Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I would argue that anything that exists is coincident with physical activity.  The mind, being something that exists, must operate under physical principles.

Then by all means make that argument :-)

[DLJ]

...
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.

Are they (1. processes and 2. brain (part of the infrastructure that enables the processing)) real in the same sense?

[HappySkeptic]

...
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.

Are they (1. processes and 2. brain (part of the infrastructure that enables the processing)) real in the same sense?

A: Yes.

[Silver]

I think people get as confused about the field of neurology in relation to the mind as some people get confused about physics in relation to engineering.

[Fireball]

I think people get as confused about the field of neurology in relation to the mind as some people get confused about physics in relation to engineering.

Would you care to expand on that? I don't disagree, as I know plenty of people who have no idea what physics is. When asked, I told people that it was a lot like engineering, but with more math. Which is actually a joke if you think about it.

[Silver]

Just that people tend to unnecessarily trip themselves up over not comprehending a subject that is easier for particular minds to grasp.

IE, I don't know Latin, but it doesn't mean it's not a real language.

AKA, you not understanding neurology doesn't mean mind isn't directly associated with consciousness.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Are they (1. processes and 2. brain (part of the infrastructure that enables the processing)) real in the same sense?

A: Yes.

...then Parmenides shook Heraclitus's hand and that was the end of Western philosophy....<the end>

Except it didn't happen that way.

You cannot just brush away thousands of years of pondering the relationship between being and change with a one word answer! Expressed in text, it comes off a little arrogant even if you didn't mean it that way. (I have the same problem). Are you perhaps saying that your ontology has only one category of being for both events and matter...and into this category "things" like sensation, meaning, and value reduce. I say that because, physical reduction is very far from proven nor is it obvious enough to be properly basic.

I take Nagel's challenge from "Mind and Cosmos" seriously: "Materialism requires reductionism; therefore the failure of reductionism requires an alternative to materialism."

[HappySkeptic]

A: Yes.

...then Parmenides shook Heraclitus's hand and that was the end of Western philosophy....<the end>

Except it didn't happen that way.

You cannot just brush away thousands of years of pondering the relationship between being and change with a one word answer! Expressed in text, it comes off a little arrogant even if you didn't mean it that way. (I have the same problem). Are you perhaps saying that your ontology has only one category of being for both events and matter...and into this category "things" like sensation, meaning, and value reduce. I say that because, physical reduction is very far from proven nor is it obvious enough to be properly basic.

I take Nagel's challenge from "Mind and Cosmos" seriously: "Materialism requires reductionism; therefore the failure of reductionism requires an alternative to materialism."

I gave a short answer, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into a physics discussion.

I haven't read Nagel, but I find that quote to simply be wrong.  Reductionism is a perfectly valid thing.  It is just the wrong tool to explain emergence.  It is a logical error, for instance, to think that because consciousness exist, a materialist must assume that the smallest particles in the universe are conscious.  That's just stupid.  Nor will knowing the properties of a particle to more decimal places get us any closer to understanding consciousness.

I am a materialist, but with modern physics knowledge, I think we can throw out most of the crap that philosophers came up with in the past.  There is only the universe, and the properties we find in it.  These include fields and particles (which are two sides of the same coin).  The fields and particles are only known through interaction events.  If events didn't occur, then nothing about these fields and particles could be known -- we could say that they might as well not exist.

In Quantum Mechanics, the two fundamental building blocks are state and events.  State is what we would call the material, but all it does is describe the probabilities for future events.  It is the memory of past events, and the driver of future ones.  The events in time map out all processes, from nuclear fusion to electrical and chemical interactions.

So, to the people who ask "how can mind come from dead matter", I say they are looking at it wrong.  Processes are emerging out of the relationships of information and events.  When information processes become re-entrant, completely new patterns can occur in reality.  The brain holds the state (wiring, memory, switching) on which a most complex re-entrant information process is occurring - one which recreates a simulacrum of the external world, and imagines itself and its future.

[Angrboda]

I take Nagel's challenge from "Mind and Cosmos" seriously: "Materialism requires reductionism; therefore the failure of reductionism requires an alternative to materialism."

Except that you can't show the failure of reductionism except by an argument from ignorance, which is invalid. So Nagel's challenge leads nowhere.

[vulcanlogician]

I take Nagel's challenge from "Mind and Cosmos" seriously: "Materialism requires reductionism; therefore the failure of reductionism requires an alternative to materialism."

Except that you can't show the failure of reductionism except by an argument from ignorance, which is invalid.  So Nagel's challenge leads nowhere.

What about qualia? Qualia are not explained by brain states. I think that's one of Nagel's main points.

To return to Searle, conscious states are causally reducible to brain states (I agree with that). But they aren't ontologically reducible (because of qualia). So the point is: reductionism fails here. Searle believes it is simply a gap in our scientific knowledge, and that the reductionism fails simply because of our ignorance of the natural world... ie... it doesn't necessarily fail. I'm not sure I completely agree with Searle here. But I like his analysis.

I'm also interested in your take on the dualism paper, Angrboda, if you happened to read it.