Why not an infinity of substances, a la Spinoza and Leibniz (monads)? — darthbarracuda
I for one cannot understand how some people, like materialists/physicalists, can believe that mind is literally reduced to non-mind. — darthbarracuda
Whereas physicalism suffers from the problem of literally explaining away our own minds, — darthbarracuda
Why would the world be structured as such? — darthbarracuda
So is there a difference between life and mind in your book? Is one "just physics" and the other "something else"? Or does life start the swerve away from the brutely material. Is it a good philosophical place to start looking for the answers you seek? — apokrisis
For the umpteenth time, not all physicalists are eliminative materialists. — Terrapin Station
ou can freely choose to pursue God’s love or you can freely choose to ignore his promptings and continue wallowing in a state of permanent isolation. He is not going to coerce anyone into loving him. — lambda
No. Eliminative materialism isn't the default position. There's no standard definition of "material" or "physical" that have it so that necessarily, neither has mental properties.if they aren't eliminative materialists, then the definition of material or physical has to be stretched. — darthbarracuda
Mind is of life, but life is not mind. — darthbarracuda
OK. That's your claim. Now make sense of it causally. What is the mechanism that underpins your categorical distinction? — apokrisis
The point of the OP was that the phenomenological experience of being a black box is in friction with a universe that is seemingly open to observation, and vice versa. — darthbarracuda
Evidently we can, for example, when we talk about the mind, and share insights into the minds of different speakers. Therefore, the mind is not isolated.at least conceptually we can open these containers and see their contents. We cannot do this with mind. — darthbarracuda
So far as I know, the only reason why you would look conscious to me is that you would look alive to me. If you could explain why and how the two are in fact ontically disconnected in the fashion you appear to presume, then I might think the OP had a better actual point. — apokrisis
Evidently we can, for example, when we talk about the mind, and share insights into the minds of different speakers. Therefore, the mind is not isolated. — jkop
As far as I can tell, anything lacking a nervous system cannot have a mind. — darthbarracuda
So my thoughts on this are that, since mind appears to be so wholly different than ordinary material objects and processes..., — darthbarracuda
Then there's also the question as to what purpose consciousness actually serves to an organism. Presumably everything necessary to survive could have been done without the use of subjectivity. — darthbarracuda
A decisive, yet accidental, mutation in genetic information created an organism that accidentally happened to live alongside more simple organisms. — darthbarracuda
The rise of complex, sentient creatures was entirely unnecessary and accidental, not inevitable, but happened anyway thanks to goldylocks luck. — darthbarracuda
This is merely communication and inference. — darthbarracuda
So how is the nervous system different from other ordinary biological processes in your view? Surely the answer to that should go a long way to solving the dilemma you express? — apokrisis
Why on earth would consciousness serve no purpose? Is that your own experience? You function just as well in a coma or deep sleep? Does paying attention rather than acting on automatic pilot not help you learn and remember? — apokrisis
More rambling unfounded assertion I am afraid. — apokrisis
the phenomenological experience of being a black box is in friction with a universe that is seemingly open to observation — darthbarracuda
The point was that the reference point that we inhabit ourselves - mind - is inaccessible to anyone else but ourselves. It is our personal, private sphere. — darthbarracuda
Now following that same logic, I could conceivably be in exactly the same brain state as you right now. I could be accessing your private point of view by exactly mirroring your neural activity. — apokrisis
If we take a deflationary view of mind - treating it less like an ectoplasmic substance and more like a complex state of world mapping - while also giving rather more credit to the actual biological complexity of a brain with its capacity for picking out highly particular points of view, then the explanatory gap to be bridged should shrink rather a lot. — apokrisis
You would be accessing a duplicate copy of my brain state, not my brain state. — darthbarracuda
My mind does not seep into the world, or at least I don't think it does (re: externalism). It doesn't come out of my ears. Mind is the one thing that I am certain about having, yet I cannot locate it in the world I assume surrounds me. — darthbarracuda
So a better analogy would be that I have my own container filled with stuff only I have seen. You can take an x-ray and get a general idea of what is inside. But you cannot actually see the contents. Only I can see the contents, only I am allowed to. Nobody else is allowed inside. Mind is subjective. Like a Liebnizian monad. — darthbarracuda
If we look at the brain, we can presumably see the structure of fatty tissue and analyze the various synapses and whatnot going on. We can dig through the whole brain, but we'll never find mind. There's hair, skin, scalp, skull, brain tissue, then skull and scalp and skin and hair again. So where is the elusive mind? Where is it located? — darthbarracuda
I don't think the explanatory gap shrinks more than it is just flat-out ignored. — darthbarracuda
If I were to suddenly flash into your exact state of mind for a moment - due to some extraordinary brain blurt, say - then how is that not accessing your state of mind?
What else would access look like according to you? — apokrisis
So doesn't that make it more phenomenally accurate to say that the world seeps into your mind? And the same world seeps into my mind? So we both share access to the same world. — apokrisis
You have to start thinking like biologist and see structures as processes. Mind is not located in stuff but in action and organisation. — apokrisis
Dualism depends on the presumption that animals can be dumb automata and humans are inhabited by a witnessing soul. — apokrisis
he point was that the reference point that we inhabit ourselves - mind - is inaccessible to anyone else but ourselves. It is our personal, private sphere — darthbarracuda
Rather I am saying that there is a distinct difference between the firing a C-fibres firing (an outdated theory nowadays but one that continues to be used out of tradition) and the experience of pain. Whatever is going on in the brain when I experience something is different than the experience itself.
The point being, however, is that a numerically-distinct experience can only be experienced by one subject at a time. A teleporter kills me because the copy of me at time t+1 is not identical to me at time t.
Only one mind can exist in a single perspective at a time, just as how only one object can exist in a single space-time location. Access to the mind would be akin to access of the exact same perspective as another person at the exact same time - impossible. My head cannot co-exist with your head at the same time. The perspective I have is unique. Of course, you can make perfect copies of my mental experience, just as you could make perfect copies of the perspective I inhabit at a certain time. But they would not be identical - it would not be true access, but rather access by "cheating". — darthbarracuda
But not at the same time nor place, i.e. perspective. — darthbarracuda
So mind just "arises" out of structure/process? This doesn't explain anything really. Just seems all hand-wavy and actually kind of poetic. — darthbarracuda
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