The missing link/intelligent design

[AlexBP]

If the mind is a distinct and separate entity from the body, and the brain were merely a 'conduit' to the mind, then damage to the body shouldn't damage the mind - yet it does.

No one has argued that the brain is merely a conduit to the mind. You're positing that brain and mind are one and the same. The evidence you offer is that damage to the brain causes damage to the mind. I and others are merely disputing that the link between brain damage and mind damage proves what the materialist explanation of the brain to be true.

First of all, we've already seen that there are some cases in which brain damage, even extreme brain damage, did not damage the mind. Second, there is no necessary implication between the fact that brain damage sometimes leads to mental harm and the assumption that brain and mind are the same. Even if brain damage always caused mental harm, even if there was a consistent mapping between damage to certain areas of the brain and certain mental effects, it would not prove that. I brought up the analogy of damaging my computer and observing an effect on its ability to download CF to make that point. I did not intend that to be a perfect analogy with the brain-mind relationship. As I've already said, I don't know what the relationship between the brain and the mind is and I'm not trying to push any theory in this thread. I'm only offering a critique of the materialist theory.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

No one has argued that the brain is merely a conduit to the mind. You're positing that brain and mind are one and the same.

Inasmuch as respiration and the lungs are one and the same, yes.

The evidence you offer is that damage to the brain causes damage to the mind. I and others are merely disputing that the link between brain damage and mind damage proves what the materialist explanation of the brain to be true.

OK.

First of all, we've already seen that there are some cases in which brain damage, even extreme brain damage, did not damage the mind.

I disagree. Your citation of new research into Broca's area doesn't say what you think. The French civil servant you cited had a physically retаrded brain and suffered from corresponding mental retardation - ironically supporting my claim.

My claim isn't that brain damage always leads to mental damage; the mechanism by which the brain produces the mind (emergence from a neurochemical net, etc) could well allow a functional mind with less or damaged parts - evolution isn't exactly thrift. My claim, instead is that the fact that brain damage has lead mental damage is sufficient evidence of a physical origin of the mind.

Second, there is no necessary implication between the fact that brain damage sometimes leads to mental harm and the assumption that brain and mind are the same. Even if brain damage always caused mental harm, even if there was a consistent mapping between damage to certain areas of the brain and certain mental effects, it would not prove that.

Prove epistemologically? I agree. Prove scientifically? I disagree - such an accomplishment would be strong evidence indeed that the mind has a physical origin.

I brought up the analogy of damaging my computer and observing an effect on its ability to download CF to make that point. I did not intend that to be a perfect analogy with the brain-mind relationship. As I've already said, I don't know what the relationship between the brain and the mind is and I'm not trying to push any theory in this thread. I'm only offering a critique of the materialist theory.

OK.

 

[AlexBP]

The article I referenced, and links within that article, did just that. Specifically, it referred to how the brain works to create the illusion that something "more" is happening, and how introspection is not reliable.

The portion of the article on the blog didn't say anything about how the brain works, but instead argued against the existence of "the self". I'll look for a copy of the magazine so I can read the whole thing the next time I'm in the library. The portion that I can read seems rather like what my students would call 'weak sauce'.

It would seem obvious that we exist continuously from our first moments in our mother's womb up to our death. Yet during the time that our self exists, it undergoes substantial changes in beliefs, abilities, desires and moods. The happy self of yesterday cannot be exactly the same as the grief-stricken self of today, for example. But we surely still have the same self today that we had yesterday.
​

The author proposes two models for exploring the concept of the self's continuity, then notes undesirable features of each. But having a failed model for something doesn't prove the nonexistence of that thing. It may merely mean that you chose a bad model.

I see no need for any model to understand continuity of self. Yesterday I was Alex B. Popper, today I still am, and tomorrow I still will be. My self keeps the same identity from day to day. Likewise it keeps many other things: the identity of my parents, the fact that I'm a white male , &c... Jan Westerhoff apparently wants us to be impressed with the fact that some mental features change. Some bodily features also change from time to time, but no one is in doubt about the continuity of his or her physical body.

 

[Davian]

The portion of the article on the blog didn't say anything about how the brain works, but instead argued against the existence of "the self".

In the context of the source of the article, and the author's position, do you think they were talking about the mind as anything other than a process that occurs in the brain?

I'll look for a copy of the magazine so I can read the whole thing the next time I'm in the library. The portion that I can read seems rather like what my students would call 'weak sauce'.

Speaking of 'weak sauce', I'm still waiting for those most convincing arguments in that book for the "...Existence of the Soul". Were they science-based?

The author proposes two models for exploring the concept of the self's continuity, then notes undesirable features of each. But having a failed model for something doesn't prove the nonexistence of that thing. It may merely mean that you chose a bad model.

You are being intellectually dishonest. The models were not described as failed. They will be necessarily incomplete, as models are by their very nature.

And the purpose of the models are not to prove the nonexistence of anything, but to explain how the brain works based on current scientific understanding.

If you want to posit the existance of something - this 'soul' - the burden of evidence is on you. Do you withdraw that claim?

I see no need for any model to understand continuity of self. Yesterday I was Alex B. Popper, today I still am, and tomorrow I still will be. My self keeps the same identity from day to day.

As the article explains, it does seem that way. Introspection can be deceptive on this subject.

Likewise it keeps many other things: the identity of my parents, the fact that I'm a white male , &c... Jan Westerhoff apparently wants us to be impressed with the fact that some mental features change. Some bodily features also change from time to time, but no one is in doubt about the continuity of his or her physical body.

Now you have changed subjects, from the 'self' to your physical body. Move goalposts much?

 

[Loudmouth]

First of all, we've already seen that there are some cases in which brain damage, even extreme brain damage, did not damage the mind.

To use an analogy, I would argue that a car engine is responsible for the power that moves a car. I would further demonstrate that fact by cutting the spark plug wires and showing that the car no longer moves. I have shown that damage to the engine results in a loss of motive power. You come along with a chisel and take out a portion of metal from the outside of the engine block, but this does not result in a loss of any motive power.

So have you refuted my argument? No. In the same way, pointing to cases of brain damage not resulting in loss of mental ability in no way disputes the obvious link between the two. No one is arguing that any damage whatsoever to the brain will also damage the mind.

More importantly, no one has offered any evidence of the mind existing independently of the brain. All they try to do is argue against others and hope that their claims win by default.

I'm only offering a critique of the materialist theory.

So what evidence is there for the non-materialist theory?

 

[Received]

Because thousands of years of exploration has found nothing supernatural, we've never found a spirit or soul, and the health of the mind is so very dependant on the health of the brain.

Well, maybe I'm not being clear: all the varieties I've posited are *not* dualistic, therefore not down with spirits or souls. IOW, just because we have brain and have consciousness doesn't mean we have one simple, non-philosophical perspective on what counts to explain this gap.

Is there any good evidence to support mysterianism? That we haven't solved the problem yet is no reason to believe we'll never solve it (this is the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam), nor is it true that conciousness cannot be explained just because we cannot experience each other's concious experience.

Asking for evidence is too far. I think Mysterianism (which, btw, I learned about from the atheist Colin McGinn) holds that because we don't have evidence or proof of exactly how the gap from objective physical brain stuff to phenomenological experience works (hence the correct neuroscience term of "neural correlates", which isn't "neural causes", when referring to neurological representation of human experience), we shouldn't assume that we do have evidence or proof. Just stop at "we can't go any further than the gap," even though it's seductively easy to say the grey matter is consciousness (etc.) because one correlates with the other.

 

[Davian]

...
Asking for evidence is too far.

No, that is where we should start.

 

[AlexBP]

So what were the most convincing arguments in the book for the "...Existence of the Soul"?

I don't recall there were any.

If you want to know what's in Dr. Beauregard's book, you could always pick up a copy. I promise it won't bite.

If you want to posit the existance of something - this 'soul' - the burden of evidence is on you. Do you withdraw that claim?

What claim?

 

[Davian]

I don't recall there were any.

Not a very good endorsement for a book you 'learned the most from".

If you want to know what's in Dr. Beauregard's book, you could always pick up a copy. I promise it won't bite.

Not after reading the reviews on amazon:

"I was in fact very keen to learn about serious tests conducted on "difficult" topics like religious ecstasy, so I approached it with a curious and open mind.
I was therefore very disappointed by the book: not because it drags to a worldview that I do not share (which would be perfectly fine) but because it contains NO science, no evidence, and still makes outrageous conclusions, giving them as "fully proved".
The scheme, reduced to the core, is "we did brain scans of nuns in ecstasy, we did find that something was actually going on in their brain, no explanation was visible for it" ERGO "something supernatural was going on, which PROVES that soul, god etc do exist." That's it...
This is not BAD science, it is just NO science, and in fact no argument at all...
Honestly, I feel that even if I had been an open minded believer I would have found the book as not at all supportive of any supernatural view."

link

What claim?

The term was from the complete title of the book you were "endorsing", and you did say "I don't claim to have a perfect understanding of mental phenomena and their relationship to the brain, but the sum of the evidence I've seen points me away from the totally reductionist understanding."

No "soul", then?

Where was it pointing you, exactly?

 

[AlexBP]

In the context of the source of the article, and the author's position, do you think they were talking about the mind as anything other than a process that occurs in the brain?

You claimed in post #33 that the article would tell me what parts of the brain were responsible for interior mental monologues and dialogues. The portion of the article that I can read contains no such thing. As I said, I'll look for an opportunity to read the entire thing, since I'm actually willing to read stuff. At the moment, though, no advocate of the materialist approach to the mind in this thread has actually addressed what I asked:

If I want to know exactly what physical event an interior mental monologue or dialogue is and the materialist answers "the movement of neurotransmitters across the synapses in your brain", that response is unsatisfactory. At a minimum, a materialistic explanation would have to explain what physical parts of the brain are doing what and how we know it.
​

It's unclear why an article about the existence of the self is supposed to have any relevance at all to this.

Now you have changed subjects, from the 'self' to your physical body.

Bringing up the physical body was not a change of subject. It was an example whereby I demonstarted the flaws of the supposed connection Westerhoff was using.

 

[AlexBP]

The term was from the complete title of the book you were "endorsing", and you did say "I don't claim to have a perfect understanding of mental phenomena and their relationship to the brain, but the sum of the evidence I've seen points me away from the totally reductionist understanding."

If you read Dr. Beauregard's book you'll see that his position on the nature of mind is pretty similar to what I've outlined, which you just quoted. As he says:

Materialist neuroscientists have not succeeded in providing a satisfactory neurobiological theory of how mind, consciousness, and self arise from the interaction between various brain regions, neural circuits, and neurotransmitters. In my view this enterprise is doomed to failure. Why? Because of the immense epistemological gap between the psychological realm and the physical realm. Mapping the brain activity underlying Godel's incompleteness theorem, for instance, would reveal little with respect to its mathematical contents. By virtue of this cardinal difference, psyche cannot be reduced to physis.
​

But since you've declared that you won't even read the book which you previously claimed to be interested in knowing about, there seems little reason to explore what Dr. Beauregard has to say any further.

 

[Received]

No, that is where we should start.

So, what's the evidence for evidence?

 

[Davian]

If you read Dr. Beauregard's book you'll see that his position on the nature of mind is pretty similar to what I've outlined, which you just quoted. As he says:

Materialist neuroscientists have not succeeded in providing a satisfactory neurobiological theory of how mind, consciousness, and self arise from the interaction between various brain regions, neural circuits, and neurotransmitters. In my view this enterprise is doomed to failure. Why? Because of the immense epistemological gap between the psychological realm and the physical realm. Mapping the brain activity underlying Godel's incompleteness theorem, for instance, would reveal little with respect to its mathematical contents. By virtue of this cardinal difference, psyche cannot be reduced to physis.​

So he is pushing a god-of-the-gaps argument. I see that he says "cannot be reduced", as if he has evidence to this 'fact'. Is that your position?

But since you've declared that you won't even read the book which you previously claimed to be interested in knowing about, there seems little reason to explore what Dr. Beauregard has to say any further.

I was under the impression that you killed discussion of the contents of the book, as when I asked "what were the most convincing arguments in the book for the "...Existence of the Soul"?", your response was "I don't recall there were any."

I went to Amazon on my own initiative, as I was interested in learning more about that book.

 

[Davian]

I find your editing my posts to alter their intent to be intellectually dishonest. That being said,

You claimed in post #33 that the article would tell me what parts of the brain were responsible for interior mental monologues and dialogues. The portion of the article that I can read contains no such thing. As I said, I'll look for an opportunity to read the entire thing, since I'm actually willing to read stuff. At the moment, though, no advocate of the materialist approach to the mind in this thread has actually addressed what I asked:

If I want to know exactly what physical event an interior mental monologue or dialogue is and the materialist answers "the movement of neurotransmitters across the synapses in your brain", that response is unsatisfactory. At a minimum, a materialistic explanation would have to explain what physical parts of the brain are doing what and how we know it.
​

It's unclear why an article about the existence of the self is supposed to have any relevance at all to this.

Post #33 does not make that claim. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

As you snipped from my previous response, the article explains that introspection can be deceptive on this subject.

Bringing up the physical body was not a change of subject. It was an example whereby I demonstarted the flaws of the supposed connection Westerhoff was using.

No, you didn't. Continuity of the physical self was not the issue.

In another post in this thread, you said "I'm only offering a critique of the materialist theory."

What other theories are there?

 

[Davian]

So, what's the evidence for evidence?

Srsly?

 

[Received]

Srsly?

Uh, yeah. "Everything should be subjected to scientific evidence."

"Okay, where's the evidence for evidence?"

"There is none."

"K, so it seems like there's something more fundamental than evidence that constitutive of veracity (and it's probably that type of reasoning that unveiled 'evidence for evidence' as contradictory)."

 

[Davian]

Uh, yeah. "Everything should be subjected to scientific evidence."

"Okay, where's the evidence for evidence?"

"There is none."

"K, so it seems like there's something more fundamental than evidence that constitutive of veracity (and it's probably that type of reasoning that unveiled 'evidence for evidence' as contradictory)."

Rather than chase down that rabbit hole, let us assume that we did, and skip to the part where I ask (again), do you think this leaves a hole in reality big enough for you to get "gods", "immaterial minds" and the like through, without leaving the Earth covered in giant invisible immaterial marshmallows?

 

[Received]

It sure sounds like you're saying:

Any standard that allows the possibility of a deity is false.

 

[Gadarene]

It sure sounds like you're saying:

Any standard that allows the possibility of a deity is false.

It sure sounds like he's saying that certain standards that allow the possibility of a deity through let a whole lot of other things through (that the people who already believe in the god they're trying to prove would reject).

 

[super animator]

It sure sounds like he's saying that certain standards that allow the possibility of a deity through let a whole lot of other things through (that the people who already believe in the god they're trying to prove would reject).

Like what?