Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[brewer]

I'm in the mind/brain camp. Damage the mind/brain enough and you end up with no thoughts (at least not measurable/recognizable) but can still preserve life. Never heard of anyone recreating a damaged mind thru thought.

[Secular Elf]

It has been a long time since I delved into any philosophy, so I am just dipping my toes into the Ship of Theseus as I have not encountered this mind puzzle before and just looked it up. It is an interesting question. I almost immediately began thinking in terms of the human body on a cellular level. Physically our cells make us who we are. They die and are replaced by new cells constantly. So if millions of cells are replaced in a year's time, would an individual be the same person from the one the year before?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's an intuition pump. It has you asking questions of the the ship when it should be a question of the crew. The question posed is immediately flawed, in that we know that theseus need not die, and no plank need be replaced, for it to become joe the sponge divers ship.

If you, in this analogy by biology, are theseus - then the ship is yours no matter how many planks are replaced until the very moment you relinquish that claim.

[brewer]

It has been a long time since I delved into any philosophy, so I am just dipping my toes into the Ship of Theseus as I have not encountered this mind puzzle before and just looked it up.  It is an interesting question.  I almost immediately began thinking in terms of the human body on a cellular level.  Physically our cells make us who we are.  They die and are replaced by new cells constantly.  So if millions of cells are replaced in a year's time, would an individual be the same person from the one the year before?

The biologogical answer is no, not the same. The body does not replace dead with identical cells, even though you might 'feel' that same.

[vulcanlogician]

Yay, man!  Good to see you (virtually of course)

Life's good.  Mostly.  Have you heard about those people who got stuck in a foreign country when the world shut down?
I'm one of those.  18 months (to the day) in a strange, primitive land where they barely speak English!!  The horror!
I dread to think what's happened in my fridge in the mean time.

For real? You're joshin'

How about you?  All good, I hope.

Yeah man. I'm good.

The Ship of Theseus problem is surprisingly obvious once one sees it.  I can imagine Darwin looking at his notes and thinking "I can't possibly be the first person to notice this."  As it turns out, he wasn't but that's another story.

I tend to see the ship of Theseus as a thought experiment that shows us the ambiguity inherent in identity more than a problem in need of a "hard" solution. Like, are you the same person as twelve-year-old DLJ? We tend to want to answer "yes" to that question, but, like the ship of Theseus, there has been stuff added to "us" and stuff subtracted. What makes us "us"?

Isn't John Searle persona non grata at the moment?  I seem to remember a #metoo thingy.  
I struggle a bit with his terminology but I think he's close. Except I've seen a couple of lectures where he starts with "You want your arm to go up and it goes up."  Pah!
Try it.  It doesn't.  It's like he hasn't noticed that conscious thought is not the same as (auto)motive stimulus.  

Well, his metaphysics is there and open for criticism. His status as a decent human being doesn't enter into that debate. He does have some good insights. For instance, intentionality, Searle says, is simply a quality in natural objects. That seems plainly true. But it's something that, say, a dualist thinks is untrue.

Can't really comment on the "arm goes up thing"... don't know the lecture. But it's quite possible that he understands automotive stimulus, but is interested in its relation to conscious thought (shrug?)... again: I haven't seen the lecture.

Anyway, the poll... I agree regarding the word 'create'.  Hence the word 'produce'.  

Not sure if "produce" works either. Does the mind "produce" thoughts? Maybe. I'm more apt to say thoughts are caused by brain states. Where "mind" enters into it, I'm not certain. I don't like approaches that see mind as some kind of artifact... inasmuch as they want to ignore mind altogether. Mind is quite a mystery, and it is a genuine phenomenon.

Regarding consciousness, yup, it's a tricky one.  I'm coming to the conclusion that there's something fundamentally wrong with the question.  
It's a bit like the centuries of asking about the nature of god and pin-dancing angels... yeah but no... wrong question.

As wrong as Descartes assumptions were, I do think he asked the right question.

I'm thinking that the phenomenologists were onto something with 'intentionality' in that we are conscious 'of' something. So consciousness isn't some 'extra' factor (as the Philosopher I was debating last week insists)... it's part of an organisms monitoring system.

You familiar with Heidegger's critique of phenomenology?

[DLJ]

Both.  It's a re-entrant system.  

The mind produces thoughts, but what produced the mind?  It was the feedback from the environment and thoughts.  Sure, the hardware is just biology, but that isn't the mind - that is just a framework for the mind to form.

There's certainly something 're-entrant' about it.

I think you are making the case that 'the mind' is the software / an app.

So, you know when theist apologisers argue that their spaceless-timeless-disembodied-mind-god created the universe and we have to argue that you can't have a mind without a brain and a brain can't exist in non-space?

Well, I think we can go one better than that and argue that minds don't exist and therefore, that kind of god can't exist.

Or, at any rate, that minds exist in the same way that the sky exists.

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What do you mean by mind?

If you mean the brain then yes the brain produces thoughts.

Nope. I don't mean brain.

Think of it like the difference between a corporation's (corpus/body) datacentre (brain) vs. it's information flows and information artefacts (mind).

Sorry for the late reply btw, I just had my first SARS jab.... knocked me out for a couple of days.

[Silver]

I perceive the word mind to be directly synonymous with consciousness. Unless one wants to take the physical route of the mind being the brain.

[DLJ]

Mind is an emergent property of the brain's neuron activity.  Thoughts are some aspect of mind, though to call them building blocks wouldn't be accurate.  Perhaps every thought is a miniature version of mind and we simply consider them collectively to be our Mind.

Thinking about it too much makes mine shut down.

Yup, I think you're into something there... 'mind' is a label for a set.

"Building blocks" is a Business Architecture term... very relevant to the nature/nurture distinction.

Cool.

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I'm in the mind/brain camp. Damage the mind/brain enough and you end up with no thoughts (at least not measurable/recognizable) but can still preserve life. Never heard of anyone recreating a damaged mind thru thought.

One can certainly have brain damage (cue Pink Floyd) but can one damage the mind?

Yet another argument for the non-existence of 'mind'.

---

It has been a long time since I delved into any philosophy, so I am just dipping my toes into the Ship of Theseus as I have not encountered this mind puzzle before and just looked it up.  It is an interesting question.  I almost immediately began thinking in terms of the human body on a cellular level.  Physically our cells make us who we are.  They die and are replaced by new cells constantly.  So if millions of cells are replaced in a year's time, would an individual be the same person from the one the year before?

Nailed it.

Exactly my line of thought.

Are you in any of the service industries by any chance?

That's the thing about the Ship of Theseus... it isn't a ship. It's a service.

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It has been a long time since I delved into any philosophy, so I am just dipping my toes into the Ship of Theseus as I have not encountered this mind puzzle before and just looked it up.  It is an interesting question.  I almost immediately began thinking in terms of the human body on a cellular level.  Physically our cells make us who we are.  They die and are replaced by new cells constantly.  So if millions of cells are replaced in a year's time, would an individual be the same person from the one the year before?

The biologogical answer is no, not the same. The body does not replace dead with identical cells, even though you might 'feel' that same.

Yabut, the components that are replaced on the ship (including crew members) are also not identical.

[brewer]

The biologogical answer is no, not the same. The body does not replace dead with identical cells, even though you might 'feel' that same.

Yabut, the components that are replaced on the ship (including crew members) are also not identical.

Looks identical and feels identical does not necessarily equal identical. Depends on observation and perception.

---

I'm in the mind/brain camp. Damage the mind/brain enough and you end up with no thoughts (at least not measurable/recognizable) but can still preserve life. Never heard of anyone recreating a damaged mind thru thought.

One can certainly have brain damage (cue Pink Floyd) but can one damage the mind?

Yet another argument for the non-existence of 'mind'.

There are concepts for many of things that may or may not exist but are perceived to exist. Like free will, that's how I experience 'mind'. Not really much to argue about.

[DLJ]

Yay, man!  Good to see you (virtually of course)

Life's good.  Mostly.  Have you heard about those people who got stuck in a foreign country when the world shut down?
I'm one of those.  18 months (to the day) in a strange, primitive land where they barely speak English!!  The horror!
I dread to think what's happened in my fridge in the mean time.

For real? You're joshin'

Sadly, not joshing.  I've been paying two rents (home in Malaysia and AirBnB here - so I have a land-lady and an air-lord )

The Ship of Theseus problem is surprisingly obvious once one sees it.  I can imagine Darwin looking at his notes and thinking "I can't possibly be the first person to notice this."  As it turns out, he wasn't but that's another story.

I tend to see the ship of Theseus as a thought experiment that shows us the ambiguity inherent in identity more than a problem in need of a "hard" solution. Like, are you the same person as twelve-year-old DLJ? We tend to want to answer "yes" to that question, but, like the ship of Theseus, there has been stuff added to "us" and stuff subtracted. What makes us "us"?

Oddly enough, "What makes you ... you?", was the first line of a poem I wrote for my mum's funeral.  Odd to watch a funeral via Zoom but that's the modern world, I guess.  Her Alzheimer's / data loss / erased memory was one of the thoughts behind what I've been working on.

There's a Wikipedia page that lists 'Philosophy's unsolved problems' and Ship of Theseus is listed there but I would agree with your analysis.

As mentioned above though, if one considers a service vs. components of that service, I think this is the actual answer.  Value (that the ship and its crew provide) is observed at the supervenient Service-level not the Component-level.

Isn't John Searle persona non grata at the moment?  I seem to remember a #metoo thingy.  
I struggle a bit with his terminology but I think he's close. Except I've seen a couple of lectures where he starts with "You want your arm to go up and it goes up."  Pah!
Try it.  It doesn't.  It's like he hasn't noticed that conscious thought is not the same as (auto)motive stimulus.  

Well, his metaphysics is there and open for criticism. His status as a decent human being doesn't enter into that debate. He does have some good insights. For instance, intentionality, Searle says, is simply a quality in natural objects. That seems plainly true. But it's something that, say, a dualist thinks is untrue.

Can't really comment on the "arm goes up thing"... don't know the lecture. But it's quite possible that he understands automotive stimulus, but is interested in its relation to conscious thought (shrug?)... again: I haven't seen the lecture.

And yet, dear ol' Descartes was on to something.  Mind and body are different 'substances' (let's assume that him being ancient and French, he didn't mean 'substance' in the sense we use it now).
With a twist that there is no mind.

Anyway, the poll... I agree regarding the word 'create'.  Hence the word 'produce'.  

Not sure if "produce" works either. Does the mind "produce" thoughts? Maybe. I'm more apt to say thoughts are caused by brain states. Where "mind" enters into it, I'm not certain. I don't like approaches that see mind as some kind of artifact... inasmuch as they want to ignore mind altogether. Mind is quite a mystery, and it is a genuine phenomenon.

As mentioned above, the mind does not create thoughts (as there is no mind).

Thoughts as brain-states... agreed.

Regarding consciousness, yup, it's a tricky one.  I'm coming to the conclusion that there's something fundamentally wrong with the question.  
It's a bit like the centuries of asking about the nature of god and pin-dancing angels... yeah but no... wrong question.

As wrong as Descartes assumptions were, I do think he asked the right question.

So do I.  And I don't think he was entirely wrong.

We are (our phenotypic machine is) a dual processor.  The body processes nutrients and our nervous system (the T of IT - also part of the body, of course) processes data.

It's the difference between a reader and that which is read.  

I'm thinking that the phenomenologists were onto something with 'intentionality' in that we are conscious 'of' something. So consciousness isn't some 'extra' factor (as the Philosopher I was debating last week insists)... it's part of an organisms monitoring system.

You familiar with Heidegger's critique of phenomenology?

I'm not.  I've tried Heidegger (Being and Time) and I find his writing impenetrable (I suspect it's on purpose )

And this is exactly where I need help from the wise.  

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I perceive the word mind to be directly synonymous with consciousness. Unless one wants to take the physical route of the mind being the brain.

Does this mean that the mind is on standby when you are sleeping or under anesthetic?

For mind, think data/information processed. For brain, think datacentre.

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...

There are concepts for many of things that may or may not exist but are perceived to exist. Like free will, that's how I experience 'mind'. Not really much to argue about.

There's a concept of god that may or may not (well, not, obvs) exist but is perceived to exist (by many True Believer). And yet, there's lots of argument on this subject.