So, there has been an age old debate that many of us don't participate in. Like many philosophical debates, it has involved one ivory tower man yelling at another. For the sake of visualisation, we will call one of them Tweed and they other Paisley.
Tweed has the stance that the mind, and its "thoughts" are not materialistically real, rather they are an anomalous phenomenon that we can not track physically. Typically, this ends up divulging into one of two arguments, neither or which are satisfactory for a scientific, or naturalistic, study of the mind.
A) The Descartian Stop. This "stop" as I call it, is a full stop. They say that the mind exists because humans have them and there is no connection (as far as physical causation is concerned) with the brain. This, my friends, regardless of what they say, is dualism. If the mind is anything else but the brain and the output of its functioning, you have a problem in that it is not compatible with materialistic reductionism- and that is the basis of science.
B) The Emergent Argument. This argument states that that the mind is the result of the brain, but there is no direct correlation between the brain and its outputs. Usually this is a cop-out because a philosopher hasn't received any training in complex systems theory and they are suffice to say that "the sum is greater than its parts." This simply is not good enough. To say that the sum is greater than the parts is bad math. What the philosophers are forgetting to factor into their equation is the mechanisms by which the thoughts and "mind" result from the processes of the physical brain.
Paisley, on the other hand, denies A flatly, and appends B. Paisley believes that the mind is simply the output of the brain. Enough said. We can put brain under a microscope, the pineal glad (contrary to Descartes) is not the seat of the soul, there is no soul, and mind = brain.
Paisley is basically right here. Scientifically speaking, if we adhere to exclusive materialism, the mind has to be the brain. But Tweed B is not completely wrong. We can also say that what we designate as the "mind" is more than just the brain because as the brain is a muted, physical, object, we deny its "life" (so to speak) by limiting it to its physical structure. Given its activity, and boy is it active, it is greater than its physical self. This, mind, is not (I repeat NOT) emergent. It is the result of physical structure as well as mechanistic causation.
For example, to go canoeing, you need water, paddles, and a canoe. If you paddle one way and your friend paddles the opposite you will turn in place, if the water is going upstream it will effect the behaviour of a canoe, the shape of a canoe also effects the behaviour of your little flotilla. However, the water, the paddle, and the canoe alone are not sufficient to explain what happens to your boat trip.
In short, the brain is necessary but not sufficient for "mind" and non-materialistic emergence leaves you up shit creek without a paddle.
Tweed has the stance that the mind, and its "thoughts" are not materialistically real, rather they are an anomalous phenomenon that we can not track physically. Typically, this ends up divulging into one of two arguments, neither or which are satisfactory for a scientific, or naturalistic, study of the mind.
A) The Descartian Stop. This "stop" as I call it, is a full stop. They say that the mind exists because humans have them and there is no connection (as far as physical causation is concerned) with the brain. This, my friends, regardless of what they say, is dualism. If the mind is anything else but the brain and the output of its functioning, you have a problem in that it is not compatible with materialistic reductionism- and that is the basis of science.
B) The Emergent Argument. This argument states that that the mind is the result of the brain, but there is no direct correlation between the brain and its outputs. Usually this is a cop-out because a philosopher hasn't received any training in complex systems theory and they are suffice to say that "the sum is greater than its parts." This simply is not good enough. To say that the sum is greater than the parts is bad math. What the philosophers are forgetting to factor into their equation is the mechanisms by which the thoughts and "mind" result from the processes of the physical brain.
Paisley, on the other hand, denies A flatly, and appends B. Paisley believes that the mind is simply the output of the brain. Enough said. We can put brain under a microscope, the pineal glad (contrary to Descartes) is not the seat of the soul, there is no soul, and mind = brain.
Paisley is basically right here. Scientifically speaking, if we adhere to exclusive materialism, the mind has to be the brain. But Tweed B is not completely wrong. We can also say that what we designate as the "mind" is more than just the brain because as the brain is a muted, physical, object, we deny its "life" (so to speak) by limiting it to its physical structure. Given its activity, and boy is it active, it is greater than its physical self. This, mind, is not (I repeat NOT) emergent. It is the result of physical structure as well as mechanistic causation.
For example, to go canoeing, you need water, paddles, and a canoe. If you paddle one way and your friend paddles the opposite you will turn in place, if the water is going upstream it will effect the behaviour of a canoe, the shape of a canoe also effects the behaviour of your little flotilla. However, the water, the paddle, and the canoe alone are not sufficient to explain what happens to your boat trip.
In short, the brain is necessary but not sufficient for "mind" and non-materialistic emergence leaves you up shit creek without a paddle.
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