[Wittrs] Re: Mind is Brain dependent
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:43:32 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > Of how subjective experience occurs in the world.
>
> Explaining "how subjective experience occurs" ?? I guess by subjective
> you mean our "inner thoughts" in distinction from our perception of
> material objects. And what about this question is not answered in the
> research on dreams, memory, feelings....???
How the brain DOES experience. How being a subject occurs in/on a physical
platform such as the brain when 1) there is no reason to think that it occurs
in/on all physical platforms and 2) experience is, not itself, a recognizably
physical thing.
We can go round on this all day (indeed, we have and for far longer periods
than mere days!) if you insist. The point, of course, is that language is not
structured to talk about experience in the way we talk about the things
experienced (because it is publicly established). And so we are constantly
faced with these linguistic ambiguities, i.e., with referring to things
(referents) which lack physical aspects and then we are tempted to think, aha,
nothing physical here at all, must require some presumption that puts it
outside the physical (dualism or idealism or maybe even nonsense-ism) and so .
. . a great mystery!
But this just leaves out a whole range of other ways we use language, i.e.,
that "thing" doesn't ONLY refer to physically observable objects, that, in
fact, there are other paradigms and, indeed, must be for us to be able to talk
about our world.
>
> > What about if the loss of memory occurred because of damage to a part
> of the patient's brain?
>
> What the patient experiences, as we do of him, is due to the brain
> damage, in the same way that this Post is do to the workings of your
> brain. But neither the patient, his family, nor you or I directly
> experience the brain damage of brain workings.
If you mean do we have awareness of our brains absent theoretical knowledge
based on the empirical studies of science, etc., no, of course not. But so
what? What has THAT to do with whether or not brains do minds?
> What we experience is a
> person living his life.
>
But what is the source of experiencing itself? (Round and round, eh?)
> If the brain causes everything, both remembering and forgetting, arguing
> and agreeing, then "the bran caused it" can play no part in
> understanding the person's experience or ours.
>
I don't know what you mean by "causes everything" but will presume you mean is
the cause of all the features we recognize, in aggregate, as mind (as having a
mind). If so, then the answer to the second part of your assertion is that it
depends on what we mean by "playing a part", understanding, a experience.
If "playing a part" we are referring to being the source of, then your
assertion is already manifestly wrong. However, if you mean what led to any
particular manifestation of a thought, intention, etc., then of course we
aren't interested, generally, in what is going on in the brain but what
antecedent words or events or stimuli preceded the thought, intention, etc., we
are considering.
As to understanding, the question is whether we are trying to understand how
thoughts occur or why particular thoughts occurred to particular persons (or
groups of persons) under particular conditions. In the former case we are
interested in a scientific understanding of what it takes for thoughts, etc.,
to occur in the world at all but in the latter we are interested in
understanding within the context of thought systems, etc., e.g., what
associative and semantic relations exist between stimulus X and respons Y, etc.
As to experience, well it will depend on whether we are seeking to understand
how it occurs at all or what particular kinds of experiences relate to what
stimuli, etc.
You seem forever to be conflating these issues.
> > But what is going on with him as a subject, a conscious being
> > is a function of what is happening in his brain.
>
> Again, it always is and hence doesn't describe or explain the behavior
> in question. It can't.
What makes you think THAT was the point of my comment though? Where have I said
this is how we should do psychology, say? Haven't I been talking about things
like cognitive science, neuroscience and AI? Have I ever proposed that any or
all of these can or do substitute for psychology? And, if not, why think that
that is the point of my statements on this matter?
> Because the physical language doesn't grasp the
> experience.
Language doesn't grasp, language speakers do. I don't see your point on this.
Certainly language is geared to the physical (because of its public provenance)
and many of the words we apply to what isn't clearly a matter of physically
observable objects or events often do seem derivative of more physically
attuned usages. And yet we can and do routinely speak about a broader array of
things than just physical objects and events. Language is much broader and more
flexible than such a narrow view as you seem to be insisting on gives it credit
for. And that, I think, is a big part of the problem here. We must be careful
NOT to read Wittgenstein so narrowly as to end up with a caricature of his
actual views on these things. That's why he is not a behaviorist and that's why
his remarks don't boil down to just saying anything that is difficult to speak
of is mere nonsense (that is "unintelligible")!
> There is probably a difference between a Picasso and your
> kid's drawing on a atomic level but you would find the artistic
> difference there
>
True enough but so what?
> > > Is it your contention that one day we will have mapped every single
> > > mental event with some unique brain event and then give a full
> > > description of mind in physical terms?
>
> > I have no idea if it will happen but I am inclined to think it is at
> least theoretically possible.
>
> As an exercise it would be interesting to spell out how this could
> possibly be done. By what scale or measure to distinguish brain events
> (mental events)? When I stimulate a C-Fiber and you say "Wow that
> hurts", exactly what caused what? The fiber firing the brain stimulate
> the speech center that stimulated the tongue....what is wrong with this
> picture?
>
> bruce
>
I have theoretically many times in the past Bruce.
Think of Dennett's model. He lays out a picture of mind that consists of
multiple processes performing different basic functions which combine into more
complex functions, etc. These process-performed functions interact with one
another, reading and changing each other's inputs and thereby affecting the
outputs which become other processes' inputs and so forth.
The idea is this: a mind consists of inputted information gathered and passed
through to a kind of massive processor (the brain or parts of it) which sorts,
breaks down, combines, associates, stores, retrieves, etc., all this data
within the context of many different subsystems. Some of these subsystems
involve capturing visual images, some tactile inputs, some somatic conditions,
etc., while some create, capture and use the information reflecting various
combinations of these. At some level there is also a reader system that is part
of the larger complex of subsystems. The point is that we can explain mind in
this way and, theoretically at least, conceive of a machine set up to do all
these things. Once you have information being processed in this way, with
sufficient capacity and sophistication to construct, retain and make use of
many different mapping schemas of the external and internal inputs with
features that involve the features we recognize in ourselves (remembering,
picturing, representing, understanding, choosing, thinking about things by
semantic association, etc.), then what would still be missing?
What is there in us that is not accounted for by the activities of such a
complex system (assuming it could be built)?
A soul? What is the soul but a sense we have of being selves? And yet isn't
what it means to be a self already accounted for in the above description of
various complex and overlaid dynamic schematic mappings?
Awareness? Well isn't that accounted for by the capacity we see in ourselves to
relate one thing to another and for such relations to be situated in broader
and deeper complex mappings?
Understanding? Well isn't that covered by an ability to broadly connect
representations with other representations in the context of those more complex
mappings and to respond in ways that demonstrate those connections?
Feelings? Well aren't these accounted for by our ability to capture and
integrate sensory and somatic data into a unified complex of representations
that have the "look" of being a self?
A self? Well isn't this taken care of by the idea of a set of interlinked and
integrated mappings that include continuous historic data about the organism's
internal (including somatic) and external (feelings and perceptions) history?
Now, given all of this, would we not be talking about a very complex system
realized on a complex machine? If so, it is not unreasonable to suppose that at
some point we could home in on which particular process element relates to
which particular aspect of the subject's experience (although it may well be
that, as we go up the line from the basic inputs to the complex
representations, etc., we have to deal with no single process or event but
multiple feed-in processes or events).
Note that I am not arguing from this that it is inevitable we will ever achieve
such a level of identification. I am only saying that, given this particular
model of mind (which I think a reasonable explanation for what we call "mind")
it is not impossible in theory that such a level of detail could be attained
(even if it were to turn out that it is impossible from a practical standpoint).
SWM
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