Where is the Mind?

[harvey1]

In another thread QED and I were discussing IGUSes (information gathering & utilizing systems: a term that physicist James Hartle articulated), and there's one issue I'd like to hear back from materialists of the mind. Where is the mind? By that I mean let's suppose that humans can only "see" atoms and sub-atomic particles (e.g., electrons). That's all that we can see. Now, using this illustration, please tell me in conceptual terms where the mind is. For example, if we look at a computer, we can see the operating system as atoms in energized states on what we normally see as a disk drive. We see how atoms are energized, how electrons flow, etc., upon the booting up of that computer, and we see why the computer works at an atomic level. However what we don't see--can never see--is anything but atoms and sub-atomic particles being shifted about inside the machine. So, I think we can quite naturally conclude that the computer has no internal state that is "non-atomic" in nature. That is, the computer has no awareness of itself, and no feelings, etc. (i.e., qualia).

So, being that we humans have this subjective inner state, I'd like to hear how materialists and identity theorists of mind (i.e., mind=brain) can conceptually account for the mind solely in terms of atomic and sub-atomic particles. Where is it among the stew of particles?

[otseng]

QED makes a lot of pseudo-scientific claims and seeks to justify them by simplistic appeals to scientism, using such terms as "natural selection" or "genetic diversity" or "genetic programing" as though he really knows what he is speaking about.

And below he shows his apparent confusion in that he is even unable to distinguish between animate and inanimate reality! Is it any wonder he is confused by his own materialistic mechanistic philosophy?

QED is blissfully ignorant

QED, like all those who wear the blinders of mechanistic materialism, are unable to differentiate between facts, meanings, and values.

Rob,

Please present your argument without commenting on other posters.

[Bugmaster]

I think this shows that it's irrelevant what source of noise is used and that there can be such a thing as "intellectual containment" but I look forward to debating this matter further in that topic.

I should also point out that pseudorandom numbers are a red herring. It is quite easy nowadays to obtain some truly random numbers; in fact, if you really wanted the randomest numbers possible, you could build your own electronic circuit to generate them out of quantum noise (your TV already does something like this when you tune it to a dead channel). Modern encryption programs require a high-quality source of randomness in order to be secure, and they do use a combination of these methods.

[AClockWorkOrange]

The mind is a kind of bi product of a complex brain with complex chemistry.

[charles51]

"A Clockwork Orange"...the flat out best movie of all time. Haven't posted in a long time...too much of the "old in-out, in-out".

If the mind is truly a bi-product of complex brain and chemistry, shouldn't it be possible to exhaustively describe subjective first-person exprience in terms of the physical brain and its chemistry? Yet any attempt to do so would omit what is most essential to the experience itself.

[AClockWorkOrange]

A Clockwork Orange"...the flat out best movie of all time. Haven't posted in a long time...too much of the "old in-out, in-out".

Quite right, ole droog.

If the mind is truly a bi-product of complex brain and chemistry, shouldn't it be possible to exhaustively describe subjective first-person exprience in terms of the physical brain and its chemistry?

I stress "complex" and would like to remind readers that medicine has only gone so far. (oh, and is this not an aspect of psychology and psychiatry?)

Yet any attempt to do so would omit what is most essential to the experience itself.

What i imagine this means is that ones perception of an event does not neccessarily mean that the event was definitive.

Now, this is an issue of relivence. What does truth matter really outside of individual perception (if only to maintain universal constant).

[charles51]

Now, this is an issue of relivence. What does truth matter really outside of individual perception (if only to maintain universal constant).

Truth, if it has any objective reality at all, does matter in that it has the power to make individual perception true or false. It does not, however, have the power to make it real or unreal.

"Bliss, bliss and heaven...Like a great bird of rarest spun heaven metal, or silvery wine flowing thru a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now."

[AClockWorkOrange]

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"
- Democritus

[charles51]

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"

Perhaps you notice the contradiction in this statement. If all that exist are atoms and empty space, then there is no "everything else", including opinion.

[AClockWorkOrange]

Well um...i suppose that was the point.

No matter.

[charles51]

Well um...i suppose that was the point.

How can atoms, or empty space, have an opinion. And why should anyone take it seriously, including the opinion that only atoms and empty space exists.