--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote:
> We see other people, animals, and by their behaviour we > deem them to be conscious. Yet if the brain of these > beings is damaged in certain ways, that conscious > behaviour departs. Injection of certain drugs, such as > Propofol (the one that killed the singer > Michael Jackson) > causes consciousness to slip away, even when > death does > not occur. On this basis a scientist will conclude that > the physical world, and the brain in particular, by virtue > of its organisation, causes consciousness. Otherwise > consciousness would not depart if the brain were destroyed. I would hope that a scientist would NOT "on this basis" conclude that the brain "causes" consciousness. Or, as Salyavin808 would have it, "creates" consciousness (using a similar form of reasoning). You both seem to be saying that "because damage to X results in damage to Y, and the destruction of X results in the destruction of Y, *therefore* X creates Y or X causes Y". This appears to me to be an obviously flawed line of reasoning (Judy has made this point previously). For example, take a statue made from marble. If you chip the marble, you damage the statue. If you destroy the marble you destroy the statue. "On this basis" is a scientist to conclude that the marble "causes" or "creates" the statue? And it gets worse. Even Supposing that we took your reasoning to be valid after all and accepted as a consequence that the brain "causes" consciousness. That does not mean (in itself) that consciousness is "nothing but" the brain and can be "reduced" to that particular material object. For example, when I flick a switch, that causes my light to come on. But that doesn't mean the light is "nothing but" the light switch. Perhaps it's the word "cause" that is creating difficulties here. What you and Salyavin808 are saying might make more sense within an Aristotelian understanding: The brain is the "material cause" of the mind. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes) But what that gains in plausibility it sacrifices in significance I would have thought. And in any case, scientistic types would hardly wish to resurrect a primitive ancient like Aristotle to bolster their scientific reductionism, would they? To add to the gaity, perhape we "mysterians" could lob a few of our own ordnance into the fray. If you belive that mind is reducible to brain, what would you predict would be the result of the amputation of a full half of a person's brain? Well, such "hemispherectomies" do happen (though mostly with children). And the results? "Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy And what are we to make of a case such as the 44 year-old French civil servant with a huge pocket of fluid where most of his brain ought to be - as reported in the Lancet and Nature: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/20/us-brain-tiny- idUSN1930510020070720 http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/news070716-15.html Or again, what about when the direction of causality is reversed? That is to say, if the influence of the brain on the mind is put forward as evidence for reductionism, what are we to conclude when the tables are reversed and the mind causes the death of the brain? As in "pointing the bone": "The condemned man may live for several days or even weeks. But, he believes so strongly in the curse that has been uttered, that he will surely die. It is said that the ritual loading of the kundela creates a "spear of thought" which pierces the victim when the bone is pointed at him. It is as if an actual spear has been thrust at him and his death is certain." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdaitcha Finally, if, following Descartes (and now David Chalmers in the video Judy posted) we conclude that the one indubitable fact (for me) is "my being me", "my existence". How, as reductive materialists, can we account for the fact that my existence has remained constant throughout my life, whereas every part of my body and brain has changed? There is very little sense in which the brain I have now is the same as the one I had at age five. But there is plenty of sense in saying that I am the same individual now as my self when I was five. In fact the entire emotional, social, intellectual, ethical, judicial and religious fabric of our lives is based on this simple idea of "individuals" - their concerns, their histories, their rights, their duties and so forth. Brains don't have such attributes. Ergo, individuals are not brains.
