it amounts to the assertion that all lesser animals and those human beings existing prior to the 17th century are and were unable to successfully predict anything. — javra
How? — Banno
No? — javra
GO back to this: if mind is something utterly different to the everyday objects around us, then how can your mind move your arm? — Banno
Preempting a possible question, don't know about Cartesian substance dualism, but something along the lines of objective idealism could well account for mind using energy to move physical things ... but, here, energy would be foundationally qualitative, rather that physically quantitative, such that the latter emerges from the former. — javra
"Outside the physical" is what I call "Meta-Physics" or "Menta-Physics" or "Mathe-Physics". Modern Science is materialistic, and does not concern itself with anything outside that narrow definition. So, Science won't "collapse" under the weight of evidence for any parallel realities. In fact, since the 20th century, it has been forced to accommodate several immaterial and non-empirical notions, such as invisible fields of "Virtual" (not quite real) particles, and sub-atomic "Strings or "Loops" of energy that are far beyond our current ability to resolve them. Likewise, Multiple universes and parallel worlds are strictly imaginary, yet plausible to scientists in terms of mathematics. Consequently, scientists are forced to stretch their definition of "materialism" to fit the strange dimensions of the quantum foundation of Reality.So science doesn't necessarily collapse if the mind at least in part exists outside of the physical as we know it? — TiredThinker
I can always depend on Banno to get to the heart of a philosophical tangle. Traditionally, Dualism has postulated two different substances : A> physical, material & tangible, and B> meta-physical, immaterial & intangible. The latter was often assumed to be "super-natural" and somewhat miraculous. Hence, such "substances" were rejected by scientists as "beyond the purview of physical Science", hence literally and figuratively "immaterial". Those ghostly substances were relegated to the irrelevance of mystical and religious mumbo-jumbo, suitable only for primitive minds."If these mental properties affected the behavior of particles in the same way that physical properties like mass and electric charge do, then they would simply be another kind of physical property. . . . .Or is there something definitely new about it—either an entirely new kind of substance, as Rene Descartes would have had it, or at least a separate kind of property over and above the merely material?" . . .
This is the conundrum that I believe can be resolved by accepting the poly-morphic nature of Information. If Information is "Mind-stuff", and also "Energy", and also "Matter", then a transformation from one to the other is plausible. Mind provides the Intention (direction, goal), and the body provides the Energy (ATP), to cause a specified part of the material body to move. Thus, Mind "works to change physical stuff". And that's how it is. :smile:IF there are two things in the world - say a physical world and mind - then how is it that mind can work to change physical stuff? — Banno
The article stipulates, “...Mind-brain dualism is the view that brain and mind are derived from entirely different kinds of things—physical stuff and mind-stuff....”, and that, “...for dualism to be true, all of science would have to be false...” — Mww
All that says nothing of other subsequent renditions of the stated dualism, but it’s always best to start from the beginning. — Mww
It's not so much that the mind moves physical things, rather the mind is physical things. — Daemon
As this can only happen if we are conscious, all physical stuff, by scientific necessity, has an unchanging ingredient or charge, which, when they massively and structured combine in our brain and body, give rise to consciousness. How else can it be? — Raymond
If the mind IS a physical thing (i.e., mind=brain), then when you imagine a blue elephant in your mind, shouldn't there be a blue elephant inside your skull? — RogueAI
Did you read any further than that opening sentences? — SophistiCat
the argument that the article cites is not confined to restating Descartes definitions. — SophistiCat
Are you seriously suggesting that the only possible way that something can emerge is through aggregation of minute quantities of its basic ingredient into a lump of a particular size and shape — SophistiCat
It's just the way it is. — Raymond
I take this to mean the footnote, which is exactly what prompted me to comment in the first place, insofar as it appeared Carroll didn’t really know what Descartes’ definitions actually were. — Mww
....attacks on dualism.... — SophistiCat
Ah, I see that I've mistaken a statement of personal belief for an argument or a proposal. — SophistiCat
If mind is truly apart from the corporeal world, then it is difficult to find a place for it in the world as we know it without denying or subverting the premise, or straying too far from the ordinary sense of the word. — SophistiCat
If the arm moves, a quantifiable amount of energy has been expended. — Banno
What if the mind, perhaps of ethereal substance doesn't effect the physical world and therefore cannot be measured? Maybe it is essentially 0 dimensional or omnipresent and cannot be quantified? And in any event even with physical measurements we keep underestimating the electrical and chemical effects within the brain. It is yet still too subtle. But assuming the brain is a receiver as some say, but not the mind, couldn't the mind influence the brain and the brain influences the body? What if we can't measure before a thought? Tedious perhaps, but what if that ended up being the case? Physics and science can operate within limited spaces if need be? — TiredThinker
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