Correlation vs Causation

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? 

So, do you feel that the mechanism by which the brain produces consciousness is understood, except in matters of fine detail - comparable to the fine details that remain to be understood about the function of the kidney?

That seems a remarkable claim to make.

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"?

Despite all of the steps between photons striking the eye and the processing in the brain, there is no mechanism by which we are able to directly experience the raw ideas of "red" or "yellow" or "blue". I still find the experience of colour to be a magical curiousity, at times.

It is curious that during an NDE, blind people have had sight again... also, I remember reading a DMT(?) trip report where the reporter said that his colour-blind friend could suddenly seemingly distinguish between red and green for the first time, as his friend had curiously commented "oh, is that what red looks like?".

I understand the science of kidneys, as a filter.  I can look up how the systems in the kidney work together and then break-down the organic chem step by step.  Fully simulated functionality of kidney processes are available. 

Can you refer me to how the brain abstracts a logical conclusion?  This is what the brain's evolution adapted to achieve on the abstract level.  Can you refer me to the model of how the brain supplies an excretion of 10 ml of understanding?  Is there a special formula of peptides, which indicates confusion between concepts?

Comparing the information output with mind to the flow of excretions has been commented on before.

V. Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 121.

• The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day. - N. Weiner
  

Maybe because the brain is a profoundly more complex organ to understand, overall?

How does that matter? Some of what we have had to figure out is much more complex than other stuff. So what? It hasn't led us to deny causation in other situations. For example, we used electricity long before we even had an inkling of quantum electrodynamics (which even yet contains deep mysteries). 

I bet that if we tried to make an arbitrary distinction based on "complexity", we'd have no more luck with it than the IDers have had with Irreducible Complexity. After all, "life" was supposed to be too profoundly complex to understand, and it turned out to be not much of anything.

Linda

Another rather obvious reason why people may treat the relationship of brain and mind differently from the question of kidney function - or at least I'd have thought it should be obvious in this forum - is if they consider there is evidence for the existence of psi. If psi exists, that means mind can interact with matter in ways that aren't explicable in terms of our current understanding of the physical universe. And that implies, doesn't it, that mind itself isn't simply produced by the physical structure of the brain through known physical laws. 

Perhaps mind could still be produced by the brain through the operation of other physical laws, but at any rate the existence of psi would certainly put the mind/brain problem in a different category from that of kidney function.

How does that matter? Some of what we have had to figure out is much more complex than other stuff. So what? It hasn't led us to deny causation in other situations. For example, we used electricity long before we even had an inkling of quantum electrodynamics (which even yet contains deep mysteries).

"So what?" Is that the best dismissal you can come up with? I was expecting more...

"life" was supposed to be too profoundly complex to understand, and it turned out to be not much of anything.

Not much of anything...? That's an extremely bold statement, lol.

Life is indeed profoundly complex, beautifully so, and far beyond the ken of any living being to understand, so anyone who can make a claim like that is definitely ignorant of their ignorance...

Just because the mystery of life can be so easily minimalised and belittled by the arrogant and perhaps shallow of thought, does not make it any less so.

Another rather obvious reason why people may treat the relationship of brain and mind differently from the question of kidney function - or at least I'd have thought it should be obvious in this forum - is if they consider there is evidence for the existence of psi. If psi exists, that means mind can interact with matter in ways that aren't explicable in terms of our current understanding of the physical universe. And that implies, doesn't it, that mind itself isn't simply produced by the physical structure of the brain through known physical laws. 

Perhaps mind could still be produced by the brain through the operation of other physical laws, but at any rate the existence of psi would certainly put the mind/brain problem in a different category from that of kidney function.

Why do folks choose to see evidence for psi? The answer to that question will tell us why the human brain is treated with exception vs. "kidneys"

"So what?" Is that the best dismissal you can come up with? I was expecting more...

I'm not dismissing it. I'm asking why you are dismissing everything else you aren't willing to give special treatment for. Quantum mechanics is teaching us that matter and realism is more profoundly complex than we seem capable of comprehending, yet you aren't holding electrons to some uniquely special standard with respect to "causation". Why not?

Not much of anything...? That's an extremely bold statement, lol.

Life is indeed profoundly complex, beautifully so, and far beyond the ken of any living being to understand, so anyone who can make a claim like that is definitely ignorant of their ignorance...

By "life" I'm referring to the idea that living beings weren't the profoundly, beautifully complex arrangements of their parts. It was the infusion of an élan vital which made them alive. It turned out that once you dug down in to that complexity, the élan vital faded away.

Linda

How does that matter? Some of what we have had to figure out is much more complex than other stuff. So what? It hasn't led us to deny causation in other situations. For example, we used electricity long before we even had an inkling of quantum electrodynamics (which even yet contains deep mysteries). 

I bet that if we tried to make an arbitrary distinction based on "complexity", we'd have no more luck with it than the IDers have had with Irreducible Complexity. After all, "life" was supposed to be too profoundly complex to understand, and it turned out to be not much of anything.

Linda

Turned out to be not much of anything? What is going on in this thread? My goodness. An individual cell is marvelously complex. How on earth does that qualify as "not much of anything"?

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

Perhaps this describes why there is a difference, in at least one way, between you and Steve, and some of the proponents. Philosophy is critically important, and makes you think a lot about important stuff. 

Here, trying to act like consciousness does not at least seem to be facially unique is a product of a lack of critical thinking.

Again, we can describe what the kidney does biochemically - and HOW that actually produces the results it does.

We understand some of what goes on in the brain biochemically, and do not have any sort of idea how it produces conscious, subjective experience. And to deny that and say that it's a product of philosophy treating things differently, is to utterly dismiss the issue without further consideration.