[Wittrs] Re: Is Homeostasis caused or purposive?
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:12:53 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
Bruce: The choice is between a mechanical or purposive model.
> No, it is not. The models are applicable in different contexts.
Correct! If we want to model brain mechanically and mind purposively,
and want to relate brain and mind, we need to mesh the two models. Here
you try.
SWM: all experience involves the physical both in terms of experiencing
whatever we are experiencing and in terms of what it takes to have an
experience at all, i.e., brains and physical events that become sensory
input via signals passed along the neural pathways, etc.
It's the etc, that's our problem. At some point, in your mechanical
model, the physical becomes experiential. Because you hold to a
mechanical model you are required to explain this transformation. Do you
see why it isn't my problem? I see your mechanical account as
conceptual. Shifting concepts requires justification but no account of
transformation.
> I suggest you have another look at Dehaene
A global neural workplace is a way of metaphorizing the brain in
mentalistic terms that gives some the impression that he has discovered
the transformation of brain into mind when all he has is a correlation.
But this fact doesn't diminish the practical use his finding for
understanding brain damage. It just doesn't address our philosophical
muddle and hence can't resolve it.
> The brain's operations cause the features we associate with
consciousness
The brain causes "features" -- features of what? -- consciousness? --
then why write "associate with." You make it sound as if the brain
causes something to happen somewhere else (the mind). But according to
Dehaene the brain dioesn't cause the GNW, the brain is the GNW. The
brain is mind. An identity, not a causal account, closer to two sides of
the coin. If you see the coin as conceptual, then no problem, but if you
try to place the sides of a coin in a causal relationship, you got
trouble.
bruce
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