Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[PixyMisa]

Doc actually raises a good point here. Brains are just lumps of matter.

True.

Lumps of matter don't like or dislike things.

Brains are lumps of matter.
Brains like or dislike things.
Therefore, some lumps of matter like or dislike things.

They're just colletions of stuff.

Sure.

Does a rock like rolling down a hill

Is a rock a brain?

or a star like producing energy?

Is a star a brain?

The materialist story is that when you arrange specific matter in a specific way (i.e., a brain), it can like and dislike things.

Yes. And this is indeed what happens.

How is this possible?

Brains are computers.

How does it work?

Computationally.

Why are some lumps of matter capable of subjective experience and all others not?

Because of how they are arranged.

What is the missing ingredient?

There is no missing ingredient.

The answers are either non-existent, highly speculative (magical, if you will), or lead to idealism (everything is conscious).

No, no, and no. Three strikes, you're out.

 

[marplots]

It is just neurological. "Context" just means more neurological states.

Yes, but states that might not be reached by the brain in a vat. I should point out that a definition of crazy might include an inability to interact in context. I think consciousness requires an "aboutness."

 

[Aepervius]

Joobz, your dog and kid are qualatatively different than "car", "sun", and "diamond". Care to guess why?

They will be more nutritious roasted over a campfire if civilisation collapse ?

Surely you wrote this wrong. You value your family because they are "simply matter"? Do you value your couch as much?

You READ it wrong. He value his family DESPITE them being matter, because his brain learned it that way.

If he was somebody with certain brain inborn deformation, he could have been a fully normal person except he would never ever have felt "love" as an emotion and still have the same family and kids. But then those would not be as special as they are now. Would that make a difference for you ?

 

[Aepervius]

By saying that brains are lumps of matter, you're describing what we know. By saying that brains are "just" lumps of matter, all you're doing is injecting something you don't know that, by your particular mode of analysis, you couldn't possibly know; i.e., you shouldn't say "just" in this context because there's no way you can back it up.

By forgetting the implied "as far as we have evidence for" you are showing your own bias.

brains are just lumps of matter <as far as we have evidence for>.

Sorry to have made your long post irrelevant .

 

[yy2bggggs]

By forgetting the implied "as far as we have evidence for" you are showing your own bias.

I do not understand.

I'm personally calling for Malerin to remove the word "just", because the difference in meaning between his statement that "brain is just matter" versus "brain is matter" is that the former is adds a non-evidential prejudice that he has about what matter is, that is not present in the latter--something that according to his analysis he shouldn't know.

I have no idea how to interpret your post in this light, or what you mean by "as far as we have evidence for". Are you suggesting that I'm biased in saying that brain is matter?

 

[lemurien]

It is silly to say "I am my brain".
It just is not true. It is an idiotic statement. Your brain can exist and function with no representation of you. You can even be awake without being you, that's what happens in epileptic automatism and vegetative state.

If you were your brain, this would not be possible.

You say "my personality, who I think and feel I am, is a process going on in my brain" and then you make sense.

Brains don't eat, talk, play games, make love or play instruments.
Only a body-brain does all this human stuff.

 

[PixyMisa]

It is silly to say "I am my brain".
It just is not true. It is an idiotic statement. Your brain can exist and function with no representation of you. You can even be awake without being you, that's what happens in epileptic automatism and vegetative state.

I am what my brain does.

 

[lemurien]

I am what my brain does.

stop being ridiculous
your brain does not do your flesh or skin or hair or tripes and all that....

 

[Akhenaten]

stop being ridiculous
your brain does not do your flesh or skin or hair or tripes and all that....

Those things aren't what (or at least who) we are.

 

[lemurien]

Those things aren't what (or at least who) we are.

You are profoundly wrong.

The 'self' function of our consciousness is tightly anchored to the body senses.
Even the little decisions we do without paying attention to them are made using 'what-if body loops'. It is called 'gut feeling' in everyday talk.

We feel the feeling of fear in our body.
If our body is ill, our mind is not well, either.

I cannot see how you can make a statement such as you do not consist of your body?
Have you tried living without your body? Do you know of a person who has?
What was he reporting and how?

Where is your knowledge coming from?
Read Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens to get an idea about how body and brain interact to create the Self.

 

[Malerin]

...you're all crazy. Malerin for suggesting that materialism = verbal abuse doing physical damage and everyone else for playing wordgames and false analogies with adware.

You're all nuts -.- stick to the actual distinction made for consciousness on a purely neurological basis please. This has become as embarrassing as doc.

rofl

 

[Akhenaten]

Those things aren't what (or at least who) we are.

You are profoundly wrong.

Ohnoes!

The 'self' function of our consciousness is tightly anchored to the body senses.

I don't know about 'tightly anchored'. They certainly help us to establish our sense of self, but they aren't the be-all and end-all.

Would you say a blind person has less 'self' function than a sighted person?

Even the little decisions we do without paying attention to them are made using 'what-if body loops'. It is called 'gut feeling' in everyday talk.

I'd be inclined to think that only the little unconscious decisions are the ones made with your body loop thingies.

Even if that's not the case, I'm absolutely sure I can make all kinds of major decisions without any kind of sensory input.

'Gut feeling' conveys no meaning to me.

We feel the feeling of fear in our body.
If our body is ill, our mind is not well, either.

So? That doesn't negate what I said about our bodies not being who or what we are.

I cannot see how you can make a statement such as you are not your body?

Well I typed it out specifically so that you could see me doing it. Perhaps your eyes didn't pass the message on or something.

Have you tried living without your body? Do you know of a person who has?
What was he reporting and how?

Not yet. No. N/A

Where is your knowledge coming from?

My brain.

Read Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens to get an idea about how body and brain interact to create the Self.

No.

 

[Malerin]

Depends on the program. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Virtual_computers

No, I'm an agency. But the agency is equivalent to the structure and workings of a lot of the brain.

I do agree that if you damage the brain you damage me. I don't see what's wrong with that... the evidence supports it. But it's a category error to say that this is the same kind of damage to me as when someone says my face looks funny.

Surely you recognize the difference between an insult and a lobotomy, and surely you would prefer the insult, right?

I never said it's the same kind of damage. My claim is that you=brain makes an entire category of harms to a person impossible when we clearly know they're possible. Insulting a person doesn't cause brain damage, but it can harm them. Therefore, the claim "you are your brain" is false.

 

[Malerin]

A car is qualitatively different from a diamond and a sun.
Just as a sun is qualitatively different form a car or an ocean tide.
Your point?

Let's put it this way: you have a rock, a chair, a pen, and a person (you don't know who they are).

Would you not care which is destroyed? I don't believe you're a sociopath, so I know you would not choose to destroy the person. What makes the person different than the other three objects?

I wrote it exactly right. You are reading it wrong.
The value in my family is the value I place on them. In reality, this has certain evolutionary advantages and can be boiled down to rather primitive reasons. This doesn't make it any less important to me.
I don't need an illusion of a grander scheme for me to wonder at it all and enjoy it for what it is.

I'm sorry I read it wrong.

 

[Malerin]

You are really making a ton of equivocations, all of which seem to be based upon the idea that you are very uncomfortable with me saying that I am the matter which I am composed of. I am my brain.

I'm neither comfortable nor uncomfortable with it. I don't agree with it because it leads to absurdities. As Lemurien points out, you can eat a sandwich. Your brain can't. At the very least you'll have to refine your statement to: I am my brain and body.

First, will my brain be affected if you "damage" my reputation? Well, it is actually quite possible. If I experience great depression, it can cause chemical differences in my brain that are detectable and noticeable. It is what leads to chronic depression. So yes, it is quite possible to effect my brain by effecting my "person".

Of course it's possible you won't be depressed at all, but rather giddy at the prospect of suing the person who defamed you. That doesn't mean you weren't harmed. The law simply requires you prove that damage occured, not that you were depressed about it. So then you're back to square one: the law (and common sense) recognize that non-physical harms to people can occur. That can't happen if "you are your brain". Every harm to you would be a harm to your brain.

You just need to soften it so that you claim that "you" are neurological process(es). You wouldn't claim a program was a computer. Why would you claim that what the brain is doing is the same thing as what the brain is?

now, we could argue about whether or not the pure programming that resides in my neurology is me and is some how separate from my physiology. It seems that the organic wiring and the programming are intimately linked and such divisions are l may not be possible. Let's put it one other way, if we did a brain transplant, would you be you?

Possibly, but I believe in souls. I could answer no because I could believe that brains are a necessary condition for personhood, but not a sufficient one.

 

[lemurien]

Akhenaten, you are arguing from ignorance.

Just an example.
Imagine a mean man throws a stone at you.
You duck.
Why?

So that somebody would not get hurt?
Who?

You. Not your brain. You.

 

[yy2bggggs]

I never said it's the same kind of damage. My claim is that you=brain makes an entire category of harms to a person impossible when we clearly know they're possible. Insulting a person doesn't cause brain damage, but it can harm them. Therefore, the claim "you are your brain" is false.

You're assuming that the claim "I am my brain" makes these entirely different senses of the word damage the same. But it doesn't.

ETA:
Let's put it this way. When joobz says "I am my brain", he does not mean by that that insults cause brain damage. What he means is that brain damage damages him; in fact, that is what he said he meant.

 

[yy2bggggs]

stop being ridiculous
your brain does not do your flesh or skin or hair or tripes and all that....

No, but the brain processes the body senses you're talking about.

 

[Akhenaten]

Akhenaten, you are arguing from ignorance.

Quite possibly. I'm hoping if I hang in here long enough, some of the smart will rub off on me.

Just an example.
Imagine a mean man throws a stone at you.
You duck.
Why?

Because rocks are harder than me.

So that somebody would not get hurt?
Who?

Me.

You. Not your brain. You.

Same thing.

 

[Sideroxylon]

There is a sense that the self is more than the brain, in the same way that a written word has a meaning that exists outside of the pixels and even lines on the screen, but what of it? Can you then make this the basis of an argument that we will continue to exist beyond death, which is what the apologist in the OP, and a couple of others, seems to be claiming. When I close the browser and direct my attention elsewhere the word is gone.