On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:18 AM, brendan downs <downs_brendan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > This question here my be a non senseical question, even though there might or > might no be family resemblences with concepts such as mind, thought, > thinking, ideas and brain. Until computers (the machine ones) came along, the lay folk weren't so desperate to hook in with OS talk (i.e. to map their metaphors about thinking to aspects of operating systems, the software that controls the hardware we use to think with (computer as amplifier, as prosthetic device)). > those it make sense in the sense of games to be talking of brains in these > arguments. Wittgenstein's objections to applying words outside the contexts > in which they have an established meaning mirror Kant's objections to the > non-empirical use of empirical reason. He doesn't object to this happening, he notes it. Then he notes how words come with baggage, a loose tie-in to Minsky's "suitcase word" idea. So you'll be talking along happily and then some philosopher (zealot) comes along and screws it all up with some monkey wrench metaphor pregnant with misleading analogies. The work gets diverted into some holding pattern, maybe never comes up for air again, until someone more like Wittgenstein comes along and helps unknot the situation, repair the damage. > Where as "brain" has empirical content and makes sense if you agree > brain/mind are identical. I would never agree to this by the way. I have the equivalent of a Swiss bank account worth of money invested in keeping "mind" and "brain" separate at all costs, as my whole philosophy would be destroyed in a heartbeat should these ever collide and fuse. Thanks to great defense systems, I feel little threat from other namespaces however. I'm happy to see people confuse these two terms, as long as they don't advertise as (phony) American Transcendentalists marketing the same metaphysics I do (all on the web, published with pictures, index, started out in hardcopy (Macmillan) by someone with a double digit number of PhDs -- talk about feeling secure!)). > Neurologically speaking the brain/mind is composed of electrical and chemical > process but to talk about brain-mind is to take the concepts out of context, > "In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that when concepts grounded in > experience are applied outside of the range of possible experience, the > result is contradictions and confusion" I've introduced Kant as a good example of a linguistic turn application. He suggests we can't help but see in "three dimensions" (this was before the "4D = 3D + Time" meme of early 1900s), yet there's a competing namespace that would say "3" is not the best number, that whole "height width and depth" demo we take for granted, and from which derives our notion of "linear independence" based on "norms" or "90 degree angles", being a silly carnival trick, a sideshow bob kinda deal -- so many suckers! > Before early biology did we have the concept "brain" even though we had a > brain. And since biology we have a concept that refers and belongs to the category science, where as the concept "mind" may refer to the usage of a concept in the category of philosophy. if you don't subcribe to the brain is identical to the mind then we have a cross categorial confusion. > > Brendan I've also done plenty of work on the term "mindset" as distinct from "mind". A mindset depends on lots of archival recordings, public records, public buildings, billboards, television. No single brain gets all the credit and no single brain is deemed powerful enough to contain a whole mindset all at once. Brains sift through them or, more aptly, ride the rails of the various mindsets (think of roller coasters). It takes real time and physics to survey a mindset semi-completely. Wittgenstein was good at it, surfed a lot of mindsets in his day. Most academics settle into one and repose there, not challenging themselves to escape any fly bottles (too old for that, a young person's game). Kirby WEB VIEW: http://tinyurl.com/ku7ga4 TODAY: http://alturl.com/whcf 3 DAYS: http://alturl.com/d9vz 1 WEEK: http://alturl.com/yeza GOOGLE: http://groups.google.com/group/Wittrs YAHOO: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/ FREELIST: //www.freelists.org/archive/wittrs/09-2009