[Wittrs] Re: An Issue Worth Focusing On
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 02:25:01 -0000
Stuart: I'm out of the country for a month. If you choose not to respond
to this Post, I'll understand.
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
and this is another example of how poorly I've communicated this
far...you think that I hold that there...
> must first already have or be a mind!
Why? Because I appear to deny that Mind comes from Brain. The only other
alternative, according to this logic, is that mind is there from the
start.
But that logic doesn't hold for me because I don't see mind as object or
a phenomena that makes an appearance. Though there is a sense in which
I'm saying "mind, i.e., the person giving the account, must be present.
I'll try once more. When we take some physical entities to be "mental",
no new object or phenomena has been discovered. Rather we just shift our
stance on how we see and treat this object. So mind not only doesn't
come from brain, it simply "doesn't come from or is caused by anything."
To say this, is not to deny certain experiences, pain, after-images,
what-have-you can be caused by events internal and/or external. But
these experiences are not objects, not things of any substance. Not more
stuff added to the universe.
To summarize: My problem with "brain causes mind" is that it puts mind
at the end of a causal chain that began, I guess, with the Big Bang.
What I've called "Bottom-Up" accounts, which, if we follow Joe's point,
viz., there is no coal or diamonds at the particle level, wouldn't even
account for chemistry. Why? Because chemistry emerges for us as, as
thinkers. It isn't there at the Big Bang. Then again, the Big Bang is
also an conceptual account. Hence, the Bottom-Up account fails us at the
start.
The Top-Down account, that our understandings must begin with the person
who understands and, hence, can't be the result, the effect of any
understanding, doesn't deny the role of the brain in human functioning,
and, more importantly, should be confused with a pan-psychism. Mind
isn't there at the start. Nor is it there at the end. It isn't an "It."
And isn't anywhere.
bruce
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