Guess physicalists can't explain sleep either :roll: — khaled
That probably explains what my hovercraft is full of eels. — Wayfarer
↪TheMadFoolIt was a reference to Monty Python. I was actually trying to support the OP with reference to Western philosophical rationalism and the argument from reason. So best to stop talking now, lest I mistake you for a philosophical zombie. — Wayfarer
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent — Ludwig Wittegenstein
Speech is silver, silence is golden — Proverb
Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know — Laozi
The brain shuts down for the night or the day, if you're napping. — TheMadFool
So how then could the meaning be something physical? — Wayfarer
If I have a sorted series of red and blue boxes, RRRBBRBRRB for example, is the series physical? As in is the pattern itself, the structure physical? I frankly don't care about the answer to that question because it's definitional. But since you want to define whether or not something is physical by whether or not it possesses mass and volume, then for you probably the pattern is not physical (since the pattern does not possess mass).
For the record, since the pattern is a pattern of physical stuff (boxes) I would call the pattern itself physical, which is maybe why a lot of people on the site think I'm disagreeing with them when I'm not. Maybe my use of physical is weird. Anyways. — khaled
I don't particularly care — khaled
So long as to you the meaning is a structure of physical things not a new separate sort of thing. Not something that you add to the physical. — khaled
My argument is that the ability to detect meaning and then to represent it in abstract terms via language, is something for which physicalism fails to account. — Wayfarer
Right and I'm asking what "meaning" is for you. Is it a pattern of physical things, or a new sort of thing entirely? — khaled
What's the difference between someone who is dead and someone who is sleeping do you think? When the brain shuts down what keeps the heart going? Cmon mate you could figure this one out with a bit of thinking or a quick google search. — khaled
There are patterns in nature - crystals, snowflakes and the like - but ‘meaning’ is not a pattern. — Wayfarer
It’s not any kind of thing. — Wayfarer
Like, in language, the structure of grammar is not a pattern, because it’s irregular — Wayfarer
Humans alone can do that - birds and other animals communicate through sounds, but only humans can perceive the relationship between symbols. — Wayfarer
The physicalist answer to all of that is simply that it is an evolved ability - which is true, in some respects, but it begs many questions regarding what ‘physical’ means, again. — Wayfarer
Let me get this straight, what you're saying is the Mu state is identical to sleeping? — TheMadFool
I employed the best science I could muster. — TheMadFool
This is to imply that your idea about "mind off brain on" is not very difficult to a physicalist to deal with. Physicalism wouldn't have gotten off the ground if it couldn't explain what sleeping was. Even though in sleeping it's also "mind off brain on". Outside of dreams anyways. — khaled
The latter (NREM sleep) is not problematic because the brain is off and the mind is off. — TheMadFool
The brain is very much on. Or you'd be dead. That's the point...... — khaled
Classical physical concepts are therefore by design irreducible to mental concepts; something has been a central feature of physics rather than a bug, at least up until the discovery of special relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which show that even the Lockean primary qualities of objects are relative to perspective. — sime
Then you typing this post about your thought of Aphrodite isnt a physical action? What about the statues and paintings of Aphrodite? Those were not produced by physical actions? How can one produce a statue or hit keys on a keyboard spelling out Aphrodite without first having the thought of Aphrodite?I can't seem to do any work with my thought about Aphrodite. I mean my thought about Aphrodite can't seem to deflect even a single air molecule off its path let alone do anything else physical. — TheMadFool
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