[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:50:02 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > My issue...was not to wonder how there could be minds in the world at
> all...
>
> which assumes that there are minds in the world. I recall you said that
> they were in our heads. What is the evidence for that?
Scientific research that has determined that our way of experiencing the world
in terms of how we think about it or perceive it is affected by doing things to
the brain, not to our pinkie toes, our kidneys, etc.
> Not every noun
> which we use to describe our world refers to literally to some thing in
> the world, e.g., truth.
>
Sure enough!
> > but to wonder how minds happen in the world
>
> which could mean the conditions under which we attribute a mind to a
> physical entity.
It means what I have always said it means when I speak in this way: how the
organisms that we are get and lose minds.
>This is an interesting question. Recent research using
> brain scans and a signaling procedure has demonstrated that some folks
> thought to be in a vegetative state where actually there able to respond
> rationally to questions put.
>
Yes, I saw that or at least something like it. It certainly tells us there's
plenty we don't yet know about brains.
> > given the evident physical and, therefore, apparently inanimate,
> nature of this world in which minds occur?
>
> This use of "physical" as referring to that which is "absent the mental"
> sets up the problem.
It refers to the fact that the world consists of what we sometimes call matter
and that matter is not animate in most instances in which we find it. It
evidences no mind, no consciousness and the world seems to be made of such
stuff and we seem to be, too.
> It gives the impression that matter makes mind, the
> way a candle wick makes a flame, and what we seek is the catalyst.
That's a picture. Sometimes helpful and sometimes misleading. As you are using
it here it's misleading. Better speak of a wheel and its turning, i.e., the
wheel and what it does.
> But
> where do we look? The brain scan is a sign of mental activity. No
> question. But where do we look at the scan to find the making of mind?
> The question is very odd.
>
Ask people like Dehaene who are actually looking and see nothing odd in that
question at all. Nor do I.
> Alternatively, we could think of "physical" as not "absent the mental"
> but that which needs to be made relevant the mental. If so, we'd not be
> inclined to ask "how and where the physical makes the mental."
Yes, we can look at the universe in broader terms and recognize that
consciousness is just one of the phenomena found in the universe. Then the
question is whether it is part of the physical universe (I see no reason to
think it isn't) in that it comes from the same underlying forces, principles,
constituents the rest of the physical universe comes from, or if it is
something set apart from the physical elements of the universe (the dualist
position).
>Rather
> we'd ask "what do we have to see and hear that persuades that a person
> is here?"
>
The right behavior at one level (what the person does or says) or at another
level (what the brain is actually doing). The latter remains to be fully
discovered of course.
> I read the researchers mentioned above taking this view. When the
> patient is seen as "brain dead", it is treated as a living non-cognitive
> thing. But when communication is achieved, the patient is seen as a
> person. The brain scans are a sign, a criterion for attributing a mind.
> The brain scan, itself, is not the presence of mind.
>
> bruce
>
>
The presence of mind outside ourselves is always in the physical evidence just
as the evidence of the wheel's turning (rather than its being stationary) is in
the movement of the wheel. However, it is possible that a person can give no
outward signs of being conscious and yet be so and this just points to the
subjective dimension of what we mean by "consciousness".
SWM
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