[Wittrs] Re: Is the brain a hammer?
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 02 May 2010 23:36:54 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> Nothing in my "model" suggests we lack the ability to make decisions,
exercise choice.
> It just offers a way of understanding how that capacity comes about
and what underlies it.
Yes, you attempt to offer a way. But if your way is "the brain causes
the choice", either in the sense that the brain causes me the person to
choose (which makes me wonder where the person is in your system) or the
brain does it on its own, then (given what we mean by scientific
causality) it makes no sense that any choice (what we typically mean by
"choice") is involved.
> You don't like the idea that what we are might just be an expression
of our individual physical constituents
Actually, I'm inclined to see it just that way. I hold that there is a
"We", people, who use their body to express themselves and their given
body offers opportunities and limits. What puzzles me is how you can
continuously use expressions like "WE" but refuse to place this concept
in your causal account. What is the relation between the person and the
brain. If the brain causes the person, it is not what we mean by
"person", it is what we mean by automaton.
> It isn't about denying awareness, intelligence, understanding,
intentions, etc., etc. It's about explaining them.
But your not explaining, rather you are explaining them away. Physics,
no matter how complex, doesn't attempt to explain psychology.
> The mind is part of a system we call a person
OK. Staying at the psychological level.
> What part?
Now, staying the psychological level, I expect to hear something about
the relationship between aspects of the conscious and our-of-conscious
mind but instead you shift to the physical origins.
> I would say it's a functional outcome of the physical constituents
of course, the mind is embodied but the "functional outcome of the
physical" avoids the tough question of whether we are going to treat a
person as an emergent whole that is conceived in psychological terms not
physical terms, or you are drawing an analogy of brain and mind
comparable to bone marrow and blood, in which the mind is simply
product. If it is, the concept of person has no application.
> If I feel a pain and I'm asked to cite its cause then what caused it
is whatever impinged upon me via my sensory equipment.
So, you exist (in some form) at the end of "the neurological pathways up
the line to the brain." If mind is a function of brain, as you say, then
there is no person at the end. The function of a muscle is to contract.
The contraction doesn't exist apart from the muscle.
> I mean that the brain is causal of consciousness
Like a the wick causing the flame. Note: A complete account of the flame
can be made in terms of the wick. But with brain research, it is the
opposite. A through mental account allows for the correlate brain
account. But then you want to turn it around and make the account of
mind dependent upon our account of brain
> Do you wield your brain to render yourself conscious?
I recognize the strangeness of the locution. But the alternative, the
brain causes me to be conscious, fails because there is no where to
place the "We" in the causal chain. Again, the "person," wielding his
body, is not to be identified with consciousness.
> Why do you think it is denied?
Any recognizable concept of personhood.
> You seem to imagine that a causal claim is a claim that we are like
clocks, predictable,
Nothing to do with prediction. People are predictable (because we know
their reasons). But there reasons don't cause their behavior, they
justify behavior. A different language game, entirely.
Remember the research. The subjects are given an opportunity to identify
with the speaker and the researcher looks for the brain activity that is
correlated with being empathic. Does it make more sense to say that the
subjects' brains caused them to behave in a way that the researchers
took to be empathic, or that in striving to be empathic (not just
looking empathic) the subjects willingly entered a frame of mind
(supported by certain brain activity) that was conducive of empathy.
If a runner kicks the last quarter mile, he drives up his blood pressure
and the muscle chemistry shifts. Is it the runner's brain that is
kicking or is he kicking with all he has?
bruce
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