tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post1864079755208749172..comments2024-01-16T09:31:45.073-04:00Comments on Anderson Brown's Philosophy Blog: Elan MentalAnderson Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-39317977118142268472011-08-19T04:12:54.477-04:002011-08-19T04:12:54.477-04:00'if the argument is that brains are conscious ...'if the argument is that brains are conscious because neurons are conscious we have once again committed the hard-to-avoid error of including something mental in our purported recipe for the mental.'<br /><br />What if the most important type of neurons for our purposes are 'mirror neurons'? What if, what drives stuff mirror neurons do is a sort of Girardian mimesis? What if the only Evolutionary model giving rise to, and thus in a sense 'explaining'- the sort of activity we call philosophy of Mind, incorporates mirror neurons so that instead of embodied cognition you have cloud sourced cognition? Why would phenomenal states not be multiply realizable if that's the solution which is Evolutionarily stable? Girardian mimesis is about wanting to be the guy with phenomenal state 'x'- I don't just want to sleep with Odette but be Swann sleeping with Odette. If Intentional States always refer back to a sort of Evolutionary drive towards Girardian mimesis of Phenomenal states then they aren't multiply realizable because information is lost about hysteresis effects arising from phenomenal state mimesis is being thrown out along the way . But if information is thrown away by a system, it wont show law-like behavior or conserved properties.It's not a good system to be looking at.windwheelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-29793546523903096812011-07-27T19:17:01.524-04:002011-07-27T19:17:01.524-04:00Hi, Mitchell Monaghan here,
Yes, I agree that p...Hi, Mitchell Monaghan here,<br /><br /><br /><br />Yes, I agree that people can be described as generally what the universe is---since people are part of the universe.<br /><br /> An explanation can be produced for everything and anything. One could even create an explanation to account for why there should be such a thing as and explanation or why the universe or why even existence itself.<br />But folk differ as to what a valid explanation is. <br /> But surely, you are not claiming that explanation determines the nature of things. Rather, does not the nature of things produce the explanation? Are not words and thought part of a wider thing, a wider existence? <br /> Surely you recognize that there is something prior to explanation, prior to thought; that there is something whether it is explained or not and whether you speak or not. <br />You don't need to explain the taste of a peach to taste it. You don't need to explain that something is, existence is, in order to be that or in that.<br /> What caused the universe? I may say that the universe was caused by<br />existence generally, as was your body and thought.<br /> And what caused existence? If existence is considered a concept and concepts are mind--then mind causes existence. <br /> And what causes mind? Well, if we get reductive about it, the brain.<br /> And what caused the brain? The universe. <br /> And what caused the universe? existence taken as a generality.<br /> And what caused existence?......<br />.....and so on. <br /> Yet in all this "explanation" is there not a something else beyond explanations? Something that needs no explanation, that is prior to explanation?<br /> I think no word or concept is needed for it and that if you and I had never thought in terms of explanation or description or definition or the universe or anything--still something is. <br /> Does that need anything at all, need an explanation or a formulation? <br /> Seems entirely obviously unmistakably patent---so obvious that it is ignored, like a fish who says, "what water?, I don't see any water".<br /> One may say that explanations are important in the realm of human life or even in the life of the universe, but if the universe end what significance is an explanation? <br /> And is there not silence there behind all thought? Is not the end of thought, the fall to silence of each thought, present even now? Are we not as much of silence as of thought? Is this not our daily experience?<br /> Do we then, not see ourselves beyond thought every moment?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-45640550959298312512011-05-17T12:26:17.344-04:002011-05-17T12:26:17.344-04:00Christopher Faille writes:
Let me see if I unde...Christopher Faille writes:<br /> <br /><br />Let me see if I understand you. I’ll take a broad view here of your posts going back many months, to when I first started following this blog.<br /><br />You believe that there is only one defensible form of dualism: the one that distinguishes between matter and form. It is possible (on roughly Platonic grounds) that the existence of a stuff and the existence of mathematical laws, formal regularities, exhibited by this stuff, are two quite distinct irreducibles.<br /><br />So let us use the term (mine, not yours) “shaped stuff” for the type of matter we actually find. Once we’ve acknowledged the duality within shaped stuff, we have done everything we need to do for dualism. Everything else, including all human facts about personality, intentionality, etc, can be explained as facts about shaped stuff, specifically the shaped things we call our bodies and their behavior, without creating or tolerating further schisms in the world or our view thereof.<br /><br />How do we get to this result? For the most part, you get to it by considering an array of arguments that dualists of various sorts employ. All of these arguments make counter-factual or at least highly hypothetical assumptions: about color inversion, zombies, or science fictional mind transference. Your basic recurring move is to say that the arguments, in establishing these premises, presume their dualistic conclusions. They put the rabbit (something not reducible to the body and its behaviors) into the hat off stage, then they showily produce the rabbit on stage, like a bad magician.<br /><br />You point out that the arguments beg the question. Thus you believe your own anti-dualistic conclusions (aside from that initial dualism) established: or at least rendered plausible.<br /><br />My own view in mind/body issues is somewhat different. I’m not a full-fledged dualist, but I do believe there is a mystery here you haven’t reached, and my views on that mystery are mostly formed by Roger Penrose, John Searle [speaking of counter-factuals, have you mentioned the Chinese room and the argument over strong AI?] and behind them both, William James.<br /><br />But my objection to your reasoning is in essence this: the case that there is more to human personality than you have made room for is not dependent on the question-begging sorts of chalkboard-bound arguments you have allowed at all, but arises from real-world experiences. <br /><br />Such as this: http://cfaille.blogspot.com/2010/05/personal-identity-part-two.html<br /><br />That particular blog post of mine pursued a point discussed in your blog under the rubric of continuity. Continuity of identity is an iffy thing, and the notion that I am the same person as a was ten years ago is useful in some respects, misleading in others. Certainly if we do suppose a continuity, it is not the same for the ‘self’ whatever-that-means as it is for the body, as instances of fugue indicate.Anderson Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.com