Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

[Laird]

Perhaps we should add another item to our list: nails. If you tend to endorse animism, and think waterfalls might be conscious, could nails also be conscious?

It's possible, but hard to know either way.

I see the mind as a set of actions and mental states.

We are all very aware of that given how much you've repeated it. In my first response to you, I pointed out that and why it's a mistaken conception.

What does it even mean to say a mind is a non-physical entity?

It means that it is mental in nature; its basic properties and capacities are predicated on consciousness and experiencing: feeling, thinking, remembering, etc.

Physical entities, in contrast, are those which lack mental properties and capacities, and which are not conscious and do not experience.

This non-physical entity you call "mind" somehow becomes tightly coupled with a brain. And yet it doesn't really seem to be doing anything without the brain's participation.

That's pure speculation, but irrelevant even if it is true: that's exactly what we'd expect given a tight coupling.

When the brain goes under anesthesia, is there no uncoupled part of the mind that could keep on working?

There's no requirement on mind-body dualism for that to be the case, but it might anyway be the case. Who knows? Maybe some uncoupled part of the mind continues to experience during anaesthesia, but we forget that upon awakening. Having been under anaesthesia on several occasions, it seems unlikely to me, but it's certainly possible.

Then why does the mind stop under anesthesia?

Because it's tightly coupled to a brain which has been subjected to anaesthetics.

If the mind follows the state of the brain's hardware, how do we know it is not a product of the brain's hardware?

I've already shared with you one very good reason. There are others.

What good reasons have been shared for thinking that brains cannot be the fundamental source of human consciousness?

Why don't you review the thread and summarise them for yourself?

[Laird]

But how we feel does effect our behavior. If something feels good we tend to do it agian. If it feels bad we tend to avoid it. Thus, evolution would tend to favor those that feel good when good things happen to that person, and feel bad when bad things happen to that person. The brain that is best able to have feelings that match the desirable state for that brain has a survival advantage.

The sound of the point going over your head:

[Laird]

Part of going slow is I don't want to dominate the discussion as I see Laird and others have replied to you as well.

Please: go ahead and dominate the discussion. I don't have anything like your stamina for this sort of thing, and am quite happy to be left behind in the dust.

How would you define the word "Physical"?

Let me know so I can keep it [in] mind as we discuss the non-conscious atoms that make up brains and nails.

Here we run into Hempel’s Dilemma, as the source you keep quoting mentions. Do we define physical as "according to known physics", "according to a future ideal physics", "according to a future ideal physics that definitely won't include the mental" or some other definition? Unless we agree on what we mean by "physical," we will just be talking past each other.

I would define physical as being in accord with a theoretically potential future ideal physics, but that definition becomes quite open-ended. We cannot know what the final state of a future, complete, ideal physics would look like. So I am finding the word isn't that useful for this conversation.

When one describes a mind as a "non-physical object," what can that even mean? Isn't than an oxymoron? And if you say the mind is not physical and not even an object, then what in the heck is it?

To me, the mind is a set of actions and states of the brain.

When I look for causes in the world, I look for causes that are consistent with science, knowing that science is steadily advancing, hopefully getting closer to that ideal, complete physics. Under this definition we can have a high degree of confidence that something is physical (as I define the word), but cannot know for absolute certainty. Scientists find that looking for causes that are consistent with known physics, while being open to new discoveries, is more likely to yield useful findings compared with appealing to a "god of the gaps" to explain things.

Then we get to things like sets of actions, such as a jam session. A jam session is not a physical object. But it consists of a number of one or more physical people playing physical instruments in some sort of coordinated fashion that we would recognize and call a "jam session."

Likewise a mind, as I see it, is a set of physical neurons interacting with physical particles (and perhaps something unknown to us yet) in some sort of coordinated fashion that we would recognize and call a "mind".

So are jam sessions and minds physical? Jam sessions and minds are names for a combination of physical entities doing physical actions. Whether one wants to call that "physical" is simply an argument about linguistics.

The sound of the point going over your head:


A video of me trying to get my point across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wooznjB475w&t=7s

[Laird]

A video of me trying to get my point across.

No, really, you missed the point. Twice. You have no point to make unless you understand the point to which you're responding...

It's possible, but hard to know either way.

You write this in response to, "Perhaps we should add another item to our list: nails. If you tend to endorse animism, and think waterfalls might be conscious, could nails also be conscious?"

I find it interesting that you think nails might be conscious. After all, the fact that nails are not conscious appears to be a central point of Patel's current line of argument. We will see where his argument goes from here, but it appears you may have taken the wind out of his sails.

[Laird]

You write this in response to, "Perhaps we should add another item to our list: nails. If you tend to endorse animism, and think waterfalls might be conscious, could nails also be conscious?"

I find it interesting that you think nails might be conscious. After all, the fact that nails are not conscious appears to be a central point of Patel's current line of argument. We will see where his argument goes from here, but it appears you may have taken the wind out of his sails.

Nah: if a nail is conscious, it's not because of its physicality (Sci's point), it's because of the mind embodied in it (on mind-body dualism) or because it was never really physical in the first place, but rather consciousness presenting the appearance of physicality (on idealism).

When I look for causes in the world, I look for causes that are consistent with science, knowing that science is steadily advancing, hopefully getting closer to that ideal, complete physics.

The definition of faith; the antithesis of the scientific endeavor.

Certainly you can see how easy it is to imagine a similar sentiment being uttered in support of prevailing 'sciences' of days past?  I'm sure Copernicus had plenty of otherwise intelligent folks telling him his heliocentric theory was 'woo' since it wasn't 'consistent with Ptolemic science'.

I would define physical as being in accord with a theoretically potential future ideal physics, but that definition becomes quite open-ended. We cannot know what the final state of a future, complete, ideal physics would look like. So I am finding the word isn't that useful for this conversation.

When one describes a mind as a "non-physical object," what can that even mean? Isn't than an oxymoron? And if you say the mind is not physical and not even an object, then what in the heck is it?

'Non-physical' is used as a term because Physicalists, a metaphysical position, hold that what is "physical" in its base constituents has no-mental character & no teleology, and (for many Physicalists) whose complete description can be given in the mathematical terms of current physics.

So we should just not use the word "physical"? Is that the takeaway?