Timeline for How do modern substance dualists answer the question of WHERE the interaction between the mind and the brain take place?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 5, 2018 at 5:15 | comment | added | Dcleve | I read section 2.3. It appears confused. Information is a logic/algorithm/abstract entity phenomenon, and is DIFFERENT in fundamental essence from both physical, and qualia/experience/psychology. the section appears to assert a brain/information duality, pretends this addresses the hard problem of experience, which it does not (functionalism has no intrinsic experience), then on top of this dualism it also assumes an Identity Theory coupling between mind and brain. This isn't new, it is a muddle of ideas that others have already been unable to get to work. | |
| Dec 5, 2018 at 1:34 | comment | added | user287279 | @Dcleve. You should read it through. It offers a new way of explaining the mind. It doesn't claim itself to be materialist. It doesn't fit in any current category right now because of its novel concepts (I myself just put it in materialist category just for the convenience of talking.) Actually, it can be considered physicalist and dualist, in a new form. If you read section 2.3, you'll understand this new way of thinking. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 17:07 | comment | added | Dcleve | A first skim of some of the content -- the author asserts a special status to information -- this is ALGORITHMIC not NEURAL identity theory, and Kim points out that either the algortihms break casual closure of the physical, OR they actually reduce to the neurology. IE, the model has a self-contradiction at the center of it. Plus -- science has basically abnadoned reductionism as a failed project. See SEP on sceintific reduction. Asserting that it is demonstrated -- is untrue. The vast bulk of materialist theories of mind today are non-reductive, because qualia are not reducible. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 17:02 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user287279 Science looks for refuting test cases, seeking challenges. Looking for confirmations -- is confirmation bias. All Theories of Mind fit SOME data! I have not read your book, but when the three leading neuro-reducitonists have abandoned reducing qualia to neurology (Dennett and the Churchlands ahve competing versions of delusionism relative to qualia, Koch has abandoned reductionism), your author either has cracked a probelm that the best materialists failed at, or simply hasn't thought the problem through. My money is in the 2nd option. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 15:52 | comment | added | user287279 | I haven’t read Blackmore’s, but I doubt if she can deny this kind of dependence. And Blackmore’s wrong in arguing that b) materialism cannot explain consciousness. Indeed, it can, such as it is done here. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 15:51 | comment | added | user287279 | @Dcleve. That consciousness is caused by a certain neural process is being verified millions of times every day in clinical and laboratory settings, such as in cases of injury to the brain, the brain gets sedated by pharmacologic agents, the brain becomes dysfunctional from encephalitis, the brain gets stimulated from electrical shock (in animal experiments), etc. These happen according to the principle that consciousness is dependent on the consciousness neural process. This kind of dependence of consciousness on the brain is undeniable. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 15:18 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user287279 Blackmore's A Very Short Introduction to Consciousness provides a lot of test cases that the materialist Identity Theory model fails. She ends up arguing: a) materialism is true, and b) materialism cannot explain consciousness, so c) consciousness does not exist. IE a committed mateiralist is forced to deny the evidence, in order to preserve the theory. Your assertions about mateiralist models of consciousness being verified are -- not actually true. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 9:48 | comment | added | user287279 | @Philip Klöcking. Everyone is entitled to his/her own interpretation and belief. The interpretations and beliefs that cannot predict anything and cannot be tested and verified lead to no where and are of no use. Our interpretations and beliefs can predict what will happen to mental events when neural events are affected. These can be applied to build many useful things such as neural prosthesis, pharmacologic agents that can treat mental diseases, electrical stimulation to treat depression, etc. It's everyone's choice which way of interpretationband belief he/she should choose. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 7:27 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | @user287279 This evidence relies on an interpretation of physical data as being identical with the mental. Sciences naturally only find the evidence they expect to find (this is at the heart of proper scientific methodology), but they commit category mistakes if they assume they can prove that what they can measure is all there is. Sorry, but no matter how successful the sciences are, they are unable to reflect their own limits. I am not a dualist, but physicalist reductionism is just as wrong. | |
| Dec 4, 2018 at 5:37 | comment | added | user287279 | @ Philip Klöcking. “… Current evidence in neurology, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, and cognitive neuroscience shows that all mental events are totally dependent on neural events. The former cannot occur without the latter. The neural events are both necessary and sufficient for the mental events to occur. These have been tested and verified in both clinical and laboratory settings worldwide. For a more detailed discussion of this, you can read this article. | |
| Dec 3, 2018 at 21:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/1069697881622437889 | ||
| Dec 3, 2018 at 17:13 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | @user287279: This seems to me like overly strong requirements. Few if any philosophers claim that the mind has to be the prime factor to causally determine neuronal states. This also would be neurophysiological nonsense since mood and dispositions are evidently influenced by much more than neuronal activity, e.g. hormonal levels and bacterial equilibria (skin, digestion), which are in interplay with, but not reducible to, neuronal activity. | |
| Dec 3, 2018 at 15:31 | comment | added | user287279 | If the mind is what causes the neurons to fire in the first place, then it must be able to control the neurons when to fire and when not to fire. Thus, it must be able to cause the neurons to fire even if the neurons are under the effects of sedatives or anesthesia and not to fires even if the neurons are under the effects of stimulants. But these don’t seem to be the case. Moreover, how does the mind know which exact neurons, among those billions of neurons in the brain, to fire in what temporal and spatial pattern in order for the desired mental activity to occur? | |
| Dec 3, 2018 at 10:04 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | Depending on the take on dualism, this question may fail to make sense, since it presupposes spatial properties of either the res cogitans itself or the interaction. Both takes have the tendency of presupposing some kind of naturalist/physicalist metaphysical basis inappropriate to dualism. In the end: Why should mind or the interaction be spatial in the first place, considering that it is an explicitly physical category? Even in Kant, it is the form of outer intuition, i.e. applicable only to physical objects. | |
| Dec 3, 2018 at 1:00 | vote | accept | Noah | ||
| Dec 3, 2018 at 0:19 | answer | added | Dcleve | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 3, 2018 at 0:07 | comment | added | Dcleve | See some prior answered questions which are relevant: philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/28876/… | |
| Dec 2, 2018 at 23:21 | history | asked | Noah | CC BY-SA 4.0 |