What we must accept if we accept evolution

Or one too few.

Hi, Faith.Your assertion seems to assume its conclusion.It seems clear, for example, that self-aware consciousness--the realization that the chimp in the mirror with the red hat is me, as evidenced by my chimp hand reaching for it immediately upon viewing the mirror image--arose before human consciousness.It is certainly a more complex phenomenon than instinctive behaviors, but the question of whether it is "a different order of things than the biological processes that supposedly brought it about" is another facet of the issue being debated. I see no reason why not. Could you tell me why not? Robin has also neglected to explain why a sensation of incorporeality could not evolve in biological systems if it conferred a fitness advantage--though I am not asking you to defend his perspective. We can change the mind in predictable ways by changing the brain, and we can destroy the mind by destroying the brain. fMRI imaging tells us that every major function of the brain examined so far has a corresponding brain state, a correspondence so close that researchers can often determine the nature of the subject's thoughts with startling accuracy.The brain clearly appears to be a aggregate of biological systems and structures, with multiple complex sets of inhibition and disinhibition.In animals we see greater or lesser degrees of self-aware consciousness corresponding to greater or lesser degrees of brain complexity. We see that earlier hominids had brains somewhat similar to ours but simpler; we see that our close cousins (as determined by DNA and morphology) have the brains that are most like ours--and minds most like ours.If you have an explanation that sounds less magical than the ToE, along with supporting observations for it, then that would indeed be a challenge to the ToE. I suspect you do not.

Hi again, Faith. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.I believe many unexpressed assumptions distinguish our perspectives on these questions. I believe the brain generates the mind; I wonder if your reference to the brain as the "physical instrument" of the mind does not mean you see things the other way around, with the activities of the mind causing alterations in brain activity? From my perspective, the mind has no existence beyond its manifestation by the brain, just as the electromagnetic field depends on the current.To me doesn't make any sense at all. If we cannot locate or measure it, then how can the term "objective" apply at all? How can anything "objective" be said about the mind? Our primary evidence of mind is experiential and privileged.I would prefer the term "interiority" to incorporeal. My experience of mind does not suggest incorporeality to me. I am "in here." I feel that in the case of mind, the how and why of its emergence is the easy part. I described correspondences between brain complexity and degrees of self-awareness/consciousness in humans and animals, and current and past primates, because I see those strong correspondences as strong evidence that consciousness did, indeed, evolve. How? The same way every other biological phenomenon did: variation and selection. Why? Because it produced greater fitness. What is mind? That is the hard part, because mind is experientially privileged.True, I cannot point to a new structure in the mammalian brain and say, Voila! the grief of elephants and porpoises, and I cannot decoct a neurotransmitter and say, Ecce agape, circa 200,000 B.C.!But I can observe close correspondences between increasingly complex brains and increasing self-awareness and consciousness and quite reasonably conclude that one produces the other. Since there are no unaccounted for minds lying about, and since my own mind's dim beginnings are a few years this side of infancy, I believe it is the complex brain encountering a complex environment that produces the experience of mind. Sure I can You have declared that the mind is incorporeal and that the corporeal cannot give rise to the incorporeal, both unsupported assertions, even if intuitively attractive.Even if I accept that the mind is incorporeal (and I'm still not sure what that means), you haven't given any reasons to believe that one thing cannot give rise to a dissimilar thing. No, you cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip, but if a turnip ever developed a brain, you probably could.We might well image qualia such as love one day as a particular cascade of brain hormones that triggers a particular constellation of greater and lesser activity in diverse brain structures, and measure the strength of that love with signal intensity.If our instrumentality achieves this, can I show you love on the monitors, and would that suffice for corporeality? Many corporeal things are only detectable by sensitive instruments, after all, and we do not "experience" things we consider corporeal, we merely sense them.If we could see the mind, would you consider it corporeal? We see illusions--are they corporeal? I don't think that's accurate, Faith, here or among scientists in general--and I don't see you as a "plodding prosaic soul."What the mind is, how it arises in the individual, how it evolved--these are questions being addressed by many scientists, as well as philosophers, linguists, psychologists, neurologists, etc. In fact, I see no one except scientists trying to answer the whats and hows of the mind; the religious essentially have their explanations already, yes?Perhaps, for the sake of argument, I should take a genuinely materialistic stance and simply say that the mind is the brain, or, more precisely, the experiential state of having a great big beautiful one.Anyway, it's a fascinating discussion, and I am enjoying it.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 01-26-2006 11:47 PM

Hi, Faith. I'm in the office busily rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, so I can't reply at the length our discussion merits until later.But for now: I personally feel that the human brain is breathtakingly beautiful, inside and out, and, yes, that experiential state is the experience of mind. I agree, much better, though there are many, many more entries in that Omni Book of Insults--I merely honored you with the choicest bits. Actually, that incident is a good case study of mind. Anyone who knows me personally would be shocked by that particular post ("Omni said that?") because I have worked hard at draining the vast reservoir of rage that my early years filled to the brim; in person, I am quiet almost to the point of shyness, and I function among family, friends, and co-workers as a peacemaker. I rarely argue with anyone, let alone become heated.But the stress of disabling injuries and multiple surgeries, and the disinhibiting effects of narcotic pain meds, opened the sluice gates to that rage more widely than they have opened in decades.To me, that "perfect storm" of circumstance confirms my brain-generates-mind model: it was not that my wicked mind was lying in wait for a moment of neurologic weakness, so it could impose fiery anger upon it, but that stress and drugs removed the inhibiting patterns I have established in my brain through years of effort, and that rage--a response that was appropriate for survival long ago, but is no longer--reemerged.Oops. More time gone by than I intended--I'll respond more specifically to your post later.