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> Materialism cannot account for the mental, and so it doesn't matter if it's simpler here anyway because it can't do the job. A LOT of people would disagree

> Materialism cannot account for the mental, and so it doesn't matter if it's simpler here anyway because it can't do the job. A LOT of people would disagree with this. Practically every neuroscientist, most AI researchers, etc... We know pretty well how the "material" brain works, and how this leads to intelligence, etc... We don't know every detail exactly, but there is a clear path leading there. There are precisely zero coherent non-material models for cognition. They're about as concrete as a random shower thought ("what if we have a ghost inside us?"). Fundamentally, all non-materialist models would make at least one testable prediction: brains would have to operate in ways that defy their physical natures. Signals go in and then instead of whatever it is that nerves do, something else happens, and then signals based on that something else go out. If you say that everything proceeds as per whatever the nerves do, then you're a materialist. If you say the nerves are superfluous to cognition, then you should be fine with having your brains scooped out. Pick one.

Winsaucerer 4y ago
This is clearly an area that you are not much familiar with, and this is evidenced by the fact that you think that the following give some reason to think I'm wrong: * Being a neuroscientist, or AI researcher, etc * Drugs having a large impact on consciousness/experience * Understanding how the brain works and its relationship to intelligence I have a passing familiarity for example with AI/Machine Learning, and I think it's a fruitful and clever line of inquiry to try and build computer systems that model how the brain works, and I think that could get us very far in replicating human intelligence. I don't see how any of the things you mention go any distance to explaining how, on the materialist view, we can explain the phenomenology of experience. I note you mention 'cognition' and 'intelligence', but those words are unclear enough that it makes it easy for you to avoid talking about the actual thing that materialism cannot explain, and instead talk about the easy problems. > If you say that everything proceeds as per whatever the nerves do, then you're a materialist. > If you say the nerves are superfluous to cognition, then you should be fine with having your brains scooped out. This is a false dichotomy. One can think, as I do, that our nerves and neurons and brain in general are integrally involved with our intelligence and that if you destroy the brain then you destroy our intelligence and ability to think at all, but ALSO think that there is nothing but mental stuff and that physicalism is false. I did describe this in my original post you replied to. I described a view of the world in which the brain is a key part of the story about what experiences we have, but also that our brains ultimately reduce to some idea in God's mind about a physical world.

Winsaucerer 4y ago

This is clearly an area that you are not much familiar with, and this is evidenced by the fact that you think that the following give some reason to think I'm wrong: * Being a neuroscientist, or AI researcher, etc * Drugs having a large impact on consciousness/experience * Understanding how the brain works and its relationship to intelligence I have a passing familiarity for example with AI/Machine Learning, and I think it's a fruitful and clever line of inquiry to try and build computer systems that model how the brain works, and I think that could get us very far in replicating human intelligence. I don't see how any of the things you mention go any distance to explaining how, on the materialist view, we can explain the phenomenology of experience. I note you mention 'cognition' and 'intelligence', but those words are unclear enough that it makes it easy for you to avoid talking about the actual thing that materialism cannot explain, and instead talk about the easy problems. > If you say that everything proceeds as per whatever the nerves do, then you're a materialist. > If you say the nerves are superfluous to cognition, then you should be fine with having your brains scooped out. This is a false dichotomy. One can think, as I do, that our nerves and neurons and brain in general are integrally involved with our intelligence and that if you destroy the brain then you destroy our intelligence and ability to think at all, but ALSO think that there is nothing but mental stuff and that physicalism is false. I did describe this in my original post you replied to. I described a view of the world in which the brain is a key part of the story about what experiences we have, but also that our brains ultimately reduce to some idea in God's mind about a physical world.