2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: >>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the >>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some >>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great >>> insight stands. > > It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are > correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
Yes, sorry - am I REALLY being so unclear? Obviously, as you say, it is all too easy to see that mind and brain are *correlated*: my point was that such correlation can't be conceived as a simple one-to-one mind-material identity of any sort without doing violence to mind as an uneliminable primary reality. I think the problem here is with the all too easy - but flatly wrong - analogy of 'the same thing under two different descriptions', because here we need to be concerned not with mere description but with apparently incommensurable modes of existence: nobody, I take it, could seriously claim that the manifestly radical ontological dichotomy between 'material-existence' and 'mind-existence' is exhausted merely by description. Because - and with justification - for many quotidian and scientific purposes we focus on the 'material' characterisation of our shared 'externalised' reality, it is fatally easy to lose sight of the fact that any reification of the material description ineluctably invokes dualism in the face of the indubitable existence of the mental realm. This hidden dualism is therefore implicit - except for eliminativists - in any material account of mind. The ultimate capitulation - a la Dennett - is to screw up your eyes and throw out mind to retrieve monistic materialism. It is by contrast reasonable to posit that both be subsumed in the ontology of a singular synthetic category in which the *correlated appearances* of mind and matter could be shown to emerge in some mutually coherent manner. COMP of course is one candidate for such a synthesis. Actually, I haven't yet seen any others (oops - pace Colin). David > > Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote: >> >>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and >>> machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your >>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of >>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I >>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion. >>> >>> THE APHORISMS >>> >>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind. >>> >>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams. >>> >>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us >>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see >>> itself). >>> >>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the >>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some >>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great >>> insight stands. > > It's more than an intuition. There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are > correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,... > >>> >>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are >>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less >>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence >>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular >>> correlative synthesis. >>> >>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or >>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy >>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly >>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are >>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies. > > That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting. I've never heard anyone claim > that > the mind is the brain. The materialist claim is that the mind is what the > brain does, i.e. the mind is a process. That's implicit in COMP, the idea > that > functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without > any > untoward effects. > > Brent > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
