[Wittrs] Re: Current Brain Research: Causal Model?
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:08:56 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> Lots of notions of "causal", aren't there?
Yes. Here is where we get stuck. Specify the use of "cause" that makes
sense in this research context.
Your example: "I read recently that some researchers have developed a
machine that can tell what we're thinking..."
Intriguing. Now tell me what is causing what and how you mean cause in
this context.
Back to my research...
> The brain is the source and, as such, the cause, of conscious
experience.
The brain is the source in the sense that without it there is no
experience. But it can't be the cause. Why? Because your model doesn't
allow for a person who stands in a causal relation to his brain to exist
in the head because that would make for a ghost in the machine. Yes, you
speak of a person but that is just an attribution. There is no person,
no other entity, just the brain. And it is the brain that becomes
conscious. Its consciousness is caused by external stimulation, from the
physical world, from the body. In fact, I have no problem talking about
it this way, up to this point.
But when "the brain becomes conscious" can any literal version of
causality account for what happens next or must we shift to intentional
discourse? That's our problem
> What else could be (unless you want to say minds simply co-exist with
brains and then you're back to dualism again).
Thanks for saying the above once again because it demonstrates your
commitment to a notion of substance, though you deny this. For you,
something exists only if it is made of some substance. The brain, you
think, is made of a physical substance. Since you agree that the mind
exists, you can only allow it to be physical (Monism) or a mental
(Dualism). Why can't you see that my researchers don't think in terms of
substances, not one, not two. In fact, contemporary physics, with its
strings and dark matter have abandoned the notion of substance.
What interests me is that you want an account of mind, but not of
matter. I guess because you believe that matter exists, out there,
independent of you, just as you experience it (though contemporary
physics does not) -- hence no account is required. But mind requires an
account. Is it matter or some other substance? But if you abandon the
notion of substance for just giving an account of our world, you can
have models for brain activity and models for the psychological, with
the continuity based on "our accounting for the world" and not some
underlying substance.
My researchers consider the brain an instrument. An instrument does not
cause the music.
bruce
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