The missing link/intelligent design

[Wiccan_Child]

You may be correct, but so far you don't seem to be justified in claiming that to be true. We have no evidence that the mind can be explained fully just like that.

We still need a theory of how you get from synapses to experience. Until them all we can say is that something happens, and that the mind is the brain in some currently unexplainable way.

True, but the firing of synapses, damage to firing synapses, and a lack of synapses, are known to correlate to a healthy, damaged, and non-existent mind, respectively. The evidence points to the mind's origin in the brain - however that happens - and the brain's mechanics boils down to several simple processes (e.g., synapses firing), not one or two big ones (such as a heartbeat). This means that however the brain creates the mind, it does so using repeated instances of a few simple processes - i.e., emergence.

We don't know everything, sure, but we know the brain seems to operate on emergence (it's a neural net, after all, not a single giant cell), and all the evidence points to a natural origin to the mind.

I'm not claiming that the mind is spiritual by the way.

I know, I was just pointing out that a spiritual origin isn't rejected a priori, it's rejected a posteriori. More of a tangent than anything else.

 

[Paradoxum]

True, but the firing of synapses, damage to firing synapses, and a lack of synapses, are known to correlate to a healthy, damaged, and non-existent mind, respectively. The evidence points to the mind's origin in the brain - however that happens - and the brain's mechanics boils down to several simple processes (e.g., synapses firing), not one or two big ones (such as a heartbeat). This means that however the brain creates the mind, it does so using repeated instances of a few simple processes - i.e., emergence.

We don't know everything, sure, but we know the brain seems to operate on emergence (it's a neural net, after all, not a single giant cell), and all the evidence points to a natural origin to the mind.

I would agree it is natural... but I wonder what natural means. Could qualia (or something similar) be intrinsic to nature rather than a product of it? Eg: could a stimuli in some sense have the qualities of qualia even before it is experienced by a mind.

I know I could just be making stuff up.

I know, I was just pointing out that a spiritual origin isn't rejected a priori, it's rejected a posteriori. More of a tangent than anything else.

Ah ok.

 

[twinc]

I would agree it is natural... but I wonder what natural means. Could qualia (or something similar) be intrinsic to nature rather than a product of it? Eg: could a stimuli in some sense have the qualities of qualia even before it is experienced by a mind.

I know I could just be making stuff up.



Ah ok.

Your Alice in Wonderland quote reminds me that in old Calcutta in India at nightfall most just laid down in the steet for the night - a stranger to this city finding himself in this situation also laid down for the night but wondered how he would know on awakening which one of these was him - so to make sure he tied a small piece of cloth around his big toe - when he was asleep someone as a joke untied the cloth and tied it around his own big toe only to be rudely awakened in the morning as someone had him by the throat shouting "if you am I who am I" - twinc

 

[AlexBP]

He had a brain.

Okay, true. The article says that he had "little more than a thin sheet of brain tissue". Many parts of the brain that the rest of us have, he didn't. Yet he still functioned normally. In any case, that's just an instance and there are many more scientific experiments that are worth mentioning. Wilder Penfield, one of the most prominent neurologists of all times, is most famous for his "map of the cortex", showing that certain regions of the cerebral cortex are directly connected to certain body regions; stimulate one region of the cortex artificially and a person will feel sensations in the corresponding body parts. But Penfield's experiments extended beyond that to the whole brain. He found that some portions of the brain could be mapped to certain mental phenomena, but there were other mental phenomena that completely defied such mappings. Other experiments with animals, with which scientists can be much more free with inflicting damage and observing the results, have also found that mental phenomena such as memory cannot be localized.

 

[AlexBP]

The material phenomenon is the movement of neurotransmitters across the synapses in your brain.

Obviously you can say that, but until we get some specifics there's little reason for us to accept it.

But if you damage your computer, while your reception might be poor, it'd be obvious that CF itself was working as well as it ever was. Likewise, if damage to the brain merely damaged the 'conduit' to the undamaged mind, then it'd be readily apparent that the mind was undamaged.

In the analogy of the computer and CF, if my computer were damaged, I could access CF from a different computer and thereby verify that CF works fine. But imagine that I was like the Little Prince, isolated on my own planet with only one computer. In that situation, if I damaged the computer, there would be no way to distinguish effects from the computer from effects with CF.

Based on what I've read, there's been a minor revolution in how scientists approach neural damage in the past few years. There's now much more acknowledgement of neuroplasticity; cases where they formerly thought that permanent brain damage caused permanent mental effects are now viewed differently, with it often being possible to cure the mental effects by purely mental means even if the physical damage can't be undone. 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.

 

[Davian]

Obviously you can say that, but until we get some specifics there's little reason for us to accept it.

For whom do you speak?

In the analogy of the computer and CF, if my computer were damaged, I could access CF from a different computer and thereby verify that CF works fine. But imagine that I was like the Little Prince, isolated on my own planet with only one computer. In that situation, if I damaged the computer, there would be no way to distinguish effects from the computer from effects with CF.

Based on what I've read, there's been a minor revolution in how scientists approach neural damage in the past few years. There's now much more acknowledgement of neuroplasticity; cases where they formerly thought that permanent brain damage caused permanent mental effects are now viewed differently, with it often being possible to cure the mental effects by purely mental means even if the physical damage can't be undone. 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.

Could you provide some specifics - such as links to scientific papers - on what you have read that lead you to this conclusion?

This was published in New Scientist recently, but it is behind a paywall; however, an excerpt has been posted at a review site:

"The self: a trick your mind plays on not-you

Here's some good news, and some even better news, from the current special issue of New Scientist: "The Great Illusion of the Self."

You're being tricked by an expert! And who doesn't like amazing tricks? Even better, the trickster is your own mind! You're your own magician.

Well, you would be if you existed. But almost certainly you don't. At least, not in any way close to how you feel that you do.

In 10 pages, several New Scientist stories -- "Who Are You?," What Are You?," "When Are You?," "Where Are You?," "Why Are You?" -- persuasively present evidence that an enduring detached self isn't who we are, even though this is how it seems to us.

Here's an excerpt from Jan Westerhoff's What Are You?

"THERE appear to be few things more certain to us than the existence of our selves. We might be sceptical about the existence of the world around us, but how could we be in doubt about the existence of us? Isn't doubt made impossible by the fact that there is somebody who is doubting something? Who, if not us, would this somebody be?

While it seems irrefutable that we must exist in some sense, things get a lot more puzzling once we try to get a better grip of what having a self actually amounts to.

Three beliefs about the self are absolutely fundamental for our belief of who we are. First, we regard ourselves as unchanging and continuous. This is not to say that we remain forever the same, but that among all this change there is something that remains constant and that makes the "me" today the same person I was five years ago and will be five years in the future.

Second, we see our self as the unifier that brings it all together. The world presents itself to us as a cacophony of sights, sounds, smells, mental images, recollections and so forth. In the self, these are all integrated and an image of a single, unified world emerges.

Finally, the self is an agent. It is the thinker of our thoughts and the doer of our deeds. It is where the representation of the world, unified into one coherent whole, is used so we can act on this world.

All of these beliefs appear to be blindingly obvious and as certain as can be. But as we look at them more closely, they become less and less self-evident."​

"

Additional text

 

[Received]

Wiccan_Child, I've jumped in a bit, but is there any reason you prefer your view to functionalism, epiphenomenalism, agnostic physicalism, or other variations? Just because (as you know) there are neural correlates to experience doesn't explain the precise causal mechanisms whereby neurons become experience (hence, of course, "correlates").

Me, I'm down with Mysterianism: that we can't make the jump from physical to phenomenological, which isn't at all to say that there is no jump, only that we can't know it. It also sounds coolest.

 

[Davian]

Wiccan_Child, I've jumped in a bit, but is there any reason you prefer your view to functionalism, epiphenomenalism, agnostic physicalism, or other variations? Just because (as you know) there are neural correlates to experience doesn't explain the precise causal mechanisms whereby neurons become experience (hence, of course, "correlates").

Me, I'm down with Mysterianism: that we can't make the jump from physical to phenomenological, which isn't at all to say that there is no jump, only that we can't know it. It also sounds coolest.

Does that also leave a hole for you big enough to get stuff though such as deities, souls, etc?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Wiccan_Child, I've jumped in a bit, but is there any reason you prefer your view to functionalism, epiphenomenalism, agnostic physicalism, or other variations?

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.

Just because (as you know) there are neural correlates to experience doesn't explain the precise causal mechanisms whereby neurons become experience (hence, of course, "correlates").

Indeed; see my response to Paradoxum. Nevertheless, though we don't know precisely how neurological activity leads to conciousness, there is still sufficient reason to believe that it does.

If homoeopathy worked, this would be borne out by the evidence, even though we'd have no idea the precise mechanism by which this occurred. This is similar to the case with neurology: we don't necessarily need to know how neurology creates conciousness to know that it does, and I believe the evidence is sufficient to support the latter.

Me, I'm down with Mysterianism: that we can't make the jump from physical to phenomenological, which isn't at all to say that there is no jump, only that we can't know it. It also sounds coolest.

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.

 

[Loudmouth]

Okay, true. The article says that he had "little more than a thin sheet of brain tissue".

He had much more than that. Did you see the pictures at the site you gave us?

Many parts of the brain that the rest of us have, he didn't. Yet he still functioned normally.

He had an IQ of 75 which is close to being disabled.

In any case, that's just an instance and there are many more scientific experiments that are worth mentioning. Wilder Penfield, one of the most prominent neurologists of all times, is most famous for his "map of the cortex", showing that certain regions of the cerebral cortex are directly connected to certain body regions; stimulate one region of the cortex artificially and a person will feel sensations in the corresponding body parts. But Penfield's experiments extended beyond that to the whole brain. He found that some portions of the brain could be mapped to certain mental phenomena, but there were other mental phenomena that completely defied such mappings. Other experiments with animals, with which scientists can be much more free with inflicting damage and observing the results, have also found that mental phenomena such as memory cannot be localized.

There is also fMRI which demonstrates specific brain activity for specific thoughts.

 

[Loudmouth]

Obviously you can say that, but until we get some specifics there's little reason for us to accept it.

What specifics do you want?

In the analogy of the computer and CF, if my computer were damaged, I could access CF from a different computer and thereby verify that CF works fine.

Shutdown the CF servers and it doesn't work fine.

Based on what I've read, there's been a minor revolution in how scientists approach neural damage in the past few years. There's now much more acknowledgement of neuroplasticity; cases where they formerly thought that permanent brain damage caused permanent mental effects are now viewed differently, with it often being possible to cure the mental effects by purely mental means even if the physical damage can't be undone.

This is due to neurons making new connections. It is an entirely physical process.

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.

So far, you haven't presented this evidence.

 

[AlexBP]

For whom do you speak?

For myself and those generally skeptical of the claim that mental occurrences are "one and the same" as physical occurrences in neurons. It's as if someone were to offer the theory that there's nothing other than bananas. Then a skeptic comes along and says, "What is a car crash?", to which the theorist responds "A car crash is bananas." The response is somewhat unsatisfactory due to its lack of specifics. Similarly 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.

Could you provide some specifics - such as links to scientific papers - on what you have read that lead you to this conclusion?

The book from which I learned the most is The Spiritual Brain, by Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary.

 

[Davian]

For myself and those generally skeptical of the claim that mental occurrences are "one and the same" as physical occurrences in neurons.

Is this a self-appointed position, or was there a vote?

It's as if someone were to offer the theory that there's nothing other than bananas. Then a skeptic comes along and says, "What is a car crash?", to which the theorist responds "A car crash is bananas." The response is somewhat unsatisfactory due to its lack of specifics. Similarly 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.

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.

Now, you said: "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."

I ask again, could you provide some specifics - such as links to scientific papers - on what you have seen that lead you to this conclusion of yours? Do you have an explanation of what the "mind" is and how we know it? Something testable?

 

[AlexBP]

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.

Except when it isn't. Perhpas the best-known case of tieing brain damage to changes in mental capability is the case of da Broca's area, named after a 19th-century French surgeon who supposedly proved that patients with damage in this particular lost the ability to speak. This has been one of the best-established facts in neuroscience for a long time, and for generations everyone in the field simply assumed that it was true. But it wasn't true. More recent research has shown that what was long assumed to be the case simply isn't.

 

[Loudmouth]

Except when it isn't. Perhpas the best-known case of tieing brain damage to changes in mental capability is the case of da Broca's area, named after a 19th-century French surgeon who supposedly proved that patients with damage in this particular lost the ability to speak. This has been one of the best-established facts in neuroscience for a long time, and for generations everyone in the field simply assumed that it was true. But it wasn't true. More recent research has shown that what was long assumed to be the case simply isn't.

So where have they demonstrated a supernatural mechanism?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Except when it isn't.

Can demonstrate that the brain's health doesn't affect the mind's health, and vice versa?

Perhpas the best-known case of tieing brain damage to changes in mental capability is the case of da Broca's area, named after a 19th-century French surgeon who supposedly proved that patients with damage in this particular lost the ability to speak. This has been one of the best-established facts in neuroscience for a long time, and for generations everyone in the field simply assumed that it was true. But it wasn't true. More recent research has shown that what was long assumed to be the case simply isn't.

Err... that paper says that the damaged area identified by de Broca, and the area now known as Broca's Area, are not the same. The paper says that the inability to speak was caused by damage to another part of the brain. In other words, the paper is saying that the centre of speech isn't what modern neurology calls Broca's Area, but rather is another area altogether. De Broca identified surface lesions, but did not identify damage to medial regions of the brain.

The long-standing neurological assumption is technically false, yes, but the truth is simply that speech is located in parts of the brain other than Broca's area. As far as our discussion goes, the paper doesn't make the point you want it to make.

 

[Loudmouth]

Err... that paper says that the damaged area identified by de Broca, and the area now known as Broca's Area, are not the same. The paper says that the inability to speak was caused by damage to another part of the brain. In other words, the paper is saying that the centre of speech isn't what modern neurology calls Broca's Area, but rather is another area altogether. De Broca identified surface lesions, but did not identify damage to medial regions of the brain.

Even more interesting is that mutations in the human FOXP2 gene result in impaired speech and cognition. Once again, we see unmistakeable ties between the physical state of the brain and the mind.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Even more interesting is that mutations in the human FOXP2 gene result in impaired speech and cognition. Once again, we see unmistakeable ties between the physical state of the brain and the mind.

Yup. And there are innumerable mental disorders that have clear physiological causes - Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Down's syndrome, strokes, etc.

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.

 

[Davian]

...

The book from which I learned the most is The Spiritual Brain, by Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary.

So what were the most convincing arguments in the book for the "...Existence of the Soul"? Were they science-based?

 

[twinc]

Yup. And there are innumerable mental disorders that have clear physiological causes - Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Down's syndrome, strokes, etc.

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.

Brain is exclusive to each but mind is inclusive to each and all - twinc