John Searle - Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem?

What's the relationship between our brains and our consciousness, between the physical stuff in our skulls and the mental experiences in our minds?
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[@caricue]

I really liked the first exchange where both men acknowledged that they really don't know what the ultimate answer really is. This is how science is supposed to work.

[@caricue]

@Levi Khimesan Determinism is not the same as cause and effect, so I don't see any problem with the material brain using reliable causation to move through the world with knowledge and intention. It is an easily observable phenomena, whether it makes sense to you or not.

[@whoami8434]

I bought a separate amp so I could hear the whispers of this conversation.

[@shudhanshuverma8244]

Kanna

[@ThinkHuman]

Great and insightful videos,and awesome channel!

[@hnikudr]

Sorry for mentioning this again (I'm just assuming it has been mentioned a million times before), but can you PLEASE adjust the volume of your videos to something that doesn't require me to turn up my speakers to eleven? I'm asking because I just watched three CTT videos in a row (all great by the way, up-thumbed them all, like any gentleman would), before thoughtlessly moving on to a fourth, which happened to start with a pretty loud and pretty obnoxious-sounding intro (looking at you, The Jimquisition). I believe I permanently damaged not only my hearing, but also my dog's, my girlfriend's (she was sleeping in the next room and is since awake, but unresponsive) and my closest neighbor's hearings. So, please. It can't be all that difficult.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

6:45 I think if 2 brains have exactly the same material structure including the states of ever single particle in it, they also have the same "inner experience". Everything else would be ridiculous because it would imply that the mind at least partially exists outside the material world. I think dualism can't be explained without ridiculous assumption so I am a strict materialist.

[@kararrsameer9243]

And then you'll have the qualia problem staring at you in the face.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

@@kararrsameer9243 the qualia problem just means that you can't know someone else's subjective experience. But it has nothing zo do with my comment because my comment is a thought experiment which makes the point that experiences are determined by material reality, not something that really happens. Or to put it simple: if 2 people experience light with a wavelength of e.g. 500nm differently, the reason is because their brains are different and in a different state.

[@suckmecok]

The volume is still crap

[@murathanakordeon]

Awesome channel !!! :))))

[@vinm300]

3:40 "What it feels like to be a ....." Jack London "Call of the Wild" hit the nail on the head.

[@vielbosheit]

I have my volume at MAX and I cannot hear the conversation. Come on, guys....

[@unerror]

Yeah, I have pondered about how it'd feel like to be a bat. After all, they are mammalian animals, even though they use sonar instead of eyes it's connected to the visual centers of their brains and I have done paragliding sometimes so I can imagine what it could feel like to fly... But have you ever pondered about what it could feel like to be Windows 98, running on an x86 processor and 128MB of SD-RAM? I wonder, does it feel anything to be an operating system?

[@whoami8434]

I mean, what if “matter” isn’t really matter at all? Why do we assume it’s just dead “stuff” that has no teleology? I find myself being repelled both by all dualism and all materialism, and yet I still believe there is a distinction to be made between my mind and my body. Sure they’re intertwined, but I really don’t think they could be identical.

[@alexandria2243]

I agree. I don't think our conciousness can be put into either one of those catagories, it's much too complicated and has proven to be lol.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

I'll bet that if you can figure out how a sentence can convey meaning you'd be on track to figuring out how neurons can do the same thing.

[@catdancen6868]

I knew I should have taken lip reading in high school!

[@davesorrell9728]

This was a great conversation. The sound was a bit muted on the video.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Could energy provide inner experience of qualia / mind in the human brain? Can the human brain process energy, such that feeling or emotion is produced, like the processing of physical information produces an image or noise?

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

No.

[@KenshoBeats]

I doubt the zombie argument will hold in light of Husserl's theory of consciousness, and ones who followed it. Soulless maybe, but it's intentionality and directedness, toward me or humans, they always seem directed 'towards' the human prey, seems to make them at least conscious. Then again, maybe that's just zombie-instinct, it being dead and all..

[@AlexM-wq7in]

I would dispute his fourth point. We don't know that consciousness is causative. We know we have a mental experience of agency or volition which coincides with physical actions, but the fact we have this mental experience doesn't prove that this mental event causes anything. The brain could just be producing both at the same time. Indeed, we can fully explain all physical effects by pointing to physical causes in the body and we've never found any evidence that mental events influence physical events. We do know that physical changes in the brain cause mental changes in the mind, when you take drugs, or suffer brain damage, or undergo brain surgery you experience consciousness differently than you did before the change. We can even predict the sorts of mental events that a particular physical event will bring about. On the whole though, John Searle is right to recognize the directly observable fact of consciousness and qualia, the fact it has physical causes located in the brain, and the problems with both substance dualism and traditional materialism. He brushes off property dualism a bit too quickly. Epiphenomenalism, in particular, can provide a complete account of physical and mental reality. We simply need to map the physical brain states associated with qualitative mental states (e.g c-fibre firing and the experience of pain) and formulate fundamental laws that describe the relationship (if X brain state then Y mental property). As for the question of answering "why do these brain states have these mental properties instead of different ones or none at all", I think we can simply answer that "they just do" in the same way physicists answer a question like "why do electrons have negative charges, why not some other charge, or no charge at all?". There exist brute facts, and we can take the fact that certain physical states of the brain have associated mental properties as one such brute fact.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Can wave-particle duality of quantum fields transition from mental (mind) to physical (brain) and back?

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

No.

[@Navak_]

If "all conscious states are caused by physical brain states" then HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS? When I DESCRIBE my conscious experience, my conscious experience is the CAUSE of that description. I saw something red, my brain processed it as red, I had a conscious experience of seeing red, and then that conscious experience is translated into words in my brain, which causes my mouth to move. Therefore CONSCIOUS STATES CAN CAUSE PHYSICAL STATES. I DON'T LIKE THIS CONCLUSION BUT I CAN'T SEE ANY WAY OUT OF IT. HELP.

[@myothersoul1953]

There is an easy way out. You see red. That is photons of a certain wavelength, cause a reaction and that reaction propagates down your neurons. That is the consciousness experience and that is you. Conscious experience is not separate from you and more than waves a seperate from the ocean. Conscious experience are part of what the brain does and are not separate from it in anyway. Conscious doesn't cause or isn't caused by brain states any more than your mouth moving is caused by mouth states.

[@kevinfairweather3661]

Computers have an input then process algorithms then have an output which is the result we see. Brains have an input of sense data, then they process the information, but unlike a computer, our inner experience is the information being processed, it has a feeling because it is all vastly inter-connected.

[@JohnDoe-nm2hs]

The example about the person experiencing colour for the first time does not explain what it's supposed to explain. Of course she hasn't "experienced" the colour red until she leaves the room, because explaining the colour red in a language isn't the same thing as seeing it! When you see the colour red then your brain forms certain neural patterns that create an image in your brain of that colour, there is no way to "explain" the image to someone who hasn't seen it before because our means of communication (spoken or written word) isn't qualified to create the image in our brain. But that's simply a limitation of our form of communication, it proves nothing about consciousness. Imagine this, the girl in the dark room has never seen the colour red, but a futuristic alien sends a signal into her brain that changes some of the neural pathways in her brain to exactly resemble the neural pathways which cause the colour red to appear in its brain when it sees the colour red. Now she will be able to imagine the colour red as the alien sees it, without ever having physically seen the colour red for herself. There is no reason to believe that this won't work, and in the not so distant future we will likely be able to test this by injecting thoughts and feelings into our own brains with future technology that can manipulate neural networks. You scan the brain of a test subject when it thinks of something it has seen (like a certain colour), then we copy the neural pattern which causes that thought and create the same pattern in the brain of another test subject, and now both have the same experience in their mind. Why would this not work? When you think about the colour red then the neurons in certain parts of your brain behave in a certain way, we know this today from brain scans. If you reproduce this effect in another brain then there is every reason to believe that person will remember the same colour red, without ever having physically seen the colour red using their eyes.

[@canyegane2406]

John Doe I thought the same thing then found my way back to Nagel's original argument, the bat. Consider echo location which is used by bats for navigating, it actually creates some connections in a bat's brain resulting in a model which is similar to how we see with eyes. This is something that you can not replicate in a human's brain even with your high tech alien helping because our brains evolved differently compared to bats. What I mean by that is we simply do not have the hardware to run bat echo location software in our brains and that forever locks us out from experiencing that qualia. That I think still leaves the explanatory gap open albeit somehow reducing it to a more physical explanation.

[@alessandromezzavilla9487]

Pretty silly to answer this 5 years later but oh, well. For starters, your counterexample is actually compatible with Jackson's argument. Assume thst reproducing brain/bodily neurochemical states is enough to reproduce a conscious experience. If aliens induce the exact neural activity happening when we see a red thing in the scientist's brain, she has the conscious experience - the "what it is like" experience - of seeing red. It is the same as she going outside: Jackson's point in both instances is that she did learn something new, namely, what it feels like to see red things/a red thing. So, even by possessing perfect knowledge of optics and the neurology associsted with vision (which is taken by hypothesis) there was something left out. That is, assuming that replicating brain activity replicates conscious experience. One could wish to take further step, then, and challange this assumption. However Jackson's argument still stands even if you endorse this belief. Personally, I feel that it is obvious that brain states and consciousness are related, and that for every conscious state you have stuff happening in the brain. In the video Searle himself says even most philosophers would tell you that. What is unclear and divisive is the nature of this relationship. Jackson's argument, and really most "consciousness is irreducibile" arguments, refer to the fact that even if you perfectly describe and map out brain activity that still tells me nothing about "the what is it like" experience, so, the conscious experience of this and that. They are not against the fact that brain mapping etc tell us something important or related to consciousness

[@larrycarter3765]

There is no problem.

[@mr.knownothing33]

She wouldn’t be able to see the rose if she was in darkness her whole life. She has to learn to see as the brain develops. David Eagleman talks about this in his books. It’s all physical and the physical experience of the brain and it’s development with the environment

[@unerror]

I have a counter-argument for the Chinese room thought experiment. Yes, of course, John Searle himself sitting in the room, mindlessly shuffling around papers according to the rulebook doesn't have the slightest understanding of Chinese - but the room itself evidently does! Yes, the rulebook (and the room) might be just a shallow but successful agent of particular type of language task, like some of these novel deep learning systems. Those systems may very well converse with you, initially convince you that they 'know' what they're talking about, and when pushed they might use rather sophisticated rhetoric to hide the fact that they have no 'real' understanding of the topics. But if you continue to push them, sooner or later you will realize how 'deep' their understanding of the human condition really goes - e.g. when you are talking about the Red-ness of things, how it feels to perceive the color Red, does it seem like it has the feeling of the importance of Red in its relations to the redness of a woman's lips or cheeks, redness of a ripe fruit, redness of the setting or rising sun, redness of blood and meat, redness of the Chinese flag? In the end, in order for the rulebook to cover all the common sense humans seem so competent in demonstrating, it really needs to have the mechanisms to represent and process that common sense. If the rulebook and the memory processed by that rulebook isn't able to achieve our common sense of size and distance of everyday objects, our basic sense of perspective - no matter how clever it looks at first sight - it will inevitably make very dumb mistakes and give itself away. Conversely, if it indeed answers many of your questions like "I have a picture and on the picture are a truck and a glass of water, which seems to have the same size, so which one of them do you think is farther away from the camera?"; then it'd be safe to assume that it really has an understanding of our everyday geometry and how pictures are taken. Now, it wouldn't be John Searle laboring in the room who has the understanding, nor the rulebook by itself; the understanding is achieved by the Chinese room - sum of all its parts working together. Just like it isn't our individual neurons or brain regions having our understanding of the world and ourselves, but all of it combined. Obviously, this doesn't exactly refute the Qualia aspect of the Chinese room argument - we still can't be sure whether this room would have some sensation of conversing with you on top of its understanding, of its awareness of the conversation. Finally, the most important reason this Chinese room isn't a fair comparison against a human is because almost the entirety of the Qualia phenomenon is predicated upon our senses. Without the memories of what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we smell, what we taste, how can one have a sensation of eating a red juicy ripe apple? Without the memories of the feeling of acceleration from within our bodies, without the nerves connected to our muscles, how can we ever conceive how it feels to lay down, to grasp a tennis ball, to walk, to go on a roller-coaster ride? However the entire sensorimotor experience of the Chinese room is input and output text! If you would cut all the sensorimotor nerves to a human brain from birth, and leave only one input and one output nerve fiber to communicate with morse code, could it have any understanding, could it have any sensation as we do?

[@ChocoDrum03]

This is the most famous reply to his Chinese Room Argument. He calls it the "systems reply" and has this counter-counter-argument: Suppose Searle simply memorizes the steps given in the rulebook. He starts working out in the open. He carries out the steps outside the room. Still, he couldn't be said to understand chinese because we know from firsthand experience that the first-person sensation of understanding a language would obviously be different from carrying out memorized rules. He says that there is nothing in the room that could be the source of semantic understanding, regardless of whether you consider the parts individually or as a whole system.

[@biryolcu4921]

Yalanını sevsinler bir de "I have" demiş bunun bahsedildiği herhangi bir kitapta bulursun zaten.

[@ChocoDrum03]

@@arletottens6349 I think you would. I was only trying to relate Searle's own defense, who would say no, no amount of symbol manipulation can give rise to understanding. I think the idea that one can "simply" memorize such a complex task in the first place is wrong (as you point out). This reply is nicely illustrated in Dennett's Consciousness Explained chapter 14 (that is, if you are unaware and interested. If you already know, sorry!)

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Seems to me what's going on in the room is exactly what is going on inside us and if the room were shrunk and placed inside the head of an android and sensors and muscles hooked up appropriately, we'd have our selves, with a little tweaking, a conscious 'host' just like those portrayed in the recent Westworld TV series. We cannot see an analogy by looking in a microscope. We cannot see an analogy by microscopic examination of the ink in the encoding letters of a printed sentence. We cannot see analogies encoded by neural discharge frequency on the screen of an oscilloscope. We cannot learn anything about the nature of a tobacco pipe by microscopic examination of the paint in a painting of a tobacco pipe. We cannot see movement per se. We can only see things. But not really. We can only see the patterned consequences of the neural discharge frequency encodings stimulated by the light that enters our eyes. It's our culture that transforms unconscious babies into conscious people and it's language that does the heavy lifting, metaphorically speaking.

[@unerror]

Ears Audio Toolkit plugin for Chrome - If you want to hear.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Are energy and matter considered to be the same substance, property dualism or substance dualism?

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Physicists long ago agreed that energy and matter are phases/properties/forms/aspects of a unity.

[@davidzubiria3783]

The audio, please!!!!

[@stevenhunter3345]

It seems that Searle isn't so much arguing against materialism as he is against certain conclusions drawn by some materialists. He admits that consciousness is caused by brain function, so he must be, in some sense, a materialist. He just objects (and I think justifiably so) to certain explanatory models of consciousness proposed by some materialist philosophers and perhaps psychologists.

[@AlexM-wq7in]

Property dualists would also agree that consciousness is caused by brain function, and in the academic literature they aren't considered materialists or physicalists in the strict sense of the term. Most laypeople would say property dualists such as Epiphenomenalists are effectively materialists in the way the word is ordinarily understood (e.g a property dualist would argue that the mind cannot survive death and that our thoughts and behaviors are deterministically caused by a sequence of physical causes without any common-sense notion of free will). Indeed, property dualists are "naturalists", in that they think only the natural world exists and reject any notion of the supernatural (which is typically what people mean by "materialism"). The reason professional philosophers don't describe property dualism as materialist or physicalist in the strictest sense is that they posit fundamental properties of physical systems (mental properties) that aren't reducible to the sum of ordinary physical properties (e.g spin, charge, mass) which physicists talk about and recognize today.

[@Hermes1548]

Quality is addressed by materialism; for instance, Santayana's theory of essences. The rose *exists* and is material. The red essence we see does not exist, but *is*. Substitute *essence* for *qualia*.

[@derpionderpson1424]

But "red" is a part of the material too... Look up light wavelength. "red" is simply a reflection of only that part of the wavelength and nothing else. And light is material too.

[@Hermes1548]

Indeed. The rose is there, an existence. Some people see the rose as red, others as pink-red, others as rosy-red, etc. The difference is between facts (a material object) and essences (a logical term that tries to define a quality of that material object, which has a material appearance, colour, as you rightly point).

[@derpionderpson1424]

Ricardo Mena well we can measure the wavelength of the light coming of the flower and confirm that it is a specific wavelength. This is material. And a specific area in the wave length have a name (that color). This is also material. So the only thing that is left is whether people have been taught the names of colors in accordance with how they are classified. If that is what essence is then essence is synonymous with faulty teaching technics. I doubt that is what you think it is, but I can't see any argument from you that makes me think it is anything else

[@Hermes1548]

It's simple: reality is divided into matter and the names we use to define, understand, control, and communicate that reality to others. Names (essences, or ideas) do not exhaust that reality (critical realism), but we use those ideas to live and cope with it. It is materialism: survival, reproduction, living in this world. But it guarantees that you do not confound names with things. Things are not our essences we use to make reference to them. The idea "horse" is not material. So what is it? An essence. See more in Santayana (The Realms of Being, or Some Meanings of the Word Is).

[@robertjkuklajr3175]

Maybe we are all created avatars of our spirit or soul.

[@charlespayne7617]

I know its your signature to start your channel out of focus, but it gives me a headache. Besides that I enjoy it very much.

[@_a.z]

very low volume!

[@Hyrinm]

06:32

[@dreamycalculator]

8:40 why not apply this to human understanding?

[@leomacdonald6929]

Haha it happens all the time I decide to raise my arm up and it goes up. See that is a demonstration there of two separate realities one physical and one mental. Assuming causal closure which John Searle does would not allow for demonstrations such as this.

[@JohnDoe-nm2hs]

I don't understand the logic of the computer program argument, that is how it refutes the claim that computers can be conscious. You could implement a similar "program" into a human brain in theory by changing the neural pathways in our brain, so that we perform a function that is programmed into us without any understanding of how it works. But we are still conscious. So how does that disprove the ability for a computer to be conscious?? But just to be clear, I don't think computer programs of today (as in how we implement them now) can be conscious by themselves, because they are designed to fake consciousness and not to be conscious. However they can be a part of a conscious entity, just like our subconscious is a part of our consciousness even though most of its parts aren't conscious by themselves. However computer programs in the future may be developed in a way more analogous with our own brains and they could in theory become conscious. We first have to fully decipher the part of our brain that causes consciousness to appear. And even if we assume that something made out of different material than our brains cannot be conscious for whatever reason, what about an exact copy of our own brain that is grown in the laboratory? Why would it not be conscious? And if it is conscious, then that proves we can manufacture a conscious entity. And since we know thoughts and feelings are directly connected with chemical reactions in the brain (energy moving between neurons and other reactions), then we must also accept the fact that we can meddle with this process and make people function in whatever way we want. We can in theory "reprogram" a conscious person, and so the line between an "AI" and a conscious living person becomes less and less distinguishable.

[@errmoc5682]

A couple of things. When he says " I wouldn't understand Chinese ". What exactly does he mean by "understand" and in what kind of context does he mean it to have. The problem with communicating any of these kinds of philosophical problems is the definition/context of the language used. The example he gives is also similar to the philosophical zombie problem. Just imagine that zombie as a computer instead of flesh and blood. If the computer was programmed to ve indistinguishable from a human brain an exact replica it would believe that it is conscious. There isn't a way to know anything other than yourself is conscious. So in my book anything that communicates to me that it is conscious and behaves in a way of something that I would believe is conscious I will take its word for it and give it the same benefit of doubt I give every person I've ever met. So I don't think his argument holds up because all he is doing is describing one particular function of something that is to be assumed to take place in a much much larger capacity. BUT, that comes down to in which ways and in what context does he mean "understand and know" .

[@JohnDoe-nm2hs]

+Eric M I think what he's trying to get at is that computer programs are faking understanding or faking consciousness, but I don't like the example he gives. For example I think we would all agree that a holographic image is not conscious even though it looks real, it's still just lightwaves that are set up by a "programmer" to look real, there is nothing going on behind it that resembles our brain. The problem with computer programs of today is that they use code and algorithms that don't work in exactly the same way as our brain's neural networking, I find it very hard to accept that a computer program that is made in C++ or Java is actually conscious. I mean how would you code "feelings"? "1 = happy, 0 = sad". It's almost like using a muppet and saying "it must be conscious because I can make it behave like it's conscious!!" The primary difference between the muppet and the code is that the code is more complex, and I don't think complexity by itself creates consciousness. However I still think machines in the future may be conscious, but before we make them we have to better understand how our own brain achieves consciousness. I don't think neuroscience currently understands the process well enough for us to copy it to a machine. But I believe the day will come in the not too distant future when this is possible, the progress within neuroscience in the last couple of decades has been quite astounding.

[@chmd22]

The point being made is that consciousness does not seem to be required to behave as a biological creature, even as sophisticated as a human being. In practice, we assume (in the way we relate with each other) that we are all conscious, but no one really knows. It's conceivable that some of us could be "zombies", pure human-machines, indistinguishable from self-aware humans. To refute this totally, one would have to identify specific behavioral markers that are only possible by conscious beings, and I for one can't think of any. Everything, it seems, could be simulated. And in that case, believing that the simulators would end up conscious means also believing that consciousness is some sort of epiphenomenon, not a necessary property.

[@j7ndominica051]

Color doesn't seem to be an illusion. It is a power balance across a range of electromagnetic wavelengths, and it can be objectively measured by machines and agreed upon by human observers. It seems that Mary's knowledge of light and vision is by definition incomplete if she doesn't know how the theory applies in practice, which labels from language correspond to which sensations. How about if she looks at her red hands or in cracks of the grey painted furniture and walls? How do you claim than the zombie isn't conscious without understanding what counciousness is?

[@JustASnack]

I understand you made this comment over a year ago, however most of the questions you put forward have been answered in this video, if not by other philosophers. I tend to agree with Locke in saying that colour is a secondary property, meaning it exists only in the perciever, not in the object itself. Remember that we as humans don't understand colour in it's entirely. There are colours we simply can't see due to biological limitations. Colour also is not always agreed upon by human observers, though this is a fault of the language we use, as well as our empirical limitations (ex: some cultures don't have an understanding of the colour indigo. Some people are colourblind and cannot see the colour red) Still however, Mary's knowledge of colour need not be applied in practice in order for her to understand colour. A good example of this is how we've gained an understanding of what black holes look like decades upon decades before we ever actually saw one for the first time earlier this year. Searle in this video also does explain what concsiousness is, as he has in numerous essays and lectures. The commonsense understanding of consciousness applies, that is, the brain processes which results in and are the cause of a state of awareness, intentionality, subjective experience, and mental causation. Thus, if the zombie has no brain processes going on, no brain activity going on, he isn't concsious, but simply seems conscious.

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

Maybe Searle in a room with rulebooks doesn't understand Chinese, but the room with him in it does understand Chinese. If you replaced Searle with a machine that could operate the rulebooks, the machine wouldn't understand anything, but the room would understand Chinese.

[@lucasrandel8589]

exactly what I was thinking

[@usbsol]

The room mechanism could be imside the man... the man still would not understand 🙂

[@sampleowner6677]

How does he account for nonlocal consciousness? There are verifiable accounts of consciousness operating independent of brain activity.

[@ChocoDrum03]

Where?

[@sampleowner6677]

@@ChocoDrum03 kzbin.info/www/bejne/hmWoq6d9iq2hmNU

[@qubitz5906]

I think qualia is distinct only in that it gives us meaning, and makes it valid to talk about the meaning of something. It makes it valid to say that religion and philosophy deals with subjects the science doesn't and cannot deal with. However i don't agree with John Searle's argument about ontology, becuase to me the chemical state (or other state/process of the system) is identical to the qualia that are caused by it, becuase, for example your not going to experience anger with some aderenaline release, so the qualia won't come into existance without the chamical release so there's nothing to even talk about until the whole process that results in a qualia occurs, so i have no problem with identity theory- they really don't seem like they are in fundermentally different catagories to me. But above all i disagree where he says that the qualia is distinct from the process that causes it becuase it can only be experienced by a subject. I disagree becuase the subject is in fact another qualia - its another phenomenon cuased by the physical system, and its a cyclically caused phenomenon becuase it disappears when the system 'shuts down' during sleep and then comes back on again during wakefullness, so the subject is a caused phenomenon just like the colour red.

[@freandwhickquest]

I exactly agree with you!

[@JJ8KK]

Searle 9:55 _We now know something that Descartes could not have known: all conscious states are _*_caused by_*_ brain processes, there aren't any exceptions..."_ This is quite obviously wrong. All of our studies of brain activity during monitored "thinking" tells us nothing re: causality. All it tells us is that there is a _correlation_ between thoughts and firing neurons: when a person thinks something, the brain is 'doing something' at approximately the same time. If a 'separate' Mind's thoughts are 'seen' by the brain, there is going to be neural activity observed at that time. If you want to believe that all thoughts are caused by the brain activity we observe, then that's what you want to believe. But _proving_ that the neural activity _caused_ the thoughts is not something that is possible.

[@caricue]

I know you commented some time ago, but you answered a question for me. Searle's third thing we know about consciousness was that it occurs inside the brain, which I thought was covered by the second point that brain processes cause consciousness and thought. I see now that he was preemptively answering your objection. I would just say that it is a regularity in nature that everywhere your brain goes, so do all of your mental processes, feelings and consciousness. That's good enough for me.

[@JJ8KK]

​@@caricue There's a reason why I said what I said. It's cuz I've come up with a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem. This is what I've written elsewhere: This conceptualization of The Soul allows for its continued existence after the body it 'owned' dies and it _also_ allows for the existence of an actual Free Will that is not ultimately merely an illusion. It is also a conceptualization which is consistent with what we understand about the laws of science. Imagine a few hundred years from now, when humans will be able to create some very sophisticated robot explorers that they will no doubt send to distant planets. If an intelligent alien race were to encounter one of these robots, they just might mistake the robot for a "form of life" given that it appears to respond spontaneously to its environment and also appears to initiate/pursue purposeful actions. Through its 'eyes' and 'ears', the scientists back on earth who made it would be able to see what it sees and hear what it hears and we'd be able to give it 'volitional' instructions re: how to take advantage of its changing environmental circumstances. All this would be possible cuz we are able to send and receive info (sights and sounds) through the vacuum of space via electromagnetic waves. If a meteor were to hit one of these robots and it "died", we could say that its 'soul' back on earth--the scientists who processed its incoming data and gave it instructions--was able to survive its death. Now we know that sights and sounds can be reduced to electromagnetic wave 'disturbances' which can communicate that data to remote destinations. And we know that all the incoming data collected by the human sensory glands is reduced to electrical 'signals' which are transmitted via the nervous system from remote locations to the brain. With the use of this metaphor, we can suspect that perhaps the human brain is effectively a 'transceiver' which both generates electromagnetic waves associated with bits of information and detects incoming data via the same EM 'information highway.' The soul's thoughts would also generate wave energy which would be picked up by the brain, where they would be mistakenly interpreted by our unwitting brains as signals coming from its own sensory inputs. So maybe what Descartes was trying to locate was the point of this _interface_ (perhaps near the corpus callosum?) Just as a radio is constructed in such a way that it is able to _be influenced by_ a certain type of electromagnetic wave frequency/pattern, our brains are--by this account--constructed in such a way that 'invasive signals' from a remote Soul are able to interface with the brains that otherwise control our bodies. Imagine this 'data collection' location in the brain where electrical signal information from the body's sensory glands is directed to. Imagine it as a sort of 'control room' where the incoming sights, sounds, feelings, etc. are 'displayed' on a 'screen' area (actually 3D) which under a microscope is where electrical, and EM events are occurring. The Amygdala would be in a position to monitor this incoming data and when it 'perceives' certain images/sounds/feelings that have been tagged in memory as threats or opportunities, it generates an emotional response. Now imagine that these images/sounds/feelings are also transmitted via EM waves in every direction, and that a remotely located 'soul' is able to receive them and perceive them in much the same way the brain (Amygdala) perceives them. Which is another way of saying that the Soul is therefore able to see/feel/etc. everything that is being 'displayed' on the 'screen' everything that the Amygdala is witnessing and responding to. Because this EMF interface is so complete, the Soul in its remote location mistakenly perceives the body's incoming sensory data _to be its own perceptions_ . When the soul then 'thinks' about alternative responses to the incoming data (alternative, that is, to the Amygdala's emotional response program) these thoughts are transmitted via 'energy waves' in such a way that _they are displayed_ on this 'screen' in the brain's 'control center.' Here, the brain/amygdala perceives the soul's thoughts, and mistakenly assumes that they are just more of the incoming data that it is always monitoring, according to its genetically determined program (flight, fight, approach). In this way, the soul is actually able to _indirectly_ give volitional instructions (idea suggestions) to the body. E.g., the body may initially perceive a threat that it needs to respond to, but if the Mind is thinking of the situation as a possible opportunity to take advantage of, instead of as a threat it must flee or attack, then the biological 'instinct' effectively becomes overridden by 'reason.' Not because the Mind/Soul is actually giving instructions to the body directly, but only because it is able---via the interface---to influence what the body/brain _is perceiving_ . How powerful is this influence on the body's biological response program? Well, powerful enough to persuade a soldier to march into machine gun fire to his certain death. What does the brain of a soldier see that makes him 'choose' to intentionally endure great suffering? Answer: the Mind's perception that such _mental_ happiness/satisfaction will be gained from being perceived a hero that it will be fully worth the physical pain/death that is fully expected as a consequence of the effort made. Such a conceptualization of The Soul allows for the possibility of an Afterlife (for the Mind, if not the body) which would be a state of affairs that then give us _logical_ permission to embrace all of the meaning and value we see in our lives on a daily basis. Without such a conceptualization of The Human Soul, we are forced by logic to perceive all of our intellectual ambitions and life goals as just so much futile nonsense... So we may be remotely-located Souls that are able to interface with Brains. The brains are always running their own genetic programs (materialistic determination of all brain instructions) BUT because their information processing is 'exposed' to other "computers" (like a MODEM link) they can be 'influenced' to perceive the Soul/Mind's thoughts & read them as threats/opportunities they will react to, according to their genetic program. Minds don't "control" their Brains/Bodies _directly,_ but they do discover with experience that they do possess some "volitional" control over certain of their bodies' activity. Something to consider?

[@caricue]

After a whole lifetime of imagining all the stories I would like to write, I finally understood recently why you must start with the end of the story in order to write a coherent tale. It might be obvious to you, and it is super obvious to me now that I get it, but sometimes the obvious is the hardest to comprehend. If I come to the big finale of a 7 book series and suddenly realize the seemingly insignificant details that were dropped in the opening chapters of the first book were foreshadowing the surprise at the end, then I should not be shocked since that ending was written before the first chapter. You put the end of your story at the very beginning, so it's not much of a cliff hanger. Since your goal was to justify life after death and free will, the rest of your formulation logically led to this conclusion, and it seemed perfectly natural. My contention is that if your goal was to avoid life after death and discredit free will then your whole logical train would be completely different. I don't know where to go from there. You could try changing your goal to "knowing what is really going on regardless of my deeply held desires", but that probably makes even less sense. Anyway, thanks for taking the effort to share your story. Good journey.

[@JJ8KK]

​@@caricue _...knowing what is really going on..."_ The way I see it, the only thing we know with Absolute Certainty (thank you, Hume) re: the possibility of an afterlife is that *_we don't know_* if there is one. All we have is _guesswork._ To guess either that there is an afterlife or that there is not one is to embrace an equally valid/invalid supposition. The number of things we know with _absolute_ certainty can probably be counted on a single hand. I know that I am currently existing. I am experiencing a variety of sensory events. I can remember existing & experiencing things previously. I do NOT know if I will continue to exist 5 minutes from now. In spite of this foundational existential uncertainty, we do not easily countenance open-ended uncertainty. So we fill in the gaps in our knowledge with "educated guesses" that either 'work' or 'don't work' for us. When I close my eyes at night, I embrace the guess that I will awaken the following morning. Thus far, that guess has proven to be quite reliable. So _as long as experience continues to validate the guesses we've made previously,_ we find that they have predictive value and are able to embrace them with justified (by experience) confidence. Nearly all of the 'knowledge' we celebrate & share is ultimately just a compilation of those guesses we embrace that continue to 'work' for us. We find that different guesses we've embraced are deserving of varying levels of 'confidence.' In science, the guesses we have the least amount of confidence in are called "hypotheses." After research/testing, if the guess continues to hold up, we call it a "theory." With continued attempts at validation, if the guess continues to "work", provide predictive value, we may end up calling it a "principle" or "law." But ultimately, they are still ultimately _guesses._ If our experience re: the physical world were to change tomorrow, we'd have to change our guesses re: what we are dealing with. (I learned some years ago that Karl Popper advocated as similar sort of Epistemology.) When it comes to our guesses re: God or an Afterlife, we discover that there are certain *logical* consequences of embracing particular guesses. Certain guesses that certain religions make about 'God' ultimately conflict with other guesses that they also profess to 'believe.' That's a problem. I basically don't have a problem with any guess a person makes regarding "unknowable" speculations like those related to religion, so long as they are not embracing logically conflicting guesses. Re: concepts of "God", I have a fundamental problem with guesses that God has a 'personality' and emotional needs that are affected by Humans expressing approval or disapproval for "Him." But I see the topic of God as one that is quite separate from the idea of an Afterlife. Whether or not we embrace the guess that there is an Afterlife *_has consequences,_* cuz LOGIC. You see, if corporeal death = non-existence, then _logically_ it cannot possibly matter whether you were a saint or an evil monster, whether or not you achieved anything, learned anything, loved anyone or were loved by anyone. The "Story of The Human Race?" Pffft. None of it matters. Let's put it this way: if you _knew _*_with absolute certainty_* that there is no Afterlife, that this life is all there is (Imagine God appears to you in all his glory & tells you this life is all there is for you, that kind of certainty), then it cannot possibly matter what you do with this utterly meaningless Life Experience, cuz the consequences are the same: nothing. You might as well be a mass-murderer, just for the experience. Sure, you might wanna be a Good Man for much of your life cuz of the approval it will earn you, but at the end, facing annihilation, why not experience what it's like to be profoundly evil? If you know death is near, why not take out hundreds of other humans living out their meaningless lives just for the experience, before you kill yourself? (Yes, I believe that's why we see more & more of that these days, suicidal ppl who've been persuaded that this life is all there is, figure they might as well shake things up on their way out) It is a guess that _logically_ annihilates all meaning/purpose in this life. Philosophers & scientists think they are accomplishing something significant when/if they expand human knowledge of the universe, but if death=non-existence, then it cannot possibly matter what humans are able to learn, cuz once you die, as far as you are concerned, _it never happened._ Those who survive you will benefit? So what? Once they die, _it never happened for them._ LOGIC is what punishes us when we assume=guess that there is no Afterlife. The fearful feelings we experience when we perceive _futility_ in some action we're thinking of executing comes from the Logic center of our mental architecture. People experience that logic-based fear when they conceive of death as = non-existence, cuz that logic center sees futility in any Life Goals we might otherwise feel inspired to pursue & make sacrifices for. In contrast, if we embrace the guess that there _IS_ an afterlife, we are rewarded with validation of all the _values_ we perceive and embrace in our daily lives. This is the basic reason why I embrace the guess that we Minds/Souls do continue to exist after our bodies die, cuz it is a guess that "works." I do not embrace any particular conception of what an Afterlife could possibly be like, but I am quick to point out certain conceptions (like Hell) don't make any sense, cuz logically, they conflict with other embraced guesses. To me, a scientist or philosopher who claims that there is no Afterlife (cuz there is no 'proof' that there is one) is necessarily declaring that all of hiser efforts to gain knowledge are a complete & utter waste of time. Why bother to 'understand' _anything?_ Indeed, if we all knew _with absolute certainty_ that there is no afterlife, then we should all give serious consideration to the option of just committing mass suicide in an act of defiance against an Existence that might as well not be happening at all. For zillions of years we didn't exist, and then all of a sudden, we are "blessed" with Life as a Human Being, only to be returned to eternal non-existence forever after. Why bother? Fortunately for me, I've conceptualized how it is *_possible_* for us Things That Think to continue to exist after our bodies die, as they can be shown to _not_ be dependent upon the bodies they interface with for their existence and it is consistent with what scientists of every stripe believe are the physical laws of the Universe. I have a difficult time conceptualizing good guesses re: "God" beyond such descriptions as "The Source of All Knowledge", "The Entirety of All That Exists", etc. But when it comes to The Afterlife, I "believe" (embrace the guess) that 1) we continue, and 2) there is continuity between this life and the next one (what happens to us in the next life is affected by what we do in this life) cuz if not, then what's the point? If you ask me the details about what the next life is like or where we Minds remotely exist apart from our bodies, I don't have anything but pure speculation to offer. I just know that my guess is logically *_possible_* and that it satisfies certain mental needs that have been imposed on me as a condition of my existence. I consider them to be 'clues' to what the ultimate reality is we are dealing with. It's a guess, but one that _works._ So yeah, I believe what all the major religions believe, but without any of the particulars (details) that are so important to them. Call it a "Secular Religion", a very nuanced concept of God/Religion/Afterlife...

[@caricue]

@@JJ8KK Wow, awesome reply. It's kind of ironic that you are the first person in these comments that actually understands the logical consequences of not believing in anything. You totally nailed my outlook in terms of nothing really matters and it never even happened if I stop existing. What's so strange is that I came to a completely different solution to the issue of nothing matters. I chose to deal with the waking nightmare of life by causing as little pain as possible in the world. I committed myself to kindness and empathy, regardless of whether it was earned or deserved by those around me. I'm happy that you found a solution that works for you. Since we are having an intellectual discussion of a very interesting subject, I will point out one small issue that I find in your analysis. My experience has led me to conclude that things which are made up out of whole cloth, with no evidence or observation to back it up, are almost never true. As far as I can tell, a soul and an afterlife are totally imaginary and not based on any physical evidence. Their existence can make sense logically, since things that exist can't really stop existing in the real world, with the strange exception of you and me, but logic alone is not able to justify a belief. Unless you look at us like a tornado or a whirlpool. We temporarily self-organize as a way for nature to quickly remove disequilibrium. We bud off a couple of smaller swirls, and then dissipate like the nothing we were. In that way of looking at things, there isn't really a problem. I feel more like a sand dune that persists for a time, then fades away, but I can't back it up with any evidence either.

[@zebonautsmith1541]

why are you peering out of your eyes and not somebody else's. Why are you , you; and not me. What put the you inside of you and not somebody else.

[@lugus9261]

8:22 me learning mandarin

[@lugus9261]

我学中文

[@MonisticIdealism]

Searle didn't solve the Mind-Body Problem, he just turned it into the Exclusion Problem. This threatens his commitment to mental causation. If he were a Monistic Idealist he could keep irreducible consciousness and mental causation with no Mind-Body Problem or Hard Problem. To learn more check out *The Case for Monistic Idealism*

[@AlexM-wq7in]

I agree that Searle fundamentally can't commit to mental causation after accepting his first three points. But the problem of mental causation itself isn't that difficult to solve. It's been solved for more than one hundred years, we just shirk from the solution rather than courageously accepting what may appear to some to be a hard, uncomfortable truth (personally, I lose no sleep over it). The physical world exists, the physical world is causally closed, the mind is an epiphenomenal property of brain states. We experience a feeling of agency or volition which coincides with an action of our physical body because the brain causes both to occur. Our intuition that our thoughts command our bodies is an illusion, whereas the reverse (in that the brain is a physical organ of the body which causes our thoughts) is a fact. We are a part of this physical universe and are subject to its laws just like any other collection of elementary particles. The beauty and wonder of our lives is that our particular configuration of elementary particles enable us to enjoy a rich mental life for a fleeting moment in the vast ocean of cosmic time, to feel joy and suffering, to love and grieve, and to come to understand the universe which birthed us.

[@MonisticIdealism]

​@@AlexM-wq7in From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry entitled "Mental Causation" section "1.1 The Importance of Mental Causation": "Mental causation-the mind’s causal interaction with the world, and in particular, its influence on behavior-is central to our conception of ourselves as agents. Mind-world interaction is taken for granted in everyday experience and in scientific practice. The pain you feel when you sprain your ankle causes you to open the freezer in search of an ice pack. An intention to go to the cinema leads you to get into your car. Psychologists tell us that mental images enable us to navigate our surroundings intelligently. Economists explain fluctuations in financial markets by citing traders’ beliefs about the price of oil next month. In each case, a mental occurrence appears to produce a series of complex and coordinated bodily motions that subsequently have additional downstream effects in the physical world. Instances of apparent mental causation are so common that they often go unremarked, but they are central to the commonsense picture we have of ourselves." LINK: plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-causation/#ImpMent As we can see, scholars for the most part are interested in _preserving_ mental causation rather than discarding it. _Prima facie_ there really does seem to be mental causation and any metaphysical theory that contradicts this fundamental commitment is what should be discarded or at the least held to a higher standard for the burden of proof since one would have to overcome this strong _prima facie_ justification in favor of mental causation. I argue that idealism is our best option for preserving mental causation since there's no worry about a mind-body problem or exclusion problem.

[@AlexM-wq7in]

@@MonisticIdealism The fact we appear to have mental causation is not strong evidence that mental events cause physical events. We don't actually observe mental causation itself. We experience a feeling of volition, which coencides with our bodies taking a corresponding action. But now we can see those actions were caused by entirely physical events unrelated to the mind. It once appeared as if the Sun, planets and Stars orbited the Earth (afterall, people saw them rise and fall in the sky), but it turned out that a heliocentric model better explained the observed phenomena and that the appearance of the Sun rising was an illusion created by the Earth's rotation. Mental causation is another illusion, one caused by the experience of being a brain that can experience the feeling of volition. Indeed, this solution is far less counterintuitive than the Idealist notion that there is no external physical reality, and that everything is mental. It appears prima facie, that we live in a physical universe. That commitment ought to be taken far stronger than any commitment to mental causation. The most straightforward and logical conclusion to draw from the Exclusion Problem is to simply accept that the mind doesn't cause the physical movements of the body. Indeed we never had any evidence it did other than our own commonsense intuitions (which have repeatedly been proven to be false or innacurate by scientific inquiry). When the body acts, we can entirely explain the behaviour in terms of a succession of neurophysiological causes in the body (sensory inputs, neurons firing, muscles contracting) that have nothing to do with mental causes. We also have abundant evidence of the reverse, that changing the physical brain will cause changes in the mental events one experiences. One can directly confirm this just by taking a drug or getting a concussion. If all observed phenomena can be explained by a simple model of reality which is in full concordance with all the other natural sciences, but which violates a relatively minor intuition, I'm going with the science over the intuition.

[@MonisticIdealism]

@@AlexM-wq7in ​@@AlexM-wq7in _Prima facie_ means on its first encounter or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance" or "on the face of it". The use of _prima facie_ is that upon initial examination, sufficient corroborating evidence appears to exist to support a case. _Prima facie_ denotes evidence that, unless rebutted, would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact. At first glance there really does seem to be mental causation: I think about raising my arm and the darn thing goes up. As noted in the SEP this is quite an obvious and common sense proposition. This doesn't necessarily mean it's true, it just means that _prima facie_ we are justified in this belief and we need a powerful defeater in order to negate this belief. You say we now know that behavior is caused by physical events but that's not what modern psychology tells us. There was a group of scientists who tried this before and they were called "behaviorists" and anyone who has studied modern psychology knows behaviorism is dead... As noted in the SEP on the decline of behaviorism: "Why has the influence of behaviorism declined? The deepest and most complex reason for behaviorism’s decline in influence is its commitment to the thesis that behavior can be explained without reference to non-behavioral and inner mental (cognitive, representational, or interpretative) activity. ...Contemporary psychology and philosophy largely share Hempel’s conviction that the explanation of behavior cannot omit invoking a creature’s representation of its world. Psychology must use psychological terms. Behavior without cognition is blind. Psychological theorizing without reference to internal cognitive processing is explanatorily impaired." Source: plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/#WhyAntiBeha What _you're_ talking about is what is most counterintuitive and is out of step with contemporary science on behavior and psychology generally. As an idealist I believe there is an external physical world out there, I merely hold the physical to be reducible to the mental is all. Many like George Berkeley have argued that idealism is actually a common sense philosophy and is most at home with empiricism. To hold there is an irreducible physical world beyond the mental is what opens the door to the mind-body problem and external world skepticism and that only puts one at a philosophical disadvantage while idealism gives one the advantage. And we do have evidence that deliberate thoughts do in fact change brain chemistry. Jeffery Schwartz has done work with OCD patients and has done experiments showing that only a deliberate focus of attention on certain things will change the firing of neurons in the brain and subsequently behavior. Mind can change brain and vice versa. The only way to make sense of this is to embrace monism since anything else leads to a failure of mind-brain interaction.

[@EinsteinKnowedIt]

Body does not determine mind to think. Mind does not determine body to motion and rest.

[@weaseldragon]

The zombie argument fails because it doesn't acknowledge theories of emergent experience, i.e., the sense of self that results from the perception of simple inputs. I can feel like "me" because I have a stable history of experience (memories), environmental input (I'm cold. I see red. I hear shouting), internal "systems" management (blood sugar, adrenaline, testosterone, et al) and feedback mechanisms (I'm tired. I'm excited. My butt hurts. etc.) Consciousness may emerge from these inputs in a way that is entirely naturalistic and fully explanatory. Also, the Chinese Room example is an equivocation on what it means to "understand." If the program can translate chinese such that it can fool native speakers, a sentient program could claim to "know" chinese to a degree that is indistinguishable from not knowing chinese. Another equivocation rests on the definition of the AI as analogous to a human consciousness. A human-analogous AI would not consist of one program that can translate chinese. It would be a system of coordinated programs, one of which might learn languages, and another that might keep a tally of what languages it "knows." I could ask it the question, "what languages do you know," and that program might say, "English, Chinese, and Spanish."

[@lugus9261]

4:37 surely before the experience of red the "full" conception she had of red would of had some meaningless statements associated to it? A gap, and thus not a full account since she could not understand, to her full ability (he senses), the information she reported. We learn loads of facts about the reality of objects, and sure we may never know what it's like to be a rock, or to learn about a rock through the senses of a higher being, but if a human had all "facts" of a rock, but had never experienced a rock, they would have gaps in their knowledge of a rock and thus meaningless statements in their account.

[@bradmodd7856]

He thinks the brain causes consciousness - consciousness causes the brain, it causes everything because the universe is conscious. In fact we have never experienced the universe, we have only ever experienced consciousness....because it is the only thing that we can prove, and even then only to ourselves.

[@alexp8785]

What lmao

[@louisburke8927]

The opposite of dualism isn't materialism it's monism. If you claim materialism are you then not commited to a non materialism as a mutually exclusive set of things that exist? It seems like a useless category. Apparently it seems that a lot of confusion comes from useless, unnecessary categorisation of phenomenon.

[@thall77795]

Louis Burke Well, that's part of his point. He thinks that the language we use covers up what's going on due to what Descartes and his mind-body dilemma started (Funnily enough, a philosopher in the opposite camp AKA continental philosophy, Martin Heidegger, already pointed this out years ago). Also, substance monism tends to be split into three types: materialism, idealism, and neutral monism. Searle doesn't deal with idealism because he doesn't think it's worth his time. Neutral monism is still kinda out there and not yet really taken too seriously. So he pretty much says materialism, as in "there is just material stuff, no spooky mental stuff," is the opposite of dualism. Why? Because he wants to attack the two most common ways people think today, either "I am body and soul" or "no mental substance, just physical. The mind is literally my brain." Searle thinks that this kind of language has more to do with substance, rather than ontology. He wants to erase the mind-body problem as introduced by Descartes, and start with what we know assuming nothing further. There is a brain, and consciousness (1st person ontology) emerges from it. We don't know how or why yet, but that doesn't mean we should posit something like the "mental" as opposed to the "physical" in a strictly dualistic sense. It's just 1st and 3rd person ontology.

[@thaddeusroberts2393]

Searle's second point at the end, where he says, "We know something that Descartes could not have known..." is just wrong. Descartes wasn't an idiot. He was looking in the brain for consciousness. He had accepted the proposition that the brain was the source for all consciousness. Go back to Hippocrates and the idea that the brain creates all states of consciousness, feelings, thoughts, desires... this is nothing new.

[@o.k4493]

In the Jewish tradition, in the book of Genesis, we find similar things. First God creates the body, the material, the raw material, and only then does the soul operate within the body. That is, the mind comes after matter. Because consciousness is the product of matter. Hence that matter is not only what seems to us like a dead body, but has in it living elements and fundamental roots capable of creating consciousness.

[@djacob7]

Are we more than the atoms in our body? Yes and no. We are the atoms and their properties: their positions, speeds, accelerations, charge, etc. Three stones on a sheet of paper are more than three stones on a sheet of paper: There are the stones' positions relative to each other as well. There's information on that sheet of paper. The mind-body problem solved: The stones are the body, and the information they contain is the mind.

[@dougradtke]

That is not even close to the philosophical "mind/body" problem in philosophy but we have some lovely parting gifts, tell em what they've won!

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

dougradtke didn't understand.

[@dougradtke]

you didn't understand

[@realLsf]

I accept the hard problem of consciousness but see no good reasons to think that consciousness is some kind of external property. We simply don’t understand how the human brain works. The religious jump on this thinking that it gives some credibility to their magical claims but it doesn’t. We should remain agnostic to THPC until science comes up with answers

[@ingenuity168]

Louder please! 📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢

[@cinterongroup7371]

John is wrong. Leibniz solves the mind body problem with pre established harmony.

[@bobaldo2339]

The mind-body problem is a cultural artifact.

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

Yep.

[@camillebinford]

ugh i hate philosophy class more than anything I've ever taken in my whole college career i ahte taking the classes it ruins philosophy for me this this conversations i can get around

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

My first philosophy class had about a hundred students in it. During the whole course only 3 or 4 of us asked questions or attempted dialog. It was a mandatory course and I think that huge majority resented being there because they could not imagine any future monetary benefit in consequence.

[@UningAndFriend]

You guys are too busy looking for answers, isn't it up to you whether it's material or spiritual, physical or non-physical, it's all just a name? words? Before something can be measured it is called non-physical, if it has been measured it is called physical? even the quantum field which was originally something abstract but after the discovery of the theory was declared part of the physical? no matter how far you search, if you can measure it even if you can measure the soul and mind, then the soul and mind you will call a part of physics, take for example infinity, is not infinity including a part of mathematics and physics? all of that is immeasurable but is called a part of the laws of physics, it's all just how you call it, if this continues then everyone will become materialist just because they don't realize it's just how language works

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Yes, we are conscious thanks to language. Language is made of codes, alphabetic sounds linked by pauses or alphabetic shapes linked by spaces or alphabetic neural discharge frequencies linked by synapses.

[@paulmartin8643]

"No dualist has ever been able to give an account of how the brain can affect the mind or how the mind can affect the brain." I have given just such an account: paulandellen.com/essays/essay0205.htm "The way I operate is to try to remind myself of what we know for a fact... 1. We know that conscious states are real...Consciousness is irreducible. 2. We now know something that Descartes could not have known: all conscious states are caused by brain processes; there aren't any exceptions. Every single conscious state is caused by brain processes. 3. We know that consciousness goes on in the brain. That's where it is localized. Conscious states are features of the brain. 4. We know it functions causally." I agree with "facts" 1 and 4 but I disagree with 2 and 3. Read my essay to understand why.

[@SeanMauer]

What we know for a fact: the origins of existence, the origins of the universe are not found within the universe. This is not dualism, this is to say that the material we experience has it"s origins in a meta-material that we can only experience it's effects, it's cause is hidden, dimensionally. Welcome to the philosophy of meta-materialism, AKA the teachings of Jesus.

[@JAYDUBYAH29]

+SeanMauer ....and that is precisely dualism. own it, girl!

[@HigherSofia]

Kinda amazing when John Searle states that "nobody" has come up with a coherent explanation of the connection between the mental and the physical. Totally disregarding or just oblivious (intellectual laziness) to the thousands of years old analytic science of mind in the buddhist schools of thought, on this very subject. The whole culture of Tibet was centered around understanding this relationship for thousands of years.. and you don't think they found anything worth exploring? The arrogance of western philosophy in this area is shameful. Alan Wallace states a good case against it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIDXeIeVlsasbpY

[@MRender32]

Sean Carrol schooled him in that debate. Alan Wallace didn't have any arguments, he just repeated over and over his conclusions.

[@tedgrant2]

What this is leading to is proof that God exists, right ? Well, assuming God does in fact exist, what does it matter ? He already has everything he needs, which apparently, is nothing !

[@kenanderson7769]

Searle maybe be clever and a good thinker. I dont know. But seems to have a narcissistic approach to his rationale.

[@BradHolkesvig]

These people are guessing at what mind/body is. If they listened to the voice of the Lord that I've been speaking for the past 7 years, they will learn how God created His characters with a visible body and a consciousness to give him self awareness and the created senses give him the experience of living in a visible world.

[@LetReasonPrevail1]

+Brad Holkesvig I'm curious, what was god's answer to these questions? And how is god's answer distinguishable from you coming up with these answers on your own?

[@BradHolkesvig]

LetReasonPrevail1 None of God's characters create their own thoughts. He created all the characters and their conscious minds to be self aware and plenty of thoughts to experience. I just happen to be one of His characters He used to reveal His plan for His creation and teach me how He created everything we experience with His voice. When He had me Google search for computer programmers who are using voice recognition software to speak computer code into to build computer programs, I instantly knew how He created His program.

[@LetReasonPrevail1]

+Brad Holkesvig Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I asked you 2 direct questions, and you offered no direct responses. Instead, you decided to chat more about your supposed special relationship with god as a way to indirectly answer my first question. And you utterly ignored my 2nd question: Reminder: How is god's answer distinguishable from you coming up with these answers on your own? Do you care to take a second shot at directly answering my questions? I'm genuinely curious to know your answers. Cheers.

[@BradHolkesvig]

LetReasonPrevail1 Every time I speak for our Creator, every word I speak is a word that He is putting into my mind to speak to one of His believers. The words that I speak for Brad comes from memory of living as Brad. You can easily tell whether it is Brad who is telling a story or our Creator. Brad stumbles around trying to remember details when he tells a story but our Creator has the body speak continuously without stumbling at all. He can have me speak for hours at a time without hesitation and not hear the same sentence twice in all those hours of speaking. When I began testifying for our Creator on June 16th, 2008, He had me write three documents by putting three words at a time on the tip of my tongue. The fourth document and every document after that He put words in my mind. This was His way to train me to take words from Him that would contain information( knowledge ) that I have never known before. I had to write about the Beast, the last day of this first age and how we'll experience life in Paradise which is knowledge that no Christian or I had ever known before. In fact, He taught me a lot about how we experience life with our created senses. Life comes to us as invisible information that is processed into picture like frames similar to how cinema movies work. However, we are observing one set of processed information at a very high rate that gives us the sense of fluid motion such as the speed of light. The light that we experience is not something that is actually moving. It is invisible wavelengths ( information ) that are processed into waves of other information that we observe. This gives us the sense that light is real and that it moves very fast. Scientists who study the observable light and other illusions do not know for sure what they are experiencing. None of them know that we're experiencing life in a similar way we watch movies.

[@jesuiscequejesuis2267]

+Brad Holkesvig I'm interesting in what you are saying; skeptical of course (as anyone should be), but interested. I see you have some videos and I'll check them out. I've been a truth-seeker for many years, have an open mind, and enjoy hearing what others have to say about what they've learnt. Could you perhaps tell me: How would you classify yourself in the religious sense? Have you had any experiences you'd class as supernatural? Cheers.