But if thoughts,which don't exist corporeally,are made by physical
brains,does't this already happen? Or am I misunderstanding
something,and thoughts have some kind of physical existence,aside from
things like bridges.
Kate Sullivan
-----Original Message-----
From: William Conger <[email protected]>
To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, May 16, 2012 5:56 pm
Subject: Re: "...The realm of emotion and conscience, of memory andB
intention and sensation."
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.
