Materialism

Another shot at it:

The idea that the mind is a thing apart, operating the brain is pretty much untenable and has been for some time. We know that memory is dependent on the physical brain That brain damage can cause profound changes of personality. And that even the unity of the mind is dependent on physical connections in the brain.

Say you're lost at sea or your plane went down on an uninhabited island and your radio is broken, it only occasionally works a little and mostly dissolves into static and the voices that occasionally come through only occasionally seem to be responding to anything you are saying if at all. Seems to me that's sort of the situation with a damaged brain. YOU are still there, or you may be, there's no way to say you aren't for sure, YOU are still having thoughts and wanting to communicate but the apparatus that conveys those thoughts isn't working well enough to do the job for you. You are absolutely dependent on this apparatus for that job, you can't do without it, but that doesn't change the fact that IT isn't initiating the communications, YOU are, IT is only the means for conveying them which it normally does well enough, only in this situation it can't, it's garbling the message, garbling memory, garbling personality.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Assumptions don't need to be accounted for. The evidence does. And the evidence says that the assumption that the mind is independant of the brain is a false assumption.

How does damage to the radio damage the user's memory? Or change their personality?
Let alone (almost) splitting them into two people (the "split brain" operation) ?

Well, the idea was that what comes through the radio to those on the other end is a garbled communication though presumably the person himself is intact. That was the idea but I don't like it any more, I think we are more of a mind-body unity than that example suggests, so I'd suppose that the person does suffer memory loss when the brain is damaged.

But I still iike my original point that it is the person who is initiating the communication, the thoughts you write down for instance, not the brain, which is simply the necessary apparatus for conveying them. Or for their existence at all in a material body perhaps.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I was just signing off for the night when I ran across Google headlines about a study of consciousness during cardiac arrest, and opened up this article on the subject. Only two percent of those studied had experiences of actual events during the time their heart was stopped, but that small percentage was taken seriously by the study:

One case was validated and timed using auditory stimuli during cardiac arrest. Dr Parnia concluded: "This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with 'real' events when the heart isn't beating. In this case, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn't resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events. "Thus, while it was not possible to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients' experiences and claims of awareness, (due to the very low incidence (2 per cent) of explicit recall of visual awareness or so called OBE's), it was impossible to disclaim them either and more work is needed in this area. Clearly, the recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine investigation without prejudice."

But of course the opint that you were answering was that the person was changed in ways that cannot be attributed to simple communication failures. Telling a story which begs the question is not an answer to that.

The brain is more than an instrument for conveying thoughts, and is deeply involved in the mind. That cannot be rationally disputed without ignoring important evidence.

In everything you've said you've failed continually to address the point that the brain does not originate thoughts, but the personality does, or the mind or soul or whatever, and that is obvious.

At this point I'll note that the "communication" model doesn't explain this data either since the brain is needed to process sensory data and communicate it to the mind in that view.

Having read the paper I suspect that most of the details were produced more by confabulation and information the patient gained after the event rather than accurate memory of the event itself. It's not provable either way, but it's more consistent with what we know.

I have addressed it by pointing out the evidence that the mind is not independant of the brain. Your point is an assumption, and one that needs support.

Your showing that brain damage interferes with mental function proves nothing about the point I made, that the mind initiates thoughts and ideas, for which the brain is the vehicle or tool. The connection may be simultaneous but clearly the mind and brain are entirely different things. You'll never discover the content of thoughts by studying the brain.

When I step on the accelerator the car moves. The action is simultaneous but the car doesn't move unless I step on the accelerator, and the car also won't go anywhere when I step on the accelerator if it is out of gas or the battery is dead or I haven't turned on the ignition. I'm the driver, the car is the tool, the action is simultaneous but I am the originator. The car does what I want it to do unless it is ailing in some way. Same with the brain.

My point is an observation that any rational person ought to be able to recognize, not an assumption.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Your showing that brain damage interferes with mental function proves nothing about the point I made, that the mind initiates thoughts and ideas, for which the brain is the vehicle or tool. The connection may be pretty much simultaneous but clearly the mind and brain are entirely different things. You'll never discover the content of thoughts by studying the brain.

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Actually it shows that they are not entirely different things, so long as we are talking about a concrete instance of a mind. However they relate the brain is involved in mental operations to the point where the mind cannot reasonably considered to be completely separate from the brain.

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My point is an observation that any rational person ought to be able to recognize, not an assumption.

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If all "rational people" ought to accept it there must be a rational argument for accepting it. Please present it.

I do believe mind and brain are separate and separable, but my argument here is more in terms of their being entirely different things and that you cannot discover the qualities of either by knowing something about the other.

Mind is simply not material and that is absolutely obvious to any rational person, and mind is also the originator of thoughts, and that is also absolutely obvious to any rational person. See my car analogy in case you missed it. And you will never be able to grasp a person's thoughts by studying the person's brain and that too is obvious. They are two entirely different things, separate in that sense at least, and different in the sense that one is the driver and the other the vehicle.

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I do believe mind and brain are separate and separable, but my argument here is more in terms of their being entirely different things and that you cannot discover the qualities of either by knowing something about the other.

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That isn't entirely true, though. We can know things about the mind by inspecting the brain and brain activity.

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Mind is simply not material and that is absolutely obvious to any rational person, and mind is also the originator of thoughts, and that is also absolutely obvious to any rational person. See my car analogy in case you missed it.

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An illustration of your opinion is hardly an argument for it, I didn't miss your "analogy", it simply didn't add anything to the discussion.

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And you will never be able to grasp a person's thoughts by studying the person's brain and that too is obvious.

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What is obvious is that that is only an opinion. We don't know the relationship between though and brain activity, but we know that there is one.

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They are two entirely different things, separate in that sense at least, and different in the sense that one is the driver and the other the vehicle.

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We know that that isn't true for reasons that I've already presented. You can't turn a driver into two people by slicing their car in half, to point out just one important one. OK I'll grant that we don't quite get two separate minds from severing the corpus callosum, but it's not so far off either.

We can know things about the mind by inspecting the brain and brain activity.

You cannot know a person's thoughts by studying the brain. Stick to the point.

Whatever you are saying about slicing things into two drivers is totally incomprehensible.

I'm not talking about physically separating mind and brain, I'm saying they are two different kinds of things and you can NOT know anything about the qualities of one from knowing about the other, and really, Paul, that is quite obvious. Calling an obvious observation an "opinion" is just a cheap way of trying to win the argument. It's an observation that any rational person should be able to make.

Mind and brain operate simultaneously but mind produces thoughts and brain does not, it is merely the physical means by which thoughts exist and are conveyed and THAT IS OBVIOUS.

And the analogy of the car does serve to make the point clearer. Brain does not think thoughts, mind does and mind uses the brain for the purpose. That's obvious.

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You cannot know a person's thoughts by studying the brain.

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That may be no more than not knowing how to do it. Yet.

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Whatever you are saying about slicing things into two drivers is totally incomprehensible.

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If you were familiar with the evidence it would be quite understandable. Especially as it' not the first reference I've made in this discussion, and I gave enough information that dismissing it with your failure to understand is hardly an adequate response.

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I'm not talking about physically separating mind and brain, I'm saying they are two different kinds of things and you can NOT know anything about the qualities of one from knowing about the other, and really, Paul, that is quite obvious. Calling an obvious observation an "opinion" is just a cheap way of trying to win the argument. It's an observation that any rational person should be able to make.

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No, saying "it's obvious" when you can give no reason why is just a cheap way of winning an argument. Pointing out the fact that it's just your opinion is a fully adequate response when you offer nothing better.

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Mind and brain operate simultaneously but mind produces thoughts and brain does not, it is merely the physical means by which thoughts exist and are conveyed and THAT IS OBVIOUS.

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If thoughts cannot exist without the physical brain your view is in deep trouble. For a start we should be able to read thoughts out of the brain. But again you are trying to separate the brain and the mind in a way that begs the question.

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And the analogy of the car does serve to make the point clearer.

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Which only shows that I was correct. It is just an illustration of your opinion. Which is now seen to be a poorly informed opinion.