Who retains copyrights to material submitted via article form?

Moreover, what about rights to ideas conveyed via normal forum conversations?

Greylorn

Wayfarer,
You'll get no argument on this from me. I've studied neuro-anatomy and some of Wilder Penfield's open-brain research from 80-odd years ago, plus the Phineas Gage "crowbar" incident. But that stuff is third-party and anecdotal. More to the point, I've gotten falling-down drunk. The brain does not need to be overtly damaged to become severely dysfunctional.

Physical Dualism explains the issue effectively. Suppose that to some extent, Descartes was right, and that a soul-like entity is indeed connected to the human brain. If so, consider "mind" as the effect of brain and "soul" working together.

By analogy, consider a car and its driver-- imagine the brain as the car, a reasonably complex machine going nowhere without a driver to guide it. They are, to some extent, interdependent.

What happens if the car is damaged? Once, driving 85 on a desert interstate road, a coyote chose a poor time to cross. The beast died, and my car's left front suspension assembly was warped. I finished my 240 mile journey with screwed up steering in a vehicle that wanted to go sideways and off the road.

Impair the brain, and naturally, any "soul" connected to it will have a more difficult time.

I've not done much research of late and was unaware of the "tiny brain" phenomenon or Cotard's syndrome. Thank you for the excellent and pertinent reference! I must consider the implications.

You seem to be well and diversely read, more so than myself. I welcome further input.

GL

Wayfarer,
Good point, fairly taken, and a perfect example of the worthlessness of the "meaning" concept, in that here we are whining about the meaning of "meaning." Can we please discuss something (that I think is) interesting?

My intention here is to convey ideas and concepts, perhaps in the context of valid information. Everyone who reads and examines anything I (and most others) write will interpret it in the context of their beliefs, which are almost always wrong, and they will come away with their own "meaning." I cannot be responsible for that. The best I can do is propose what seem to me to be solutions to problems.

My interests are simply the nature of consciousness and whatever potential it might have. I solved Chalmer's "Hard Problem" about 30 years before he formalized it, but have had little success at presenting it, because my solution is well outside any currently accepted paradigms, religious or materialist. I would prefer to kick ideas around on a good physics forum, but those guys have become rather stuffy and offer no place for unconventional ideas.

Philosophers may not have the kind of background as physicists, but they are generally more tolerant.

I actually studied some philosophy and took a post-grad course. I appreciated Descartes (more mathematician than philosopher) and my ideas would fit into the "dualistic" category of conventional thinkers if not for several significant divergences.

After considerable experience, I regard philosophers as people dumb enough to believe that they can understand anything about the nature of the universe, and of the humans populating a tiny part of it, without understanding basic physics. Scientists are dogmatic thinkers who insist that if they cannot explain something, it does not exist; thus they are always right.

GL

Wayfarer,
I can't dismiss a word you wrote. All valid, but not really pertinent to anything I wrote. I'm a physicist of sorts, not a philosopher. Here's what I know about the subject I addressed.

"Meaning" is philosophical BS. Until philosophical pinheads can explain why using the wrong vowel in a noun entirely changes the meaning of a statement voiced in Russian, but why anyone speaking conventional US English in a Chinese laundry will easily understand, "No tickee, no shirtee,," the entire subject of "semantics" will remain a useless, padded foil for intellectual pinheads who are incapable of addressing any serious subject.

If semantics is your thing, enjoy it. I'm not interested in wading in that mud.

I've not heard of or directly studied N. Weiner, although most of my really nasty courses in EE must have been derived from some of his work in energy transmission;. Not an authority to be dismissed, although he was, like many pioneers in idea development, not widely recognized.

I think a bit differently, or perhaps express myself poorly.. Information is not energy or matter-- however, it is encoded and transmitted (conventionally) using matter or forms of energy. Any physical mechanism that has access to and is capable of interpreting lots of sensory information has the potential to host, or become, a mind.

However, only if it is also capable of violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics, can it persist.

GL

The belief in any brain/mind paradox is a linguistic glitch. The mind is immaterial, whether it is entirely a function of the material brain or a property of the "soul." The mind involves complex exchanges of energy, which are not material.

For example, the computer programs enabling this conversation are themselves not material, although they operate within computer processors that are composed entirely of matter.

An additional distinction might clarify the confusion. Matter is an obvious component of the physical universe. However, there are many components of the physical universe that are NOT MATERIAL-- light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, gravitational force, electric charge, magnetic fields, nuclear binding energy, etc.

The "mind" is necessarily immaterial. It is, of course a function of some physical mechanism. That may be the brain, but I think not. More likely, mind is a function of brain interacting with a physical (and immaterial) version of the traditional soul, according to principles of physics that we've yet to discover.

Perhaps the important point to integrate into your mind's beliefs is that the terms "physical" and "material" are not synonyms.

The mind is certainly not material, but it must be physical.
GL