The question is can something material give rise to something immaterial? People have always claimed that magic for themselves but do they claim it for other creatures and any living thing at all? Wait, some people even say inanimate things without brains, like rocks, can have thoughts or can have feelings.
I very deeply want to be a dualist. It would solve a lot of issues that make it more comfortable to be a human being. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, May 16, 2012 11:18:52 AM Subject: Re: "...The realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation." William writes: > No brains no thoughts. Show me a thought > independent of a living brain and I'll reconsider the dualist position. > But the dualist position is not that consciousness is independent of brain substance and activity. It's that consciousness is not itself material. Dualists are not uniformly dumb people. Do look into the Chalmers. Dualism is not my specialty, so I'm a poor spokesman. I grant that if you pinch my flesh you stir the brain to activity, but I can't concede that the neural writhing "is" my feeling of pain. The fire in the fireplace affects my skin and, through nerve connections, my brain. But I'd no more consider my feeling of warmth to be "identical" with the neural activity than I'd say my warmth is identical to the fire. A typical specialist's argument is that if you describe every possible thing about the material activity in the brain you still haven't described my feeling. William continues: > The origin of this dualism is the Bible and the expression, In > the > beginning there was The Word. > wc > I'm not quite as unthinking as that suggests, William. The "origin" of MY dualist convictions is not the bible. > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: > "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: > Wed, May 16, 2012 9:10:41 AM > Subject: Re: "...The realm of emotion and > conscience, of memory and intention > and sensation." > > In a message dated > 5/16/12 9:49:34 AM, [email protected] writes: > > > > And it can't happen > without a living, pulsing brain. Oops, that's the > > realm of > > the physical, > ain't it? > > wc > > > > Dualists don't deny the physical, neural world. But, as > Updike conveys, > their honest conviction is that a feeling, a thought, is not a > material thing. > See David Chalmers's anthology, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: Classical > and > Contemporary Readings.
