[Wittrs] Re: Dennett's paradigm shift.
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:05:29 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> Again the claim that the mind just is the brain is not a claim that
the mind is a physical thing
> but a feature (or features) of a physical thing.
What is so difficult to grasp is the assertion that X is a feature of a
physical thing but can't be physically detected (as the turning of a
wheel can). X can only be associated with the physical thing, as in my
love for my car. My love isn't physical.
Nor is it conceivable that the "mind is just the brain" when the two
share no common properties aside from correlations which, we with our
minds, impose. Thus, I agree...
> the physical constituents of matter at all levels show no evidence of
being conscious, having minds).
Right! The brain isn't conscious. People are. That's why brain-talk
can't be substituted from people-talk.
> Can the mental life easily go on (or go on at all) without the
physical process?
No. But that fact doesn't explain how we get from the physical to the
mental. Causation is an empty gesture because there is no way of
connecting cause and effect.
> Kill the brain and what happens to subjective experience?
What does that tell us aside from a necessary condition? BTW: Kill the
mind and what happens to the physical world? We have two concepts, mind
and body, they are internally related. If one goes, so does the other.
Now that perhaps is a paradigm shift because it asks you to drop both
materialism and idealism.
> nor does the wheel's turning analogize with a secretion.
A wheel turning is at point a, b, c, and the analogy to mind is...
>I think you are so intent on avoiding the picture of mind-brain
dependence,
Read carefully. I insist on dependence but conceptual, not material. Now
that's a shift.
bruce
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