Well yea, since the OP opens with: "If the mind is immaterial:"Several of the questions presuppose the idea that minds can exist separated from the body. — Harry Hindu
Or the point of a mind not consisting of a body?I ask, "What is the point of a mind separated from a body?"
FWIW : These are just a few personal opinions on the brain/mind paradox :• how can a brain (with all the various properties of material objects), be caused to do something by something that lacks all material properties (no mass, no energy, no charge, and no location in space)? Or does the mind actually have some material properties? If so, which ones? — Relativist
The mind involves complex exchanges of energy, which are not material. — Greylorn Ell
The mind is certainly not material, but it must be physical... — Greylorn Ell
"Meaning" is philosophical BS — Greylorn Ell
Injury to specific parts of the brain produces corresponding deficits in cognition. — TheMadFool
My thesis is that this is a foolish question Of course I exist and rows exist and arrangements exist. But these arrangements are arranged stuff not more stuff or immaterial stuff. I exist, I am an arrangement, or a complex relationship analogous to a whirlpool. Is a whirlpool material? does a whirlpool exist? Nobody needs to ask. But folks want to get bogged down in complex physics and psychology as if that is easier to understand. Get your ducks in a row first. — unenlightened
"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. — Greylorn Ell
Most people are not materialists, so you can't say they're ignoring it. It seems to me it's natural to think of ourselves in mental terms. It's reasonable on cold, objective terms: at distinguishes us from one another. But more importantly, mental processes motivate us to act - we act intentionally, and we do (or try to do) what we want to do.Granted that materialism is true and the mind is nothing more than the brain doing its thing, what concerns me is our tendency to identify ourselves and others with the beliefs and ideas (mind-stuff) that we hold. We seem to completely ignore that we're physical beings - our bodies being considered simply as loci of ideas and beliefs, the mind-stuff. More people have died for their beliefs than their physical appearance; it gives me the impression that people consider identity and being as more mind than body., — TheMadFool
By my reckoning, an actual row of 3 actual ducks is a material state of affairs (a thing). — Relativist
A state of affairs is not a thing that exists, it is a relation that is real--either between different concrete things or between a concrete thing and an abstract quality. Predicate terms denote such qualities or relations (form/essence), subject terms denote things (matter/existence), and propositions signify states of affairs by attributing predicates to subjects (entelechy/reality).States of affairs (i.e. complex objects) exist that have the properties we associate with rows. — Relativist
I don't follow how an arrangement of physical matter is at all like a phenomenological state. — Hanover
the mind is nothing less than the brain doing the world. — unenlightened
how can a brain (with all the various properties of material objects), be caused to do something by something that lacks all material properties (no mass, no energy, no charge, and no location in space)? Or does the mind actually have some material properties? If so, which ones?
• If minds occupy a specific location in space, where is this? Does it occupy the same space as the brain?
• How does the brain deliver sights and sounds to the mind? For example, does every neuron connect to the mind, or only certain ones, or combinations?
• If a mind can become detached from a body (as in an OBE), how is it able to perceive what is happening in the absence of being connected to sense organs? If sense organs aren’t needed when disembodied, why are they needed when paired with the body?
• Do minds pre-exist bodies, or do they come into existence with the body? If the latter, when? At fertilization? Does it develop in parallel with the brain?
• What ties a specific mind to a specific body? E.g. if a mind causes me to raise my arm, why can’t my mind cause you to raise your arm?
• If my mind causes me to raise my arm, and simultaneously your mind causes you to raise your arm, how do we know it wasn’t my arm causing your arm to raise, and your mind causing my arm to raise?
• Memories are lost when brains are damaged from trauma or disease, suggesting memories are encoded in the brain. If memories are physical, and destroyed as the brain decomposes at death, but your mind survives, in what sense is that mind still YOU? i.e. what aspects of YOU is your disembodied mind? — Relativist
We contemplate all sorts of ways the world is not. — frank
We contemplate all sorts of ways the world is not. — frank
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. — Greylorn Ell
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. — Greylorn Ell
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. — Greylorn Ell
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36) — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36
Clearly there's an 'upward causation' of the material form of the brain to cognitive ability. That much is clear from myriad of injury and drug studies, and the like. But what of 'downward causation' - the cases where injured brains re-route all of their activities to compensate for damage to a particular area? — Wayfarer
What drives that, other than something purpose-directed, and therefore teleological, in some sense? And where does 'downward causation' begin? Who says it doesn't begin in the very simplest forms of organic life? — Wayfarer
When you say "phenomenological state" it sounds like a thing, but it isn't a thing, — unenlightened
Mind is "immaterial" in the sense that thoughts (for example) are occurrences.
There's no conservation involved, like there is with the food we eat.
My supper is movable, my experiences thereof are interruptible.
And it so happens that my mind is uniquely associated with my body when occurring. — jorndoe
A phenomenological state, on the other hand, is an actual perception of something that is separate from the duck and it's separate from the brain. — Hanover
The row is located at a2 through h2. — Hanover
The problem with an appeal to downward causation is that the capacity for such causation is only provided for by complex organized structures. — Metaphysician Undercover
The white pawns on a chess board are in the starting position a2, b2, c2... h2 (if you're familiar with chess notation). The row is located at a2 through h2. Their location in space and their relationship to one another strikes me as a physical attribute no different from other physical attributes. — Hanover
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