People (or bats) have experiences, not brains or minds.
I agree, and often spell out, that the philosophical use of the term 'substance' is problematical, because of it's conflation with the every day sense of 'substance' as 'a material with uniform properties'... — Wayfarer
I think it clear that the difference between a bat and a rock is made clearer by talk of minds and morals than talk of substance and being.the very worst thing about modern philosophy is NOT differentiating beings from things. — Wayfarer
So we agree that there is a difference in quality between a rock and a bat, but disagree as to how to elucidate that difference.
↪Andrew M
People (or bats) have experiences, not brains or minds.
A person is made up of many things: arms, legs, organs, tissue, brain, etc. If I stub my toe and experience pain, where exactly in my body is that experience taking place? Not in my pinky. Not in my kidney. — RogueAI
It is you that is experiencing pain (or is in pain), not your toe.
or else concede that I'm in pain, but no part of me is experiencing any pain, which of course is an absurdity. — RogueAI
It doesn't follow that something predicable of the whole should be predicable of any of the parts.
Yes, so conceivably echolocation technology could be embedded into the brain and body so that a person could see (so to speak) with their eyes closed. Things would look different via that sense modality since the information received would be different.
Indeed, empathy depends on recognizing points of difference as well as points of commonality. — Andrew M
Each individual neuron doesn't think or feel anything, but combined, they are more than the sum of their parts. Your position is going to lead to the hard problem: if the parts of a person don't experience pain, but the person does, how does that work? Which parts are involved? What's their function? How do they combine to produce the experience of pain? Why pain and not some other experience? — RogueAI
Of course, no one can answer that these days. But maybe a picture will help.Consciousness is like superconductivity, it is there or not. If something is not right (too high temperature, too strong magnetic field), then the superconductivity disappears. The whole system is superconducting, not the single atoms.
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