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Well, this is the problem with our society as a whole. In particular, and most importantly, the problem with intellectuals. They tend to gloss over the inexplic
by debt 12y ago
Well, this is the problem with our society as a whole. In particular, and most importantly, the problem with intellectuals. They tend to gloss over the inexplicable things like consciousness and the mind. It's just too hairy and scary to try to tackle and try to understand. I think that's why we've distanced ourselves, ironically, from ourselves for so long.
We need to really take a long look at ourselves and try to understand what's going in our mind.
Modeling and measuring are different from genesis. Where is the mind? Should we even be asking "where"? What about "why"? Can we even ask that? Do we even know which questions make sense to ask about the mind? Maybe we can't use language to talk about it. After all language seems(again we have no real empirical basis for this) deeply coupled with the mind so we're going to use the mind to understand the mind? It's microscopes all the way down then I guess.
It is mystical simply because most people haven't really shed much light on it. So the mind remains a mystery. The mind just really, truly does not make sense. It baffles philosophers, scientists, biologists, lay people, etc. We'd rather tackle something like the inner-workings of quarks or the interactions of black holes with dark matter than even attempt to answer the question: what is even allowing me to communicate with myself and answer any of these other questions? Why do I think?
We can talk about personalities. We can talk about the brain. We can talk about language. But how do we work backward from those attributes of the mind to get to the point of genesis; where is the mouse in the wheel creating the thoughts writing this sentence.
No one knows. We don't kinda know. We, truly, have no fucking clue. We think it's related to the brain. That's it.
I don't take it as a personal attack because honestly our understanding is mystical nonsense.
- snowwrestler 12y agoI don't think this argument makes sense unless you believe that the mind, or consciousness, is a special "thing" that must be investigated--which is begging the question. Consider the possibility that the mind does not exist; that instead it is just a collective noun we use to refer to a group of observed behaviors, the way we use words like "climate" or "weather" or "wave." What is the smallest part of a wave that is still a wave? We can talk about the chemical characteristics of water, about momentum and turbulence, about gravity, but those all apply equally well to flat water too. Where does the wave come from? Does the concept of a wave make sense in the absence of fluid? These seem like silly questions because we know how waves work. But similar questions don't get any less silly just because we don't know how the brain works yet.
- quick111 12y agoYes we can capture a cubic meter of a wave at an instant of time and explain everything about it being a wave. We could do the same with a brain, freeze it in an instant of time. We might me able to tell what memories it is recalling now, what it is about to say, how you are feeling. Where specific memories are located, what behavioral traits you have. Neural correlates are the easy bit. But having captured and frozen the brains system state have we captured an instant of mind, consciousness or qualia? Can we say anything reasonable about those properties? Or do they suddenly stop existing when the state has frozen? Are we dead at that point? Could we step through consciousness like a debugger? Does conciseness or the mind only exist in between the break points, or state changes. Is consciousnesses the transition between two quantum states, and a lump of meat while nothing is going on? Slightly tougher questions.