To the extent that the wood is identical to the camp fire.

We could ask about the whole nature of correspondences and causation in general. The brain may be the apparatus of the mind, but the exact nature of causal reality may be more complex, especially as to how the material gives rise to specific states of mind in terms of human experiences.

Do you mind? Does it matter? I think mind = matter, at least in the two preceding questions. The puzzle can be solved by looking at the other words viz. "do you" and "does it"

@180 Proof, I'm only guessing, would've said, as walking is to legs so mind is to brain. Once we look at mind as a function, Putnam's notion of multiple realizability becomes powerful and minds can be transferred from one medium to another, like people moving homes. I guess the notion of a soul was millennia ahead of its time.

I would say the opposite, the brain gives rise to the mind. The material gives rise to the immaterial. As the wood gives rise to the fire.
If we stick to the fire analogy, there is slightly more to it than just fire from wood. You need oxygen to feed the fire, and a spark to start it. What is the “oxygen” and “spark” for a mind? If we figure out when the mind comes online, perhaps the “spark” is somewhere around that time…being born maybe?
The “oxygen” might be the brains interaction with everything not brain like sensory organs or environmental influences.

To the same extent that a program is identical to a computer.

It is indeed a puzzle and I imagine that 180 Proof may have something to say if he is not sick and tired of this underlying question in philosophy. I wonder to what extent it can ever be explored sufficiently or whether many of us could spend our entire lives wondering about the nature of consciousness, especially how it is bound up with the nature of matter, as the underlying basis of it, as one of the central philosophy conundrums.

We could ask is the physical the starting point for mind? I am not saying that they are not, but I do wonder about this, especially in relation to philosophies of idealism, such as those of Berkeley. Are these outdated ideas? The exact same role of matter and mind, or which is primary seems to be essential within philosophy. Is it possible that it may go beyond an either/ or? What is mind and matter and how are the two differentiated in the first place? Is dualism is an issue here, although I am certainly not clear where mind and body end or merge, especially in the realms of emotions.

The short answer is that we don't know.

A longer answer is that the term "identical" isn't useful here, a brain is not like experience. We in fact can see this empirically, we see brains outside of heads, lacking experience. Or in the cases in which a person is conscious and a surgeon sees inside the brain, the surgeon sees the brain as it appears to his experience, and not experience itself.

All we can say, at this point, is that the brain is a necessary condition for experience. But the how this is possible question, might well be beyond our capacities to understand, which is very plausible.

180 Proof, I'm only guessing, would've said, as walking is to legs so mind is to brain. Once we look at mind as a function, Putnam's notion of multiple realizability becomes powerful and minds can be transferred from one medium to another, like people moving homes. I guess the notion of a soul was millennia ahead of its time. — TheMadFool

Two points – (1) walking : legs :: mind-ing : brain (IME "mind" is an abbreviation for the verb minding) and (2) "soul" is a nonphysical entity separate from the brain, which assumes "substance dualism" (re: MBP which was dissolved about three and a half centuries ago by Spinoza via 'property dualism', etc) and so what's called "soul" is not analoguous or related to what cognitive neuroscientists (re: functionalists) call "mind" – minding – today. Also: multiple realizability says that the connectome ('pattern of functions' of which minding consists) is like digital files that can be transferred from a CD to a flash drive or a DVD, that is, encoded into a different substrates; your analogy of "people moving houses" doesn't work, Fool, because minding is a property and not a separate entity like people who exist without, or separate from, houses (which implies 'minding separate from a brain' or 'walking without legs' ... :roll:).

I would argue the concept mind is not equivalent to the brain but to the entire body. No other entity, least of all parts of that entity, engage in any act of minding. Besides, what is a brain absent the blood or oxygen or energy or support from the rest of the organism?

This is the mind/body problem, tweaked a little.

We have no idea what “material” or “physical” or “body” mean.

So there is no problem.

:smirk:

To the extent that the wood is identical to the camp fire. — DingoJones

To the same extent that a program is identical to a computer. — khaled

I used this last week. I like it so much, I'll use it again.

To the same extent that your TV set is identical to "Gilligan's Island."

:kiss:

We could ask what is physical and what is not. In some ways, this may appear as a stupid question, but, on an experiential level of existence in terms of living in a spectrum of living as embodied minds this may make sense. In other words, to what is do mind and matter come together in the realisation of embodied human experience?

But we know how a television and computer work.

Besides that, the brain is a concept. Concepts are an aspect of thinking. Thinking is something people do. So again it’s a problem of whether we believe in materialism or, perhaps better, the “physical” world. There isn’t a technical notion or theory in which “material” or “body” (which would include the brain) are defined— so there can’t be a mind-body problem.

:up:

We could ask what is physical and what is not. — Jack Cummins

An excellent question, yes.

In other words, to what is do mind and matter come together in the realisation of embodied human experience? — Jack Cummins

You’re missing my point, though. To ask about mind and matter coming together begs the question. The question is: what is matter?

We can’t ask about whether something is or isn’t matter until we know what matter is. Or material, or body. There’s been no conception since the 17th century. So there’s really no problem, just speculation. We can define matter in many ways, just as we can define God in many ways. To me the questions about, for example, whether God is male or female, is as silly as asking about whether our being is physical or mental. May be fun to speculate about, but we’ll get precisely nowhere.

I have no doubt this will be discussed anyway, despite this obvious objection. But to me it’s a waste of time. I at least occasionally like to point it out when these threads are created.

To the same extent that your TV set is identical to "Gilligan's Island." — T Clark

And I repeat is again too. The brain is no medium through which information flows to show it to the ones watching. If you talk with your girlfriend there isn't some TV show that was once put on video that is passed to you. The TV is just part of the physical world neutrally passing images of that world from faraway times or faraway places. A computer does the same, basically.

It is indeed a puzzle and I imagine that 180 Proof may have something to say if he is not sick and tired of this underlying question in philosophy. I wonder to what extent it can ever be explored sufficiently or whether many of us could spend our entire lives wondering about the nature of consciousness, especially how it is bound up with the nature of matter, as the underlying basis of it, as one of the central philosophy conundrums — Jack Cummins

There seems to be two ways of approaching the issue:

i) Armchair philosophy: A priori way. Just sit there in your favorite chair and see if the mind matters make sense. I suppose this can't be done with some empirical input; nevertheless, the idea is to look for inconsistencies in the Sherlockian sense (eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth).

ii) Neuroscience: A posteriori way. Do physical experiments and see how it pans out.

I see no reason why we can't do both. Get the best of both worlds, you know.


Speaking for myself, there's a very thought-provoking paradox lying at the heart of the issue: My mind knows, for sure, that this cup on my table is physical but it seems to be hopelessly incapable of ascertaining its own nature (physical/nonphysical). Contrary to the Delphic Oracle's nugget of advice - temet nosce (know thyself) - our minds are more confident about the not-mind than itself (the mind).

In a sense, then, we're not as self-aware as we think we are for there's a lacuna in our knowledge of ourselves, to be precise our minds, its true/real nature is unknown.


All that aside, I have a simple argument to make:

1. A mind $\rightarrow$ A brain [Premise, verifiable. Have you ever encountered a mind without a body?]

2. A brain $\rightarrow$ A mind [Premise, verifiable. A healthy brain is always conscious]

Ergo,

3. A brain $\leftrightarrow$ A mind [from 1, 2]

In short, as far as we can tell, mind = brain.

your analogy of "people moving houses" doesn't work, Fool, because minding is a property and not a separate entity like people who exist without, or separate from, houses (which implies 'minding separate from a brain' or 'walking without legs' ... :roll:). — 180 Proof

I'm with you on the mind being just what the brain does (physicalism), but, this is where we diverge, I'm persuaded to believe that the mind can be transferred from the brain to another substrate, preferrably something more durable with replaceable parts. :grin:

We could ask is the physical the starting point for mind? I am not saying that they are not, but I do wonder about this, especially in relation to philosophies of idealism, such as those of Berkeley. Are these outdated ideas? The exact same role of matter and mind, or which is primary seems to be essential within philosophy. Is it possible that it may go beyond an either/ or? What is mind and matter and how are the two differentiated in the first place? Is dualism is an issue here, although I am certainly not clear where mind and body end or merge, especially in the realms of emotions. — Jack Cummins

Ya I think its outdated. We have a lot of data now about how our minds are directly correlated to various parts of the brain. Its possible brain is where mind comes from but until we get new data that suggests otherwise I don’t see a basis to say otherwise.

Well…both of those are better than mine. I guess Ill just go fuck myself :razz:

I would argue the concept mind is not equivalent to the brain but to the entire body. No other entity, least of all parts of that entity, engage in any act of minding. Besides, what is a brain absent the blood or oxygen or energy or support from the rest of the organism? — NOS4A2

I share the view that its more accurate to say body rather than brain, since the brain is affected by the rest of your body. We know that the foods and other things your body processes effect your mind/thoughts. I read your stomach has almost as many neural connections as your brain does.
This is also the reason I don’t by the conventional philosophical free will arguments, like you dont have free will because the decisions are locked in before your aware of them. Sure, science shows us that but just because its happening outside your awareness or elsewhere in your body doesn't mean its not you doing it.
Agency isnt your conscious mind, its your whole body.

To what extent is consciousness based on the physical basis of human experiences? — Jack Cummins

I think science is on the verge of addressing this with conclusiveness. It is essentially the binding problem of consciousness: how do trillions of distinct biochemical ingredients produce the integrated perceptual substrate of experience?

Like every occurrence, experience must be caused by substances, so what is the binding property of substance? A simple explanation which scientists have provided much preliminary proof for is that the electromagnetic field of the brain has emergent organization driven by local field potentials (LFPs), with intentional will being like the gulf stream among the much more finely grained EM fields of particular neural networks. The brain's EM radiation then quantum superpositions into biochemical pathways of neurons, a process analogous to the simpler additive properties of light itself. EM radiation in the brain quickly decreases in intensity as it radiates, but the spread is still enough for billions of radiative fields to each bind thousands upon thousands of molecules into individual units, and these are the basic percepts, essentially quantum resonances that generate images, sounds, smells, etc. Neuronal matter must be extremely absorptive of EM radiation to cause these effects, explaining why it looks dark greyish from the outside while being subjective color, feel, thought - additive quantum resonance - from the inside.

Essentially, superposition must nondimensionally "feel" or at least involve physical fragments of feeling that are conglomerated into complex sensations and emotions by the brain and body's emergent organization. Complex quantum mechanisms are located throughout the body which cause these percepts to seem located in structures external to the brain such as sense organs. Synchronization of these percepts is orchestrated by "supervenient" LFPs conjuncted to biochemistry.

The soul's physical basis is a more obscure scientific problem, but it probably arises from nonelectromagnetic fields our instruments have not yet been able to detect that are more nonlocal in their causation, synchronizing matter in a similar way. Perhaps these nonelectromagnetic, aetherlike fields can manipulate electromagnetic matter so that percepts and what they perceive are generated outside a carbon-based body by similar field/superposition mechanisms.

All of this still has to be proven by research, but the experimental results so far always support the model, so it seems promising. Consciousness must be a result of substances the mind is made of, and this is how the evidence suggests those substances work.

I do think that the question of what is matter is extremely important, especially in relation to the underlying one of mind and matter. It can be asked if matter is the foundation of mind, but how do the two aspects come together and where diid matter arise from in the first instance? To what extent are mind and matter similar as aspects of metaphysics, or ways of describing important aspects of human constructs about this?

This may be a large question which arises in the area between philosophy and quantum physics..I wonder to what extent the findings of the physicists will throw some clarity, or whether it will give rise to so much more uncertainty and the whole philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness and substances underlying the existence of 'mind'.

On the inside the brain feels like the mind, from the outside it looks like the brain. It gives you a means to see hear, smell, and taste, to have thoughts and emotions or dreams, and it makes you feel pain, heat, pressure, sick, nausea, ecstacy, feel a stick break, makes you press a pill out, walk, move your body, perform an experiment, makes you solve problems, envision God or angels and demons, engage in psychotic worlds, feel depression in an unnatural world, experience space and time, etc.

So the material description is missing an essential part. The part experienced from within. You can make a map from the materialistic description to the the experienced one. Of course. But it doesn't explain consciousness, however necessary for being able to exist in the world.

I guess this OP is just another expression the mind body question and the hard problem of consciousness, huh? Seems to me that about 50% of all philosophy discussions end up somewhere here.

Yes, it seems that in the current world of physics, what we call reality is actually understood as quantum waves, with discreet blobs of energy bobbing about on them. Seems kind of hard to talk about mind and body if this is what physicalism amounts to.

Personally, I struggle to understand how a mind would not be what a brain does. I lack the ability to relate fully to the supposed hard problem and to the idea of qualia and the notion of 'what it is like to be something' which seems to be at the heart of this debate for some very clever thinkers. Subjective experience is the crux of the matter.

Is consciousness is an immaterial property, a 'magic thing' that sits in our bodies for a while and then with death, transmigrates, or moves to be with the gods? Or is consciousness the product of brain function? John Searle described consciousness as being to the brain what digestion is to the stomach.

What we do know is that there seems to be a lot at stake in this subject. The outcome of this question seems likely to support or demolish the idea of the soul.

My question is this. If it could be conclusively proven that what we call mind is just what brains do, would intelligent people still believe in higher consciousness?

It does seem that so much time and energy is spent in explaining and thinking about the nature of consciousness. Of course, I have read the thread about enlightenment and probably spend the majority of my time in unenlightened states of consciousness. It can lead beyond the question of who am I, to what on earth is going on?