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ThinkingSapien
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I get the feeling here you may be using a different meaning of “real” than My first interpretation of your question would be synonymous with “do we have thoughts and feelings.” To that I would say that many of us do.
I don’t understand what you are asking here.
That the concept of “thing” can encompass any entity (including another “person”) . Anything that was not produced ex nihilo could be said to have been produced, have formed/developed, so on from another entity.
%between%
If the “mind” is what the brain does then the two are entangled. Changes to the brain (physical injury or alteration, disease, changes in chemical state, electrical stimulation) can have an impact on one’s thoughts, feelings, and the other things that we associate with the activities of the brain . One’s mental activity can have an impact on the “wiring” of the neurons that compose the brain, to say nothing of the psychosomatic and indirect impacts of the brain.
Can’t say that I know of any non-physical events. So I wouldn’t be one to ever assert non-physical explinations.
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Sair
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I’ll join ThinkingSapien in asking what exactly you mean by ‘real’ here. Do you think the heat of a fire is real? It is produced by physical entities, is itself a physical entity. If heat is real - though not something we are able to actually touch or hold, as such - then why not thoughts and feelings?
Persons are a particular category of thing. The complaint often made is that scientific explanations try to ‘reduce’ persons or subjective phenomena to mere chemical interactions or arrangements of matter; but this is quite incorrect. You can’t ‘reduce’ a person to her constituent parts and still have a person, any more than you can hack a table into splinters and still call it a table. A person is a particular arrangement of matter and energy that manifests particular capacities because of such arrangement, but no less wonderful and fascinating for being so - in fact, I would say more wonderful and fascinating than if we are merely lumps of otherwise dead matter infused with some magical soul-substance, whatever the latter might be.
To turn this question around, do you believe the mind does control the brain, exclusively and in one direction? As ThinkingSapien pointed out, thought patterns and deliberate mental exercises can shape neural wiring - this is the theory of neuroplasticity in a nutshell. Difficult as it may be to consider that the mind is a conglomeration of conscious and unconscious activity, the evidence certainly points in that direction.
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tonyrey
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If we have thoughts and feelings - and don’t imagine them - would you agree they are as real as physical objects?
Are our thoughts and feelings less real than physical objects?
In your opinion how did persons originate?
Is **all **mental activity caused by events in the brain?
Would you agree that if all our mental activity has a physical explanation we do not control our mental activity? In other words “ThinkingSapien” is merely an honorary title…
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tonyrey
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Sair
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Sair
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Not self-evident, no, but it does provide a useful analogy.
What else might a person be?
How can mental events be ‘non-mental’? You’re confusing a particular kind of physical event with what you suppose to be a completely different category of event to anything physical. There’s no reason to suppose that particular arrangements of matter and energy are incapable of generating thought, or of being rational, or of assuming responsibility for particular actions. As I’ve asked before, if my actions are generated by electrical impulses within my brain, how are they not my actions? Unless my ‘self’ is a substance entirely separate from my physical body?
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tonyrey
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The spatial factor dominates all your thinking even though there is no evidence that our thoughts or decisions depend on spatial conditions. Similarly your atomistic view of reality doesn’t correspond to the way we think and live. We don’t regard ourselves or others as composed of bits and pieces but as** indivisible entities**. What is it that **unites **atomic particles and transforms them into rational, purposeful and autonomous beings? It is no good saying “evolution” - which is merely a cloak for ignorance. Each stage of development has to be explained right from the initial combination of molecules into one entity with **an urge to survive **and a plasticity totally absent in inorganic structures. Materialism is a dead horse no matter how much it is flogged…
There is no evidence whatsoever that minds have arisen from physical things. If anything the reverse is the case. In the order of knowledge and power the mind comes first. You assume you have power before you even begin to think and act. What precisely is it and how did it originate?
Again it is useless to invoke science and say it will eventually solve the problem because** science presupposes the reality of thought and rational beings**. Materialism amounts to putting the cart before the horse and the driver - as if the cart knows where it is going, what it wants to do and, above all, has a** reason **for what it is doing…
In your scheme of things reason pops up unexpectedly out of the blue for no reason! Don’t you find that rather an illogical hypothesis (remembering that a hypothesis needs to be translated into “particular arrangements” of atomic particles? Ay, there’s the rub! “arrangements” implies a rational rather than an irrational agent - unless you regard yourself as irrational. But then your conclusions would be rather tenuous…)
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tonyrey
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An analogy needs justification particularly when it implies that physically imperceptible thoughts and emotions are in the same category as physically perceptible heat…
A question requires an answer, not another question - to which the answer is an indivisible, rational, autonomous being. What is your answer?
That is a problem for the materialist!
You’re confusing a mental event with what you suppose to be a completely different category of event, i.e. physical. Do you equate thoughts with electrical impulses? If not why not?
There is every reason to suppose inanimate things are incapable of generating thought, or of being rational, or of being responsible for particular actions! The onus is on you to explain how that incredible feat is accomplished. Is it an everyday occurrence? Can you specify a time and location when and where it occurs? Can it be replicated in the laboratory? Or is it merely an unverifiable and unfalsifiable act of faith in the supreme power of physical energy?
Conjunction in time and space is not an adequate reason for attributing ownership, agency or responsibility. In addition “my” is an illegitimate use of the term in a world composed solely of impersonal objects where persons become redundant.
Which do you prefer to have - a bodiless mind or a mindless body? Why do you think the terms “mind” and “person” exist? Why do you use those terms yourself if mind and brain are identical? Surely it is literally a case of self-deception because according to you there is no self to deceive! You can’t have it both ways - unless it is the brain deceiving itself but how could it do that?
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inocente
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There’s a Christian poster on CAF who is adamant that person-hood requires possession of human DNA. I disagree, but an issue with concepts is we have different “definitions” in our heads.
And of course, a baby in your arms is a person while the representation of her in your head is not.
No, depends on context, but subjective can lie - if you subjectively believe you can leap tall buildings in a single bound, the objective evidence is you’ll be disappointed.
Unless terms have technical definitions, our concepts of things can be quite squidgy - she was in two minds about the hive mind, but couldn’t get her brain in gear, she was a bird-brain at the best of times.
If by mind you mean consciousness, that’s in your brain, if you mean command and control in general, that’s your nervous system in general.
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inocente
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Real = existing in fact; not imaginary
Your subjective experiences are real to you but not to anyone who doesn’t share them. One value of religion may be that it provides a language by which we can share subjective experiences which would otherwise be locked inside us.
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tonyrey
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ThinkingSapien
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They are as real as the action “running”.
They are at times less tangible. Though I don’t know what it means for something to be more real than something else. Is there some "spectrum of “realness” that you have in mind?
Couldn’t tell you. I could repeat a few hypothesis on the matter but can’t say that I know about the “original person” or “original population of people.”
Some of it is. Some is caused by stimuli that has eventual impact on the brain. I think what you are trying to get at is whether or not mental activity is deterministic and/or mechanistic. It’s quite possible.
Even if I thought that some of our mental activity was from some “non-physical” explanation I wouldn’t think we are in control of our thoughts. At most we influence our own thoughts. There are other animate and inanimate entities that also participate in influencing. Our past experiences with others also influences. There are thoughts that we have involuntarily and obsessively. It’s a possibility that the apparent willful influence that we have on our own thought is also mechanistic but complex.
LOL. If thinking were shown to be mechanistic it would change how we think about thinking. Think about it!In other words “ThinkingSapien” is merely an honorary title…
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tonyrey
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So subjective evidence is generally as valuable as objective evidence?
The criterion of sense perceptibility is currently popular. Do you accept it?
Do you believe we have developed from atomic particles?
So you’re uncertain?
In that case we’re not responsible for our thoughts or conclusions!
You don’t think I have any choice! I’m just a spectator…
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inocente
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I had a bout of depression some years back, and in that state feelings of love, beauty, happiness disappeared, and without them I thought of myself as more thing-like than person-like. My doctor knew what to do, a standard treatment to speed up the return of depleted neurotransmitters, along with a (very gentle) lecture to work a lot less and play a lot more so it doesn’t happen again.
So when I say our mind is between our ears it’s not mere speculation, it’s from direct objective and subjective evidence.
I keenly await your explanation of why I should ignore the evidence of that experience in favor of your theory, whatever it may be. Please, take the floor.
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inocente
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Don’t understand. I’m just saying that if someone gets nothing from your favorite piece of music, it’s next to impossible for you to communicate your subjective experience so they feel what you feel.
Sure, but religion provides other languages such as ritual.
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Sair
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Depression is a real eye-opener, in some respects. The way I have defined it, for myself at least, is that it’s like completely forgetting how to be happy, and that you ever really were. All is numbness, and even the things that thrilled you before have virtually no effect.
Over the course of my life, since my first major bout of clinical depression as a teenager, I have learned how to recognise and manage the thought patterns that herald the onset of a depressive episode. What is particularly interesting is that I have found, more recently, that actually performing physical actions, be they as simple and mundane as housework or walking my dog, actually have positive effects upon my thought patterns. What is also extremely valuable is being able to redirect my thoughts from a negative spiral - acknowledging that my depressive thoughts don’t define who or what I am, but can be allowed to simply pass through as mental traffic, and give way to the possibility of more positive thoughts. I can’t think of anything in my life that has more clearly demonstrated that the physical is equivalent to the mental; that I am more than just what goes on in my brain - that the rest of my body is just as integral and important to my person.
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Sair
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That would depend upon what you are seeking evidence of - if someone sees something, or otherwise senses something, that is most certainly evidence of something - though it may not be evidence that what this person believed they saw or sensed was actually what happened. Consider the art of sleight of hand, for a useful example of how our senses may be decieved.
Obviously I can’t speak for ThinkingSapien, but for myself, yes, I do. What’s more, I believe we consist of atomic particles, but in various molecular, structural, integral arrangements. What do you think we developed from? Of what do we humans consist, in your view?
If we’re not, who is?
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Sair
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Got it in one! We’re finally getting somewhere
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