Correlation vs Causation

A perceived difference. I think there's more existential importance underpinning to this brain vs kidney thing even though both are just organs. It's a very interesting question arising in your statement. Why I wonder?

I stand corrected never the less a facetious question.

Not perceived, actual. Good for you that you arbitrarily think it's about existential importance, instead of recognizing the gravity of the difference and how clear it is that it exists.

Not perceived, actual. Good for you that you arbitrarily think it's about existential importance, instead of recognizing the gravity of the difference and how clear it is that it exists.

All this talk about brains and consciousness here and at skeptiko.  They're both organs, distinctive only in function. It's humans like you that make an arbitrary existential distinction.

That's the point though. All we can do is suspect because we can't know. We cannot measure or quantify or observe directly what another human feels.

Indeed. We have to find the clues where we can.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/f...-s-secrets

“When the doctors removed the bandages a day later, Yadav’s world was filled with light, and shapes that to him were inscrutable. He couldn’t tell people from objects, or where one thing ended and another began. His brain, deprived of information from his eyes for 18 years, didn’t know what to make of the flood of visual stimuli. But over the coming months, his brain gradually learned to interpret the signals it was receiving from his eyes, and the blurry and confusing world began to come into focus.”

Also, there is a difference between human baby development and animals. Lambs seem to be able to see pretty well from the moment of birth.

Chris may want to see some references for that claim!

I'm not really sure where you are going with your argument.

We’re getting off the thread topic I agree, but I was just responding to your lyrical rendering of a sunset, and how it might interact with a brain. Perhaps a thread entitled “Beyond the sum of all our experiences, who are we?” Would be worthwhile?

We’re getting off the thread topic I agree, but I was just responding to your lyrical rendering of a sunset, and how it might interact with a brain. 

It wasn't an attempt to be lyrical and I suspect you are having a little dig at me as you seem to prefer purely mechanistic terms (hence your use of the pejorative "pseudo-profound" earlier). The point I was making is that there is a subjective quality that the observer (mind) will be aware of and react to which is not explained by the (optical/neurological) mechanisms involved.

[EDIT] Perhaps a better way to put it would be to say "which is not reducible to the (optical/neurological) mechanisms"?

All this talk about brains and consciousness here and at skeptiko.  They're both organs, distinctive only in function. It's humans like you that make an arbitrary existential distinction.

You're right, it's only here and skeptiko. It isn't an issue that has been debated and considered for literally thousands of years by leaders in science and philosophy. Honestly steve, give me a break. Distinctive only in function? So you can explain consciousness fully in terms the brain's processes, the same way we can describe the way a kidney functions? The functional gap between the two is an enormous chasm - one is explicable in terms of current biochemistry, the other never understood remotely and still hotly debated with no end in sight.

Do you even know how a kidney functions? You don't have any sort of background in science - but sure, steve, keep telling yourself that it's just "humans like me" making "arbitrary" distinctions. How anyone could take you seriously when you say something like that is beyond me.

You're right, it's only here and skeptiko. It isn't an issue that has been debated and considered for literally thousands of years by leaders in science and philosophy. Honestly steve, give me a break. Distinctive only in function? So you can explain consciousness fully in terms the brain's processes, the same way we can describe the way a kidney functions? The functional gap between the two is an enormous chasm - one is explicable in terms of current biochemistry, the other never understood remotely and still hotly debated with no end in sight.

Do you even know how a kidney functions? You don't have any sort of background in science - but sure, steve, keep telling yourself that it's just "humans like me" making "arbitrary" distinctions. How anyone could take you seriously when you say something like that is beyond me.

I mean, no one takes Steve seriously, so that’s on you.

Excuse the hypothetical question, but if the observer had had no previous experiences at all before that observation, what feelings could that sunset provoke.

What’s the distinction between ‘ I can’t remember ‘ and ‘ I didn’t experience ‘ ?

What’s the distinction between ‘ I can’t remember ‘ and ‘ I didn’t experience ‘ ?

Sub conscious (or non conscious) processes?

What would you say?

I suspect some folk aren’t happy unless you can present a causation chain all the way back to to the Big Bang. Thus philosophy.

It seems that you are right, because now we are on to a different topic. We are no longer talking about correlation vs. causation, but about whether a mechanism of causation has been fully elucidated. Somehow, when it comes to gravity or the kidney, it is sufficient to be able to discover that gravity causes the apple to fall or that toxins are filtered by the kidney, before knowing the mechanism in every detail. But when it comes to "mind", philosophy does not allow us to discover even a whiff of causation until every detail of the mechanism down to the Planck length has been laid out? 

Getting back to the OP...why is this? Why must philosophy treat the brain so very, very differently from the kidney?

Linda

Getting back to the OP...why is this? Why must philosophy treat the brain so very, very differently from the kidney?

Maybe because the brain is a profoundly more complex organ to understand, overall? The brain isn't understood quite so simply as the kidneys... consciousness and its relation to the brain is still an extremely difficult problem for those scientists who are determined to find only physicalist explanations, especially when you throw NDEs, OBEs and psychic phenomena into the equation.