The vast majority of people in the world have a religion, are not materialists who derive the mind from purposeless atomic particles and do not believe we are machines whose functioning is programmed by physical events.
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It's fair to say, also, that the vast majority of people in the world do not have a thorough-going scientific education...The lack of a scientific education diminishes the probability that people have insight into **reality as a whole** only for a materialist who believes **everyone** can be explained in terms of purposeless particles. It is a typically snobbish and elitist view that underrates the intuition and intelligence of the vast majority of human beings.
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… and have a religion primarily because their parents have a religion, within the tenets of which they raised their children.
A genetic fallacy…
No response.
It is far less demanding, far less confronting and far more superficially comforting to suppose that there is nothing else but **oneself **to decide what is true, good, right and just.
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Minds are not simple, monistic entities, but complex, many-faceted structures - what’s so difficult about accepting that they result from the interactions of simpler entities?
That argument would not satisfy a judge and jury who regard you as
one person who is uniquely responsible for your decisions and actions - when you think and behave **rationally **of course. To which particular facet of your structure do you attribute your beliefs, values, goals, values, choices, ideals, decisions and conclusions? How do you derive **unity **from multiplicity?
No answers to these questions…
Your atomistic view of reality fails to correspond to the way you think and live. Modern medicine regards a person as an integrated whole rather than a collection of physical organs that have somehow magically succeeded in appearing, developing and co-ordinating their activity to such an extent that they are capable of not only being aware of themselves but also controlling themselves. Obviously miracles never cease…
No response.
There’s a difference between being an indivisible entity - in the sense of consisting of only one part or one substance - and being an indivisible entity because it would be impossible to function as such an entity if the parts were not all in place.
The use of the term “parts” reveals a total inability to conceive of any type of reality but matter. Your analytical approach pervades all your thinking yet you cannot explain
synthesis. Precisely
how are entities formed? What unites and integrates the so-called “parts” of a person? (Please answer the questions in this and the previous post.)
What makes you suppose that mind is a substance in and of itself, an essential element of reality?
“substance” is a term best avoided because it introduces the misleading spatial dimension “sub”. I prefer the neutral term “entity”. There is overwhelming evidence that a person is an essentially real and indivisible in every respect: legal, moral, social, political, aesthetic, economic and philosophical. Do you ever refer to the “parts” of a** person**? Do you ever equate “you” with “your body” when you are talking to people? Do you belong to your body or does your body belong to you? What are “you” exactly? What is the mind in your opinion?
Based upon what we can discern and experience of minds, they are subject to variation and damage - if a living brain is damaged, the mind exhibited by that brain also changes.
A false deduction. The mind is intangible and cannot be equated with the brain unless it is reduced to electrical impulses - which you emphatically deny is the case. You cannot have it both ways. Which is it to be?
Brain damage prevents and distorts the ability to communicate, express and control the brain and the rest of the body. It does not destroy the mind. If it did a person would lose the right to life. Do you believe we are justified in killing everyone who is seriously brain damaged? How could you ever **know **the mind no longer exists? It is merely a supposition for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
That is just one piece of evidence that minds are not fundamental, monistic, elementary substances. If you ingest certain chemicals, your mind changes. When a person dies, their mind, for all intents and purposes, disappears from the world.
A ludicrous argument based on the unverifiable, unfalsifiable and unrealistic assumption that matter alone is the prime and pre-eminent reality.
Furthermore, there is no evidence of the presence of mind in the absence of complex brains. All of this suggests that minds are built up from more fundamental aspects of reality, and are not, themselves, elementary.
- How are they “built up”?
- Do you believe only in what you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch?
- If so why?
What makes you suppose atomic particles are more fundamental than
everything else? Ironically your supposition presupposes - and relies upon - the very reality you are determined to eliminate from your closed scheme of
things. It demonstrates your parochial** state of mind** and suggests a very **elementary **stage of intellectual development. To underestimate the power of the mind in favour of inanimate objects is the fatal flaw in your hypothesis and quite impossible to implement in practice…
Can you really not see what someone means when they say a narrative works on more than one level? The concept that reality exists on more than one level is so fundamental, and so commonly understood, that I’d be amazed if you can’t see it. As a first step, try to lose that somewhat exotic notion of an homunculus control center.
