Physical viewpoints on the human mind bother me.

I would put this in IJBM, but that forum's soon to be gone.

Anyway, whenever I read comments on the Internets or hear people say "Oh, all your thoughts and memories and feelings are are a bunch of electrical impulses in your brain, neuroscientists can look at your brain and tell what you're thinking."

I'm not going to deny the importance of the brain in that regard, but I'm sorry, saying that that's ALL there is seems to be a really arrogant presumption. It's why reading some of David Wong's Cracked articles pisses me off. As much as I like some of Wong's stuff, nihilistic wankery rubs me the wrong way.

edited 5th Jan '11 5:04:30 AM by TomoeMichieru

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That's not nihilistic, that's deterministic. They're not nearly the same thing.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Well... they kind of are. I like to think, though, that they add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Be not afraid...

It's also rather ignorant as well. Consciousness is more than just a bunch of synapses firing off. It is about a complex emergent order that has formed from that framework.

where else would it come from? your liver?

edited 5th Jan '11 5:12:16 AM by thatguythere47

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

You know, for all your harping about people strawmanning you, I would think you'd be a little more careful about it.

"People's brains are only made of electrical impulses" is not what he's trying to argue against. A computer program is a complex emergent behavior too, but it would be theoretically possible to reconstruct it from a record of the currents inside it.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

I have always imagined that what neuroscientists seeing in the brain is not the cause, it's the effect.

"We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty." - Malcolm Reynolds

Effect of what?

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

I think of the brain as a transceiver between your body and your mind/soul/essence/whatever you want to call it.

Swordplay and writing blog. Purveyor of weeaboo fightin' magic.

There's no reason to assume that to be the case. I don't see how "the brain is the source of consciousness" is any more nihilistic than "the soul is the source of consciousness".

It might be more materialistic, but I don't see why that should necessarily be a bad thing.

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^^ Get back to me when you can make a falsifiable prediction.

edited 5th Jan '11 5:36:56 AM by Taelor

The Philosopher-King Paradox

and the difference between that and it all just being in your head is?

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

I remember reading an article some time earlier this year, about research on memory, that suggests memories are altered slightly every time we consciously recall them. I don't think the researchers drew any sort of conclusion from that, but it strikes me as being greater support to the idea that memories are merely chemical/electrical storage in the brain, being changed by the observer (us) every time we look at it.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Hey!

Kill all math nerds

Okay. So how much more evidence demonstrating the dependence of the mind on the brain do they need to collect for it to stop being a mere presumption to you? Clearly, we can't completely rule out explanations as unfalsifiable as souls, solipsism, or sub-quarkian homunculi, but I think when we have a preponderance of evidence for more parsimonious alternatives, it is intellectually responsible for us to treat those alternatives as tentatively true, pending new developments.

I'm not sure what the argument here in the OP is. The brain is an electrochemical machine, this we know, and you are suggesting it is "more" than just that but I'm not sure by what you mean with the word "more". Do you mean that it sounds degrading that one suggests the complex outcome of such a machine is merely due to electrical impulses or do you mean there is something that more that we've yet to discover?

Actually, no, you can't read minds no matter how fancy your equipment. The closest you can get is to ask someone to think something and see what it does to the readings.

^ Yeah, but in theory if the brain and its reactions were mapped out well enough and the machines were made sensitive enough, one could read minds that way. We're several decades, at least, from that, though.

While one can reduce the brain to a completely deterministic system, it's such a ridiculously delicate one responding to such a large amount of internal and external stimuli, a good deal of which is quite chaotic and that we basically have no hope of accounting for accurately, that to say "I can make a computer that will accurately predict your life" (or much of anything more complex than general association, really) is rather silly.

That, and knowing how it works, even if you're not entirely sure where the soul fits in, doesn't make it any less beautiful despite what some would have you believe. If anything, knowing just how staggering a system you're looking at makes it even more wondrous.

edited 5th Jan '11 1:17:32 PM by Pykrete

I agree with the OP. I don't think that human thought is nothing more than machinery and electricity. It's my personal belief that the brain is a sort of data storage/translator for the soul and the body; the door, if you will, between the rooms of the physical and the metaphysical.

Edit, ninja'd. Pykrete also makes a very good point. Scientists haven't even begun to scratch the surface of how the brain works, and anyone who claims they have Did Not Do The Research. His (Her? its?) second point is also valid; understanding something doesn't reduce the awe-inspiring storm of wonder it is. We know precisely what causes lightning, why it looks how it does, why it makes thunder, etc, but there's still a primal "Holy crap that's cool" at the sight of it, correct?

edited 5th Jan '11 1:07:25 PM by Diamonnes

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

"I'm not going to deny the importance of the brain in that regard, but I'm sorry, saying that that's ALL there is seems to be a really arrogant presumption." - Tomoe

Well, what else do you think there is, and what exactly do you base this on?

Let's not forget that serious study of the brain is a relatively new science. I'd wager a beer that we'll be able to tell what someones thinking with 80% accuracy in 20-30 years.

But what does that mean? Even if part of our self is contained in a soul or something similar it still manifests in the brain. They're functionally the same thing.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

^ We already can in a lot of cases. If you're on IJBM I'd guess sex, YF I'd guess gender issues

If there is some soul apart from the brain, why are you affected by drugs or emotion?

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I, er, can't see how saying that thoughts and minds are just electric impulse is deterministic.

Half-Life: Dual Nature, a crossover story of reasonably sized proportions.