Brain / Mind

[InReverse]

Here are some facts (the list should be longer but it can be extended if needed):
-Damage to certain brain areas causes predictable loss of function. There is list with types of agnosias here.
There are also documented cases of damage to functions such as memory formation.(H.M.)
-Split brain patients cannot verbally relate to information presented only to their right hemisphere, but can nonetheless react to it unconsciously. (ref)
-Certain substances alter the function of the brain (by known mechanisms) and also the state of consciousness (alcohol, drugs, anesthetics)

Question: "Is evidence from neuroscience sufficient for one to reject the mind-brain dualism?"
If not, how does one reconcile the facts above (and many others) with the separation between mind and brain. Also, how would you disprove "minds are what brains do".

[keithprosser3]

It might be that it's hard to give the right sort of stimulation. I don't suppose anyone has tried anything more sophisticated than a crude electric current prodded in different places.

It might be possible to get someone's arm to jerk a bit by direct stimulation of the brain, but I don't think anyone would try to get someone's hand to do open heart surgery that way.

[scourge99]

I've provided good reasons and evidence to satisfy that burden. Evidence and reasons you have yet to directly address.

I think your arguments are sound, nothing to criticize. So far you have succeeded in showing that minds are dependent on brains, not that one produces the other.

I don't think minds literally produce brains. Rather, minds are manifestations of certain types of working brains. Remember, this is emergence we are discussing, not simple causation.

You haven't provided ANYTHING to support your claim or to even explain what your claim is. The only thing you've done is be skeptical of my claim and make an analogy. But what is the analogy analogous to EXACTLY? If the movie screen is the brain and the movie is the mind then where does the mind exist?

Notice that this was not my claim, I used the analogy to explain what I mean by necessary and sufficient conditions. My claim was that the conscious experience is not identical to the brain activity, and I provided a simple logical argument for that.

I agree that conscious experience is not identical to brain activity. If i did then that wouldn't be emergence.

Likewise, supply and demand is not identical to any individual buyer or seller in the market. Supply and demand is an emergent phenomenon that manifests when there are thousands of self-interested buyers and sellers in the market.

We cannot imagine that which is logically impossible. For example we cannot imagine a round square or a world where my desk does exist and doesn't exist at the same time. We can imagine an experience of pain without firing of C-fibers, therefore existence of the conscious experience without the brain activity is not logically impossible. Therefore the two are not identical.

If conscious experience is an emergent property of a brain then it doesn't make sense to narrowly equate certain nerve fibers with the sensation of pain. That is, there may be some relationship between C-fibers and pain but its not necessarily restricted to a 1-to-1 relationship as you propose.

To what extent is it necessary? What do you think minds can do that are NOT reliant on the state of the brain to do? If your answer is nothing then doesn't that demonstrate that minds are entirely dependent on the state of the brain?

Sure, at least we can say that minds cannot manifest themselves in the physical world without brains.

Just a nit pic: Minds do NOT manifest in the physical world at all. They are purely conceptual and only inferred to "exist".

Whether or not manifestation of the mind is entirely dependent on the brain does not mean that one produces the other. Consider my example of watching a movie from a TV screen, which is entirely dependent on the functioning of that screen, but that does not mean that the TV screen produces the movie.

I asked how you would falsify that claim or support it. You responded by saying that if we could build a tv and it produced movie then that would falsify it.

I then gave the following response that you did not address:
1)We observe consciousness arising out of new brains all the time. Its called reproduction. So doesn't that falsify the claim that brains aren't sufficient for consciousness? Or are there some mystical forces at work during reproduction?

2) you have yet to provide ANY positive evidence. We can never prove we can't do something because there is no way to distinguish between not knowing how to do it and it being impossible. So the inability to do something is not positive evidence for the opposite claim.




I also asked you to explain what the analogy is analogous to. You can't just present a naked analogy and pretend its valid when I've challenged you to defend it. What is the analogy analogous to EXACTLY? If the movie screen is the brain and the movie is the mind then where does the mind exist? How does it come about through reproduction? Why are the capabilities of the mind affected by the brain (to use your analogy, if we damaged the movie screen we wouldn't expect the movie to skip or be damaged, but if we damage the brain, cognitive capabilities are harmed like memory, personality, face recognition, etc).


I also asked you to apply this same hyper skepticism you apply to the brain/mind relationship to other things like the relationship between gravitation and mass. If we apply the same hyper skepticism to gravitation and mass then we would be forced to concede that "we just assume mass is related to gravitation because its a necessary condition".

I'm presenting this example to see if you are being consistent in your reasoning or are committing the fallacy of special pleading. But you dodged and danced around my challenge, with the lame excuse that what i was saying was meaningless.

[instantc]

I agree that conscious experience is not identical to brain activity. If i did then that wouldn't be emergence.

But emergence is identical to its ingredients, isn't it? Take water for example, it is logically impossible to conceive water without conceiving water molecules, since the two are the same.

We cannot imagine that which is logically impossible. For example we cannot imagine a round square or a world where my desk does exist and doesn't exist at the same time. We can imagine an experience of pain without firing of C-fibers, therefore existence of the conscious experience without the brain activity is not logically impossible. Therefore the two are not identical.

If conscious experience is an emergent property of a brain then it doesn't make sense to narrowly equate certain nerve fibers with the sensation of pain. That is, there may be some relationship between C-fibers and pain but its not necessarily restricted to a 1-to-1 relationship as you propose.

This seems irrelevant, since we can also run the same argument regarding the mind and the brain as a whole.

2) you have yet to provide ANY positive evidence.

Any evidence of what? I claimed that the mind and the brain are not identical, and that you haven't succeeded in showing that one produces the other.

I also asked you to apply this same hyper skepticism you apply to the brain/mind relationship to other things like the relationship between gravitation and mass. If we apply the same hyper skepticism to gravitation and mass then we would be forced to concede that "we just assume mass is related to gravitation because its a necessary condition".

You are not making any point here, I never said that mass is not related to gravitation, nor did I say that minds are not related to brains. Also, I think skepticism is warranted regarding mind/body, since the two exhibit fundamentally different properties, and after decades of research we have no idea how the mind is produced. With regard to gravity, what are you suggesting it is that I should be skeptical about? Nobody ever claimed to know how exactly massed objects attract each other.


Plus, I think that the previous poster was right in saying that 'emergence' is not really much of an explanation. After all, movie emerges from the TV screen, but once we understand how the two work, we realize that one does not simply produce the other. Again, I'm not saying that this example is necessarily analogous to the mind/brain relationship. I'm using it to show that the mere fact that one seems to emerge from the other does not give us much information about their relationship.

[scourge99]

That's because you think emergence explains something it doesn't.

Ah, but I thought you thought is explains something it doesn't. Perhaps we don't disagree about anything.

What exactly do you think i believe it explains? I'd like to know.

My view is that we materialists (or monists, physicalists - the precise label doesn't matter) can be a little blase about the problems posed by consciousness. Nothing is clear or settled about consciousness, and it won't be settled until we have a proper theory of consciousness, one that describes exactly how it arises out of non-conscious processes and gives a clear road-map as to how an artificial consciousness can be constructed and guaranteed to work.

I couldn't disagree more.

We don't have to know everything about something in order to say something about it.

By knowing what constrains something and what conditions it operates under, tells us alot. For example, the world at the level of the brain is causually closed. That is, we know all the forces of nature that exist at the level of the brain so brains and consciousness must be some combination of those forces. The only way to disagree is to argue that there is some new unknown force that operates at the level of the brain that we haven't discovered. And there isn't because we would have observed this force and we haven't and have strong evidence and reason to believe there is not. So we can say with strong certainty that consciousness is somehow emergence from the forces we do know about that work at the level of the brain.

I am aware that is the sort of thing opponents of materialism say, but I say it not because I think artificial consciousness is impossible but because I am sure it is possible.

The inability to currently produce artificial consciousness doesn't do anything to harm the theory that the mind is the product of the brain. You have to have REASON and EVIDENCE why its not possible, not merely incredulity because its impossible to differentiate a lack of knowledge about something from the impossibility of something. Otherwise its no different than saying "inter galactic travel is impossible because we haven't done it and it won't be proven until we do it." The problem with this reasoning is that intergalactic travel is possible its just extremely difficult and time consuming such that its impractical. Artificially reproducing the billions of neurons in the brain appears equally as difficult, if not more difficult and impractical.

But we materialists have to admit to ourselves (if not to pesky dualists) that there are still huge conceptual problems to be faced and things are not as clear cut as we would like.

I don't wish to downplay that problem. The problem is we don't know how exactly consciousness emerges from non-conscious matter. Some believe this is an impossible problem to overcome. I don't think their reasoning is sound. Theories like "the computational theory of the mind" have shown a lot of promise in unraveling this enigma.

The fact is we don't know how consciousness works, nor how it arises in the brain nor how to make an artificial consciousness. Perhaps we will one day, but the fact is that as of 15 May 2013 we don't.

But we know how consciousness is constrained. Its directly correlated with the state of the brain and it must emerge from unconscious matter. We know this because we see minds emerge during reproduction and we know the physical world is causally closed at the level of the brain/mind. So unless you propose magic or some other extraordinary force that operates at the level of the brain/mind that we have somehow missed until now, then the evidence forces us to concede that the mind is constrained in these respects.

[instantc]

2) you have yet to provide ANY positive evidence. We can never prove we can't do something because there is no way to distinguish between not knowing how to do it and it being impossible. So the inability to do something is not positive evidence for the opposite claim.

I have argued against the reductionist view, since the evidence we have about the correlation between the mind and the brain does not justify reductionism. On the contrary, we know that brain activity and consciousness are logically speaking not identical, and it is hard to see how physical matter could have properties such as intentionality. Thus, in the light of our current knowledge, some form of property dualism is more warranted than the narrow reductionist view in my opinion. Perhaps consciousness is a non-physical property of the physical brain, and thus cannot be reduced to physical matter. This seems plausible taking into account the extraordinary nature of the properties, which we don't observe in any physical objects.

[scourge99]

I agree that conscious experience is not identical to brain activity. If i did then that wouldn't be emergence.

But emergence is identical to its ingredients, isn't it? Take water for example, it is logically impossible to conceive water without conceiving water molecules, since the two are the same.

Emergence is the manifestation of some NEW property or behavior even though the constituent parts of that thing do not possess that behavior or property.

For example, flocking is not a behavior of an individual bird. You can study avian biology until you are blue in the face but as long as you only study individuals in isolation, you will never understand or encounter flocking.

The same goes for studying neurons. You aren't going to find consciousness by studying any individual neuron. But when you put billions together, that form together to make complex structures, then you will.

We cannot imagine that which is logically impossible. For example we cannot imagine a round square or a world where my desk does exist and doesn't exist at the same time. We can imagine an experience of pain without firing of C-fibers, therefore existence of the conscious experience without the brain activity is not logically impossible. Therefore the two are not identical.

If conscious experience is an emergent property of a brain then it doesn't make sense to narrowly equate certain nerve fibers with the sensation of pain. That is, there may be some relationship between C-fibers and pain but its not necessarily restricted to a 1-to-1 relationship as you propose.

This seems irrelevant, since we can also run the same argument regarding the mind and the brain as a whole.

I don't understand what you're saying. Please elaborate.

2) you have yet to provide ANY positive evidence.

Any evidence of what? I claimed that the mind and the brain are not identical, and that you haven't succeeded in showing that one produces the other.

claiming that the mind is an emergent phenomenon of a brain IS NOT the same as claiming the mind and the brain are identical.

! THE

I also asked you to apply this same hyper skepticism you apply to the brain/mind relationship to other things like the relationship between gravitation and mass. If we apply the same hyper skepticism to gravitation and mass then we would be forced to concede that "we just assume mass is related to gravitation because its a necessary condition".

You are not making any point here, I never said that mass is not related to gravitation, nor did I say that minds are not related to brains.

I know you aren't but I'm trying to demonstrates your inconsistency. Instead of repeatedly dodging my question, explain how mass is sufficient to explain gravity. Don't just hand-wave it away as "we know its sufficient" or "its been proven". Because you repeatedly challenge my claim that the mind is the product on the brain on the basis that its insufficient. And I'm challenging you to demonstrate sufficiency on something else to see if you are committing the fallacy of special pleading. And you keep making excuses and avoiding my challenge.

Also, I think skepticism is warranted regarding mind/body, since the two exhibit fundamentally different properties,

Which is precisely what we would expect if the mind is emergent from the brain!!

and after decades of research we have no idea how the mind is produced.

Two whole decades. We better give up? Ignore the fact that we can now predict people's simple choices before they make them, operate machines merely by thinking, and a whole host of other achievements and amazing new insights and developments made possible by greater knowledge of how the brain/mind operates.

[instantc]

For example, flocking is not a behavior of an individual bird. You can study avian biology until you are blue in the face but as long as you only study individuals in isolation, you will never understand or encounter flocking.

So the emergence is not identical to a single bird, but it is identical to the collection of birds. The mind is not identical to any collection of brain activity or neurons. We cannot conceive that which is logically impossible. For example, we cannot conceive water without water molecules. We can conceive consciousness without any brain activity or neurons, therefore it is not logically impossible for consciousness to exist without brain activity. Therefore the two are not identical.

And I'm challenging you to demonstrate sufficiency on something else to see if you are committing the fallacy of special pleading. And you keep making excuses and avoiding my challenge.

There is no fallacy, philosophically speaking we don't know whether mass is sufficient for gravity, or how gravity works exactly. However, it interests nobody and it doesn't seem possible to investigate it any further, so for our purposes it is sufficient to know that massed objects attract each other.

[scourge99]

For example, flocking is not a behavior of an individual bird. You can study avian biology until you are blue in the face but as long as you only study individuals in isolation, you will never understand or encounter flocking.

So the emergence is not identical to a single bird, but it is identical to the collection of birds.

No. Flocking is not identical to a collection of birds. Flocking does require a collection of birds. But flocking describes a bunch of birds doing something that manifests as a behavior no individual bird possesses. Likewise, consciousness describes a bunch of neurons doing something that manifests as a property that no individual neuron possesses.

The mind is not identical to any collection of brain activity or neurons.

Correct. The mind is not identical to any collection of brain activity OR neurons. Just like a flock isn't identical to a bunch of birds OR their interactions with one another.
However, the mind is an emergent property that manifests from a collection of brain activity AND neurons. Likewise, a flock is an emergent behavior that manifests from a collection of birds AND their interactions with another.

We cannot conceive that which is logically impossible. For example, we cannot conceive water without water molecules.

I don't see how its logically impossible to conceive of the mind as emergent phenomenon from the brain.


If we cannot conceive of water without water molecules then how did people conceive of water before they learned of atomic theory and water molecules? How do children conceive of water?

We can conceive consciousness without any brain activity or neurons, therefore it is not logically impossible for consciousness to exist without brain activity. Therefore the two are not identical.

Emergence doesn't claim they are identical!!

Its seems you still don't understand what emergence is. Please revisit the examples like flocking.

And I'm challenging you to demonstrate sufficiency on something else to see if you are committing the fallacy of special pleading. And you keep making excuses and avoiding my challenge.

There is no fallacy, philosophically speaking we don't know whether mass is sufficient for gravity, or how gravity works exactly.

Fine. Then we don't know the brain is sufficient to produce consciousness to the same extent we don't know that mass is sufficient for gravity.

Which is just a long winded way of saying "we aren't absolutely 100% positive but we are pretty damn certain."

However, it interests nobody and it doesn't seem possible to investigate it any further, so for our purposes it is sufficient to know that massed objects attract each other.

And why is it "sufficient" for our purposes for mass/gravitation but insufficient for our purposes for the brain/mind? This seems exactly like the special pleading i suspected.

After all, we can conceive of gravitation occurring without mass so mass and gravitation are not identical. So on what basis do you accept the relationship between them?

[Jacob Simonsky]

[Replying to post 1 by InReverse]


Are you speaking as though the entire mind were a product of the brain only or do you allow that certain higher functions such as abstract thinking and intuition exist independently?

[instantc]

No. Flocking is not identical to a collection of birds. Flocking does require a collection of birds. But flocking describes a bunch of birds doing something that manifests as a behavior no individual bird possesses

Flocking is a word which describes the movement of multiple birds. Therefore it is identical to the movement of multiple birds. Consciousness is not identical to the movement of neurons in the brain, as I have demonstrated.

If we cannot conceive of water without water molecules then how did people conceive of water before they learned of atomic theory and water molecules? How do children conceive of water?

Children are not conceiving water without water molecules, they might be conceiving water without conceiving water molecules, which is different.

Fine. Then we don't know the brain is sufficient to produce consciousness to the same extent we don't know that mass is sufficient for gravity.

I don't think the two are analogous. Gravity is just a description of observable movement of physical objects, while the mind is an entity with independent extraordinary properties. Your claim is that they are analogous, but you haven't showed it to be true.