• Am I my body?
    I'd like to. Please show me, where is that organ Mind?ENOAH
    It is not a physical organ, but conceptual and functional organ. All your thoughts, feelings, emotions and senses i.e. the bundle of perceptions are your organ of mind, which emerged from your brain.
    You cannot see it of course. It is conceptual and functional, hence even Hume couldn't see it, and he had to conclude the existence of self doesn't exist. There is only a bundle of perception when looking at the idea of self.

    I will do some thinking for my reply to your other points. Later~
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Rationality is what delivers the truth, so there can be no question whether rationality delivers truth. It would be like trying to measure the standard metre in Paris in order to find out whether it is a metre long.Ludwig V
    We were not talking about truth here. We were talking about whether your knowledge or beliefs were rational or irrational. For that, you need to verify your knowledge or beliefs if they are not from deductive reasoning.

    H'm that's a bit quick. What about people like Aquinas or Descartes who believed that they had rational arguments for belief in God? That's quite different from belief from blind faith. True, most people (but not all) believe their arguments were not valid. But they certainly weren't blind faith.
    There are theologians who take as their starting-point the "presupposition" that the Bible is the word of God. It has something of the status of an axiom. Something posited as true, but not capable of being proved or disproved. Their theology follows by rational process. Sometimes rational thinking has irrational elements.
    Ludwig V
    Aquinas and Descartes were the people who used rational thinking to prove the existence of God. They were not the religious authorities who punished the general public based on the faiths and religious social codes.

    My problem is that I've never been able to grasp a clear meaning for the term "intelligence". So I mostly ignore it, especially in philosophy.Ludwig V
    Intelligence means knowing something, or being able to do something in coherent way. It is not same as reflecting, analyzing, criticizing and proving something, which are what rational thinking does.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    What it is like for you to make a prediction and to imagine things when you are awake?Harry Hindu
    Seeing images in your dreams and making predictions are totally different things happening in your mind. They are not the same activities. Seeing something is visual. Predicting something is imagining. There are two types of prediction. One by your hunch, and the other by inductive reasoning. Both activities involve your intention, will and inference.

    Seeing visual images in your dreams is random events happening without any of above. Plus it is visual operation with no imagination, guessing or reasoning.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    You just proved that you're wrong. You combined letters above, resulting in sentences. :up:night912
    I didn't combine anything at all. I just chose words to make up sentences. Anyway, it is not the same thing as seeing the images in your dreams.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    So it seems that even if I believe my perceptions without any grounds, I can justify them - that is, provide reasons (grounds) for believing them - after I come to believe them.Ludwig V

    You could, but if it is irrational, then others will not agree with your justification. Being rational means also it has to be objective. Your problem seem to be confusion between intelligence and knowledge with reasoning and being rational. They are not the same.
  • Am I my body?
    Mind craves an afterlife because the mechanism of the subject creates the illusion of continuing. I think, harsh as it is a pill to swallow, the so called subject doesn't really exist, and as for we tge body, it dies and is reborn in tge incessant present. If we want to put it into religious terms, There's God's gift to us, the eternal present, life, our fall is ignoring life and opting for knowledge and our own world that we built with it.ENOAH

    It is a bit strange that you seem to acknowledge the existence of God, and creation of the universe and humans by the God. But at the same time you deny the existence of souls and spirits, and brush aside death as the final page of the chapter for the beings.

    Souls and spirits are the essential elements in most religions. They are not for those non-believers. But if anyone is religious, then souls and spirits are the important existence which are real as the mind and body in the real world.
  • Am I my body?
    The body is plainly real in every sense of the word real. You're offering that in your statement.

    All of the enumerated things mind can do are what we (mind) ascribes to itself as proof of its reality 'beyond' the physical body. But these are just functions being carried out by a system of stimulus and response. Just happens the functions have evolved to act in such a richly complex and sophisticated way, with a narrative form, mechanisms like the ones we call logic, grammar, reason, etc., that the body observing these functions and responding, triggers good feelings when tge system classifies itself as "real"
    ENOAH
    Your problem seems to stem from conflating mind and body at times, and then looking at mind and body separate entities as you go along. Constancy and coherence are lacking in your argument.

    Mind and body are the same. Mind is is a part of the body. You are born in your body with little or no mind, then as your body grows, your mind emerges from the body. If you look at the mind as one of the organs of the body, then things get clearer.

    Body has different parts, and the different parts do different things. Mind and body work together to function properly. If you had no eyes, then you won't have sights. If you have no ears, you won't hear. If you had no mind being unconscious, you will not see or hear even if you had eyes and ears. It is that simple.

    We are a conceited ape. The conceit is the illusion that our imaginations are special beyond their function (yes, that is impressive) but somehow as an eternal truthENOAH
    Yes, humans have logic, grammar and reasoning, which are handy for delving into more sophisticated tasks for survival in nature and the real world. All other animals which are non-human lack the capacity, and even humans have different levels in logic, grammar and reasoning. It is just a fact, nothing to do with conceit.

    You can call humans as apes, because they share some biological mechanisms in life. They both have to be born, eat and drink, sleep, get old and die eventually. But that is where the common features exist and end as beings with the biological bodies. But they are not the same, when you look into their capacity of minds i.e. logic, grammar and reasoning. Saying that they are the same sounds over simplification of the beings in categorization trying to brush them under the same carpet for some peculiar reason.
  • Am I my body?
    unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity;ENOAH

    If mind believes in God, after life, resurrection, the heaven and hell etc, then it needs to postulate the existence of soul or spirit, so that it will unite with divine when it dies. We could say that soul or spirit is a postulated entity for a mind, like Thing-in-Itself is a postulated entity in Kant's system.
  • Am I my body?
    I agree that we have gotten it all wrong. We have privileged the Mind (unique to humans), unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity; relegating the flesh to a category shared with 'animals' as if we are superior to 'them', and worse, relegating it as the source of evil. Yet, prima facie, any animal born into this world has no 'cause' to question it's reality nor that of the natural Universe. Then why do we question reality? Because the 'we' doing the questioning is not our bodies, but this process of constructing and projecting (emerging out of our real imaginations--a thing we presumably share with primates, elephants, and sea mammals for e.g.) which has developed over generations, is transmitted with socialization, and has displaced our natures with--admittedly very functional--fictions.ENOAH

    I am not sure if the emergent mind is not real.  It is utterly real in that it knows, observes, feels, predicts and feels.  How can the mind be not real? 

    Enoah has a mind and body.  The body has a head, arms, feet and hands etc etc.  The mind can feel, know, observe, recall, predict, reason ... etc etc.

    The mind is a part of the body, which is invisible not only to other minds, but even to the mind itself.  But it is as real as the body so long as it operates with its expected functions.
    Mind dies when the body dies, because it is a part of the body.

    Mind asks about the world and also about reality, because it is one of the nature / functions of mind i.e. curiosity.

    Saying other animals are not the same as humans in reasoning is not placing the animals into the lower level out of arrogance of the human mind.  It is just telling the truth and reality out of observations on nature and the world.  It would be like saying the Sun is brighter than the Moon.  It is just stating the fact, not making the Sun any superior to the Moon, or trying to make the Sun feel proud.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    I think this matters because I think a democracy needs to be clear about the difference between fact and fiction. A democracy must have education for rational thinking based on facts and understand what this has to do with morality. If we believe a God made us closer to angels than animals, or if we believe we have evolved along with the rest of the animals, it really matters. That is the center of our understanding of reality and decisions that must be based on reality.Athena

    You should be very careful not to be deceived by the word democracy. It could mean, that you must do anything irrational to justify the word. It would be wiser to stay critical and analytical on these fancy words which can be hollow inside, but can force people to irrational actions and thoughts.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    600 years ago it might have been rational to believe the Bible is the word of God, there was an Eden, an angry God could and would punish people, but given what we know today, is that belief rational? Arguing the Bible is the word of God may be a rational thing to do if we have no standard for "rational" meaning a fact that can be validated. And if we believe rational means facts that can be validated then the belief that the Bible is the word of God, is not rational thinking. A definition of "rational" that treats fantasy as equal to thought based on valid facts is problematic, isn't it?Athena

    Religious beliefs always have been from the blind faith rather than anything to do with being rational or irrational. And at the time, when the religious authorities were ruling the society, it was more of the ruthless mad social system, which enforced people with the barbaric punishments rather than being rational or irrational. People had no options but abide by the system out of fear, rather than being rational.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Why does it matter whether our beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions were rational or irrational? Is it because that is how we know that they are true - or, in the case of actions, justified?Ludwig V

    Any reasonable person would want his / her beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions to be rational than irrational. No one wants to have beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions which are irrational by human nature. That is why it does matter for your beliefs, actions, knowledge or perceptions to be rational.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    That's basically what amalgamate means. Combining image 1 with image 2 results in an image that is neither image 1 or 2. So, the answer is obviously, yes.night912
    Combining image 1 and 2? doesn't make sense to me. How do you combine images? Combine something means mixing something. To mix something you must add 1 substance to the other substance, which is only possible with liquid or powder stuff. If you put down image 1 to image 2, then image 2 will be invisible blocked by the image1. What is going on here?

    Someone who isn't Elon Musk with Bill Gates, Taylor Swift or Madonnanight912
    You were talking about the images, but suddenly now you are talking a person called someone?

    To come up with a new image.night912
    I don't. Do you? Why do you want to come up with a new image?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    The same type of thing you experience when you make predictions, goals, solve problems, etc. Imagining is part of the process that we use to make predictions and solve problems.Harry Hindu

    Seeing a tiger attacking you in your dream is "seeing something" i.e. seeing an image and motion. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with making predictions, solving problems etc.
  • Am I my body?
    Yes. I believe that too. Only the emergent mind is not real like the body is.ENOAH

    Why is the emergent mind not real? What do you mean by "real" and "not real"?
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    You surprise me. I thought that was what you were suggesting. It's good to know that I was wrong.Ludwig V

    Asking for grounds or justification for your belief, knowledge, actions and perception is not Formal Logic. It is just a rational thinking process for finding out if your beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions were rational or irrational.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    If it did shut down completely you wouldn't be able to wake up to loud (and possibly dangerous) noises in the world.Harry Hindu

    Seeing something means there was an object in the physical world, which came into your retina in the form of lights, and activated your neurons and converted into images, which was transferred into your brain. But in the case of seeing an object in your dreams, you have no external object, which causes all the seeing process.

    So what are you actually seeing, when you are seeing a tiger trying to attack you in your dream?
  • Am I my body?
    That is exactly my point; there is no real "you" and "your" body is not "yours". The question dualists need to consider is why a human body wouldn't be itself without the constructions and projections we classify as a separate entity and call mind. Why is a lizard still a lizard without thought and language, but only humans have a soul? Sure, we claim that God prefers us and gave us a soul. But I think we've grown up enough to stop clinging to that.ENOAH

    So you must be an atheist and materialist, is it correct? If you are, of course that would be your view.

    But there are spiritual and religious folks who believe that body means nothing, and souls and mind are the true selves. They would also likely believe eternal life, after life or resurrection into the material world (in case of buddhists), existence of God, heaven and hell ... etc.

    In my view, body is the precondition of mind, and mind is a part of body. Body can lose some of its parts. You see some folks with no leg, arms or fingers. When you shave your hair, you have no hair.
    Just like that, body can have no mind. You see on TV unconscious folks or dead bodies with no mind in the movies and dramas due to sleep, drugs, illness or accidents. But you have never seen in your whole life, souls or minds without body, I dare to guess.

    Therefore, body is you. Mind emerged from body, as body grew up and developed biologically. When body dies, the mind in the body also dies.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    What does it mean for our perception to not exist in a material level? Our perceptions and dreams can have a causal impact on the world, no different than when a errant baseball smashes a window.Harry Hindu

    Let say, you are seeing a wall in front of you. You see the rows of bricks piled to make up the wall. But you also notice, the wall is level with the fence next to it. The walls and fence exist in the external wall in material level (materially, you can go and touch and inspect the walls and fences). But the levelness you perceive don't exist in the world. It exists in your mind or the perceiver's mind.

    Likewise, absence of sound, emptiness of space don't exist in material level, but they are perceived by the perceiver in the mind.

    Now, the levelness of the walls, absence of sounds (silence), emptiness of space don't exist. Are they then pure product of mind, which are caused by the external objects? Or are they something that exist in the world without being noticed until the perceiver notices them? Because everything we perceive must come from external world.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects


    Images in dreams are interesting in the sense that, the dreamer sees images that don't exist in the external world. Where do the dream images come from? You say, well from your memories, experience, and amalgamation of what you have seen before. But there are also images that you have never seen, experienced or the places that you have never been in your life previously in your life.
    Where then those images come from?

    Of course all the mental images you see and dream exist in your brain. Then while sleep, your brain is supposed to shut down too.
  • Am I my body?
    I'd say, it is because of the structure of our "thinking" that we even "desire" eternity/immortality. Of course our bodies are "temporal" in their lived forms. That, to me, doesn't prohibit them from being our only "reality"ENOAH

    If your body has lost all the contents of your memory let us suppose, but it still functions biologically. Would you be able to know then, your body is you?
  • Am I my body?
    Why is the body not enough. I don't approach these things religiously (as in conventional religions), but even if I did,ENOAH
    Could it be because body is temporal? As we all know, bodies get old, die and becomes dust. Bodies don't last too long.
  • Am I my body?
    but 'soul/spirit' are misunderstandings: illusions within the illusion, about what the illusion might be.ENOAH

    Surely the concepts of souls / spirits have existed for thousands of years. If you are religious believing in after life, resurrection or the heavenly world and God, wouldn't soul be the essential being for the belief?

    Bodies get old and die through time. Minds die too. But souls supposed to survive after death to be identified for what the being had done, and how it lived to be placed in the different parts of the heavenly world, or the hell. To be able to keep continue the life after death according to the holy scriptures.

    Without soul, the old body disintegrated, and mind evaporated, the system wouldn't work, or wouldn't make sense.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Does it imply that our perceptions are not direct? Could there be other factors involved in perception apart from the the object of perception, sensory organs, memories and experiences?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    They're the sort of thing that we might find ourselves experiencing, especially if you lead a life that often experiences new places. One would expect to dream of experiencing yet more new things.noAxioms

    In my dream one night, I was flying a light airplane over the night sea. In real life, I don't know how to fly airplane, and never plan to learn to fly either. That dream was something that I would never experience or wish in my life time in real life.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Funny, but I have little recall of explicit dreams of sounds.noAxioms

    Could sounds in dreams might interrupt the dream, and make the dreamer wake up from sleep, therefore you subconsciously switch the volume off during dreaming?
  • Am I my body?
    We apply those terms to the nonphysical, 'mental' processes which ultimately cause/include the illusion of being, although they are actually fleeting and empty processes.ENOAH

    Do you mean then souls / spirits are something that we apply to the illusion of being? That sounds like souls / spirits are illusions.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Can't you see Madonna in the eyes and a nose strikingly similar to that of Taylor Swift?

    Yes, we are both perceiving an object that doesn't exist.
    RussellA

    No, I cannot see M or TS in there at all, but then I have never looked at their facial features of the eyes and nose closely before. I tend to look at and identify them with the whole face, hair style and what they wear rather than eyes or nose. You created the image, hence the image exists.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    That's a very creative image. But I don't see TS and Madonna in it at all.
  • Am I my body?
    I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating.ENOAH

    I know body exists confirmed by the mental (perception and thoughts - "Here is a hand. Here is another hand. I have two hands."). But souls? How do you prove souls exist?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    But my point is that if I dream about the past, this is not necessarily leading me to a deception. So, we have to be careful of using these frames as a notion of reality.javi2541997

    Definitely not.   You have your memory to back up your dreams have factual coherence from the past.
    Time and space are regarded as external entities by scientists.  But your point seems to indicate they can be internal (mental) entities private to you.  Could it be related to Kant?
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    One explanation for this is that the whole image in a dream is not an exact image from memory. That image could be amalgamation of several images. For example, you subconsciously take different parts of a face from several people that you know and blend it all up, resulting with a new face that you've never seen before.night912

    Can different images be amalgamated into totally different another image? Who do you get if you amalgamate images of Elon Musk with Bill Gates, Taylor Swift and Madonna? Why would you do that?
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    It is not desirable to be 100% formal logic because what is so may not be so tomorrow and our thinking needs to be flexible. We need to be creative. We need to think about what is and what can be. Humans have taken creative thinking and created their own reality. This is beyond what animals do.Athena

    No one was suggesting to be 100% formal logic, Formal logic is a subject which studies propositional validities, which can aid human thoughts and scientific theories to be more rational.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Hume's criticism was aimed at the scholastic concept of some power, hidden from our experience, was what enable to first billiard ball to make the second billiard ball move.Ludwig V
    Didn't he say, it is the constant conjunction of the one event followed by the other, which gives us the idea of cause effect?

    Asking what rational ground we have for that is asking for a rational ground for relying on rational grounds.Ludwig V
    Really? Could you come up with an example? Much of the math, science and logic are based on formulating proofs from the valid premises based on the rational ground, and we do accept them when it makes sense.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    I left out the conditional "if formal logic is your standard of rationality" and qualified "the whole of humanity" to "almost the whole of humanity".Ludwig V

    Formal logic deals with the propositions for their validities. Suggesting formal logic as your standard of rationality sounded very odd even as a conditional comment.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    How about when we perceive silence, emptiness in space or time passing? The objects of our perception actually don't exist in material level. However, we still perceive them.
  • Perception of Non-existent objects
    Dreams are a memory of past visual events being sorted through. A person born blind doesn't visually dream, because they have no memory of anything visual.
    And by blind, I mean completely blind, not merely legally blind.
    Philosophim

    Interesting point. But if the images in dreams are from the memories, why some folks see images that they have never come across in their lives, or meet people they cannot recognise and never met, or go to the places they have never been in their whole lives before?
  • Am I my body?
    From my pespective:
    1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body.
    ENOAH

    But aren't there different stages in mind? From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, they seem all different in complexity and capabilities.

    And even in humans, we can differentiate different types of mind sets of people depending on who they are, what social background they are coming from, or what religious background they come from, and what types of beliefs they have, they would have different states of minds. Some folks believe they have souls, and some would totally deny existence of souls.

    Souls have long history in human cultures and studies, which seems suggest its relationship with the religious beliefs and concepts. Whereas mental is the state of mind which is the basic functions of the brain of all living organism.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    however, to interpret "demonstrative" as meaning conclusive and hence logical, in the strict sense. This is usually taken to mean sound by the standards of formal logic. Which makes almost the whole of humanity irrational.Ludwig V

    Scientific principles and theories require justification and proofs backed by demonstrative argument. I am not sure what you mean by the standards of formal logic, which makes the whole humanity irrational. Why would formal logic make the whole humanity irrational? Formal logic is another area of academic subjects which enables human reasoning more rational.
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    Well, he didn't say exactly that. But the point that is usually made is that inductive reasoning can be wrong - which doesn't necessarily mean that it is irrational. Hume made two points in the light of his argument. The first was that we are going to go on using it even though it may be wrong and the second was that it was as much of a proof as you will ever get of how the world works, and even ends up (in the section on miracles) calling it a "proof, whole and entire".Ludwig V

    You got it wrong again. Hume was not concerned on the fact that inductive reasoning can be wrong. What he was saying was that, "there can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience." (A Treatise, Hume).

    You have been seeing the train arriving at the train station at 7:00 every morning for last x number of years. That does not logically warrants you to expect the train will arrive at 7:00 next morning. There is "no demonstrative arguments to prove."

    It is not about right or wrong on the inductive reasoning, but isn't it about lack of logical or rational ground in the reasoning Hume was pointing out?