I think the important word in my comment is separate.
Define it philosophically how you want, but any brief experimentation with psychotropic drugs should quickly convince you that mind and brain are inextricably linked.
I'm not claiming mind and brain aren't "linked"; in fact, I open my post with by stating that the mind is what the brain does. What I'm arguing is that they are fundamentally different kinds of things, that they are composed of different stuff.
Are you suggesting this doesn't constitute dualism?
Which sounds like you are going for an ontological distinction and substance dualism. I think claiming clear Interactionism and that the brain and mind are clearly inextricably linked, yet maintaining the two are composed of different stuff, is an incoherent position that Ockhams razor can chop off at the knees. Why invent a whole different kind of stuff, when your mind stuff clearly cannot be separated from the brain? Sounds like a whole unnecessary kind of substance.
I think claiming clear Interactionism and that the brain and mind are clearly inextricably linked, yet maintaining the two are composed of different stuff, is an incoherent position that Ockhams razor can chop off at the knees.
Why? You have a sound understanding of how computing works. Is it a coherent position to maintain that software doesn't exist, merely because it's possible in theory to determine the entire state of a computer without ever referring to what it's running? Is software irrelevant because the entire workings of the computer can be explained in terms of the movements of electrical charge?
Why invent a whole different kind of stuff, when your mind stuff clearly cannot be separated from the brain?Of course "mind stuff" can be separated from the brain: it happens every time we write, or code, or even talk. Trying to describe the transference of information which occurs, for example, when I listen to the radio news in terms of changing electrical and chemical gradients in my brain seems a little like the kind of
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Ah, but the distinction I'm getting at here is that between substance dualism (the mind and the brain are different kinds of stuff) and either property dualism (mental properties and physical properties are distinctly different, but mental properties are always ultimately properties of some form of physical 'mechanism') and predicate dualism (the mind and the brain are the same, but it simply doesn't make sense to phrase questions about the mind the same way we would ask questions about the brain
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I think software that isn't running on anything isn't anything apart from potential
And what of the meaning contained within it? Where does that reside, and in what form? Synapse weightings in the cortex of the beholder? This is more than a different way to talk about what brains do. There's something else involved here.
Because a dualist is, pretty much by definition, arguing that the mind is separate from the brain in a way that it, you know, isn't.
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I claim that the mind is ontologically different from the brain, and have tried to explain why I see it that way. Why do you claim otherwise?
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Define it philosophically how you want, but any brief experimentation with psychotropic drugs should quickly convince you that mind and brain are inextricably linked.
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Are you suggesting this doesn't constitute dualism?
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Why? You have a sound understanding of how computing works. Is it a coherent position to maintain that software doesn't exist, merely because it's possible in theory to determine the entire state of a computer without ever referring to what it's running? Is software irrelevant because the entire workings of the computer can be explained in terms of the movements of electrical charge?
Why invent a whole different kind of stuff, when your mind stuff clearly cannot be separated from the brain?Of course "mind stuff" can be separated from the brain: it happens every time we write, or code, or even talk. Trying to describe the transference of information which occurs, for example, when I listen to the radio news in terms of changing electrical and chemical gradients in my brain seems a little like the kind of ( ... )
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And what of the meaning contained within it? Where does that reside, and in what form? Synapse weightings in the cortex of the beholder? This is more than a different way to talk about what brains do. There's something else involved here.
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