Does human thought refute physicalism?

[Vanellus]

Is this argument valid?

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

Taken from Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

and from a blog post on this book:

I would want to comment on this quote as follows: The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter is in one sense right because his third person perspective on the first person will mean that observations of the latter will only ever reveal tiny physical movements of grey matter. But if we are a cerebral physiologist we must not neglect to carry out the reflexive operation of looking back down the line of our observation to ourselves where it becomes apparent that implicit in our third person account of the brain are the observations and theorizings of a first person perspective. It may well be that every conscious event maps on a point by point basis to some kind of neural activity, but this still leaves us with the observer-observed dichotomy between the first person and third person perspectives.
from https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2012/07/planet-narnia-part-3-consciousness.html

 

[Tom 1]

Is this argument valid?

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

Taken from Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

and from a blog post on this book:

I would want to comment on this quote as follows: The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter is in one sense right because his third person perspective on the first person will mean that observations of the latter will only ever reveal tiny physical movements of grey matter. But if we are a cerebral physiologist we must not neglect to carry out the reflexive operation of looking back down the line of our observation to ourselves where it becomes apparent that implicit in our third person account of the brain are the observations and theorizings of a first person perspective. It may well be that every conscious event maps on a point by point basis to some kind of neural activity, but this still leaves us with the observer-observed dichotomy between the first person and third person perspectives.
from https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2012/07/planet-narnia-part-3-consciousness.html

I think this is one of the arguments behind why some people argue human consciousness cannot be studied by conscious humans. To get at something like an objective definition you’d need a third party with some higher state of consciousness able somehow to see and evaluate the bigger picture in its entirety.

 

[Radagast]

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

C. S. Lewis makes that argument (in a clearer and more detailed form) in his book Miracles.

The essence of what C. S. Lewis says is that when we use the laws of logic, we are appealing to a level of certainty that can't be grounded in a few cupfuls of neurochemical goo.

 

[public hermit]

Is this argument valid?

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

This argument does not strike me as incoherent (if that's what you mean by "valid"). What would appear to me as incoherent is if one simply assumed from the outset that thought is only physical. But I suppose the physicalist would want say the opposite.

When the brain is observed, we find synapses firing off electrical or chemical signals between neurons, or something like that. What we don't observe is the thought, "Thought is only physical." So, at the very least, there must be some kind of translation occurring between the physical activity and the thought. We just don't know what that bridge is that connects the two.

Consciousness and thought is a bit of a mystery, and a hotly debated topic, so without clear evidence to one side or the other, it seems a number of claims can appear valid.

 

[Vanellus]

I didn't intend "valid" to mean incoherent - more like the opposite.

 

[hedrick]

I don't see anything useful in the argument.

 

[※※♡Rose○Gold○Macaron♡※※]

Wait, so some people actually think that parts of your brain actually move a bit when you think about any thought? That's terrifying.


I guess we really do learn something new everyday...

 

[stevevw]

Is this argument valid?

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

Taken from Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

and from a blog post on this book:

I would want to comment on this quote as follows: The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter is in one sense right because his third person perspective on the first person will mean that observations of the latter will only ever reveal tiny physical movements of grey matter. But if we are a cerebral physiologist we must not neglect to carry out the reflexive operation of looking back down the line of our observation to ourselves where it becomes apparent that implicit in our third person account of the brain are the observations and theorizings of a first person perspective. It may well be that every conscious event maps on a point by point basis to some kind of neural activity, but this still leaves us with the observer-observed dichotomy between the first person and third person perspectives.
from https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2012/07/planet-narnia-part-3-consciousness.html

I find that fascinating. It raises the question about the hard problem of consciousness. The connection between the physical brain and consciousness and how this can happen. This may have something to do with the observer effect in quantum physics. Something happens with physical interactions which breakdown when it is linked with the observer. Not just a machine but a conscious mind. I know there have been experiments done such as the double split experiment and people have questioned the observer effect. But further experiments have confirmed this with the delayed choice experiments.

Quantum experiment in space confirms that reality is what you make it
Quantum Weirdness of Light Was Just Confirmed by Shooting Photons Into Space

It makes you think is there something about the mind that is beyond the physical. I always think of John 1 when he describes the word as being a sort of nonmaterial thing and then becoming flesh. The word is described as the light which makes me wonder about what light represented as it is intriguing that it is photons that take on different forms in the quantum experiment.

I know it is sounding a bit metaphysical but it is kind of fascinating. Is this all linked. Is consciousness something that can exist independently of the physical. Is this all there was, to begin with, and that created the material world. The material world is what is made real by an observer. It is sort fo created by a mind. I think there is also some info on the mental universe which was a paper around 2005 that is along these lines.
Making Sense of the Mental Universe
https://philarchive.org/archive/KASMSO

I also recall there was also another controversial experiment with quantum vibrations in microtubules in the brain by Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They did a revision of this and seemed to verify it. So maybe this can begin to help explain consciousness. It's all weird and strange but very interesting. I like to have an open mind on stuff like this. What do people think?

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose.
Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness

 

[Radagast]

Wait, so some people actually think that parts of your brain actually move a bit when you think about any thought?

Well, yes.

Those parts are called "molecules" and "ions."

 

[J_B_]

Is this argument valid?

The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies?

Taken from Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

and from a blog post on this book:

I would want to comment on this quote as follows: The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter is in one sense right because his third person perspective on the first person will mean that observations of the latter will only ever reveal tiny physical movements of grey matter. But if we are a cerebral physiologist we must not neglect to carry out the reflexive operation of looking back down the line of our observation to ourselves where it becomes apparent that implicit in our third person account of the brain are the observations and theorizings of a first person perspective. It may well be that every conscious event maps on a point by point basis to some kind of neural activity, but this still leaves us with the observer-observed dichotomy between the first person and third person perspectives.
from https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2012/07/planet-narnia-part-3-consciousness.html

I don't follow how this argument (or the one mentioned by C.S. Lewis) supposedly establishes an ethereal mind, but it's always interesting to hear opinions on the topic.

 

[Jok]

Thoughts are not physical, it’s a phenomenal experience. Even if physical brain matter movement is a necessary correlation for thoughts to also occur the actual thought itself is still not physically detectable. And what does Physicalism claim if they would call something ‘Real’ without it being physically detectable? They wouldn’t claim such a thing, that’s what they claim to be impossible. Physical detectability or nothing is basically their mantra.

Since the most immediate and axiomatic piece of knowledge that any person alive has are their thoughts, it would be a form of academic hypnotism to allow yourself to actually say that thoughts aren’t real, they technically are the most real thing that we have access to. Now if we were to reach the utopian dream of Physicalism 50 years from now by gaining 100% exhaustive knowledge of Physics you would still never be able to point to, weigh, measure, or feel actual thoughts, only the physical brain matter correlations that go along with those thoughts. Physicalism is not allowed to squirm out of its position that EVERYTHING is physical. You can detect it or you can’t, and they say if you can’t it’s not real. Well what about just the thought itself in its own right? IMO Physicalism tries to seduce me into a denial of my most immediate form of knowledge, thoughts.

You could weigh, measure, sense electrical presence, etc, from the physical brain matter that may correlate to me having thoughts that I am wrestling a slimy crocodile and I’m half paralyzed by fear, but you only have access to the squishy brain matter movements, you have no access at all to the experiential thoughts and emotions themselves. If you had an intense drug induced hallucination of a crocodile attack that was scary enough it may be able to perfectly match the brain activity, and perfectly match the conscious experience of actually being attacked by a crocodile. But in neither case could you see, weigh, or measure the thought of crocodiles or sliminess or fear, etc. Only could a Physicalist detect the correlating brain activity. You have zero access to the actual qualitative thoughts. PHYSICALLY you don’t have enough tools to properly assess the full extent of every single parameter that makes up the situation. You need non-physical tools to fully know what happened, you would need some ability to jump inside of the mind in question and live the experience to know all there is to know about the situation. But Physicalism claims that all there is to know about anything at all is physical, that all there is to know about a situation would somehow physically register on a meter of some kind.

If it was the drug induced hallucination situation instead of the real thing, and if the person isn’t even responsive Physicalism leaves you will tons of unanswered questions (even with exhaustive knowledge of Physics and brain chemistry). Again it seems to me that Physicalism is a request for me to not only demote my #1 source of knowledge (thoughts) in favor of that which a meter of some sort could detect, but even worse, to completely abandon thoughts altogether as a source of knowledge.

 

[Tom 1]

Thoughts are not physical, it’s a phenomenal experience. Even if physical brain matter movement is a necessary correlation for thoughts to also occur the actual thought itself is still not physically detectable. And what does Physicalism claim if they would call something ‘Real’ without it being physically detectable? They wouldn’t claim such a thing, that’s what they claim to be impossible. Physical detectability or nothing is basically their mantra.

Since the most immediate and axiomatic piece of knowledge that any person alive has are their thoughts, it would be a form of academic hypnotism to allow yourself to actually say that thoughts aren’t real, they technically are the most real thing that we have access to. Now if we were to reach the utopian dream of Physicalism 50 years from now by gaining 100% exhaustive knowledge of Physics you would still never be able to point to, weigh, measure, or feel actual thoughts, only the physical brain matter correlations that go along with those thoughts. Physicalism is not allowed to squirm out of its position that EVERYTHING is physical. You can detect it or you can’t, and they say if you can’t it’s not real. Well what about just the thought itself in its own right? IMO Physicalism tries to seduce me into a denial of my most immediate form of knowledge, thoughts.

You could weigh, measure, sense electrical presence, etc, from the physical brain matter that may correlate to me having thoughts that I am wrestling a slimy crocodile and I’m half paralyzed by fear, but you only have access to the squishy brain matter movements, you have no access at all to the experiential thoughts and emotions themselves. If you had an intense drug induced hallucination of a crocodile attack that was scary enough it may be able to perfectly match the brain activity, and perfectly match the conscious experience of actually being attacked by a crocodile. But in neither case could you see, weigh, or measure the thought of crocodiles or sliminess or fear, etc. Only could a Physicalist detect the correlating brain activity. You have zero access to the actual qualitative thoughts. PHYSICALLY you don’t have enough tools to properly assess the full extent of every single parameter that makes up the situation. You need non-physical tools to fully know what happened, you would need some ability to jump inside of the mind in question and live the experience to know all there is to know about the situation. But Physicalism claims that all there is to know about anything at all is physical, that all there is to know about a situation would somehow physically register on a meter of some kind.

If it was the drug induced hallucination situation instead of the real thing, and if the person isn’t even responsive Physicalism leaves you will tons of unanswered questions (even with exhaustive knowledge of Physics and brain chemistry). Again it seems to me that Physicalism is a request for me to not only demote my #1 source of knowledge (thoughts) in favor of that which a meter of some sort could detect, but even worse, to completely abandons thoughts altogether as a source of knowledge.

There are some arguments that thoughts arise out of, and only out of, some underlying physiological process, e.g prompted by some attempt by the brain to predict what is going on or from processes arising from some stimulus in another part of the body. Some aspects of the very earliest art, like geometric forms, and the most rudimentary hallucinations of shapes that are apparently common in some states of consciousness mirror structures in the brain.

 

[Jok]

some underlying physiological process, e.g prompted by some attempt by the brain to predict what is going on or from processes arising from some stimulus in another part of the body. Some aspects of the very earliest art, like geometric forms, and the most rudimentary hallucinations of shapes that are apparently common in some states of consciousness mirror structures in the brain.

Ok so you are getting at the idea that the entire crocodile experience could be formulated by both my memories of sense experiences that I've had in life, combined with physical structures within my brain? Well I feel like something very meaningful (in the attempted explanation) beyond physical matter in motion, and sense memory and visual aids would be necessary to take me away from an inner darkness of emotionally void form comprehension, or even the emotionally void super computer experience of The Terminator or something.

There's something extremely additional going on about the whole concept of "Taking an emotion filled ride inside of" an organism, as opposed to the mechanical laws of that organism's motion throughout it's life force. Like what does that even mean, to live out an experiential existence inside of something? I just can't understand how such an explanation, whatever the explanation might be, could be a purely physical one.

I don't deny that my head would explode trying to figure out the physical truth of ultimate reality, I know that's beyond me, but I still see the necessity for an underlying intelligence packed into that material reality that would be able to give way to having experiences. So I don't have a problem with properties emerging out of certain lower levels of physical organizations. But I don't think that physical organization of physical material would explain those emergent properties at all, as far as having a qualitative experience popping out of them.

To physically explain what something does is a world of difference to explaining how something feels. "How matter is arranged and moves around" intuitively seems completely inadequate to get at an explanation of the existence of conscious experiences (maybe my last post should have been saying that instead of "thoughts"), it almost seems like checking the oil in a car to get a feel for why the paint is chipping away. The wrong technique all together, it's like physical analysis misses the mark completely of what the question is.

 

[Tom 1]

Ok so you are getting at the idea that the entire crocodile experience could be formulated by both my memories of sense experiences that I've had in life, combined with physical structures within my brain?

To an extent maybe, the ideas I suppose in relation to the scope of what isn't known are pretty rudimentary but fairly solid (as far as I know) as far as they go. From what I've read/listened to of their ideas David Eagleman and a couple of other experts whose names I can't remember are pretty circumspect about what can be said with any certainty about the brain/mind. A book I like and am just about to finish is The Mind in The Cave by David Lewis-Williams, which draws parallels between shamanic experiences, the nature of prehistoric art and the processes involved in making it, and the structures of the brain, but there is no broader point made about the overall functioning of the brain. More speculative ideas about the evolution of the brain in response to different situations and other stimuli are interesting, I think. In Sapiens Harari briefly mentions one idea about how humans might have come to begin thinking about spiritual or invisible beings, namely through the necessity of trying to picture what people they couldn't see, in the next valley or wherever, were doing. I suppose once the ability to imagine something has developed in relation to one scenario then it will find a mode of expression in another. The way we understand the world seems have a lot to do with metaphor and imagination, relating new things we come across to things we already know, or bending new ideas into a shape that fits our thinking, which is a process that takes place in the subconscious and conscious, rather than completely unconscious, I would say. Part of that is cultural conditioning I suppose, for instance although I can recognise some similar themes between the Baghavad Gita and the Bible for example I find the conceptual framework of the former much more difficult to gel with, the ideas of personality types and the role of diet etc, than the latter, maybe because, although I didn't grow up in a religious household, I did grow up in a nominally Christian country. Anyway it does seem there are different levels in play - the promptings of the body, the interpretations of the brain, cultural and personal influences, knowledge and the use of the imagination, and anything else there might be. I think we're still a long way from really understanding much about it all.

 

[Vanellus]

Quoting from the Oxford Companion to Philosophy:

". The main argument for dualism is that facts about the objective external world of particles and fields of force, as revealed by modern physical science, are not facts about how things appear from any particular point of view, whereas facts about subjective experience are precisely about how things are from the point of view of individual conscious subjects. They have to be described in the first person as well as the third person"

 

[Jok]

To an extent maybe, the ideas I suppose in relation to the scope of what isn't known are pretty rudimentary but fairly solid (as far as I know) as far as they go. From what I've read/listened to of their ideas David Eagleman and a couple of other experts whose names I can't remember are pretty circumspect about what can be said with any certainty about the brain/mind. A book I like and am just about to finish is The Mind in The Cave by David Lewis-Williams, which draws parallels between shamanic experiences, the nature of prehistoric art and the processes involved in making it, and the structures of the brain, but there is no broader point made about the overall functioning of the brain. More speculative ideas about the evolution of the brain in response to different situations and other stimuli are interesting, I think. In Sapiens Harari briefly mentions one idea about how humans might have come to begin thinking about spiritual or invisible beings, namely through the necessity of trying to picture what people they couldn't see, in the next valley or wherever, were doing. I suppose once the ability to imagine something has developed in relation to one scenario then it will find a mode of expression in another. The way we understand the world seems have a lot to do with metaphor and imagination, relating new things we come across to things we already know, or bending new ideas into a shape that fits our thinking, which is a process maybe that takes place in the subconscious and conscious, rather than completely unconscious, I would say. Part of that maybe is cultural conditioning I suppose, for instance although I can recognise some similar themes between the Baghavad Gita and the Bible for example I find the conceptual framework of the former much more difficult to gel with, the ideas of personality types and the role of diet etc, than the latter, maybe because, although I didn't grow up in a religious household, I did grow up in a nominally Christian country. Anyway it does seem there are different levels in play - the promptings of the body, the interpretations of the brain, cultural and personal influences, knowledge and the use of the imagination, and anything else there might be. I think we're still a long way from really understanding much about it all.

I do like Kant’s explanation when he talks about how we are not just a blank slate at birth that soaks up sense experiences, nor does that necessarily mean that we must have innate knowledge at birth either, but we do have this cognitive apparatus that predigests and gives organizational meaning to our sense inputs. That makes a lot of sense to me since you not only have a bunch of different species taking in the same sensory inputs, but also just within humans you have differences in IQ, and differences in natural ability & intelligence. Personally I am a believer in primary sensations and secondary sensations. Primary sensations are objectively real which would include size, motions, shapes, etc of objects in the world, and these sensations would be shared by humans, cows, insects, etc. Whereas secondary sensations would be more sensory organ specific, for humans things like color, taste, odor, feeling of texture, etc, could vary greatly with other species.

I think that no matter how much we come to know about the physical brain & nervous system there will always be this brick wall that can’t be broken through to give any meaning to subjective conscious experience. Just the wrong tool for the job. No matter how precisely you might hone in on which detailed subsections of the brain are actively corresponding to very specific subjective experiences, it will still be two completely different things, like the definition @Vanellus gave. Unless at some point they are able to probe a certain region of the brain and it fires off a hologram video of that person’s thoughts, like Princess Leia’s message from R2D2 lol. But even then you couldn’t share the feelings & sensations of the experience so even that would fail.

I’m not sure about the theory about imagining someone from a neighboring tribe, thus causing a chain reaction to bring forth a species with imagination. Because why just us? I could think of endless paranoid imaginary thoughts that might haunt prey, and I could think of many optimistic imaginary thoughts that predators might have about what lies over a distance hill. I think the difference would involve that cognitive apparatus being very special and original for humans.

 

[hedrick]

Thoughts are not physical, it’s a phenomenal experience. Even if physical brain matter movement is a necessary correlation for thoughts to also occur the actual thought itself is still not physically detectable.

In principle it's detectable. Instruments for doing so are improving. However the same kind of distinction exists with computers. Execution of a program isn't something that it's easy to detect with physical measurements, except as it produces outputs. In principle it's possible, but with modern chips it would be nearly impractical. Both thoughts and program execution could be dealt with best by concepts such as emergence.

That doesn't prove that physicalism is right. It might not be. But I don't think you can accuse it of being unable to explain thought.

 

[Radagast]

That doesn't prove that physicalism is right. It might not be. But I don't think you can accuse it of being unable to explain thought.

The idea is that materialism cannot explain the certainty of thought. Patterns of neurochemicals and electric charge are merely patterns of neurochemicals and electric charge. There is no reason why we should trust them.

However, we do trust the laws of logic. That indicates that the laws of logic are more than just frequently occurring patterns of neurochemicals and electric charge.

Unfortunately, if one is looking for someone to explain something that C.S. Lewis said, Michael Ward (who is cited in the O.P.) is completely the wrong person.

 

[Jok]

In principle it's detectable. Instruments for doing so are improving.

Absolutely. They have even had success with questionnaires to patients in comas, based off of reactionary brain activity. But we have to always remember what the claim of Physicalism is, that there is nothing about ultimate reality that is beyond the explanation of physics.

We claim that the brain activity of the coma patient explains the thoughts/feelings of a mixture of joy & sadness whenever we play her wedding song because it activates brain states A, B, C, and D. And we know this because we have a mountain of data from coherent test subjects who confirm that a joy & sadness mixture of thoughts/emotions in them also fires off brain states A, B, C, and D

But the problem is that it seems obvious to us only because we all have experience with the phenomena of a joy & sadness thought mixture, and this very real phenomena of the experiential feeling of joy/sadness doesn’t really need clarification from anyone because we all intuitively understand it, so it’s very easy to just lump the experience and the brain states together and call it a day.

But they are not the same thing. Data from Star Trek is completely confused about what this experiential feeling thingy is that everyone keeps talking about, he doesn’t have the luxury of making the obvious connection between the two due to experiential instances to draw from. Data however can run circles around all of us when it comes to grasping the most minute physical details of the brain states involved in a joy & sadness mixture because he is what the Physicalists would probably refer to as “The philosopher par excellence” because of his extraordinary comprehension of physics. The only major problem is that he doesn’t get it. This concept of an emotional joy & sadness mixture is not something he has access to, because access to this phenomena is off of the radar of physics. So it turns out that physics can not exhaustively describe anything that there is to describe in ultimate reality.

However the same kind of distinction exists with computers. Execution of a program isn't something that it's easy to detect with physical measurements, except as it produces outputs. In principle it's possible, but with modern chips it would be nearly impractical.

Well something being difficult to determine/detect/comprehend, etc, is very different than the claim that there is nothing there at all that can be physically detected. I disagree with reductive physicalism but I still think that the theory has a coherent attempt going for it. However this is my problem with non-reductive physicalism, it conflates having an extremely complex explanation of something that could really benefit from layman’s terms (such as psychological discourse), with no detailed explanation being available via physics. Thus undermining Physicalism.

We can definitely talk all day long about super complexity and the need to explain super complex things in layman’s terms because the explanations are just so far over people’s heads that they don’t make sense. But that’s not the same thing as the claim that an explanation in all of its complexity can not be given. I need you to give me the General Theory of Relativity in layman’s terms because the full mathematical explanation is gibberish to me, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a complete mathematical description available for it. It does not matter to Data from Star Trek, or to a super computer how complicated the explanation might be, the question rather is can physics provide the explanation or can’t it!? Reductive Physicalism says that it can. But I don’t even know what kind of double talk non-Reductive Physicalism is even trying to get at.

A Physicalist saying that a full blown physics explanation is not sufficient to describe what’s going on with mental states, therefore we need psychological discourse, seems pretty self defeating to me. Unless they were to follow it up by sayIng “However, we could still provide that physics description for you if you wanna try to get your head around it, but good luck!” A 70 page physics description of what a Jeep did while off roading for 30 seconds may be so complex that it’s totally useless to anyone, however such a physics description can be provided. Physicalism should offer the same thing, so I don’t even understand non-Reductive Physicalism.

Both thoughts and program execution could be dealt with best by concepts such as emergence.

I have no problem with emergence, but what emerges is off the radar of a physics description. This is precisely why Data from Star Trek is constantly confused, he’s dying to understand what has emerged. If you have a perfectly cloned qualia zombie who was programmed to perfectly mimic your neighbor Dennis, yet the qualia zombie is emotionally dark inside even though it can perfectly mimic Dennis down to every micro expression & brain state, then physics can not describe for you the difference between Dennis and the emotionally dead clone. But obviously there is a difference between them.

Let’s say that brain states A, B, and C causes brain state D to emerge, and brain state D always corresponds to the thoughts/feelings of anger. This means that two things emerged. Even if I were to convert to the emergence theory that says “No, Dennis’ clone DOES experience anger if you properly arrange all of the same physical materials in exactly the same sequences.” Even then brain state D and the thought/feeling of anger are multiple emergent properties of states A, B, and C. And these emergent properties have a distinct difference about them, one I can point out to someone with a physics explanation, but one I can not. Which totally violates what the Physicalist is trying to claim, that physics is capable of describing EVERYTHING. It seems like a partially incorrect list of examples of the Reflexive Property if one were to say;
A = A
B = B
Electrical currents from X neurons to Y neurons
= Being angry

 

[Jok]

C. S. Lewis makes that argument (in a clearer and more detailed form) in his book Miracles.

The essence of what C. S. Lewis says is that when we use the laws of logic, we are appealing to a level of certainty that can't be grounded in a few cupfuls of neurochemical goo.

I should pick this book up for myself! His articulation is rather extraordinary.