You brought up mind. You defend it. Pretty sure that's how it works.

I'm looking at the Wikipedia page on logic and there is a problem with formal logic in that it abstracts away from content in a way that becomes overly burdensome in a complex environment

Both mind and brain are more basic elements than are needed. Show your logic for why mind is needed so I have an example. I'm thinking it's an imagined object.

Ok, the Wikipedia logic page..Both are propositions.

Anyone know what P and Q stand for?

Q is the proposition — Bartricks

I do like the P and Q stuff, Might be useful. Hope it's not a distraction.

Personally, I like the method of working the problems of monism/dualism, information, brain states and a few other problems as one problem. Can your method do that?

Well, that was just gibberish. — Bartricks

I agree. Just so you know, I'm not classically trained.

Since you don't understand, there's no evidence, but you have lots of evidence and there is an actual situation and we should be interested in what's true and what's most likely true and the fact that your mind is not your brain, then my position is indefensible...nuts.

I sometimes get into how the brain contained 'non-physical' can control physical matter. Your point in treating thought as a concept(disembodied) is useful and maybe a commom perception of thought.

In the physical form that they exist, they are brain state. That's not a limitation. You just don't need a non-physical realm to explain them.

The OP asks 'Does thinking take place in the human brain?', not how.

I think this is an excellent preliminary question to ask before asking how. It identifies where to start looking if you answer it correctly. And we don't know the solution before we get there. I do U-turns if I need to.

So given some uncertainty, isn't the brain state model still the front runner. What are the alternate models or should we just work harder on the brain state model?

That seems like the fallacy Bartricks was accusing me of. I might try to review on my own what the science is. Science doesn't have a full explanation.

↪Mark Nyquist Where's your argument for this? If you provide one, I bet it'll commit the fallacy I identified earlier - that is, you're going to argue like this: this brain state causes this mental state......therefore this brain state 'is' this mental state. — Bartricks

You might be right about brain state causing mental state being fallacy. I was giving an overview, not cause and effect. My second attempt was that thought can only exist if supported by brains state. That's how I approach it
Mental state(as non-physical thought) is subsidiary to brain state, not equal to. But mental state cannot exist unsupported so (in the state it exists) it is brain state.

I stress, it isn't true and you have not supported it in anyway — Bartricks

I'm not trying to do a full proof here but trying to outline a posible relation.

I agree that 'thoughts' are 'non-physical'. But this type of non-physical can only exist if supported by a sufficiently capable brain state. Like this:

BRAIN(a specific thought) = a specific brain state
and,
A specific thought unsupported would not exist.

So the existence of specific thought is proof that brain state is supporting this specific thought.

Are you discounting the posibility that by a closer examination of brain state you could find states of mind within?
Something like brain state expanded to a physical brain that has the capability to fully support an observed state of mind.

So since thoughts have specific content you could estimate how many unique thoughts per day might be typical for a given persons brain. It might be five, ten or twenty thousand. The thoughts would match the history and circumstances of that persons brain. That is evidence that thoughts take place in brains.
Is there any alternative?

That's why I brought up burden of proof. Proving the positive claim (thinking takes place in the brain) is hard enough. I can't do it. Proving the positive claim (thinking takes place outside the brain) would fall on you if that's your claim. Proving the negative claim (thinking does not take place outside the brain) seems imposible. This is tricky. So if I claim that thinking does not take place outside the brain then the burden of proof would be on me and I wouldn't be able to prove it.

A thought is not just process, but also has specific content. That might be a clue.
An affirmative or positive claim is easier to prove than a negative claim.
A negative claim is harder to prove. If your position is that thought might exist in other places, than a brain, then some burden of proof may fall on you.

Thinking takes place in the brains thinking areas. That seems circular but I'm ok with it.

Trestone, I looked at this yesterday and again today and I'm not getting it. Could you clarify if its application is to solve logic problems or is it a model of how body/mind work.
There seem to be some good principles of logic here but I don't see that it can model how the brain and mind work. For example the need to reset, readjust moment to moment, and mental reaction times(layers are too slow). I looked up human reaction times - a quarter second is common. It doesn't seem like a layered process is common but more of a special case.

Brain state interacting with the physical environment gets you out the front door in the morning.
Brain state interacting with the physical environment can drive your car to work.
Brain state interacting with the physical environment can do all the science we have done.
Brain state of person 1 can be transfered to person 2 by encoding and decoding physical matter.
If brain state is information then you have a coherent theory of everything.
Brain state is physical.
Brain state by expansion is BRAIN(mental content) and BRAIN(specific mental content).
Or in reverse order; BRAIN(specific mental content) = specific brain state.
Monism and dualism should be dropped in favor of this expansion method.

I use this when I want to learn something new. It's usually difficult until you reach a point where it's easy. It maybe involves training new neural pathways.

I don't know or can understand what does this mean. Should I study monism or something? — Alkis Piskas

Not only is a specific thought based on a specific brain state, but failure to grasp a specific thought is a failure to assemble a specific brain state. Sorry you didn't understand it. Did anyone else? As a concept it's not that hard and you might not agree with it.

"Brainists" totally outnumber "Non-brainists". — Alkis Piskas

To identify yourself as a Brainist or Non-brainist you should have already run through the question of what is thought and answered the question. So I assume most have done this.
The question is close to the question of monism or dualism so most of us have an opinion on that.
I like to expand monism/physicalism to include mental content. I went over this idea in Pops thread 'What is information?'. Basically you take brain state and do an expansion...equal states but increasing detail such as:

Brain state = BRAIN(mental content) = BRAIN(specific mental content)

So I assume brain state includes thinking. By working backwards, knowing your birthday is evidence of a specific brain state.
To frame this problem we have known end points...a physical brain and observed mental content. The circumstances point to brains having the ability to contain mental content. A more difficult question is how the brain actually contains mental content, what is the physical process and is the thing contained physical or physically non-existent. From the Brainist view point it's not hopeless. There are puzzle pieces. Thoughts are associated with the cerebral cortex, memory with temperal lobes, there is centralization in the thalamas, a nested heirarchy in a brains overall structure and there is some ability to observe and correlate brain activity with imaging (MRI's).
If the point of this post is to point out there are huge gaps in what is known, I agree.
There seems to be a relation of the physical brain to physically non-existent subject matter that is a significant problem in philosophy.

A doctor might check brain memory by asking a person to repeat 'banana, phone, door'.

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain. — Alkis Piskas

If you can remember you birthday doesn't that confirm the information or thought is contained in your physical brain?

Thoughts are the things that occur in the brain region that has thoughts.
Banno, I wrote that just for you.

As an example I could show how mental content can flash into existence in a way physical matter can not. Let's say you are driving along a dark road and a deer jumps in front of your headlights. The physics would play out as expected but the outcome could be determined by how you manage mental content.

I maybe painted myself into a corner. Brain state is entirely physical and the subject matter of mental content can be affected and based on physical matter. I was referring to mental content the way you would think of thought or ideas as non-physical.

is a wavefunction of affect: — Possibility

Did you miss that mental content (as contained) is unaffected by physical matter?

Brain information doesn’t actually differentiate between physical and non-physical representations. — Possibility

I agree. I tried to write it that way.
As for 'non-physical' representations, it would be hard for us to function without them and we all use them all the time...try never doing math. It's just better to understand than not.
This mental ability is also unique to us(humans) on planet earth and we don't know of it anywhere else in the universe. That is a stark contrast to the everything is information definition of information.

Your most fundamental thought, is a mirror image of fundamental reality. — Pop

Maybe it's a logic problem. Fundamental thought is the only tool we have to explore fundamental reality. But the tool itself seems to emerge from fundamental reality.

You and Pop must go back a ways and I haven't read it all but I think you are saying logic first is a good principle to follow as you approach this problem.

Dunno.

Cant the physical world contain non-entropic information too? — Prishon

I dunno, but our brains are at the top as far as we know.

See my recent answer to Prishon.

I was asking about physically non-existing things. — Prishon

Ok. My definition of information is that it's the same as brain state. This isn't a common view so I'm starting from scratch to explain it. A physically non-existing thing is a general catagory of information (or brain state). Holding non-physicals is a capability of our brains and unique to our brains.

Im not sure I understand this — Prishon

I get that a lot.
I use non-physical as a noun but it's more commonly used as an adjective. Does that help at all?