‘Mind’ is the last immaterial bolt hole for ’soul’. ‘Body’ is a misleading abstraction. Zombies are animated bodies. (Neuroscience deals only with zombies.) Human beings are not animated bodies.

‘Human being’ is a misleading abstraction. A society consists of persons living in nature, sharing a common highly artificial, abstract web of interactions called a culture. Outside of culture there are no persons. Inside of nature there are no machines, no plans, no purposes, no aims.

Whatever can be expressed by language, including my experience of so-called “private” perceptions, belongs solely to culture, not nature. Language is our interactive collective consciousness. ‘Mind’ disappears into language.

‘Body’ is merely an abstraction from ‘person.’ Specifically, a failed attempt to account for the difference between a living person and a dead body.

One of xianity’s darkest gifts is its focus on the so-called individual soul. Western philosophy gets nowhere by having been theology’s lickspittle. Explanations drawn from neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary biology can not be expected to provide a full account of culture. They were not designed to do so; they will not do so.

Persons, language, and culture arose simultaneously. In that sense culture is irreducible; it is the given.

There are no minds. There are no bodies. There is nothing to interact.

bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007

I have a problem with Putnam not you, try relax. Who exactly are “you guys?” Sorry but I am speaking from my own exclusive brain state not anyone else’s.

let me ask you some simple questions… Do you genuinely believe that two brain states can be identical?

Is pain subjective?
Is it measurable?

No thing is identical to another thing… even if “identical” they occupy a different space. Different space, different reference. Did Leibniz work in an ideal setting or a real setting?

I am not making arguments for reductionism… I am saying merely Putnam is overly simplistic and you have to take a leap of faith to accept his premises.

My argument is this Putnam is generalizing. Pain is subjective. This is the real world, no two pains are alike. I don’t accept his premises. Not only bad arguments but bad science, no verifiability, no repeatability.

“Brain state” is an absurd concept. You can never throw a rock into the same river twice man… never.

“All multiple realizability says, is that it is logically possible to have the same experience of pain, without brain state X.”

I don’t believe “the same experience of pain” ever exists with or without brain state X.

I don’t even know what you are referencing here. Suffice it to say, that there are multiple arguments against the reductionism of the mental to the brain, and there are good reasons to be critical of it. Which is WHY most philosophers don’t hold to reductionism. If you really think reductionism is the right way to understand it, then you answer the many criticisms leveled against it. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/#Lat

http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/identity.htm#H2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theory

Besides there are much better naturalistic theories of the mind body relation to put to rest the original identity theory. Functionalism is a much better theory and doesn’t have the problem of multiple realizability.

It is as untenable as someone trying to convince me in proof of god because they “felt” his presence.

It is clear that you do not understand what Putnam is saying, nor what the identity theory is .

According to Leibniz’s law if something is identical to another thing, then it must share all the same properties. So if pain=Brain State X, then if one has pain, then by necessity, they have brain state X. In other words, it is not logically possible to be in pain and not have Brain state X. All multiple realizability says, is that it is logically possible to have the same experience of pain, without brain state X. Therefore, the identity theory fails. Why because it fails to conform to Leibniz’s law.

Large bodies are often wrong, 1800’s, 1960, 500 BCE etc. Doesn’t matter. Dozens of wise men on a sinking ship won’t convince me to jump aboard.

Multiple Realizability i think oversimplifies and I have a hard time agreeing with its starting point. “All mental kinds are multiply realizable by distinct physical kinds” How can anyone quantify this? How can a “mental kind” be proven to be the same? “A given psychological kind” with regards to pain across species or even people isn’t verifiable other than the words we use to describe it. It is as untenable as someone trying to convince me in proof of god because they “felt” his presence. Even within our species pain is experienced very differently person to person and even within the genders. It is different qualitatively and quantitatively. Why because our brains and bodies are different. Personally, I don’t even experience something the same way twice. The physical makeup, structure and chemistry changes even after experiencing something once. You hold the same flame up to my left and then my right finger at two different times I will experience the pain differently. My argument is that no to mental states are ever completely the same. I take complete opposition to the word “identical.”

Every moment in my life is distinctly different from the next… even Deja vu. Why? Cause the first time it wasn’t Deja vu!

Pain or anything is experienced differently due to… different brain chemistry… person to person, species to species.

The language we use to describe pain is simplified and is the only thing close to being the same.

Hilary Putnam is a reductionist. He is a reductionist when it comes to mental state of pain.

My response… what fallacy is that? Appeal to popularity? How about this… if mind can be reduced to the brain what does it do to philosophy?

Its one thing to commit the fallacy ad populum. It is another to allude to a large body of philosphical research that has proved convincing to the vast majority of scholars, that a reductionist theory does not work. Appealing to the majority of informed scholars is a form of an appeal to authority, but a legitimate one. Here is just one argument against areductionist theory of the mind. (there are many others)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/#ArgAgaRedMinBraIdeThe

My response… what fallacy is that? Appeal to popularity? How about this… if mind can be reduced to the brain what does it do to philosophy?

Without the brain there is no mind.

“In fact, you don’t need a PhD in nueropshyiology to understand that gaining more and more precise knowledge of the workings of the brain won’t solve the question of conscious experience arises from brain tissue.” That is very precise because it’s not the neuroscientists who deny the connection (of course here I’m assuming you mean mind, as defined earlier, not as “subjective experience,” which is a highly debated topic). So yeah, if you don’t have a PhD in one of the scientific fields involved with studying the brain you will probably not be concerned with investigating the connection between brain and mind.

If you read the scripts from the Symposium I recommended you should see that many scientists are concerned with philosophical arguments and they do not discount them. However, philosophical arguments cannot be used to replace a microscope in the lab. Scientists will continue to formulate theories and test them scientifically.

“It is very easy to attack a scientific argument with a philosophical one.” What are you talking about?
I’m talking about comparing apples to apples. But you’re right I should have explained clearer. What I thought of was that scientists have entire studies made up of biological facts, that amount to proving or disproving a theory. These studies take sometimes decades to complete. Susan Green published a short uncomplicated review of her studies on the brain and the mind, and even short as it is it’s filled with data accumulated through years of research. To break down her argument, the science in these studies should be taken apart piece by piece. Throwing philosophical arguments at her one-page article is not going to truly touch the studies that she quotes.

And I think I’m done with this topic. However, I will start a “What will the atheist say…” series. Second question in the series is “What will the atheist say when you sneeze?” The first question was “What will atheists say about the existence of a soul.” Which I think we debated enough for now. So sneezing as a topic should be much more simple.

ummm…so why did Pinker say this?

And the challenge to that deep-seated belief from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and cognitive science has put religion and science on the public stage. I think it’s one of the reasons you have a renewed assault on religious beliefs from people like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Clearly the implication is that nueroscience is a very devistating challenge to traditional religious worldviews.

You are taking a very extreme stance here. While you have a grasp of philosophical arguments you don’t seem to be aware of the progresses in neuroscience.

I am sure that I don’t have as good of a grasp on contemporary neuroscience as I would like to. But, that doesn’t mean that I am ignorant of the fact that neuroscience has greatly advanced and become much more complex. However, just because we are now able to understand what neural circuits give rise to certain behaviors, it doesn’t follow that we understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience. In fact, you don’t need a PhD in nueropshyiology to understand that gaining more and more precise knowledge of the workings of the brain won’t solve the question of conscious experience arises from brain tissue. I don’t think my position is extreme in fact, i think it is pressupposed by everyone who does philosophy of mind. So (1) it is not extreme. (2) It is not unsupported. You should read that link I put from Chalmers which supports my position entirely.

It is you who challenged the statement that the mind is what the brain does, so theoretically you hold the burden of proof.

Me? Well I am not that smart. Fortunately, the theory of the mind you are using here has been severly criticized by others more intelligent than I. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

It is very easy to attack a scientific argument with a philosophical one

What are you talking about? I can’t even imagine a philosophical argument that should be taken seriously that contradicts an scientific truth. So I don’t even understand what you are saying here. I am NOT posing a philosophical argument against a scientific one. I am giving a taxonomy between empirical and philosophical areas of investigation. To say that the mind is nothing other than what the brain does IS a philosophical argument. It is making a claim about the existence of the mind that CANNOT be verified empirically! Try it. We could do all sorts of experiments (as researchers are doing right now) and find out to an immesurable degree the relationship between certain brain functions and their attendent conscious experiences, but it does not follow from that information that conscious experience is nothing more than brain function! There are more assumptions involved in that conclusion and these assumptions cannot be empirically tested. You are the one conflating empirical and ontological claims, not me.

My understanding is that the inquiry into how we know things is “epistemology.”

Mana,

I am REALLY impressed by your articulate and thoughtful reply. I couldn’t have said it better (or as well). You are much more well-informed than I.

You have added support to my idea that the soul-folks give up too easily, taking refuge in “metaphysics” and “philosophical questions.” It’s all in your head. We must persevere to uncover the astonishing secrets of how neurochemistry becomes subjectivity, memory, and all the rest.

Figuring out how the brain does what it does will be very hard, but perhaps not impossible. One cognitive scientist even said, somewhat paradoxically, “If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we might be too stupid to understand it.” Certainly, using computers to replicate consciousness (as opposed to the appearance of it) is a lot harder than people thought.

shalom,

Alan

Alan M. Perlman, PhD
Secular Humanist Author and Speaker
www.thejewishatheist.com

“Believing in God is only religion if you are intimidated by God. If…you stand up straight and refuse to surrender you may be a humanist… Denouncing God is not very useful. Pursuing dignity is.”

Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine