the sun has been burning for 4.5 billion years and that it had that much more time to burn before shrinking to a white dwarf. The scientist would have no way to make any sense of that because in his world, there is no known principle of physics that would make that possible. He would have to deduce that the sun burns by a mechanism unknown to him.

That's where we are right now regarding mind. However it is produced, it is something that is beyond our current knowledge. We've got nothing more than speculation. Just like the hypothetical scientist from 1800 trying to figure out how the sun is powered, we can only conclude that there must be a layer of physics beyond our current understanding. Because what we've got now cannot remotely explain HOW physical activity in the brain somehow results in the emergence of mind.

[HappySkeptic]

That's where we are right now regarding mind. However it is produced, it is something that is beyond our current knowledge. We've got nothing more than speculation. Just like the hypothetical scientist from 1800 trying to figure out how the sun is powered, we can only conclude that there must be a layer of physics beyond our current understanding. Because what we've got now cannot remotely explain HOW physical activity in the brain somehow results in the emergence of mind.

Yes, there is a lot that is unknown, but I would argue that anything that exists is coincident with physical activity.  The mind, being something that exists, must operate under physical principles.

[DLJ]

Mind is an emergent property of the brain's neuron activity.

So it would seem. But by what mechanism? This is where the great mystery lays.

If the mind is an emergent property of the physical activity of the brain, it is produced in accordance with a set of physical laws.

But what laws are those? We have absolutely SQUAT! NOTHING! ZILCH!
...

...
  The mind, being something that exists, must operate under physical principles.

Ooooor... there's something wrong with the question.

Like the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Maybe, just maybe, there are no angels and maybier, there is no mind?

That's my conclusion.

[HappySkeptic]

...
  The mind, being something that exists, must operate under physical principles.

Ooooor... there's something wrong with the question.

Like the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Maybe, just maybe, there are no angels and maybier, there is no mind?

That's my conclusion.

The mind (and consciousness) isn't a thing - its a process.  The brain is the "thing" that allows this process to happen.  To me, processes are as real as things.