Missing links in bold argument against brain-mind correlation

[SentinelofTruth]

I think both too.

 

[Bahman]

The main question is what is functionality of brain when it comes to its interaction with self/mind?

Hey, I’m looking to disprove the common idea that there is a direct causal correlation between brain events and mind events (other than perception, of course). I am aware of how bold this is, since even the wikipedia articles on the brain and such are explicitly at odds with me, but I won’t be stopped just because I’m (probably) alone in this. So here’s what I’ve got so far:

Proof for the existence of free will:

1. 
   *]Introspection is the means by which we perceive our conscious phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, desires, perceptions, and… free decisions.
   *]Following from the definition of “conscious”, it is impossible for a conscious event to occur in my mind without my knowledge, or for me to think a conscious event occurs in my mind but be mistaken.
   *]Thus, to suggest that introspection is not infallible is incoherent.
   *]And introspection tells me that I make free decisions. Therefore, I do.

1. 
   To me almost all aspect of mind but free will can be experienced, as such I don’t think if it is possible to provide a logical proof for free will.
   

   Proof of immateriality of free will:
   

   1. 
      *]Free will exists.
      *]Physical things are deterministic.
      *]Therefore free will can’t be explained in terms of any physical system. Our decisions, at least, must therefore be made in the soul rather than the brain.

   1. 
      What do you mean by physical things and why do you think that they are deterministic? What if underlying laws of nature are indeterministic?
      

      Proof for substantivity of the soul:
      

      1. 
         *]Everything is either a substance or an abstract concept.
         *]Nothing abstract is self-existing. Abstracts only exist insofar as they are instantiated in substances.
         *]The soul, however, as perceived through introspection, is clearly a conscious, and therefore inherently existing thing.
         *]Therefore the soul is a substance.

      1. 
         The fact that things are experienced does not mean that there is a self that experience it.
         

         Solid so far, right? Post any objections. Here’s where my difficulties start:
         Proof for immateriality of other conscious phenomena:
         

         1. 
            *]The meaning of the patterns of pixels I am using to convey these arguments is not inherent to the pattern of the pixels, because if I had spoken a different language, different pixel patterns would have conveyed the same ideas.
            *]The same can be seen to be true of other physical things used to convey meanings (pictures, sound waves, etc).
            *]Thus, the meaning of a physical thing is never inherent.
            *]But my belief in the validity of this argument (and all other mental things) do not derive their meaning in this way. Their meaning is inherent.
            *]Therefore they can’t be explained in material terms either.

         1. 
            We have to find a logical answer that consciousness cannot be the emergence of matter in a specific form (brain).

 

[Aloysium]

. . . By deterministic I meant that they follow a rigid, causal pattern and don’t do anything unless caused to. But what you appear to mean by denying their “deterministicity” is simply that God created them. Not sure what their created-by-God-ness has to do with their being deterministic. . . . You say we can’t change the physical directly and then you say our will can act physically. ???. Also it is undeniable that our will can change our own mind, and that is physchological. . . .

You “assume” they follow a rigid pattern, that is all I was suggesting. You can’t prove it and it has not been revealed. What is revealed, is that God is omnipotent. In eternity, He creates all things, all time. He maintains the structure of the universe which our mind discerns as having physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions.

At any rate, it may be beside the point. I would say, and I believe you would agree, that what we understand of the behaviour of matter does not fully explain all the physical activity of the body.

As an example, here I am typing.

If I try to understand what is happening using the lens of the physical, I observe muscular movements in space.
I exist as a whole within the environment of the entire physical universe. Its “laws” are my laws and there is a flow and continuity of material processes going on within the totality of the world of matter.
I imagine that within my cerebral cortex there are patterns of neuronal interaction in motor centres and those related to thought and emotion. If I am struck by the beauty of God’s creation and pause to reflect on our relationship, there will be overall changes in the amounts of dopamine and serotonin being released by specific cells in my brain.

I can also understand what is happening here in terms of experience, thought, memory, imagination and feelings. Again, this takes place within an encompassing environment, this time psychological; it is no coincidence that we think using words and images that enable us to communicate with one another.
The physical activity of my body, which can be described but not not fully understood solely on the basis of physical “laws”, can be now make sense in terms another sort of order, that of the mind.

There is the spiritual. If I were to feel ecstatic, realizing the presence of our Lord, right here, where He always is, this would make sense of the neurochemical changes in my nervous system and the words I am using.

While the spirit can be understood as the “cause” of certain changes in the physical and mental processes, it is important to remember that we are not all partitioned, but rather exist as a holy unity.

That’s my :twocents:

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bahman:

To me almost all aspect of mind but free will can be experienced, as such I don’t think if it is possible to provide a logical proof for free will.

No doubt you’ve had dreams before. You ever notice how incredibly different your mind feels without free will?

Bahman:

What do you mean by physical things and why do you think that they are deterministic? What if underlying laws of nature are indeterministic?

Don’t ask stupid questions, you know what physical means. I think that they are deterministic because in all the 15+ years of my life I’ve never seen anything happen in a physical system that couldn’t have been predicted by science. Besides, if they are probabilistic, that wouldn’t really help. Either way, they are not free, and how could a system of non-free things be free?

Bahman:

The fact that things are experienced does not mean that there is a self that experience it.

I’m starting to suspect that you’re just using EAR tactics. You must know that things can’t be experienced unless something experiences them.

Bahman:

We have to find a logical answer that consciousness cannot be the emergence of matter in a specific form (brain).

I just proved that it can’t, because physical things can have only derived intentionality. The intentionality of my mental states is certainly not derived.

Aloysium:

You “assume” they follow a rigid pattern, that is all I was suggesting. You can’t prove it and it has not been revealed. What is revealed, is that God is omnipotent. In eternity, He creates all things, all time. He maintains the structure of the universe which our mind discerns as having physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions.

Have you ever seen a physical thing do something not predictable by science? Can you prove that can’t be predicted? Has it been revealed? BTW, that God is omnipotent is not all that has been revealed.

Aloysium:

At any rate, it may be beside the point. I would say, and I believe you would agree, that what we understand of the behaviour of matter does not fully explain all the physical activity of the body.

Yes, that is the cornerstone of everything I’ve said. The addition of an immaterial soul to our ontology is necessary.

Aloysium:

I imagine that within my cerebral cortex there are patterns of neuronal interaction in motor centres and those related to thought and emotion. If I am struck by the beauty of God’s creation and pause to reflect on our relationship, there will be overall changes in the amounts of dopamine and serotonin being released by specific cells in my brain.

What makes you think that?

Aloysium:

While the spirit can be understood as the “cause” of certain changes in the physical and mental processes, it is important to remember that we are not all partitioned, but rather exist as a holy unity.

Agreed, but you must remember not to include anything physical as essential to the soul. The physical universe is, as I proved with the third (or was it fourth?) argument, not metaphysically related to the soul.

 

[inocente]

I’ve looked at arguments from brain damage before and they seem to be perfectly compatible with either side re: whether the brain causes the mind or whether it’s just an instrument of the mind. If it’s just an instrument of the mind, then it would still follow that brain damage would impair mental ability, just as a musician’s ability to play good music is impaired by damage to his instrument. The arguments from brain damage always seem to ignore this, and suppose that if you damage the brain and it impairs mental ability, it automatically implies that mental ability comes from the brain. But that doesn’t follow unless you already assume what you have to prove – that correlation implies causation.

Your analogy doesn’t work. We can all see the musician and we can all see the instrument, we can all conclude that they are separate. Whereas we can’t see a mind, we can only see a brain. We only have your word for it that there’s a separate mind.

And while the musician is fully aware that his instrument is damaged, the brain-damaged mind is not, which is part of why the evidence is so convincing. For instance someone may lose their memory, and may not be able to retain new memories, so memories are definitely in the brain. Or his entire personality may change, so person-hood is also in the brain. In the same way everything turns out to be in the brain, in one case or another. There is nothing left for a separate mind to do or to be.

 

[inocente]

You accuse me of circular reasoning and then assert that I must be wrong because the mind comes from the brain? If you don’t think that’s circular, I ask you to cease debating with me.

Temper temper. It’s only a debate if you allow give and take, otherwise it’s just your monolog.

 

[inocente]

Is that surprising? A damaged guitar affects the ability of the guitarist to play…

What precisely is “all the evidence” that the mind comes from mindless, purposeless molecules?

Now there’s a duff analogy. We can all see that the guitarist is separate from the guitar, whereas there’s no evidence for your invisible undetectable homunculus separate from the brain.

I never said anything about molecules, but given that your body is made of them, and your Catechism says the “unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the form of the body”, and that with God all things are possible, what more evidence do you need bro?

 

[inocente]

Subjective Reality
Science has shown us that the redness doesn’t inhere in the apple; but rather is associated with the nature of the photons reflected from the skin of the apple. However, we know that the photons are not red, nor does the redness arise in the eye, which brings us to the neurons in the brain. Obviously the redness of the apple is created somewhere in the brain. The unresolved question is how is the redness of the apple actualized, by which I mean, brought into reality? No one knows; all we can say for certain is that redness is real, but real in a different sort of way than the configuration of molecules that we identify as the form of the apple that occupies a specific segment of space outside our eyes. The redness, on the other hand, is formless and resides in the mind. We refer to the molecular structure of the apple as objective reality and we refer to the image created by the brain as subjective reality. We conclude that both the molecular configuration of the apple and the image it creates within one’s mind are real. However the only thing that exists in objective reality is the configurations of discrete particles all else—light, color, odor, touch, sound inheres as formless subjective experience. In other words the apple exists at two levels of reality: the objectively and the subjectively.
Redness isn’t the only property of the apple that exists subjectively; there are tastes, smells, and sensations of touch, sounds, and sight. In fact, all of the images that the senses create in the mind are called qualia. After all what exists outside our minds is nothing more than the arrangement of discrete elements we call atoms. Although each quale is most likely associated with a specific neuronal circuit in the brain, science has no plausible explanation for qualia other than to say that they are an emergent property of the brain. When we are conscious and the senses are awake and alert, the mind acts to integrate the form of objects with the associated qualia to create a percept that can be stored in our memory. The details of how this works will be discussed in a later chapter. In this chapter, I am presenting my view of existence in general terms. Suffice it to say at this point, the percept that is produced and stored does not have specific form—as I will explain later—that is, it conveys not a sense of discreteness, but rather that of continuity. Notes are transformed into melody, photons into redness of a sunset, molecules into the feel of a baby’s cheek. Discrete becomes continuous within the mind. Qualia do not exist externally, the redness exists only within the brain. The configuration of atoms and molecules are transformed in the entire experience of sensations, the magical mysticism of subjective reality. Subjective reality is internal and continuous.

Obviously there is a duality in the brain; neuronal circuits form the material memory; the spiritual forms the perceptual memory where all the qualia, feelings, emotions, percepts and concepts are stored.
Yppop

Not sure that feelings and emotions are stored, it sounds a little as if trying to explain the mind in computer terminology, as does “neuronal circuit”.

I think there are very plausible explanations appearing. For instance, color vision greatly aids survival, even though the sensors in our eyes only detect photons in a tiny range of wavelengths, 380-740 nanometers. We call those at the top end of the range, 620–740 mn, “red”. But what we see isn’t a legend reading “703 nm” or even the word “red”, what we sense is just redness. Nor do we sense a need for specific proteins to convert into amino acids, we just become hungry. Everything about our senses is based on simple expression, we see a very simplified version of the world and we process common situations with little effort, while uncommon situations can confuse us greatly.

We only just started the science of the mind, and imho that kind of analysis offers lots of scope for exploration and explanation.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

inocente:

We only just started the science of the mind, and imho that kind of analysis offers lots of scope for exploration and explanation.

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?

inocente:

We only have your word for it that there’s a separate mind.

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.

inocente:

Temper temper. It’s only a debate if you allow give and take, otherwise it’s just your monolog.

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

inocente:

I never said anything about molecules, but given that your body is made of them, and your Catechism says the “unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the form of the body”, and that with God all things are possible, what more evidence do you need bro?

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

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.

 

[lao_tzu]

Hey, I’m looking to disprove the common idea that there is a direct causal correlation between brain events and mind events (other than perception, of course).

Why?

I am aware of how bold this is, since even the wikipedia articles on the brain and such are explicitly at odds with me, but I won’t be stopped just because I’m (probably) alone in this.

Slightly brash, and certainly underinformed, perhaps, but hardly bold. Given your faith declaration, which seems to be missing a ™ due solely to unfamiliarity with ASCII code, , it seems clear your arguments are about what we should expect from someone around 15.

A word of advice, then. Do not begin with a conclusion, and then proceed to look for evidence to support it, and most certainly do not ignore evidence in opposition to your conclusion.

So here’s what I’ve got so far:

Here’s a short list of what you’re missing so far:

An introductory course in quantum mechanics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that what is material is necessarily deterministic. Cf., nuclear decay, brownian motion.

An introductory course in the philosophy of mathematics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that the abstract must be instantiated, and cannot be self-existent. Cf., the Pythagorean Theorem, and pi.

An introductory course in neuropsychology, by which you could avoid the suggestion that conscious experiences cannot be illusory.

For a deeper perspective, you might also be interested in Conway and Koch’s Free Will Theorem.

As ever, Jesse

 

[Tomdstone]

To me almost all aspect of mind but free will can be experienced, as such I don’t think if it is possible to provide a logical proof for free will.

A logical proof generally involves arguing from initial hypotheses. I’d like to know what those initial hypotheses are that lead to a free will, because you would have to have some reason to accept the initial hypotheses in the first place.

 

[Tomdstone]

Why?

Slightly brash, and certainly underinformed, perhaps, but hardly bold. Given your faith declaration, which seems to be missing a ™ due solely to unfamiliarity with ASCII code, , it seems clear your arguments are about what we should expect from someone around 15.

A word of advice, then. Do not begin with a conclusion, and then proceed to look for evidence to support it, and most certainly do not ignore evidence in opposition to your conclusion.

Here’s a short list of what you’re missing so far:

An introductory course in quantum mechanics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that what is material is necessarily deterministic. Cf., nuclear decay, brownian motion.

An introductory course in the philosophy of mathematics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that the abstract must be instantiated, and cannot be self-existent. Cf., the Pythagorean Theorem, and pi.

An introductory course in neuropsychology, by which you could avoid the suggestion that conscious experiences cannot be illusory.

For a deeper perspective, you might also be interested in Conway and Koch’s Free Will Theorem.

As ever, Jesse

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.

 

[yppop]

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

 

[polytropos]

I would say both. First of all, what is the number 3. The number 3 is written as 11 in base 2, but it means the same thing as 3 in the base 10. What is meant by 3. It means that there is a 1-1 correspondence between your first 3 fingers and the 3 bears. So in a sense you have abstracted the fact that the count of the number of bears is 3. However, the fact that there are 3 bears is also an instance of an example of 3 items, just as your first 3 fingers is an instance of an example of 3 items. Since both are instances of 3, it is clear that 3 is instantiated in them.

The premise was, “Abstracts only exist insofar as they are instantiated in substances.” What you are saying is that abstracts are both abstracted and instantiated. Fair enough. But to save the premise one would have to show not just that abstracts can be both abstracted and instantiated, but that even once they are abstracted, they “only exist insofar as they are instantiated.” In other words, one would have to show that you need three bears or three fingers or three something conforming to the one-to-one correspondence in order for “3” to exist.

I’m not even implying that showing that would be impossible (although, I think it is somewhat implausible - I think we can abstract three from the world and consider it without its being instantiated), just that it has not yet been shown.

 

[Tomdstone]

The premise was, “Abstracts only exist insofar as they are instantiated in substances.”.

I would say it depends on the abstract you are talking about. You can’t really prove one way or another whether it is true of 3 because, in fact, there are 3 things in reality and you are claiming that you could have knowledge of 3 even if that were not the case.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

lao tzu:

Why?

Because I don’t believe in it.
lao tzu:

Slightly brash, and certainly underinformed, perhaps, but hardly bold. Given your faith declaration, which seems to be missing a ™ due solely to unfamiliarity with ASCII code, , it seems clear your arguments are about what we should expect from someone around 15.

A word of advice, then. Do not begin with a conclusion, and then proceed to look for evidence to support it, and most certainly do not ignore evidence in opposition to your conclusion.

• 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.

lao tzu:

Here’s a short list of what you’re missing so far:

An introductory course in quantum mechanics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that what is material is necessarily deterministic. Cf., nuclear decay, brownian motion.

An introductory course in the philosophy of mathematics, by which you could avoid the suggestion that the abstract must be instantiated, and cannot be self-existent. Cf., the Pythagorean Theorem, and pi.

An introductory course in neuropsychology, by which you could avoid the suggestion that conscious experiences cannot be illusory.

• 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.

Tomdstone:

A logical proof generally involves arguing from initial hypotheses. I’d like to know what those initial hypotheses are that lead to a free will, because you would have to have some reason to accept the initial hypotheses in the first place.

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

polytropos:

The premise was, “Abstracts only exist insofar as they are instantiated in substances.” What you are saying is that abstracts are both abstracted and instantiated. Fair enough. But to save the premise one would have to show not just that abstracts can be both abstracted and instantiated, but that even once they are abstracted, they “only exist insofar as they are instantiated.” In other words, one would have to show that you need three bears or three fingers or three something conforming to the one-to-one correspondence in order for “3” to exist.

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?

PS: Polytropos, thank you for being the only one here who is not using EAR tactics.

 

[Tomdstone]

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?

The fact is that you have only 10 fingers. Yet, I suppose that one could abstract the concept of 11, even if you had seen only 10 objects. Similarly, the number of objects that exist and are present to an observer is limited by say the number M.
But one can still abstract the number M + 1, even though there were no instance of M+ 1 objects, but only M of them.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

You would then be abstracting 11 from the idea of adding another object. Can you abstract 11 from 10 things without using the idea of +1?

 

[1AugustSon7]

…all your “proofs” are circular.

. . .

Trying to use our own mind to understand how our mind works means we can get fooled very easily.

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

 

[1AugustSon7]

• I agree that conscious experiences that are perceptions of things other than the self can be incorrect

But even that is debatable.

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.

Indeed the authority of the senses is such that most people take sensibles to be the rule -so to speak- of reality; that is, those things subject to sensation are taken to be most assuredly what’s “real”: substance most certainly for Aristotle.