Is there a way to disprove this though? — LibnizMakesMeThrowMyBookAway
I can't think of a philosophical way to disprove this, and creating an experimental conditions whereby we could even tell if mental states change without brain states relevantly changing seems mind-buggeringly hard. — bert1
It's not just philosophy any more, supervenience of mindstates upon brainstates and neural correlates are essentially the same concepts. — fdrake
Yes. Supervenience assumes (or logically relies) on two assertions, (1) Reductionism and (2) determinism. — Kitty
To disprove supervenience we would need to observe a change in mind state over a time interval in which the brain state did not change. Since brain states are always changing - think of all the subconscious processing necessary to keep our heart pumping and physiology regulated - there is no time interval in which brain states do not change. So it looks like the theory cannot be tested. — andrewk
In other words, if I clone Ben 2 from Ben 1, Ben 2 should have the same psychological qualia/mindset/thinking as Ben 1, given that their brain states are similar. — LibnizMakesMeThrowMyBookAway
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