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Weak attempt. The mind is what the brain does. The very same way your browser appears on your screen. Good philosophers, mostly eastern ones, tried very hard t
by lngnmn 10y ago
Weak attempt. The mind is what the brain does. The very same way your browser appears on your screen.
Good philosophers, mostly eastern ones, tried very hard to establish a distinction between products of imagination and adequate representations of what is.
The classic example is how the brain conditioned by hundreds of thousands of years by Mother Nature readily mistakes a rope for a snake. Notice, that there is nothing arbitrary here - just wrong interpretation of an appearance.
Modern, based on statistics hipster's science could be compared to a bundle of snakes.)
- MikkoFinell 10y agoDon't change the subject. Explain how consciousness arises, and describe an experiment that replicates it.
- lngnmn 10y agoEvery single morning one could see how it changes the states. For proper experimental evidences visit any hospital.
- MikkoFinell 10y agoYou said Nothing exist unless experimentally proven and replicated. Describe the experiment that proves you are conscious.
- lngnmn 10y agoI did.
- MikkoFinell 10y agoWhat you subjectively experience in the morning is not proof of anything. Since you continue to evade the question, I will only ask once more time: Describe the experiment that demonstrates the existence of consciousness in a manner which is "experimentally proven and replicated". I'm forced to interpret failure to describe the experiment as your admission that you don't actually require "experimentally proven and replicated" to believe things, or at least that you cherry pick some propositions to require that standard. That's OK too, no one is demanding that you be intellectually honest or self-consistent. But you should not be surprised if people call you out on it though.
- lngnmn 10y agoOh, please, cut this cosplay out. In every surgery room of the whole world you could see how chemical compounds administered to patients would turn them unconscious and back. This implies that the consciousness is a product of the brain, not some immaterial substance, divine presence or other kind of abstract crap. This also implies that it is not mere an abstract idea of so-called pure reason ("soul", "I" and "god" are such idea, "awareness" isn't), but a valid linguistic label associated to a real high-level biological phenomena (a set of coordinated processes). In every neurology department which deals with brain injures and pathology one could see the evidences that the states of consciousness and even its pretense or absence are bound by particular parts of the brain, which, in turn, is an artifact conditioned by the evolutionary forces and constraints of this particular universe and its physical laws. The way medical science went from Phineas Gage to modern maps of the brain centers, insights into how the vision sub-system works, etc. constitutes the experimental proofs you are asked for. The proof could be considered still incomplete (but nevertheless it is valid because there is not a single contradiction in what is experimentally confirmed), because there is no way to describe step-by-step the whole development from a single fertilized egg to you, but there is no doubt that there is nothing extra to that mere "mechanical" process, and that the mind is what the brain does and that conscious, which some people would call primordial awareness, is mere a product of the brain activity, which can be affected by chemical compounds and even switched on and off, which, BTW, happens every time you fall asleep (because it is not required) and wake up.
- MikkoFinell 10y agoI didn't ask whether consciousness is abstract crap, nor did I ask about vision subsystems (which aren't even unique to brains), nor did I ask you to explain the whole process of development from fertilized egg to me. Well, unless that has something to do with the experiment that would show that consciousness exists, which it may or may not, at least you drew no apparent connections in your post. I asked you to describe the experiment which proves that consciousness exists. Merely saying that consciousness is a product of the brain is like proving dark matter by saying it's a product of the universe. I hope you can understand why that is not a convincing argument.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]