[Wittrs] Re: From Brain to Mind: Continuous or Discontinuous
- From: "blroadies" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:26:00 -0000
Classical science aimed at predicting an outcome, then conducting an
experiment to
confirm it. But natural systems don't behave so neatly. The specific
details can be
described, yet no one can predict the outcome. ?You can predict when
lightening will
strike under certain conditions, but you can't predict when or
where?.Classical
science can't predict the behavior of a cloud, which is nothing but
a bunch of water
droplets moved around in the air by heat and gravity.
In a word, stochastic.
Wikipedia
A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic in that
a system's
subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions
and by a
random element. Stochastic crafts are complex systems whose
practitioners, even if
experts, acknowledge that outcomes result from both known and unknown
causes.
Examples are warfare, meteorology, economics, and rhetoric, where
success and
failure are so difficult to predict that explicit allowances are made
for
uncertainty.
Food for thought about about the emergence of mind.
bruce
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "blroadies" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
> Hi SWM:
>
> What with the Posts going private and such I've decided to compose
> something (that is not a nothing) on a theme which I believe shows our
> difference. Where we agree is -- subjectivity can be studied
> empirically, this study doesn't require positing a new substance,
hence
> we look forward to making a synthetic being with a mind, this being
> requires a brain of some type, without which there is no mind; and
while
> mental accounts require a different language game than physical
> accounts, this account can be responsibly scientific.
>
> Where are disagreement emerges is how to express the relationship
> between brain and mind, You are comfortable with "cause" which means,
in
> this context, produces, yields, makes happen. Is this fair? You hold
to
> a CONTINUITY THESIS, viz., from brain comes mind, while hold to a
> DISCONTINUITY THESIS or EMERGENCE, i.e., mind emerges in a way that it
> is inexplicable.
>
> Most succinctly put: We can no more ask "where mind comes from?" than
we
> can ask "where matter comes from?" Though we can date each event.
Matter
> starts with the Big Bang. Mind starts when we conceived of being as
> having a mind, when we attribute mind in the phylogensis of the
animals,
> in the ontogenesis of the conceived and then new-born child.
>
> While we can date the event. We only can do so because we have decided
> that it has happened. A close examination of physical materials
present
> at the emergence of mind will tell us what must be present for mind to
> emerge but we can't detect mind emerging from the materials or how
this
> materials give birth to mind.
>
> bruce
>
>
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