Is there any solid evidence that the mental activity within the brain directly causes the mind to exist?

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Robert_Sock

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Versus the notion that God causes the mental activity which then causes the mind to exist?

Keep in mind that if you believe in the Holy Spirit and Satan, and believe we have a free will, then it follows that these spirits can put thoughts (and anticipatory emotions, like the anticipation of pleasure) into our mind.

I know that most people assume that the mind is directly caused by mental activity within the brain, but I doubt that they have any solid evidence.
 
Isn’t it the mind that causes the mental activity? Or perhaps the mental activity isthe mind?
 
seagal said:
Isn’t it the mind that causes the mental activity? Or perhaps the mental activity isthe mind?
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I never heard that theory. Where did you get it? If it’s true, where do thoughts come from?
 
The way science works is not to try to prove ideas. Instead it disproves wrong ideas, so getting closer to the truth with every wrong idea that’s disproved.

The assumption that ‘the mind is what the brain does’ would be disproved and discarded as soon as any solid contrary evidence was discovered. To date that’s not happened.
 
A neurologist would say that synaptic activity in the head **is **the mind.

As to causation, is this not the classical paradox?

ICXC NIKA
 
The brain is the material cause of most of the mind, is necessary per se for most of its operations, and necessary per accidens for all of its operations.

If that makes sense 🙂

Christi pax.
 
My position, again, is that God’s energy is what triggers all the neurons in the brain and gives rise to the mind.
 
GEddie said:
But then it could still be accurately said that the brain generates the mind.
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Yes! The real question would be who or what controls the brain, and I believe it’s God and Satan. I have several mental disorders including major depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and I believe that while neurochemicals play a part, it’s really Satan that triggers these things.
 
inocente said:
The way science works is not to try to prove ideas. Instead it disproves wrong ideas, so getting closer to the truth with every wrong idea that’s disproved.
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“Science works” by proposing hypotheses and then testing them. The body of scientific knowledge tentatively expands when a hypothesis consistently fails to be rejected.

It’s the lack of rejection that expands possible truth; not rejection itself.

After enough failures to reject, hypotheses become theories. Under exceptionally rare circumstances, theories may eventually become scientific laws - although that lofty designation is not in popularly sought with the contemporary scientific community. Too many old “laws” substantively changed in the last 40 years…

In a very similar way, a criminal trial does not prove the innocence of the defendant. The verdict is either “Guilty beyond reasonable doubt” or “Not guilty beyond reasonable doubt”. The conflation of “Not Guilty” with “Innocent” is an error.

We “know” what we know because we’ve failed to disprove it so far. In the same way, you stayed out of jail because we failed to prove your reasonable guilt. In the first, we didn’t prove it was a fact. In the second, we didn’t prove your innocence. We only failed to prove that it was untrue/guilty.

A college-level statistics course that covers the probabilities of “Type I” and “Type II” errors in a given model (and how to choose a model that limits one or the other) would be pertinent.
To the OP, yours is the question of consciousness. No definitive conclusions drawn yet. Sam Harris (of Four Horsemen fame) is spending his life’s work trying to figure that one out.

I’m very confident that if a durable hypothesis comes forth, we’ll all know about it.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Yes! The real question would be who or what controls the brain, and I believe it’s God and Satan. I have several mental disorders including major depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and I believe that while neurochemicals play a part, it’s really Satan that triggers these things.
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You are a human being created in the image of God. You have free well and that includes your mind. Whether you are influenced by Good or Evil is up to you.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
You are a human being created in the image of God. You have free well and that includes your mind. Whether you are influenced by Good or Evil is up to you.
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Do I have a free will to accept or reject my mental illnesses?
 
Vonsalza said:
“Science works” by proposing hypotheses and then testing them. The body of scientific knowledge tentatively expands when a hypothesis consistently fails to be rejected.

It’s the lack of rejection that expands possible truth; not rejection itself.

After enough failures to reject, hypotheses become theories. Under exceptionally rare circumstances, theories may eventually become scientific laws - although that lofty designation is not in popularly sought with the contemporary scientific community. Too many old “laws” substantively changed in the last 40 years…

In a very similar way, a criminal trial does not prove the innocence of the defendant. The verdict is either “Guilty beyond reasonable doubt” or “Not guilty beyond reasonable doubt”. The conflation of “Not Guilty” with “Innocent” is an error.

We “know” what we know because we’ve failed to disprove it so far. In the same way, you stayed out of jail because we failed to prove your reasonable guilt. In the first, we didn’t prove it was a fact. In the second, we didn’t prove your innocence. We only failed to prove that it was untrue/guilty.

A college-level statistics course that covers the probabilities of “Type I” and “Type II” errors in a given model (and how to choose a model that limits one or the other) would be pertinent.
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Which is what I said using a lot less words. You’ve muddied the waters by talking of me staying out of jail. Before you allege that I’m a criminal, you have the duty to prove your allegation. That’s not how science works. And come off it, no one needs a statistics course to use the scientific method: 1. Ask a question (be curious). 2. Gather information (research). 3. Guess your answer (hypothesis). 4. Test your guess (experiment). 5. Write it up.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Do I have a free will to accept or reject my mental illnesses?
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Angels can influence your passions and thoughts, but demons can’t force you to directly sin, but only indirectly by emotions and images and thoughts.

I say angels because we often forget (or at least I do) that our guardian angel is also putting holy thoughts and helping us cultivating perfect emotions too.

Christi pax.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Do I have a free will to accept or reject my mental illnesses?
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I don’t know. But I do know you can choose the good no matter what your mental state is. You don’t have to wallow in unclean and evil thoughts.
 
inocente said:
Which is what I said using a lot less words…
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You said that “The way science works is not to try to prove ideas. Instead it disproves wrong ideas, so getting closer to the truth with every wrong idea that’s disproved.”

As long as you actually meant “Science gets us closer to the truth by failing to reject ideas despite best efforts”, then fine.

“Rejection” itself is proof of literally nothing. It is only the failure to prove the hypothesis being tested in that specific instance. You cannot correctly affirm anything based on a rejection. Rejection is not direct proof that “the opposite must be true”.

It sounded like you were claiming that hypothesis rejection creates truth. So if you weren’t, then fine. I withdraw.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Versus the notion that God causes the mental activity which then causes the mind to exist?
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What is the use o f brain then? Matter is conscious. What we call mind is nothing more than a set high level brain process, such as thinking and deciding, which could be experienced.
Robert_Sock said:
Keep in mind that if you believe in the Holy Spirit and Satan, and believe we have a free will, then it follows that these spirits can put thoughts (and anticipatory emotions, like the anticipation of pleasure) into our mind.
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The very fact that they have access to our mind shows that mind is a byproduct of brain activity. They simply manipulate our brains.
Robert_Sock said:
I know that most people assume that the mind is directly caused by mental activity within the brain, but I doubt that they have any solid evidence.
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Evidence? Existence of brain.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Versus the notion that God causes the mental activity which then causes the mind to exist?

Keep in mind that if you believe in the Holy Spirit and Satan, and believe we have a free will, then it follows that these spirits can put thoughts (and anticipatory emotions, like the anticipation of pleasure) into our mind.

I know that most people assume that the mind is directly caused by mental activity within the brain, but I doubt that they have any solid evidence.
Click to expand...
If you’re a dualist, I’d imagine that you’d accept that the direction of causation goes both ways, as opposed to one way like materialists claim. So I don’t think you should have a problem embracing any evidence that shows the brain causing mental events. I’d only have a problem if the conclusion was that the brain could account for everything that the mind/person is or does as opposed to just some functions.

One feature that the brain has not been shown to account for is consciousness. We can model a lot of our cognitive functions using computer systems/processes, but again the one thing that’s still lacking in these models is consciousness. If anything these models heighten the mystery since they confirm that complex processing can take place without any need of consciousness.
 
Our mind is the result of collection of different things, from experiences, perception and learning…
 
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