an integral aspect of the material brain — GLEN willows
Isn't this still hopeless dualism, and our primitive tendency to believe in spirits, souls etc.? — GLEN willows
My argument is more that the whole belief in a separate consciousness is based on folk psychology....as the Churchlands would suggest. — GLEN willows
But what of people like Chalmers who still cling to a form of dualism. — GLEN willows
If you just mean the brain causes or creates the mind then everyone can agree there I think. — khaled
The Churchlands argue that "consciousness" in this sense is a folk psychological term, that they believe should be replaced. I'm not that militant about it myself. — GLEN willows
Suppose that in my office of Minister of Scientific Language I want the new man to stop using words that refer, say, to emotions, feelings, thoughts and intentions, and to talk instead of the physiological states and happenngs that are assumed to be more or less identical with the mental riff and raff. How do I tell whether my advice has been heeded if the new man speaks a new language? For all I know, the shiny new phrases, though stolen from the old language in which they refer to physiological stirrings, may in his mouth play the role of the messy old mental concepts.
but that no causal link need be constructed between some physical state or process and a given mind state. So being in love might never be equated to the excitation of specific nerve clusters; and yet remain entirely a result of activity within the mind. — Banno
Sorry - my phrase just means I'm a full reductive materialist. Full stop! — GLEN willows
I'm not sure I want to start this again. — khaled
But there can be no evidence of this isomorphism, and so the only direction the argument can go in is from the fact of communication to the supposition of isomorphism. — Banno
I'd go a step further and say that there is no "thing" to be isomorphic, that all we have is the communication. — Banno
I have absolutely no problem with believing (yes it is a belief, as you have opposing beliefs) that love is an outgrowth of brain chemicals. — GLEN willows
What makes you think that love is something floating outside of the brain — GLEN willows
I don't know what moral mass means — GLEN willows
My argument is simply that - I agree. — GLEN willows
The feeling of love is a result of neurochemical interaction. Eventually science will prove this and we'll know that the "love" isn;t really a thing — GLEN willows
I'm saying: that we might, or that we don't, is irrelevant. Isomorphism is not required. — Banno
"do all kinds of love reside in the brain, as part of a materialistic process, not separate." Love isn't magic, floating in a fantastical sphere of it's own. Again I THINK you're agreeing with that? — GLEN willows
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