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2023-05-21
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| Merle's Most Liked Post | ||
| Post Subject | Post Date/Time | Numbers of Likes |
| RE: Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable? | 2023-06-08, 12:05 PM | 3 |
| Thread Subject | Forum Name | |
| Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable? |
Related Topics
Skeptic vs. Proponent Discussions
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| Post Message | ||
| Meanwhile, I'm back at post #146 and trying to catch up. ;) Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: (2023-06-07, 06:19 PM) -- I'm still confused about the argument. Is it: 1. There are no souls. All mental faculties/awareness/memories can be explained by reference to the body & brain [and possibly outside world for External Mind arguments] which are all "physical" which, whatever else that means, lacks any mental character/aspect at the fundamental level. or 2. There may be a soul but if it exists it must be dependent on the brain which is a "physical" structure as defined above. Because the latter means taking the idea souls exist as a premise, if not accepting that some aspect of a "filter" theory has to be true. -- Neither exactly expresses what I think. Let me try again. My position is that the mind is a set of states and processes of the brain. I cannot rule out that other things may be involved that might be as strange as dark energy or dark matter. Or perhaps something even more exotic is involved. But once we propose things like that, we reach the vague edges of what we mean by "material" or "physical". To me, anything that is affecting the physical world in predictable ways is physical. So, in that definition, the mind is totally caused by physical things, regardless of whether anything other than the physical brain is involved. So I see the mind as a function of the brain, but I do not definitively rule out that some strange fields or something else might be involved. The easiest way to say that is, "The mind is a set of states and processes of the brain," but if you need my answer to be pedantic, "The mind is a set of states and processes of the brain, but I cannot be absolutely certain nothing else is involved." If anything else is involved, the brain itself is so central to mental processes, that no meaningful continuation of my mental processes should be expected after my brain dies. Do you need me to state those paragraphs every time I say what I mean by the mind, or is it acceptable to use the shortcut, "I think the mind is a set of states and processes of the brain"? If the souls you speak of exist, are they physical? After all, if your brain was connected to sensors, and we asked you to count to 100, we would probably see a distinct set of brainwaves. And seeing you do it a few times, we could predict how those brainwaves will look the next time. So we could physically measure what that soul is doing. Does that make souls "physical"? The definition gets fuzzy. But whether those souls are called "physical" or "non-physical", I don't find any convincing evidence that souls can in any meaningful sense continue the mental human processes after death. | ||
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The Mind Set Free AKA Neural Patterns Shifting States