Before I get overwhelmed by all the intelligentsia on this thread. Isn’t consciousness, also known as sentience, essential to the nature of all living organisms?
You must point out the sentient shallots and conscious cucumbers you obviously have in the States.
).Both neuro-science and the immateriality of the mind are compatible. Both can be accepted. The problem arises when neuro-scientists overstep their bounds and say that correlation of certain intellectual processes equals causation–but then we can always disprove the overstep or at least show that the overstep is unfounded.
Definitions from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh EditionYou must point out the sentient shallots and conscious cucumbers you obviously have in the States.
There’s a fun idea called the Sentience Quotient – “the relationship between the information processing rate (bit/s) of each individual processing unit (neuron), the weight/size of a single unit and the total number of processing units (expressed as mass)”.
Each degree on this scale is an order of magnitude above the previous, and apparently plants have an SQ of -2, dogs +4 and humans +13, the most advanced possible alien apparently weighing in at a hefty +50.
(I don’t believe any of it either
”Defining usage of terms is extremely important.
While I obviously won’t agree about the immaterial
, yes it’s very important to define the concepts. I may be coming at it from a different angle though.
, and it included I think eighteen separate facets with philosophers still adding new ones. I can’t find it now, maybe it’s been removed, but you can get a flavor of the problem from the article on consciousness.First, such theorizing has only recently become much more problematic than it used to be. I am here talking about the onset of modern philosophy. There were problems back then, but not as much as there is now in contemporary philosophy.
The laugh is on you!
data explain everything! It is only the materialist who regards palpability as a criterion of reality - a view that needs justification in view of facts like truth, justice, evil, purpose and love. So now I can’t believe in God any more?
Not if we take your statements at their face value - unless your concept of God is materialistic…
I’m not young, I’m not entitled and I’m not mistaken!
Wise researchers are not so presumptuous as to claim that** all **human behaviour will be explained by neuroscience…
How would that work? I mean for instance how would an immaterial mind know which body it belonged with?Why couldn’t brain activity be caused by mental activity? Don’t you have any control over your thought processes?
Why postulate more than one when your perceptions don’t indicate that you have more than one?
The principle of economy!
I accept the inexplicable nature of the Supreme Being whereas you imply that everything is ultimately explicable by science. After all, matter is not such a hard nut to crack, is it? As you observed:
“Memory is then taken out of the realm of the theorists, and in the same way, little by little, year on year, **everything will be explained **without the old theorists.”
Science is at the lowest level because it answers questions about the least important aspects of reality. You won’t choose your life partner or friends on the basis of what you can see with a scanner or microscope. Technology won’t tell you anything about truth, goodness, freedom, justice or love…
In other words you cannot refute my statement!
flesh, blood, brawn, bone, nerves, are all part of the physical world. What is your point?
No, I’m saying attempts to explain something as sophisticated and complex as the mind is a huge project, perhaps the biggest ever, and the methods used by the old theorists are completely unsuitable. The problem is they have no mile stones where they can check whether they’re on the right course. Look at the literature, they’ve been at it for centuries, haven’t really got that far, and are still squabbling amongst themselves.
I don’t understand why you’re trying to drive a wedge between philosophy and science. If you want tight definitions, buy these or similar books:
Is this where we’re supposed to go “grrrrrr” at each other?
Indeed, it does sound unlikely that the science of the nervous system would expect to explain all human behavior.
Are you saying your mind and mine are the same? That sounds very Eastern.
Hmmm… as I was talking about the mind at the time, you don’t feel by “everything” I could have been saying “everything to do with what we’re talking about” rather than “everything in the entire cosmos”? Incidentally, God is not a thing.
If the only reason you started this thread was to have yet another one of the ever popular science vs. whatever debates, I’m not playing and shall trudge home.
In other words you cannot refute my statement!
. By way of reply, could you say (a) why you think it’s so bad if we are purely physical, (b) what evidence you have that any part of us is immaterial, and (c) how that would be any kind of an explanation at all…Interesting. I like the last paragraph:
) is about a system that detects our emotions by looking at our face:Make all these interesting ethical problems go away. Forget machines. Consider you and your friends as a bunch of cows. You should be able to tell the difference between a dead cow and a live cow. One caution. Do not stand near a truck which says “fresh beef” on it.
Any reason not to report you for calling me a cow?Make all these interesting ethical problems go away. Forget machines. Consider you and your friends as a bunch of cows. You should be able to tell the difference between a dead cow and a live cow. One caution. Do not stand near a truck which says “fresh beef” on it.
I do not understand who you are referring to when you talk about the old theorists. Because if it is in regards to philosophy, it would seem that some of the “old theorists” made considerable progress in what they were attempting to set out and do. With regards to the field of neuro-science, then such “old theorists” didn’t get very far. Are you talking about psychologists?
If you are talking about scientists, then it is important to know that science really doesn’t work like that. They posit models that have predictive value based upon the evidence. Granted, I would say that the models work insofar as they have something true about them, but that is a far cry from the model being wholly correct. Indeed, we see evidence of this with the onset of new theories in physics that replace the old.
One important question is if the philosophers in question tried to give an all-encompassing explanation of the human mind and brain in the first place, taking away any glory due to the scientists.
I am only pointing out the wedge that already exists. Both philosophy and science can have the same object, but they go about their inquires in very different ways. I don’t think they should all be lumped together as “old theorists”.
I was about to alert you that I am in a very cranky mood so don’t pay any attention to me. However, I did begin with the word “consider” which means the choice to be or not to be is in your camp.
From what you said in post #26, you reckon the considerable progress made by some of these old theorists was to decide that the mind is immaterial, and hence beyond explanation. They took on far more than they could chew, threw up their hands, and in effect said it’s all too much, we dunno, and went off to quaff a few beers. Have a look at post #11 on my definitions.
Of course science is provisional, it’s one of its strengths. The old approach is like a cave man trying to build a moon rocket without realizing there are many, many interim steps, there is much to first be learned. Explaining something as sophisticated as the mind can only come progressively.
If philosophers already had the answers then scientists wouldn’t get any budget, would they?
And let’s not reduce this to the level of football supporters, fans of either the Philosophical Falcons or the Scientific Giants .Never a good idea to post while cranky. Oh, hang on, that would mean you’d never get to make any posts.I was about to alert you that I am in a very cranky mood so don’t pay any attention to me. However, I did begin with the word “consider” which means the choice to be or not to be is in your camp.
On the other hand, if a mechanistic explanation for a human person is reasonable, i.e., the answer yes to thread title, why would there be an objection to cowness?