Meanwhile, I'm back on post #46. I'm never going to catch up to you guys.
(2023-05-23, 04:53 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Also here's the Atheists' Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg telling us Cogito Ergo Sum is false if everything is physical ->
You have quoted this many times, and I have not had time to address it. Let's discuss it now.
Rosenberg's comments puzzled me. I didn't have access to the book, so I didn't really understand what he is getting at. However, I recently found this review at Amazon that really seems to explain it. In that review Norman Bearrentine states:
Quote:Having made the point, at least to his own satisfaction, that thoughts cannot be about things, he [Rosenberg] goes on to state that, nonetheless, "...no one denies that the brain receives, stores, and transmits information." (Location 2819) "The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts." (Location 2922) "...we think accurately and act intelligently in the world." (Location 2708)
Rosenberg has no problem granting that our brains have these abilities and yet these very abilities contradict his denial that thoughts can be "about" things. [source]
So much for your quotes about Rosenberg showing brains cannot have thoughts about things. For Rosenberg does indeed think that brains store information, and that the neurons in our brains act on this information to drive our motions. And ultimately that information stored in the brain is about something.
Why does Rosenberg then say thoughts cannot be about things? I haven't read the book, but according to this review, these chapters in this book are one long argument against free will. Bearrentine reads this all as an elaborate way for Rosenberg to say we aren't actually deciding of our own free will to buy a ticket to Paris, for instance. Instead masses of neurons that are processing signals from neurons that are processing other signals all the way down to those neurons which were getting input about Paris worked in such a way that they directed the body to go through the actions of buying the ticket to Paris. As Rosenberg puts it, "The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can't have thoughts about stuff either." In other words, the brain is doing all this, but it is not actually conscious thoughts about stuff that drive our decisions. It is patterns of neuron firings. The brain portrays this set of neuron activity as the conscious mind thinking thoughts about Paris and consciously buying a ticket to Paris. But instead, Rosenberg says, what is really happening is that a mass of neuron activity is directing the actions.
So anyway, it appears that Rosenberg is not arguing that neurons can't have thoughts. Rather, he is actually arguing that they do have non-conscious thoughts, that they drive all our decision-making, and that the "aboutness" we experience is a construct of the brain.
So this whole repeated argument from Rosenberg was a needless diversion. Rosenberg was actually saying that neurons
do think (non-consciously), make our decisions, and drive our actions. It appears you quoted him out of context to make it look like he said the opposite.
But even if Rosenberg was saying neurons cannot have firings that direct actions that are about things, what does that matter? You have given us no reason to think this is right, other than constantly telling us that he says this. That is an argument from authority. It is a bogus argument.