[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:06:57 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > Do we have a mental life or not?
>
> What does that even mean? In what way is having a mental life
> different from having a life?
>
It refers to having subjective (private) experience. After all it is at least
imaginable that many living things lack the ability to experience subjectively.
What of the jellyfish? The earthworm? They are alive, have lives in that sense,
and yet I think there is a good possibility that they are organic automatons
(or the closest thing to it). So by "mental life" I mean what I went on to
enumerate in the additional sentences I wrote, all of which are aspects of our
private selves.
>
> > When we're not paying attention to our immediate surroundings but
> > lost in thought, are there mental things going on?
>
> What does "there are mental things going on" add to "I am lost in thought."
>
Turned inward, introspecting. When I sat in meditation as a Zen Buddhist the
idea was to shut out as much of the sensory world as possible and try to empty
one's mind. One did that by attending to certain thoughts and by attentively
disregarding intruding thoughts, etc. In some ways this is like daydreaming
except in that case we just let our thoughts carry us a way.
> I don't see the point of adding the word "mental" in these cases.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
It's to distinguish the private or subjective aspects of our world from the
public aspects. If a behaviorist wants to say there is only behavior then
either he or she is denying that there are also these private non-behavioral
experiences or he or she wants to redefine them as behavior, too (as Gerardo
and, to a lesser extent, Glen, have done). I've already made clear my view that
that is to stretch the meaning of behavior too far. If so, then the only option
is to deny them or reduce them to something that is closer to behavior (maybe
brain processes -- but then we still have the problem of being aware of at
least some of them).
SWM
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