Originally posted by carpedm9587
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Cogito ergo sum
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Forum Rules: Here
Here in the Philosophy forum we will talk about all the "why" questions. We'll have conversations about the way in which philosophy and theology and religion interact with each other. Metaphysics, ontology, origins, truth? They're all fair game so jump right in and have some fun! But remember...play nice!
Forum Rules: Here
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Can Atheism Account For Rationality
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Originally posted by carpedm9587 View PostNot a single characteristic in common?
1) They both exist.
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post2) They both are associated with humans (brains to other animals and mind possibly as well)
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post3) They are both associated with thought (and the brain with other things as well)
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post4) They are both impacted (to one degree or another) when harm is done to the brain
5) They are both associated with memory
6) They are both associated with the five senses
If we take the five senses for example, it's quite obvious for different parts of the brain are related to different senses, but it's not like the qualia, or sensations themselves, reside anywhere in the brain.
Bottom line, it seems to me that you've tried to come up with as general (and abstracted) type of characteristics as possible in order to find commonalities, but when you start delving down into the specifics you see that although the mind and brain have characteristics that can be grouped together into the same sort of category they're not really the same characteristics at all, but different characteristics of the same general type (So they're both in the general type of characteristics of being "associated with the five senses" for example, but the specific type of association is different for the mind and the brain).
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post7) They are both fallible
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post8) They both exist in time and space
Originally posted by carpedm9587 View PostThat's my quick list...there may be other things.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think they are "the same thing." But they do appear to be inextricably linked.
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Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostOnly that they are separate things. I'm not alleging that it's evidence that the mind can exist independently of the brain.The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas
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Originally posted by carpedm9587 View PostOK - but I would not agree with "separate." "Distinct," perhaps - but not separate.
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Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostWell obviously, though I don't count existence as a property per se. Though that by itself shows that they are separate things, because if the mind exists as an entity in itself then it couldn't possibly be the same thing as the brain.
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostI mean, if you use "associated with X" as a characteristics you can basically subsume different characteristics of the same general type under the same umbrella and sort of assert that they are the same characteristic, but I'm not really convinced by that.
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostBut in different ways. Thoughts themselves only exist in minds, so brains are only associated with thoughts in virtue of being related (in whatever fashion) to minds. Thoughts are primarily associated with the mind, and only secondarily with the brain. (Unless you're an eliminativist of course)
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostWell, except they're impacted by and associated with these things in fundamentally different ways. Memory and the five senses are associated with the mind and brain in different ways, and so is the way the mind and brain gets impacted when harm is done to the brain.
If we take the five senses for example, it's quite obvious for different parts of the brain are related to different senses, but it's not like the qualia, or sensations themselves, reside anywhere in the brain.
Bottom line, it seems to me that you've tried to come up with as general (and abstracted) type of characteristics as possible in order to find commonalities, but when you start delving down into the specifics you see that although the mind and brain have characteristics that can be grouped together into the same sort of category they're not really the same characteristics at all, but different characteristics of the same general type (So they're both in the general type of characteristics of being "associated with the five senses" for example, but the specific type of association is different for the mind and the brain).
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostI don't even know what it means for the brain to be fallible.
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostI mean, I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong here, I'm inclined to believe that the mind does exist in time, or we experience the passage of time, but if the mind exists in both time and space how is it that we've never been able to directly observe the mind of anyone other than ourselves? It doesn't seem to me like the mind is extended in space at all.
Well - almost never. A great deal of study has been done on how the mind creates a map of the body and can even extend that map to objects we hold or use. So the baseball bat becomes an extension of the body. Even a car becomes an extension. And then there are those "out of body experiences," which we now know can be induced in a repeatable fashion by the correct electrical stimulation to the correct part of the brain. It seems that stimulation "translates" the map the brain has built to a different set of coordinates, leaving the person feeling as if they are "outside of their body looking down on it."
Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostWell, I think they're linked as well, not just as inextricably as you believe them to be.
Coming to grips with the fact (I believe) that such things are illusions is not an easy process.The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas
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Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostIn the context of this discussion I'm using separate and distinct pretty much interchangeably. I'm pretty sure there's an overlap of meaning between the two, at least for some definitions of the words.
I am not sure if I have said this to you before, but I thoroughly enjoy your discussion style. You focus on the arguments and the concepts, and don't appear to take disagreement as a personal attack. There is not a hint of sarcasm about you (except playfully), and your tone is consistently civil. I wish there were more posters like you. You set an example that I strive (not always successfully) to emulate.
And coming from a 61-year-old curmudgeon - that's high praise!The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas
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Originally posted by Darfius View Post[ATTACH=CONFIG]38018[/ATTACH]The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas
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Originally posted by MaxVel View PostWelcome to 'dialogue' with Shunya. Watch out for when he cites a source which clearly refutes whatever position he's arguing for. That's always entertaining.Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:
go with the flow the river knows . . .
Frank
I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.
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Originally posted by shunyadragon View PostOnly in your apparent lack of understanding of the English language. Nothing I have cited refutes my position.Originally posted by shunyadragon View PostYou are not even up to date on the scientific advances in the development of 'organic computers,' and computers that simulate the neurological nature of the brain, which represent the future generation beyond our mechanical digital computers.
Here is why:
Searle has produced a more formal version of the argument of which the Chinese Room forms a part. He presented the first version in 1984. The version given below is from 1990.[51][n] The only part of the argument which should be controversial is A3 and it is this point which the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove.[o]
He begins with three axioms:
(A1) "Programs are formal (syntactic)."
A program uses syntax to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics of the symbols. It knows where to put the symbols and how to move them around, but it doesn't know what they stand for or what they mean. For the program, the symbols are just physical objects like any others.
(A2) "Minds have mental contents (semantics)."
Unlike the symbols used by a program, our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.
(A3) "Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantics."
This is what the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove: the Chinese room has syntax (because there is a man in there moving symbols around). The Chinese room has no semantics (because, according to Searle, there is no one or nothing in the room that understands what the symbols mean). Therefore, having syntax is not enough to generate semantics.
Searle posits that these lead directly to this conclusion:
(C1) Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds.
This should follow without controversy from the first three: Programs don't have semantics. Programs have only syntax, and syntax is insufficient for semantics. Every mind has semantics. Therefore no programs are minds.
This much of the argument is intended to show that artificial intelligence can never produce a machine with a mind by writing programs that manipulate symbols. The remainder of the argument addresses a different issue. Is the human brain running a program? In other words, is the computational theory of mind correct?[g] He begins with an axiom that is intended to express the basic modern scientific consensus about brains and minds:
(A4) Brains cause minds.
Searle claims that we can derive "immediately" and "trivially"[36] that:
(C2) Any other system capable of causing minds would have to have causal powers (at least) equivalent to those of brains.
Brains must have something that causes a mind to exist. Science has yet to determine exactly what it is, but it must exist, because minds exist. Searle calls it "causal powers". "Causal powers" is whatever the brain uses to create a mind. If anything else can cause a mind to exist, it must have "equivalent causal powers". "Equivalent causal powers" is whatever else that could be used to make a mind.
And from this he derives the further conclusions:
(C3) Any artifact that produced mental phenomena, any artificial brain, would have to be able to duplicate the specific causal powers of brains, and it could not do that just by running a formal program.
This follows from C1 and C2: Since no program can produce a mind, and "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, it follows that programs do not have "equivalent causal powers."
(C4) The way that human brains actually produce mental phenomena cannot be solely by virtue of running a computer program.
Since programs do not have "equivalent causal powers", "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, and brains produce minds, it follows that brains do not use programs to produce minds.
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Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostHow on earth does it make sense to recognize a notion that's so patently absurd and false? The issue of how an immaterial entity can interact with a material entity isn't even half as insurmountable as the problem the eliminativist faces when he has to explain how the brain and the mind, two entities that do not share one single characteristic in common, could actually be one and the same thing, despite every indication to the opposite.
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Originally posted by Chrawnus View PostPerhaps, but if the question of how the mind can interact with the brain if they're two distinct entities has yet to be adequately explained then it looks even bleaker for the person who wants to maintain that they're one and the same thing.
Well for one (and this is perhaps the most fundamental difference), your brain is physical and can be touched, while your mind is intangible and cannot be accessed by anyone other than yourself.“He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.
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Originally posted by Tassman View PostThe question of how the mind can interact with the brain if they're two distinct entities does not need explanation at all, because they are not separate entities. This is merely an assumption generated in an attempt to explain the existence of ‘souls’.
This is why it is an undergraduate position that tends to be expunged by the time people get to postgraduate study - in philosophy. Outside of philosophy it is an uncritical position held by computer scientists and the like that they accept blindly.
Regarding the hard problem of consciousness - this again, has not been solved. So claiming that it has been, is done so uncritically because - herp derp, "attempt to explain the existence of not ‘souls’."Last edited by Zara; 06-29-2019, 10:32 PM.
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Originally posted by Tassman View PostThe question of how the mind can interact with the brain if they're two distinct entities does not need explanation at all, because they are not separate entities. This is merely an assumption generated in an attempt to explain the existence of ‘souls’.
Originally posted by Tassman View PostThe same applies to all sentient creatures, not just the human animal. Humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate intangible characteristics such as consciousness, self-awareness and reasoning power. Do you suggest that chimpanzees have a mind separate from their brains?
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Not that I expect analogies to be understood these days, but
That gravity arises from matter doesn't mean that gravity is matter. (and gravitational waves seemingly can continue in existence long after the matter that produces them is destroyed.)
That mind (perhaps) arises from brain doesn't mean that mind is brain.
The concepts advanced by Chrawnus seem reasonable to me.
As for animals having minds - observation indicates a high probability that they do.1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
.⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
Scripture before Tradition:
but that won't prevent others from
taking it upon themselves to deprive you
of the right to call yourself Christian.
⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
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