Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
Try removing your brain and see how well you think.
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Mind/Body Distinctness
- Thread starter Fluffy
- Start date
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
You are assuming that mind is embodied in brain.
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
Although I did enjoy your answer, try removing your heart and then you tell me what you think
Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
It's certainly not in my big toe.
The mind is the living, functioning brain. There is no mind without a brain (feel free to point one out if you can find one).
Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
I think I'd need a machine to keep my blood flowing or else I'd be brain dead real quick.Although I did enjoy your answer, try removing your heart and then you tell me what you think
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
Doesn't Descartes method of doubt suggest that a conceptualisation of mind that requires body is incomplete?It's certainly not in my big toe.
The mind is the living, functioning brain. There is no mind without a brain (feel free to point one out if you can find one).
My understanding of Descartes is that it is conceivable that minds might exist independently of brains. If you think it is inconceivable, why?
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
Just about anything is conceivable. The question is whether or not there is evidence of minds without brains, especially considering that the minds we are familiar with are the functioning of brains. Without that evidence, why believe minds without brains exist, or even can exist?
eudaimonia,
Mark
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
The problem I have is that I can comprehend that our brains can register things. On the other hand Phenomenal consciousness presents me with a problem in terms of conceptualisation. Processor like concepts of the mind don't seem to me to offer a satisfactory conceptual framework. Perhaps talk of p.consciousness is a conceptual confusion but, if it were, it seems to me impossible that we would experience it (p.consciousness).
My intuition is that we are currently not accurately conceiving of either mind or consciousness. I think that an accurate concept of mind would be able to dispense with the problem raised by Descartes which our current concept cannot. I think that is the relevance, perhaps it's a question of language?
Yerda
Veteran Member
What would you say a mind is, Stephen?
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
The seat of consciousness, but that's not good enough, what's consciousness?The question you put to me is one I've put to myself and I don't know.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Good question! I think that there is nothing that does not require something else for existence. For instance, "I" requires an awareness of a world of "things" (including body; breathing, physical groundedness, etc.) in contrast to "I". That is how "I am". That awareness is consciousness, and it is brought about by "thinking" (thing-ing). Although I haven't read his work in particular, I think that Descartes "I think, therefore I am," captures the idea that thinking (and therefore an agent of thinking, like body) necessitates the "I".
Here is another idea to toy with. Could "things" be considered the agency of "I"? Need we look any further? The contrast between things (me and other, "I" and "not-I") includes body, it includes mind, it includes thinking, it even includes a mysterious soul if we allocate that, in all its indistinctness, to being a "thing."
All it takes to "be" is to be in relation to things.
Consciousness is a thing.
A "thing" in symbol form; that is to say everything as we know it.
That's one way of looking at it. Another might be that if I look at a mountain from one side, and then look at it from another side, it might look like two completely different mountains, although it is one mountain. But in fact, what you are looking at is two distinct and unique sides of the mountain, and that whatever may be "the whole mountain" is not observable from any particular perspective. In that case, "complete understanding" ("the truth") is not possible and we have to settle for as complete an understanding as we can garner from combining the perspectives available to us.
If it is a result, how can it be non-existent? Doesn't it have existence as a result?
No, I'm more like saying:
I perceive A to have property p by one perspective
I perceive A to have property q by another perspective
Therefore, from each perspective A appears to me to have distinct properties, i.e. is two different things.
Mind is the common factor between the soul and the body. We realize our bodies through our mind, but we can also sense ourselves out of our bodies after death, through our minds too.
The mind is the core of the our souls, IMO. The body is just a machine we used on this earth to live, but we can live somewhere else in another condition of living without the need for the body, but we can't live as if we have a body in that condition.
The mind is the core of the our souls, IMO. The body is just a machine we used on this earth to live, but we can live somewhere else in another condition of living without the need for the body, but we can't live as if we have a body in that condition.
methylatedghosts
Can't brain. Has dumb.
I see what you are trying to say here, but I think it's more like
1) I perceive A to have property p
2) YOU perceive A to have property q
Therefore:
You're perception of A =\= my perception of A,
Therefore, we are not seeing the same thing.
Therefore, It is two different things.
Actually, it could be better put as
1) I perceive A to be q
2) you perceive A to be p
therefore, I think A=q, you think A=p
therefore, I am not seeing A, but am seeing q
you are not seeing A, but are seeing p
Therefore, two different things.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I think it may be many many things.
I think its an example of the nature of our language determining the thoughts we can have.
I think the word consciousness is incapable of conveying the range of complex meaning applied to it.
Eg-
If I asked you what are you conscious of here and now your answer is a memory of consciousness.
Calculations are performed consciously, that is a different consciousness than the one that experiences love.
We can be aware on a motor level of things that we are not 'conscious' of eg hollow face illusion.
We can be 'conscious' of things that are not physically there eg phantom pain in amputees.
It's like a bar of soap - every time you try and think of consciousness it has slipped into the past.
So although I think that and more, I still haven't got a clue.
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
I don't see how consciousness can be a thing. It can be an activity, or a property, or a relationship, but a thing?
eudaimonia,
Mark
eudaimonia,
Mark
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I would refer to activites, properties and relationships as things.
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
Why? Since they are activities, properties, and relationships *of* things.
I think that distinction is crucial for avoiding all kinds of logic errors.
eudaimonia,
Mark
Is an activity a thing? is a property a thing? is a relationship a thing? Everything is a thing.
Edit: Oops, it's already been answered.