In each case, the meaning is conserved, but the physical representation is different. Therefore, they're different kinds of things, — Wayfarer
The thing is that physical existents are, by virtue of being objects of the senses, able to be modeled in terms of quantity and described in terms of physical qualities. On the other hand things like love, hope, faith, anger, hatred, beauty, truth, goodness, spirit and so on cannot be quantified or described in terms of physical qualities. — John
I think you are wondering, in terms of the physical, what a non-physical thing could be. See the problem? — John
Love, hope, etc. are physical things on my view--they're terms for particular brain states and particular behaviors/behavioral dispositions that accompany those brain states. — TerrapinStation
It seems there really is no pleasing some people.What is going to prevent me from coming into existence again? What's going to keep me dead? — dukkha
Re brain states, how can there possibly be any confusion over what that's referring to? — TerrapinStation
Leading scientists in integrating and visualizing the explosion of information about the brain will convene at a conference commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Human Brain Project (HBP). “A Decade of Neuroscience Informatics: Looking Ahead,” will be held April 26-27 2009 at the William H. Natcher Conference Center on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, MD.
Through the HBP, federal agencies fund a system of web-based databases and research tools that help brain scientists share and integrate their raw, primary research data. At the conference, eminent neuroscientists and neuroinformatics specialists will recap the field’s achievements and forecast its future technological, scientific, and social challenges and opportunities.
“The explosion of data about the brain is overwhelming conventional ways of making sense of it," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health. "Like the Human Genome Project, the Human Brain Project is building shared databases in standardized digital form, integrating information from the level of the gene to the level of behavior. These resources will ultimately help us better understand the connection between brain function and human health.”
The HBP is coordinated and sponsored by 15 federal organizations across four federal agencies: the National Institutes of Health (NIMH, NIDA, NINDS, NIDCD, NIA, NIBIB, NICHD, NLM, NCI, NHLBI, NIAAA, NIDCR), the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Representatives from all of these organizations comprise the Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Human Brain Project, which is coordinated by the NIMH. During the initial 10 years of this program 241 investigators have been funded for a total of approximately $100 million.
More than 65,000 neuroscientists publish their results each month in some 300 journals, with their output growing, in some cases, by orders of magnitude, explained Stephen Koslow, Ph.D., NIMH Associate Director for Neuroinformatics, who chairs the HBP Coordinating Committee.
“It’s virtually impossible for any individual researcher to maintain an integrated view of the brain and to relate his or her narrow findings to this whole cloth,” he said. “It’s no longer sufficient for neuroscientists to simply publish their findings piecemeal. We’re trying to make the most of advanced information technologies to weave their data into an understandable tapestry.”
But this is why I am saying that your argument doesn't make sense. When something 'makes sense', then we both agree on what it means. Furthermore, in the case of a sentence that describes a very specific thing - 'pick up that object and move it 2.3 meters to the left' - then the meaning is invariant, i.e. same for any observers. So the fact that 'it has meaning' is not actually up for debate. — Wayfarer
Yeah, definitely, but what other option do I have if I can't begin to make the slightest sense out of what a nonphysical existent is supposed to be? — Terrapin Station
And yet you accuse others of not having an understanding of "phil 101" ideas! — dukkha
You seem to have a naive realist understanding of perception and people are finding it difficult to reconcile this with your identity theory. — dukkha
Pinch yourself, in what way is that subjective experience of pain physical? — dukkha
Also if mind=brain then isn't some sort of panpsychism necessary? — dukkha
If consciousness is the very same thing as a physical brain state then atoms must have as a part of them a conscious aspect, in order for the atoms in your brain to literally be equal to conscious experience. — dukkha
Is it that you don't understand nominalism, or that you're just kind of stubbornly insisting on a non-nominalist interpretation? — TerrapinStation
...you saying that you don't know what a brain state is... — TerrapinStation
In my view, meaning is subjective. It's a mental association that a particular individual makes at a particular time. — Terrapin Station
Wayfarer is asking what identity refers to as if he's unfamiliar with identity talk. — TerrapinStation
Do you mean the kind of talk that is in this article? — Wayfarer
How do you deal with the private language argument? — dukkha
Did you notice the quoted passage immediately above your response to me? — Wayfarer
Well, yeah, I buy (basically disjunctive) naive realism. Why folks would have a difficult time reconciling that with identity theory, who knows. — Terrapin Station
You don't seem to understand the stance. — TerrapinStation
Nothing at all unusual, just the normal sense of "state:" the particular (dynamic) conditions, that is, the particular set of materials and their (dynamic) relations at a set of contiguous points of time (or abstracted as a single point of time).
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