Missing links in bold argument against brain-mind correlation

[SentinelofTruth]

1AugustSon7:

Okay I can’t help but find this is just a little humorous.

Hah, good one, I didn’t even notice that before!

1AugustSon7:

If I recall correctly, Aristotle takes care to note that the sense are things that are moved - they are receivers of something external or “other” to themselves, yet of course there needs to be some (presumably common) medium. Thus, for me to sense something requires it to exist in some sense: there has to be something that is moving or acting on the senses. Aristotle thus limits the fallibility of the senses in this way; and in a limited but strict sense the senses are (for him) infallible.

First, Aristotle is far from infallible. In fact he was wrong about quite a bit.
Second, I was only talking about stuff like illusions (eg, optical) and such.
Third, if our perceptions have to be of real things, how do we have dreams?

 

[inocente]

We did not “just start” the “science” of the mind. Philosophy has been around for as long as science, plus there’s introspection. Why does everyone always act like the mind is something we can’t directly perceive?

Philosophy isn’t science, it doesn’t use the scientific method.

No, you have introspection telling you that your mind exists, and the properties of your mind, as reported by introspection, have 0 in common with the properties of the brain as reported by visual or otherwise sensory perception of the brain.

Introspection isn’t the scientific method and is as subjective as you can get.

You were being circular and hypocritical. Fortunately, you stopped saying circular things.

Please don’t bother answering this post unless you can do so without making any more personal remarks.

The soul is not the form of the body. I refuted that claim in my third argument.

Your posts indicate that you are a Catholic, your Catechism says the soul is the form of the body, based on some well known philosophy which goes back centuries, as opposed to your arguments which don’t.

Inocente, you have yet to answer any of my four arguments. Besides, did you take manualman’s suggestion? Whether you did or not, you can’t just evade the point much longer. If in the next post you don’t say something against my original four arguments that is based on philosophy rather than science, I’m going to start completely ignoring you.

I answered them in my first post, I said they are circular. No philosopher has ever made those arguments because they are faulty. You might like to read a bit of philosophy about the mind, and a bit of science, then you’ll see other points of view which are not logically faulty.

 

[inocente]

Inocente

Here is where I am at, I need more than 5000 words to explain

forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=18402&stc=1&d=1380400845

Yppop

Nice schema, and yes it needs explanation. The one comment I’ll venture forth is that for me there’s a problem with the way Catholics traditionally divide things up into the spiritual, rational and animal.

For instance, my dogs seem to experience the spiritual values of joy and peace, and at times their faith in me is stunning. You’ve also classed identity as a basic need, but dogs don’t seem to go in for self-identity (although they do identify with their pack). So they achieve your spiritual value of self surrender by virtue of not having a self . Although perhaps I’m getting hung up on the word identity here, since we are a very individualistic culture compared with just about any other time in history.

btw noticed a few typos: spelling of IDENTITY; remove period after CORPUSCULATION; center last column heading.

 

[lao_tzu]

However, according to the following article:
Christian Wüthrich (2011). Can the world be shown to be indeterministic after all?. In Beisbart and Hartmann (eds.), Probabilities in Physics, Oxford University Press, 365-389, preprint at philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8437/1/WuthrichChristian2010PhilSci_IndeterministicWorld.pdf.
there is a flaw in Conway’s Free will theorem.

Hello Tom,

That’s not a flaw in the C&K’s Free Will Theorem; it’s a flaw in how it’s been utilized by others. The Free Will Theorem makes no explicit claims about determinism, but rather the consequences of indeterminism. To wit, if human behavior is indeterminate, then so is behavior of subatomic particles.

As ever, Jesse

 

[SentinelofTruth]

inocente:

Philosophy isn’t science, it doesn’t use the scientific method.

Yes, I know. That’s what I was saying.

inocente:

Introspection isn’t the scientific method and is as subjective as you can get.

I didn’t say it was. And if by subjective you mean that it can’t tell you things that are objectively true then you are wrong.

inocente:

I answered them in my first post, I said they are circular. No philosopher has ever made those arguments because they are faulty. You might like to read a bit of philosophy about the mind, and a bit of science, then you’ll see other points of view which are not logically faulty.

You didn’t say how they were circular. Besides, I’ve read a book or two on philosophy of mind, and the vast majority of what I know is my own figuring-out. This is because philosophy isn’t something you can “study” or “get a degree in”, it is something you figure out. Science is based on empirical observation, and so science can be studied from those who are knowledgeable in the field. But philosophy is all reason-bound. It does not rely on observation, and so you cannot study it.
lao tzu:

To wit, if human behavior is indeterminate, then so is behavior of subatomic particles.

Not necessarily. Human behaviour, is, as I thouroughly proved using my second argument, immaterially decided, so it’s indeterminicity has no bearing on the ways of subatomic particles.

 

[lao_tzu]

Because I don’t believe in it.

Does your disbelief derive from your religious preferences?

• What’s not bold about this?
• My faith declaration doesn’t need a TM thingy to be true.
• Please provide an argument to disprove my views rather than ignoring my arguments and simply saying that there is evidence against them.

An ant attacking a volcano would only be considered bold by another ant. Everybody else would think it foolish. As muted irony seems to escape you, allow me to make myself more clear: Don’t be arrogant. You don’t own a trademark on the real catholic faith. As to citing evidence against your arguments, I refer you to the admission within your own OP, to which I was responding.

• I don’t need a degree in quantum mechanics to be a good philosopher. We have all observed the deterministicity of the universe. Besides, saying that the universe is probablilistic doesn’t really stop my argument: free will is as different from randomness as it is from determinism.
• Concepts like these are instantiated in our minds when we use them in our mathematical reasoning.
• I agree that conscious experiences that are perceptions of things other than the self can be incorrect, but it is conceptually incoherent (see my first argument) to suggest that we can be wrong about our self-perceptual experiences.

The suggestion that a good philosopher need not be familiar with quantum mechanics is only saved from slander by the comical suggestion that you are, yourself, a good philosopher. The Pythagorean Theorem did not come into existence when first discovered, nor does it waft out of existence when no one is thinking about it. Now that is an example of conceptual incoherence.

Next you’ll be arguing that humans aren’t capable of fooling themselves.

Oh, wait.

You are using EAR tactics (Evading Admission of Refutation). The “initial hypotheses” were stated as clearly as possible in my OP.

They were incoherent, and so is this.

Philosophy works its way from initial premises to the construction of their entailments. It is the deductive method. Inductive methods, and only inductive methods, such as the scientific, begin with initial hypotheses. The former is a method of creating proof, while the latter creates support for that which cannot be proven. Choosing “initial hypotheses,” and hence induction, guarantees that you will never construct a proof.

True, but you can’t abstract anything except from an instantiation of it: if there weren’t three bears, how could you abstract the concept of three from them?

From the Peano axioms, of course. Why is that even a question? But I’d imagine you feel one needn’t be a mathematician to be a good philosopher, either. You might want to look up this fellow Descartes. He had a few things to say about your topic, too.

As ever, Jesse

 

[SentinelofTruth]

lao tzu:

Does your disbelief derive from your religious preferences?

Not exactly. It stems from these arguments.
lao tzu:

Don’t be arrogant. You don’t own a trademark on the real catholic faith. As to citing evidence against your arguments, I refer you to the admission within your own OP, to which I was responding.

This is not being arrogant. I don’t have to “own a trademark” on the catholic faith to know what it teaches. BTW, you’re contradicting yourself here. You’re saying I’m wrong about what the faith teaches, and that I must believe you about this because I didn’t found the religion, but neither did you, so you have no more authority over it than me.
As for the admission in the OP, we have not gotten that far yet.
lao tzu:

The suggestion that a good philosopher need not be familiar with quantum mechanics is only saved from slander by the comical suggestion that you are, yourself, a good philosopher. The Pythagorean Theorem did not come into existence when first discovered, nor does it waft out of existence when no one is thinking about it. Now that is an example of conceptual incoherence.

• Philosophy and science have nothing directly to do with eachother.
• This is an ad hominem. You’re basing an entire argument here off the assumption that I’m a bad philosopher.
• The pythagorean theorem is a mathematical concept and is, therefore, a rule of logic (it doesn’t “exist” in some substantive sense).

lao tzu:

They were incoherent, and so is this.

Name one assumption I made an explain why it is incoherent.
lao tzu:

Philosophy works its way from initial premises to the construction of their entailments. It is the deductive method. Inductive methods, and only inductive methods, such as the scientific, begin with initial hypotheses. The former is a method of creating proof, while the latter creates support for that which cannot be proven. Choosing “initial hypotheses,” and hence induction, guarantees that you will never construct a proof.

Re-read my arguments. You will find that I am, after all, using deductive reasoning.
lao tzu:

From the Peano axioms, of course.

Then it wouldn’t be abstracting it from the bears, but from an image you mentally form consisting of those bears plus another, or from an idea you create from the concepts 3 and 1, which are already instantiatively stored in your long-term memory.
lao tzu:

You might want to look up this fellow Descartes. He had a few things to say about your topic, too.

Odd. Considering Descartes was a dualist, it ought to be me referring you to him. As a dualist, he would agree with most of what I have said.

What’s with all this “math and science preceed philosophy” stuff? Philosophy, or at least the branch that is of interest here, studies the nature of being, ie. metaphysics. Science studies the physical world, which is all contingent and thus of no relevance to metaphysics. Math studies the relationships between numbers, which are a kind of ideas. Math is therefore a study of the rules of logic, so it’s a little bit more relevant, but still not paramount.

 

[lao_tzu]

…] avoid the suggestion that the abstract must be instantiated, and cannot be self-existent. Cf., the Pythagorean Theorem, and pi.

Concepts like these are instantiated in our minds when we use them in our mathematical reasoning.

The Pythagorean Theorem did not come into existence when first discovered, nor does it waft out of existence when no one is thinking about it. Now that is an example of conceptual incoherence.

The pythagorean theorem is a mathematical concept and is, therefore, a rule of logic (it doesn’t “exist” in some substantive sense).

Except that it’s already been “instantiated” in your earlier post. I’m going to leave you to argue out this position with yourself. You’re leading with your chin, and not ready for prime time.

As ever, Jesse

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Actually, the pythagorean theorem hasn’t been instantiated in my earlier post, just a sequence of characters that represents it
As for the apparent discrepancy, both of my statements are true. The pythagorean theorem is instantiated when I use mathematical reasoning and as a rule of logic.
Also, it must be kept in mind that the pythagorean theorem is an abstract, not a substance, and so it never “exists” in the same sense that a substance does, even when it’s being instantiated. It only ever “exists” as a relationship between distances on a spatial plane.

BTW, please answer all of the other points I made in my last post. I will understand, of course, if you can’t think of any good responses, but you should have at least admitted it if you couldn’t.