Timeline for answer to Does psychoactivity reveal the mind's physical basis? by Jo Wehler
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Post Revisions
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 hours ago | comment | added | keshlam | @ScottRowe We have examples of action at a distance, and of spooky action at a distance. The idea of the brain as a remote peripheral is not completely incoherent. It's just completely unsupported (except by disliking the other answers) and undefined. As has been pointed out, if we ever find out that it's true, physics will attempt to address it. But, yes, until we have direct evidence one way or the other arguing about it is pointless. (Wording fixed.) | |
| 15 hours ago | comment | added | Scott Rowe | @keshlam what we would need is an example of a non-physical thing affecting another with no physical mechanism involved. Like something in a running computer program affecting something else, but not affecting the hardware. It seems like an incoherent idea. But without an example to investigate, the question is best set aside, like all empty speculation. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | keshlam | @mudskipper: the non-physicalists, as I understand it, are in fact saying that mind and body are part of the same process, with causal links; they are just insisting that there are non-physical links to the non-physical mind. Until we can prove that the mind is completely within the physical system, they can and will continue to insist that there is some part which isn't; piecemeal solutions will not be accepted, nor will "everything else is, so why is this an exception." I am classifying this as a matter of faith, lowercase f. As structured, untestable and unprovable. Pick your poison. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | mudskipper | @keshlam - Yeah... that's a pretty subtle point. I don't know if we can distinguish the models for the realities here :) I believe this (blending of model and reality) is sth Hofstadter had in mind when speaking of a "strange loop". | |
| yesterday | comment | added | keshlam | @mudskipper: I actually believe that nobody can observe our own minds. What we can observe is the models we have made of our own minds, in the same way that we can observe the models we have made of other minds. We refine the models continuously and without thinking about how we are doing so, and they are pretty good. But I certainly find myself doing some things I didn't expect I would, and I don't think I am unusual in that regard. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | mudskipper | @ChrisDegnen - I mean, there is an obvious self-contradiction in your statements. How can spirit become more manifest if it wasn't manifest to start with? Why would we see tremors (in suitable cases) as manifesting fears if there was no causal link at all between experience and manifestation? If those were not two sides of exactly the same coin (the same physical process)? | |
| yesterday | comment | added | mudskipper | Oh, were can those robots be found, I wonder? I've never yet seen one of those. Mind is not an "interior" phenomenon. It it was, nobody could ever learn to observe it. The whole Heideggerian critique of Cartesianism tries to refute the naive presumption that mind is purely "inner". Heidegger and Wittgenstein are in vehement agreement at least about that. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | Chris Degnen | @mudskipper – shows of "action and behavior" can just as well be done by a robot. In the examples I give of spirit, objective recognition is emphasised by heightened emotion, a transport, anger, shock, when the 'spirit' becomes more apparent to another. It probably won't be long till an AI can pull that off too. But anyway, really, mind is an interior phenomenon, and conventionally it can't be experienced by another. From the mind's point of view, awareness doesn't feel physical, (although of course one's body does). | |
| yesterday | comment | added | mudskipper | The mind is readily observed, like everything else, because it manifests itself in action and behavior. It's impossible to having any feelings, for instance, that are not related to actions. Emotion is action-readiness. Fear manifests itself in fight, flight or immobility. It's impossible to even say what any "belief" is or means, if you abstract from the values and the possible actions that it implicitly refers to (or that form its actual context). The basic fact is that we learn to observe ourselves (and our own "inner" states) first by "outer" learning (imitation and learning to speak). | |
| yesterday | history | edited | Jo Wehler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 164 characters in body
|
| yesterday | comment | added | Chris Degnen | Re. "The mind are the mental processes of the brain." – I was rather thinking of mind from the experiential point of view, as distinct from 'brain' which is objectively observed. While experience is all mind, mind is not so readily objectively observed. This is why I mention the 'shine' of spirit, which is most obvious when it shocks, eliciting in another a 'gasp' (also derived from *gheis-d-. So what I'm asking is how, from the experiential perspective, mind can be thought of as material if it is directly affected by material. | |
| yesterday | history | edited | Jo Wehler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 2 characters in body
|
| yesterday | history | edited | Jo Wehler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 6 characters in body
|
| yesterday | history | answered | Jo Wehler | CC BY-SA 4.0 |