Let's go for a whirl then,
- via this very belated combined response to your long-ago responses to me.
To start with I lay some groundwork based on a consideration of two phenomena: the brain and experience. I've chosen to use "experience" so as to avoid the problems with words like "mind" and "consciousness", which either come with baggage or are defined differently by various parties in this exchange.
Briefly, though, it's important to define clearly enough what I mean by the two terms that I
have chosen, so, here goes, noting that, unfortunately, it's impossible to feasibly define "experience" without using one of the "problematic" words.
"The brain" is that squishy lump of stuff between one's ears.
"Experience" is what happens in consciousness; what consciousness does; what consciousness is characterised by (in the sense that "a conscious experience" is a tautology); it includes - but is not limited to - sensing, perceiving, feeling, thinking, remembering, desiring, imagining, deciding, etc.
Clearly, the brain and experience are two different things. Equally clearly, there is some sort of relationship between the two.
In the context of this discussion, the main options are:
- The brain is what experience looks like from the outside, with either:
- Experience determining the brain's form (idealism in at least some variants, such as Bernado Kastrup's analytic idealism), or,
- The brain's form determining experience (most - all? - forms of physicalism which don't explicitly or implicitly deny the reality of experience).
- Experiences are distinct from and fully determined by the brain (epiphenominalism).
- Experiences are distinct from the brain and causally interact with it in both directions. Typically, this is fleshed out by positing the existence of a mind - distinct from the brain - which either:
- Has a form, which, similarly with respect to the brain in #1.1 above (idealism), is what experience looks like from the outside (interactionist dualism), or,
- Is formless (Cartesian dualism? I haven't studied it but my understanding is that that term fits here).
Now, per the arguments in
the thread on Titus's Exit Epiphenominalism paper, to which I've just added
a post (which I encourage you to read in tandem with this one) with some additional arguments, option #2 (epiphenominalism) is false, because it provides no possibility for the causal efficacy of experience, and thus if it were true we could not know that we
were experiencing, let alone
what we were experiencing, yet we
do know that and what we are experiencing.
By parallel arguments, #1.2 (physicalism) is false. The parallel is this: it is just as true on physicalism as on epiphenominalism that the nature of an experience is causally irrelevant; it is only the physical facts (about the brain) that determine the subsequent physical facts (about the brain), and whatever the experiences are that are in turn determined by those physical facts is irrelevant to the physical facts; the experiences are in the same sense as on epiphenominalism merely the steam off the brain's engine.
It's not perfectly clear whether your own view best matches #1.2, #2, some combination, or something related, but what
is clear is that your view is that experience is wholly determined in one way or another by the brain, so the arguments that I've provided apply to it.
Option #1.1 (idealism) is unappealing because it is unclear why (and hard to conceive that) experience would be structured as though it were matter operating according to the laws of physics. Why would experience take the
very intricately sub-divided - apparently unnecessarily so - form that it does: that of a bunch of tiny sub-atomic particles gathered together into atoms, then molecules, then organised into cells, some of which are neurons, which themselves are organised into an unfathomably intricate neural network? It is hard to see how this could be a straightforward reflection of experience, and just as hard to see why experience would
not be reflected straightforwardly in its form. (A similar observation applies to option #1.2 as well, of course).
Option #3.2 is unappealing because experience is differentiated and thus seems to entail some sort of structure and dimensionality, and thus some sort of form.
We are left then with option #3.1, which, "fortuitously" and interestingly, has a lot of empirical evidence to support it - much of which has been and is discussed on this board.
OK. There's the groundwork. Now, to respond to your posts (out of order):
(2023-06-18, 11:01 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ] (2023-06-17, 01:19 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Again, your terminology is off: consciousness isn't a model; it is that within and by which models are constructed and comprehended.
Even if your terminology is accepted though, your response that, on your view, consciousness is causally efficacious - and thus that your view is not subject to the otherwise fatal argument (from the inability to know we're conscious) that Titus provided and which I summarised - fails: a model is not a cause in the relevant sense. Your view remains stuck with a causally impotent consciousness which cannot "touch itself" - yet we know that our consciousness can and does touch itself (know of its own existence).
You made me think.
Not hard enough, because you failed to respond to the argument, instead simply ignoring it. I explained - and have reiterated above - why this...
(2023-06-18, 11:01 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]So anyway, yes, our awareness can become aware of being self aware
...could not be the case on your view. Simply affirming that it is the case does not defuse the argument.
If you don't understand the argument, then let's try to work out why.
(2023-06-17, 01:56 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]"Roughly in the ballpark (groan)" doesn't do a lot to help me understand your views.
A brief clarification in case it's needed: my parenthetical groan was not a reaction to anything you'd written, but the reaction I anticipated to my bad (but unintentional) pun.
(2023-06-17, 01:56 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I would appreciate if they would markup my original paragraphs as shown below to match what you think happens.
I don't have the patience to do that, nor do I think I have the knowledge to do it accurately. Here's my rough sense of things though:
The brain is very much involved in processing sensory information, and in learning innately via feedback, so, yes, it is very much involved in the activity of tennis-playing at that level. I'm not sure how much it constructs models in the full sense, but maybe to an extent it does model reality. The mind, though, definitely models reality, and that's where the higher-level aspects of the game of tennis occur: strategising, recognising what one's opponent is doing, assessing what's working and what's not, calibrating and recalibrating one's strategy in response, emotionally (re)motivating oneself and encouraging oneself, etc etc. Some of that may, though, be aided and assisted by, or reflected in, the brain: my sense is that the filter model is not quite apt; I prefer a model more like "solvency", in which the mind ("soul" if you prefer) is "in solution" (in the chemical sense) with the brain.
I think that the "solvency" model might help you to better understand why I don't find your points such as failure to recall memories, and loss of consciousness during general anaesthetic to be particularly problematic for interactionist dualism, because I think it might give you a better sense of how tight and close I see the coupling between mind (or "soul" on your terms, if you prefer) and brain (body in general) to be: that they are like two substances together in solution.
(2023-06-17, 01:56 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]We keep hearing that somehow soul and mind are intertwined
"Soul" is, I think, a poor word to use in this discussion, because it has different meanings, and although you've defined what you mean by it, it might still be confusing for others who might define it differently. Anyhow, one way to look at this bearing in mind to some extent your definition of "soul", and my definition of "mind"...
(2023-06-17, 01:56 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]but the exact nature of this intertwinement are undefined.
...is that the mind is one of the aspects or components of the soul, kind of like the brain is one of the aspects or components of the body.
(2023-06-17, 02:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ] (2023-06-17, 01:39 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]A little better elaboration on what exactly is wrong with your terminology seems worth adding:
A model doesn't feel; a model doesn't experience; it is merely abstract and conceptual and thus cannot even in principle feel or experience - but these are precisely what define consciousness.
I think the model of consciousness includes the modeled concept that these things feel a certain way. Why can that not be part of the model?
You seem to have missed the point.
You might have heard the phrase, "The map is not the territory". We can adapted it here as, "The model is not the modelled".
A model containing a concept that things feel a certain way
is not a feeling and
does not feel. A model of consciousness
is not conscious.
Does that help the point to stick?
(2023-06-17, 02:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Do non-physical entities feel and experience? How can a non-physical entity even do anything? Isn't "non-physical entity" an oxymoron? If you think non-physical entities exist, how do they do things that physical things can't do? Is it magic? If not, how is it different to say "a non-physical entity did this physically impossible thing" instead of "magic did this physically impossible thing"?
See my groundwork top of post: I'm working on a conception of (non-physical) mind as described in relational option #3.1, but "non-physical" has become a fraught term in this context in this discussion, so maybe we should avoid it. If it isn't clear how my groundwork leading to #3.1 answers your questions, then feel free to rephrase them.