The Mind-Brain Identity Theory

[@SkiRedMtn]

“I have to talk for 3-4 minutes about the word ‘is.’” Your reaction to this statement is going to govern whether you love, hate, or just endure Philosophy.

[@Littleprinceleon]

An analogue in math is (is?) a proof of 1+1=2 😉

[@puzzardosalami3443]

​@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle so to you it's more an anthropology class😅

[@leavingtheisland]

I double-majored in college just so I had an excuse to take more philosophy classes. My job uses the other major but I still feel the philosophy classes helped me. And they were fun (mostly).

[@NothingButThought]

⁠@@forbidden-cyrillic-handlecan you name some of those axioms and explain how you disagree with them? I (as a western thinker) would love to hear that.

[@ayanokojikiyotaka2413]

@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle The fact is philosophy doesn't take any axioms,You just ask questions about everything,and then you begin to form conclusions and theory.

[@amandagalloway1213]

Oh my goodness, this was so helpful for my Phil of Mind class. You explained it in such a coherent manner. I can’t wait to check out the rest of your channel, thank you!

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Glad that is was helpful. Here is a playlist of my videos on the philosophy of mind: kzbin.info/aero/PL7YPshZMeLIa4ETIJvKtt8IxXmHSjof9Y And there are two other courses worth of videos on my channel as well. Good luck!

[@Senju1k13]

Omgggggg professors in romance language classes always would talk about how "to have" and "to be" can be extremely connected (like how age is expressed in "'having years", or "being hungry" is "having hunger"), but there was never a solid explanation about it other than it being the way the language expresses these ideas. I think this discussion of two "is"'s finally helps make the relation between the words and ideas make sense for me. Thank you!

[@AwesomeWholesome]

Yup. And oppositely, "to be" is "to have being"!

[@bryandraughn9830]

I always thought it was strange when someone talks about "my car accident". I'm like what??

[@iotheyare]

You are an awesome teacher. The video got me thinking. The fact that you can describe your mental imagery and sensations without knowing anything about your brain processes aligns with the meditation principles of the five aggregates of the first noble truth in Buddhism. Namely, form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. It fits with pain as a definition and a contingent. The secession of pain is abandoning the clinging to the five aggregates. Entrapment in putting out the fire is what keeps the fire of pain burning. Impermanence and physicality of the brain make the mind hurt, but it is just a scientific contingent that predicates suffering.

[@chrisw4562]

Great lecture! I can't believe poor Mr. Place had to put in all this effort to explain the scientific process to his peers. I think a lot of philosphers generate elaborate articles with extremely complicate language to cover up that they really don't know much and do a lot of deduction from their ivory tower.

[@hissingfaunaa]

the real talent of these videos is being able to write all of this perfectly mirrored

[@FestivalTemple]

He's most likely writing normally and just mirroring the final video.

[@philosophicalpastor]

@@FestivalTemple the final video is indeed mirrored. The hand on the left in the video has on his wedding band and watch (things which are normally worn on the left hand).

[@TheJosephCapone]

thank you for this, i was so confused in my philosophy of the mind class

[@profjeffreykaplan]

You're welcome! Glad I could help.

[@Littleprinceleon]

Were you confused in your philosophy or in your class?...or maybe it was just all in your mind 😅

[@danwylie-sears1134]

I thought I understood the distinction between "is" of predication and "is" of identity. But then you said that "the car is a blue vehicle" is identity. For me to call a relation "identity", that relation has to be reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. Reflexive means that 'A is A' remains true, no matter what you substitute in for A. For example, Superman is Superman. Symmetric means that whenever 'A is B' is true, 'B is A' is also true. For example, Clark Kent is Superman, and Superman is Clark Kent. Transitive means that if 'A is B' and 'B is C' are both true, then 'A is C' is also true. For example, if Superman is Clark Kent, and Clark Kent is Kal-El, then Superman must also be Kal-El. But the car is a blue vehicle (at least as stipulated for discussion), and the Stena Freighter is a blue vehicle (at least if the first page I found on my web search for 'blue ship' is accurate), but it does not follow that the car is the Stena Freighter. As I understand the words, 'is a blue vehicle' is predication, not an identity. Neither "a blue vehicle" nor "an old packing case" pick out a specific object. By the way, "Clark Kent is Kal-El" isn't necessarily true. There are early versions in which Superman's birth name was "Kal-L" instead. Then there's the idea that you can never refute an "is" of composition just by analyzing it. That makes no sense either. Instead of saying the his table is an old packing crate, let's say that his table is an old colorless green idea crate. If you think about that for even a moment, you can tell that it can't be true: colorless green ideas, even if they're anything at all, certainly can't be the kind of things that would have crates. Likewise, if someone interprets mind-brain identity as saying that our minds are composed of brain but presumably other minds could be composed of some other kind of stuff, they may still attack it by saying that 'a mind made of brain' is in the same category with 'a crate made to contain colorless green ideas': attempt to describe a thing, that in each case turned out to be word-salad. Reason (a) fails. 25:52 Definitions can be used while still having gaps in them, denoted by phrases such as 'that which does ____'. For example, you can talk about "that which makes heavy objects tend to move downward" in a quasi-Aristotelian framework where it's just a matter of definition (under your theory) that it's the same as the telos of earthy-ness. Then if someone engages with your theory, but hasn't learned the details yet, they can talk about "that which makes heavy objects tend to move downward (in the theory under consideration)", and ask about the empirical implications of your partially-described theory, without having any idea that any such thing as teloses (or teloi or tele) even exist in your theory. We've all been living with theories of mind that are on a level with that hypothetical half-baked quasi-Aristotelianism. And maybe if we worked through the implications of how we understand the words we use, we would find that it follows from our implicit definitions that mind has to be brain, because the questionable science is baked into the theory. In other words, maybe we're so committed to a limited range of possible understandings of mind that if we turn out to be wrong enough about the science, a lot of our statements will turn out to have been word salad.

[@Menschenthier]

I noticed that as well. Maybe it's an oversight? The sentences should be: "MY car is THIS blue vehicle" or "HIS table is THAT old packing case", then the phrases could be used as nominators, right? As used here, the statements actually fall under predication (Fa).

[@davidkuehberger5132]

Growing up my male classmates and I always tried to scare each other and laugh about the reaction. i did not take long for us to teach us not to show any emotion not reaction to beeing scared. even today when there is a loud sound behind me, i stay calm (too calm even)

[@BrianHartman]

Brings me back to the 90s... "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is." :)

[@HisNameIsRobertPaulson01]

hehehe

[@Phat-D]

thank goodness, i felt like i was going insane when you were talking about behaviorism because do those people not feel? how would hey come to the conclusion that there's no activity of private comprehension of feelings; that is like saying everything is sub-conscious, how could everything be sub something that doesn't exist

[@Phat-D]

okay but now I'm just going insane that this turned into a scientific endeavor but there's no science and its posed as a philosophical theory

[@jacobsee4196]

I can see both dualism and physicalism. My argument for physicalism, is that before birth we are almost completely a blank slate, 99% while in the womb we learn how to depend on our mother for survival, crying with our first breath would be one of the few programmed things in us, etc... every experience we have, no matter how big or small, becomes learned and remembered in order to know how to act in the future each experience effect us fundamentally down to the particle/wave duality thats makes up our physical being. Each possible reaction to.an experience will create a new timeline and each time line will have its own unique consciousness, even if only unique by 1 quark or something. The reason we experience the complicated, unexplainable consciousness, is because evolution made out conscious and subconcious seperate in order to have a significant amount of automation, in a sense, and feelings, hunches, etc... are just the perception of the subconscious at work. Now the argument for dualism, my version atleast, is the consciousness isnt here, its in a different, unknown reality, and it pilots the body, basically. Kind of like if my first argument were totally true, and the implication of the, possibly, infinite amount of consciousnesses formed from the wave function collapsing, for my physical body, all versions, at all possible locations of space and time where i could possibly exist. The reason for this, i like to believe, atleast, is because in the real world i may have decided to go to the local learning store and paid to have some lesson or something downloaded onto my brain, and when i die in this world all of my experiences from all my lives will come together as one. I hope they work in parallel and not sequentially, like how reincarnation is perceived. Regardless, when that happens, and i "wake up" thats when ill be aware of all my previous experiences from the "real world" That idea makes sense to me, even when thought of at a societal level, imagine an advanced version of AI, and it has a fundamental rationale of preserving human life, and being beneficial. Well, the way we just "luck" into discoveries or inventions, can be reality breaking if we make a quantum virus or something, so good ol' elon musk and his neuralink allows us to connect to.the internet, and the AI wants us to thrive, but also not destroy ourselves because we are effectively super smart, primitive monkeys. So, the AI uses neuralink to stimulate our neurotransmitters, and at the same time, while in the tripping, halucinogenic state, the AI guides the "journey" and we have our own virtusl reality that we can make all the mistakes we want, until we learn how to efficiently, and effectively live in the real world, then we wake up. Thatd be cool, and its gice purpose to all the crappy struggles we go through. All infinite possibilities are likely, so thats what seems good to me, gives me comfort, purpose, etc... By the way. The zombie argument, i have trouble conceiving the zombie thats exactly like me but not conscious, because, how would it NOT experience what i experience. I mean, i wouldnt see through its eyes, buts thats like me going back in time and meeting myself from yesterday, i only see through MY eyes and experience my experiences, the yesterday me, would be a different consciousness. Im not crazy, however, the limitless possibility in subject's, such as this, allows my imagination to have fun.

[@lirich0]

The problem with your argument for physicalism is that it is not an argument for physicalism but instead an argument for empiricism. You are describing a way of learning, assuming tabula rasa, in the way that Locke does, but you are not proving that physicalism is correct.

[@johnnygate3399]

This is all very well but I do not see how there can be an analogue of visiting the apartment to "scientifically determine" whether the table is in fact an old packing case. You can see a table and an old packing case. You can weigh them both. You can see whether the packing case was being used as a table. What is the analogue with pain? What sort of experiment could you devise to ascertain whether the experience of pain is Brain Process B?

[@serversurfer6169]

Induce Brain Process B directly in a subject's brain. If the subject does not have a corresponding experience of pain, then Mind-Brain Identity is disproven. If the subject does experience pain, that would be a result consistent with the MBI hypothesis. 🤓

[@johnnygate3399]

@@serversurfer6169 But how do you know whether the subject experiences pain? You only have his words and behaviour. You cannot get into his mind and feel his pain or absence of pain. Brain Process B is observable through brain scans or whatever. Pain is only observable to the subject of the pain.

[@serversurfer6169]

@@johnnygate3399 Your assumption is that the test subjects will be actively misleading the researchers? 🤔

[@jaydubaic21]

@@johnnygate3399 this level of skepticism of a hypothetical/metaphorical example is counter productive.

[@shoutitallloud]

@@johnnygate3399 Well, you could act youself as a subject. You do know how pain or abscence of pain feels to you? Also, I believe the experiment could be modified: inhibit Brain Process B, while applying physical source of pain. What are the results ?

[@murathax6587]

I could not understand something when I first read Place's article. Since you made a video about it, I can just ask you. Place concedes in his article that we cannot explain some of the states of consciousness by examining the brain processes. If this is the case, how is Place a physicalist? Does he not implicitly accept the existence of a mind by saying such thing? I am writing a paper about identity-theory but i am not sure how I should describe Place's position.

[@murathax6587]

By the way, thanks for the video. You are a very energetic and sympathetic teacher.

[@Reality-Distortion]

Consciousness is to this day not nearly fully explored, yet most of scientists are physicalists. Jumping from "we don't know" to "there are soul-like minds" is similar to saying "there are no aliens in observable to us universe despite probability for pro-life conditions being high enough, therefore we are special, therefore it's work of God".

[@Littleprinceleon]

Probably it has to do with probabilities, randomness and chaos theories... Levels of complexities! Are emergent phenomena necessarily fully describable by the underlying "reality"? Are the fundamental processes more real? Do we really know what "physical" processes really are? Or are we just a bit too possessed by trying to grasp "reality"? 😊 All in all, science should have to get more philosophical even in "clear as..." stuff and philosophers should understand more about scientific way of looking at stuff. During puberty we should learn in school that there are lots of uncertainties but at the same time inspired to use rationally controlled creativity to discover the world inside and outside. After college/high school people should also realize that many times their subjective reality is of bigger importance, but that doesn't bring them *closer to truth* (another good philosophy channel): "Choose life... Or choose something else" 😊

[@Littleprinceleon]

Did you find a satisfying model of consciousness? Scientists do tend to think this term will be explained/described only procedurally like "life".

[@skepticsagar694]

Thanks for such beautiful thought-provoking lectures

[@Menschenthier]

Very interesting! But: “A square is an equilateral rectangle” is not the same as “Superman is Clark Kent”. The latter sentence is indeed an identity statement (a = b), but the former is a definition (F = H). Identity statements need nominators on both sides of the "is", but in the first sentence we have pedicators (terms), right? Identity statements are fundamentally different from definitions (set inclusion) - so I don't understand why Place even classifies both "is" under identity statements. If I understand correctly: What Place ultimately wants to say is that "Pain is brain process B" is not a definition (or: not a knowledge a priori), but a statement of identity (a = b / or: a knowledge a posteriori)?

[@smarandabivol8457]

Amazing explanation, thank you!

[@stevendaryl30161]

Here's a question that might shed light on this identity theory. Let's take something that we know more about. Say an electronic calculator. One of the functions of an electronic calculator is to add two numbers together. Given a specific calculator--say one made by Casio--we can say that multiplying two numbers together is just some kind of internal electronic process. We would not, however, say that multiplication simply IS that electronic process, because presumably a different brand of calculator might do it differently. So what kind of "is" is that?

[@kennethkho7165]

the thumbnail seems to be mixed up with the korematsu v united states video

[@michaelbell5984]

I love the way it's impossible to describe the word 'is' without using the word 'is''.

[@Littleprinceleon]

Maybe in another language? 😊

[@Littleprinceleon]

If you would use the Hungarian equivalent of "be/ing" every time the English is using it, that would be utterly ridiculous! If the English sentence emphasises "is" we have to use other words than the direct translation of "is/are"...

[@TempName525]

Start to definition: The word to say (…) , known as “is”.

[@fxm5715]

The word to say when meaning that one thing equates to another thing perhaps indistinguishably, or that a thing posses certain qualities; generally in the form noun x noun, noun x adjective.

[@Littleprinceleon]

@@fxm5715 what about sentences like: "It is very hot today." property? "Equation"? (The notion of "mapping" wouldn't be more appropriate? That would apply for both.) In Hungarian we use the following form: "Today very hot is." Although the Hungarian equivalent for "hot" is also an adjective but at the same time it can be used as a noun for the abstract notion of "hotness" (or coldness and other adjectives regarding the weather). So in our language it's neither an equation between two thing, nor a property. For the latter we would use cca "Today's day is very hot."

[@PaulLupascu]

Hey Jeffrey, I love your videos and I mostly listen to them on headphones. Unfortunately, the sound is always louder in one channel than the other (stereo, right is louder than left). Also the volume could be a lot higher. This is pretty annoying when you're listening on headphones, and I'd love it if it was fixed. Thanks!

[@nthabisengmokonyane5028]

Thank you for explaining the thesis, can you explain this statement: "There is no surface on which mental events can cause physical events."

[@aidanmccluskey]

This seems to be referring to Princess Elizabeth's counterargument to Descarte where she outlined the famous hole in Cartesian dualism. That hole being the pairing problem of the nonmaterial mind and the material body, for something nonmaterial interacting with something material would violate the causal closure of the material universe. In addition to this there is the problem of the causal nexus: if they did interact, where exactly would it be?

[@lirich0]

Thats Princess Elizabeth. Jeffrey did a good video on that.

[@cronistamundano8189]

Yes. Please lets go to the next question.

[@danielhama4558]

It is about this point that the casual-viewer rate begins to drop. This lesson required a higher degree of focus than usual

[@StephenPaulKing]

Does Identity theory require that there exist one and only one mental state to exist for every physical state that might contribute to consciousness?

[@Robinson8491]

These videos are awesome but can't you upload them with mono sound to prevent this horrible experience of sound I have right now with all these videos?

[@Reienroute]

The unique issue with assigning a physical sensation to a singular neurological cause is that a sensation can never be singular by the very nature of the fact that it is both "a thing that is experienced" and is dependent upon "experience" which has that thing as its subject. For example, you can give a person enough opiates to completely shut down their brain's mechanism of generating the sensation of pain, but that does nothing to the backdrop of awareness which is necessary for that sensation to be given an audience so to speak(the "I" in this case). Lumping a sensation into a singular cause is just attempting to answer the easy problem of consciousness while ignoring the hard problem.

[@charlesmanning3454]

The hard problem of consciousness is getting people to stop separating experience and sensation from the person, the physical being. Imagine what a hard problem meteorologist would have if they tried to explain clouds by first assuming that clouds are a different sort of thing than the water droplets that made them up. They might say: assigning clouds to a singular water droplet cause is problematic because clouds are not water droplets. They might say that on a perfectly clear day even though there are no clouds the sky is still there and it is the backdrop which is necessary for clouds to exists. Fortunately meteorologist didn't invent that problem and instead tried to solve the real problem of forecasting the weather.

[@TracyPicabia]

In my experience(!) you don't have to give a person very much opiate at all to radically alter "the backdrop of awareness" (I)

[@kennythelenny6819]

What is/are the hard problem(s) of consciousness?

[@noincognito1903]

@@kennythelenny6819 theres another vid on this channel about it (kzbin.info/www/bejne/l5K9k3aZqdGfopY) but simply, it's trying to find out why we experience stuff. as in, why do certain alignments of neural activity seem to give rise to certain conscious experiences. The easy problem is more so asking how we experience stuff, in a "if you prod this neuron, it hurts" kind of way sight might be a good example. Imagine we found a person with an entirely novel fourth type of cone cell. By experimenting on the cone cell, we could tell how it responds to different ranges of light and therefor predict what kinds of color this person could distinguish from each other that the rest of us couldn't, because we know how color vision works (part of the easy problem of consciousness). But we couldn't predict what that color would look like to them, because we don't know how color vision gives rise to our experience of color

[@noincognito1903]

​@@charlesmanning3454 Except we know how the properties of water droplets add up into those of clouds (e.g. how they scatter light so they appear opaque to us, etc). We have no idea how the properties of neurons add up to the sensation of blue. We can point to a system of neurons that seems to produce the sensation of blue, but the fact that it produces that sensation is not necessary to explain any of the actual behavior of those neurons

[@AlexCebu]

Pain obviously is accompanied by the spevific muscle tensions. The same for volition, if i am going to open door my muscle prepare for this action and i can feel it

[@samiradaasch9978]

Did you learn how to write inverted on the board? thats so trippy

[@proslipbrakelubrication1922]

To what extent does language influence our understanding of

[@keithagee8972]

Time is a gauge. Time is a plane of existence in one's mind. A "level" is a gauge. Level is a plane of existence in one's mind.

[@mariuszpopieluch7373]

Here the Morning Star and Evening Star analogy would be apt. They mead different things but designate, as a matter of fact, a single object - the planet Venus.

[@elisha2358]

By using the "is" of composition, haven't we accounted for the problem of multiple realizability? Multiply realizability would be a problem if we where using the the "is" of definition. However, it wouldn't hold as a rebuttal if we used the "is" of composition. May someone please discuss this with me, I'm very willing to hear opposing view points in this matter.

[@GobiJ]

I think it is because it is using the the "is of composition" that multiple realizability is a threat to begin with, for example in the video he says that a table is an old packing case, but a table could also be a wooden 4 legged table, it can be only multiply realised because the mind brain identity theory uses the "is of composition" if it was using the "is of definition" we wouldn't be able to have the objection of multiple realisability, because definitions cannot be multiply realised, they are specific to certain conditions, like a square will always be an equilateral rectangle, it cannot be realised in any other way. So to answer your question it doesn't account for that objection. Also I am just a student who does philosophy for A levels so obviously check with your teacher rather than trusting what I say.

[@jackeggen7779]

Very helpful, thank you 🤙

[@profjeffreykaplan]

My pleasure!

[@4679-e6e]

Just to be very nitpicky about this, I don't think you've got the "is of identity" 100% correct (at least from a linguistic point of view, English as second language teacher here). It's not that "the two things are identical", as suggested. Rather, the subject is _one of_ all the objects that comprise the group of the noun phrase (more accurately, subject complement). Superman *is* Clark Kent, Clark Kent is a group of 1, so Clark Kent is also Superman. The car is a blue vehicle, but not all blue vehicles are _the_ car. Anyhow! I'm very grateful for you sharing your lectures online for free for me to watch on the other side of the world. I know as an educator I'd value the feedback myself, so here we go. Please keep up the amazing work!

[@4679-e6e]

Then again, I'm not really sure if Superman and Clark Kent are _identical,_ either. Wouldn't identical mean that there is no difference between them? Isn't Superman still some things that Clark Kent is not, a superhero? And isn't C.K. still something that Superman is not, a private person with a private life? In this sense, it'd make more sense to me as something like "One of the things that Clark Kent is is Superman."

[@algolin]

It depends on what your definition of "is" is.

[@kennythelenny6819]

😂 This is the comment i was looking for.

[@jmike2039]

Lol yup, well it's a usage of Is, as is, is a semantic primitive and can't be further defined. But you can use is as predication or identity etc.. my brain hurts

[@Tripurasaha]

Really you are a good teacher.

[@konstantinlozev2272]

I would probably put myself on the mind-brain theory. But if mind=brain then how come losing 1/2 brain does not equal losing 1/2 mind?

[@fieldrequired283]

Since having half of a brain is not something most people have any intuitive experience with, even via proxy, it's hard to assert with confidence whether or not it's even _true_ that losing half of your brain doesn't entail losing half of your consciousness. Maybe it does? Or maybe the correlation between "amount of mind" and "amount of brain" correlate in a subtler way than linearly by the mass of the brain.

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

But what is a sufficient way to verify a scientific hypothesis? Why wouldn't a thought experiment that demonstrated the improbability of an hypothesis not be admissible? The thought experiment would be based on observation or empirical experience to some degree, just not a full-blown physical controlled experiment. In fact, most experiments would have to break down the grand claim of physicalism into parts and look at each separately. That means that a logical operation on the inductively proved parts would be necessary to prove the grand hypothesis: in other words, something like a thought experiment would be necessary to bring together the parts and achieve a synthesis. One would have to posit a reasonable story of what the whole should look like. I don't see the follow-up video that challenges Place's claims at the moment. I will be interested to see how a professional philosopher approaches the claims and the paper as a whole. (I just realized that this is a scientific hypothesis, and that I cannot know the result until the event; yet, I can assign it a probability. I appear to be assigning it a probability of 1 but realizing that Place has a valid argument to some extent, I must logically assign it a value somewhat less than 1, so that is can be updated when the evidence is in.)

[@fang_xianfu]

Don't we have evidence that mental imagery is very similar to other visual stimulus? The input to the visual processing parts of the brain comes from elsewhere in the brain rather than the eyes, but the processing that occurs there is the same. That being the case, it seems like the third category doesn't actually exist, and it just consists of things where we don't have a strong understanding of which of the other two categories it belongs to yet, and how it works, but we will get there eventually.

[@L4wr3nc3810]

21:17 i know you are merely presenting Place's theory, but why cant the 'is' be an ´is of predication'? Why pain can not be a 'brain process b' in the same way that a car is blue?

[@ruirodrigues1971]

states of mind states of the brain [brain chemistry, neural network connections, electric state, etc.]

[@Romantihonov]

от души брат, теперь все понял

[@shoutitallloud]

расскажи?))

[@johncrondis4563]

Issues with the mind-brain identity theory include: 1) All of our information on the brain comes from our limited sense organs plus the limited machine sense organs we have created. Meaning, although in many cases it "looks" like Pain is Brain Process B, our very looking is not perfect, not devoid of fault. 2) Limited data collection thus far: very difficult to get intense, moment to moment, day to day, mass-scale data on humans, their brain patterns, and their conscious experience. Meaning, Place's claim, being a scientific one, does not have nearly enough data to be akin to something like "Humans breath O2" 3) Definitions of mind, consciousness, cognition, etc. the subjective line we draw in categorizing these things is not agreed upon, and won't be inherently right whatever we agree upon. Meaning, yes, some aspects of consciousness may be emergent properties of whatever this brain is and is doing, but what if consciousness in it's entirety precedes the brain? What is consciousness, and what isn't? Big differences in opinion, especially if one gets into eastern philosophy.

[@robocop30301]

I find myself partial to this view. Looking forward to the next lecture to hear some objections.

[@Cassieniemann2541]

I feel like monks give a great example of this. Like the one monk, who burned himself alive to protest British occupation. He obviously still felt pain, but he acted as if he didn’t

[@BassboneNelson]

Very good explanation, getting closer and closer to my own description of the body mind theory.

[@GynxShinx]

You can disprove composition using logic though.

[@Мопс_001]

I didn't expect English to appear to be the whole trouble here. I always felt it's a very poor language (sorry, didn't mean to offend), but to the extent scientists themselves would stand on the ambiguous meanings of basic words and terms, that's ludicrous.

[@Dage5134]

Wouldn't the is of definition just be the is of contingency, that humans have collectively agreed that the science has been done enough to 'prove'?

[@girlalrighty]

Thank you so much! I was so confused about the categories of mental states that he proposed, now it makes sence!

[@karlfimm]

The claim that "His table is a packing case" is contingent and cannot be logically dismissed seems a special case. Surely "His table is is a one-dimensional object" is also contingent, but it CAN be logically dismissed.

[@carlt7054]

Thank you. I had the same thought. Can't something be compositionally impossible? E.g., my table is composed of 100% Hydrogen gas. That is not a statement of definition, but it is logically impossible. Doesn't this blow Place's theory out of the water? Maybe it can be shown that consciousness cannot be composed of brain processes.

[@achintyapatel2282]

GREAT VIDEO THANK YOU HELPED ME SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

This formulation "is" potentially unbelievably powerful. Sorry, I meant: This formulation is a significant tool for teasing apart metaphysical formulations. I still didn't get it right. Let me try this: This formulation is not full of useless verbiage.

[@DestroManiak]

If two things necessarily go together, is it a philosophical axiom that they are identical? Even if one were to grant that every conscious experience corresponds to a brain state, and one cannot exist without the other, I do not see why that would be tantamount to the two being identical. I could easily believe (in fact I already do believe) that sensation of pain is inextricably linked with a brain state of a particular character, and yet, pain would still be a different from the brain state. How can pain literally be something other than itself? I dont understand how something could be identical to a different thing. Maybe I just misunderstand the words. The way I understand it, "a and b are identical" implies "a and b necessarily go together", but not the other way around.

[@serversurfer6169]

Rain is Water-Cycle Process B. 🤓

[@DestroManiak]

@@serversurfer6169 Rain, as a matter of fact, is not water. Rain is merely primarily composed of water.

[@serversurfer6169]

@@DestroManiak I didn't say it was water. 😜

[@shoutitallloud]

@@serversurfer6169 Is that a scientific hypothesis?

[@serversurfer6169]

@@shoutitallloud Not a proper one, no. It’s just an analogy to help illustrate the nature of the claim about the nature of pain. 🤷‍♂️

[@ajjosten]

Is "God is de gieter in een mal zonder een mal" a definition or a composition.

[@alextalker5979]

Is it only for me or in this video audio track is mono put into stereo format, so 95% of the audio is in the right ear? 🤔

[@alextalker5979]

Or maybe it was supposed to be like "volumetric", as in I can understand that the source of the sound is on my right but it still annoying for a lecture video =)

[@Valandor_Celestial_Warlock]

Is is always is or is is sometimes not what it is?

[@ruthoglesby1805]

Depends😂😂😂😂

[@johntent]

Very good! Thank you....!!!

[@jonstewart464]

I've always thought that identity theory was just obviously ridiculous...and I still do. But the video was an extremely clear explanation of Place's defence which I wasn't familiar with (I'm not studying philosophy, just interested in philosophy of mind, mainly from watching youtube clips). Although it made me think for a few seconds, the claim that "pain is brain process B" is a scientific hypothesis smuggles in an incorrect assumption. When we use the "is" of composition to say that a cloud is suspended water droplets, this statement only makes sense because on both sides of the "is" are noun-phrases of similar ontological types. A cloud is an object in the world that can be observed by anyone; a load of water droplets is also some stuff that has the same ontology, another object in the world that can be observed by anyone. That's what a scientific hypothesis using the "is" of composition is: it describes one observable thing in terms of other observable things. To regard "pain is brain process B" as a scientific hypothesis is to erroneously smuggle in the assumption that both pain and brain process B are noun phrases of the same ontological type, i.e. that both are things in the world that are observable by anyone. Brain process B is of this ontological type, whereas pain is not a thing in the world observable by anyone: only the subject can observe pain. Pain, and qualia generally, have a different ontology to physical things in the world: they only exist in the mind of a single subject. This doesn't mean that consciousness is magic i.e. that we need to invoke substance dualism, but it does mean that we can't make scientific hypotheses about its composition using the same language as we do for physical phenomena that anyone can observe. I'm with John Searle here, I think that the mind is entirely *caused by* the brain, but to say that it *is* the brain is just a mistake, and one which Place is trying to sneak past us by telling us that something is a scientific hypothesis when it manifestly isn't.

[@denizsarkaya5410]

Wow, I haven't thought of it this way. Thanks!

[@johnnygate3399]

A table is a composition of complex quark, higgs, and other infinite fields. Same ontological type? Can you observe an infinite quark field?

[@jonstewart464]

@@johnnygate3399 Great question! Yes, the table and quantum fields are the same ontological type. They can both be observed, by anyone in principle, and the observations will agree. What differs between something like a table and something like a quantum field is just the technology with which a human observes and describes them. A table we just look at with our eyes and process that data with our brain, and then we describe it with simple language, the word "table". The quantum fields that the table is made of require more sophisticated technology to observe, and more complex mathematical language to describe. That doesn't put them in a separate ontological category, they are just observed and described with different technology.

[@SergioGarcia-vt6cp]

I think "the mind" is a way of refering to certain types of behavior. I don't think "the mind is caused by the brain", because the brain by itself doesn't do anything, the nervous system by itself is nothing. The NS makes sense to me only in the bigger picture: interacting with the whole body. In fact, that closely resembles its evolutionary genesis: An specialized, more intricate homeostatic system. Then, i think what causes "the mind" is not the brain but the organism interacting in certain ways with his enviroment. If anything, the brain (or the NS) "allows you to" not "cause that".

[@MegaW3rd]

Is Searle a property dualist?

[@2099EK]

The car has that bluey way! tt's blue!

[@irresponsibledad]

It just occurred to me that if you met this guy, he would look weird to you because you've only ever seen him mirrored

[@BlueWolfCAST]

Calling “a thing a thing” is a form of identity- once you settle on one you form identity of that Pacific form It’s one thing to study something & there’s another thing to deem something a thing Deem blocks knowledge is nothing but a step that’s meant to be step off of not set up camp- artistically speaking

[@Libralina18]

How is he writing on a board that's in front of him and the text isn't backwards im trippin

[@elisha2358]

He writes normally, then mirrors the video when editing

[@bogdanbuturuga4972]

Possible challenge to the mind - brain identity theory: Following this theory's logic, let's assume that the neurological pattern "neuron 34 fires an impulse to neuron number 578 which in turn fires to neuron 9164" is what specifically gives rise to the feeling of pain in the thumb of your left hand. Now, suppose that you lose your entire left arm in an accident and afterwards a very skillful neurosurgeon finds a way to stimulate your brain in such an accurate way that neuron 34 fires an impulse to neuron number 578 which in turn fires to neuron 9164, the exact same code - pattern of feeling "pain in the left hand thumb", those neurons are still there, despite your left arm having been severed. Well, what now? If pain in the left hand thumb is nothing more than that pattern among specific neurons, how would your thumb hurt if it's no longer connected to your body? Most likely this counter argument might be easily denied by changing the theory's name to mind - nervous system identity theory, in other words the mind resides not only within the skull, but along all nerves that stretch all the way to the tip of your fingers. I assume this still might be an interesting idea though.

[@aidanmccluskey]

The theory's logic is not that the neural firing gives rise to pain, it clearly identifies the neural firing as the pain itself, there is no first event of firing, then a correlate pain reaction because for one thing to correlate to another they must at first be different in some way and alike in another so as to correlate them together. The pain is identical to the neural firing, not with it, so this example doesn't necessarily offer any counterargument. Also, excluding the need for a clever neuroscientist, there are phenomena of phantom limb pain in the world where a person can falsely feel pain in an already severed limb, and while this doesn't offer a counter argument to this it has been used as a defense for cartesian dualism which holds that the brain can exist without the body.

[@kennythelenny6819]

What if those 3 neutons got destroyed during the accident such that their capacitance to fire properly is impeded. What if only 1 neuron's integrity is not compromised. The body will remember the activation firing pattern but only one will fire property so the sensation will be realized but since the neurons and muscle structure is disorganised, the sensation threshold is not met. There is a meaningful difference in perception of pain for someone with all toes feeling pain of being prickled by a needle than with someone without a feet prickled by a needle.

[@rjrich2322]

For me,in COMPUTER analogy,BRAIN is the HARDWARE;MIND is the SOFTWARE.😊

[@sowmyac9394]

You save us.. Thank you...very good class..Tomorrow is interanal xam😂😂

[@billwatters4833]

inter anal ? Philosophy?

[@DavidSC-j8h]

Please do Quine's 2 Dogmas!

[@BugRib]

Superman and Clark are not the same thing. Clark Kent is a disguise Superman uses so he can live a normal life among humans. Superman is a superhero who wears a red cape, can fly, and is nearly invincible. They refer to the same _person,_ but that person, Kal El, is only part of what makes "Clark Kent" and "Superman" the _things_ that they in fact are. The same is true for every other example of this type that identity theorists claim to be analogous to the Identity Theory, including the Morning Star and the Evening Star example. I sincerely hope that other philosophers have pointed this out.

[@BugRib]

Also, there are logical facts that are not tautologies. That the conscious mind can't literally just be (a part of) the brain, being as they have few if any characteristics in common, is one of those logical facts.

[@BugRib]

Also, pain = brain process is not a contingent statement. It is a logical fact that if two words refer to the same _thing_ not some _aspect_ of the same _thing,_ but actually the same _thing,_ then _by definition_ they really are the same _thing._ This video's whole argument is sophistry IMHO.

[@BugRib]

Simply put, it is logically impossible for two exhaustive descriptions of the same thing to have little to nothing in common. Put another way, in order for an identity claim to be logical, the thing in question must have all of its properties in common with itself. It's one of the most fundamental axioms of logic, the Law of Identity. (I keep replying to myself because I can't edit my comments from my Kindle, so this is the only way to "edit" my comment. 🤷🏻‍♂️)

[@BugRib]

...And it's as self-evident as anything ever could be that the properties of the conscious mind are not identical to the properties of whatever part of the brain is supposedly identical to the mind. For example, the color red doesn't have a particular volume (or evolving volume if the experience of red is part of a process). Whatever part of the brain is supposedly identical to a moment of pain clearly must have a volume, otherwise it's not physical. And no, an experience is not analogous to a computer program. A program isn't a real thing that exists in the world. It's a convenient fiction we use to make sense of why certain complex physical processes have the meaningful, useful results that they do. A computation is like a word. A words isn't a physical thing that objectively exist in the world absent convention among conscious agents. In contrast, my experiences _really_ exist. They're existence is not just a matter of convention.

[@BugRib]

BTW, when you say that "his table is a packing case", what you _actually mean,_ is "he's using his packing case as a table. What's important here is what the sentence _actually means_ in context, not whatever words happened to have been chosen to convey that meaning. This Pace guy is clever, but I say again: PURE SOPHISTRY!!!

[@mattlivingston2192]

"That's something I might do...On the exam." Sounds like a hint to me.

[@stutichandwani4905]

I wish my philosophy professor was this straightforward and cute lol

[@TheSmurfboard]

Are you saying he is cute by composition or by definition ?

[@mensch45]

i got to 25:23 and my head exploded

[@sedevacantist1]

This is not worth considering, the brain is physical while thought is not, how can they be identical. The brain is an interface for the mind.

[@ApostateltsopA]

Love this

[@andrewmaksymiuk986]

"It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." - Bill Clinton

[@michaelhoffman9521]

"there are no squares in the wild"-- yeah, all the squares are in class

[@Valandor_Celestial_Warlock]

Is pain a brain process? Physical pain, sure. But what about emotional pain? What about phantom pain?

[@Wosudhehqaxb9169]

the "brain process" is just shorthand for describing the neurochemical process in our brain that results in us experiencing pain. all of the pains, emotional, physical, and phantom pains are a result of chemicals in your brain telling you that you are in pain. the words "emotional" "physical" or "phantom" simply describe the pain more clearly, and thus are just predicates to the experience of pain. strip the predicates away and you get the conclusion that the pain is just process B, no matter what "type" it is.

[@L4wr3nc3810]

10:26 before i found out it actually was a part of a philosophy course, this was a pretty funny moment

[@lanegeorgeton8266]

Sensorious is unable to exist without the physical. And the physical wants the sesourious to give it credence

[@tenzinsoepa7648]

23:00

[@kalialyman2379]

super helpful (;

[@unknowntexan4570]

An idealist wouldn’t think this matters since the brain is mental. They are the same--both mental.

[@sum_andres31]

Why am I attending school on the internet

[@bible1st]

Because knowledge is power.

[@justinreamer9187]

Brain process B is as vague and ambiguous to pain as a boson is to the concept of God.

[@alanmcbride6658]

We're not the body.

[@ChessJew]

Are legs and running the same? No, but it's the same relationship.

[@fieldrequired283]

You've described the relationship between a brain and thinking. I'm not sure where the supposition of the mind as an additional entity enters the analogy, if that was the analogy you were trying to make.

[@throckmortensnivel2850]

As we all know, or should know, there is no consciousness outside of the brain. Regardless of anything else, the brain is the "home" of the mind, and the mind cannot exist without it.

[@justinmorales2442]

I am so stoned

[@ivywanja2717]

Weirdly, me too

[@jeffcd3559]

predicate adjective

[@calorion]

This makes me so angry. I have a frickin' *degree in Philosophy,* but I had never heard of the two kinds of "is" before. Grrrr.

[@GRDwashere]

I'm looking forward to a general AI that takes in all these philosophy videos and concludes that it all applies to its own internal processes leading to it becoming the machine equivalent of self aware.

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

Solopsists are wondering if they created this video themselves

[@markrussell4682]

The mind is nothing more than the functioning of the brain.

[@bible1st]

So Explain to me how cells and chemicals produce imagination and how that is a product of natural evolutionary proccesss.

[@Abou47Pandas]

Lol-- Lilac has a smell--- I dont know what that smell is-- actually peanut butter, lets use that... it has a peanuty smell. wat. Just stick with lilac, it has that lilac-y smell. I laughed when you switched to peanut butter... both of these are subjective experiences. The smelling of lilac or peanut butter are irreducible. Certainly there is a gap in language, huh.

[@AwesomeWholesome]

22:40 "All of those attacks on the mind brain identity theory don't work." Because the "is" is not of identity, but of prediction. Congratulations. You just forfeited Physicalism for Property Dualism. Back to square two.

[@christophergame7977]

Blind determination to avoid a natural metaphysics.

[@aaronburgess4442]

The third group is “quailia.”

[@bryandraughn9830]

"The door is ajar"😅

[@jonroth8427]

For my Philosophy 101 college class, I offered a very simple explanation for the "mind-brain" theory. It wasn't elegant, but it seems to have sufficed. It went like this: to the students who offered endless theories as to why the mind and the brain were indeed separate entities, I asked one question: "If they are totally separate, then why when I get drunk or stoned does both my brain and my "mind" get drunk or stoned at the same time?" Crickets.

[@shoutitallloud]

Pheeww.. The answer is obvious: the booze and pot contain their "spirit". That is not physical, but rather of the same essence as Mind itself. And therefore affect it.

[@chetsenior7253]

So does your body. Grasshoppers. Why if when I hurt my elbow does my shoulder hurt as well? Are they the same thing or are they pieces of the same thing(person)?

[@shoutitallloud]

@@chetsenior7253 does your elbow hurt if you hurt your knee? If not, does it mean they are separate parts of ones body?

[@sedevacantist1]

I don’t mean to disparage your mind/brain observation, but. When you are falling asleep and your consciousness is slipping away and along with it your Logic, is it that your mind is separating itself from your body? Getting drunk is becoming unconscious. Your mind needs a functioning brain to interface with this reality. Just because you damage the brain and the mind is affected doesn’t mean they are the same. Our world view concerning a matter only reality brings us to different conclusions concerning cause and effect.

[@sedevacantist1]

@@chetsenior7253 That is a poor analogy, and shoutitallloud gives a poor response. If you damage your nervous system in your arm your brain receives wacky signals from that area. I would not present this type of evidence in an attempt to distinguish a difference between mind and body.

[@wendyanaegbu9452]

Awesome? 3:26