Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[Akhenaten]

I should really check if I'm actually watching documentaries, shouldn't I.

No biggie, I reckon. Someone will generally come along and tell you that This Is Really Serious.

 

[PixyMisa]

You're right, that is weirder!

I remember seeing a program about a woman who was unable to control one of her hands - it used to pinch her, slap her and try to strangle her. I can't remember the terminology, maybe alien hand syndrome?

Yep, Alien hand syndrome.

 

[joobz]

I see a fundamental logical fault in Joobz's posting.

We do seem to agree that brain is the seat of our identity.
The Self (core self and extended one) is a function of the brain.
Also, I believe that we agree that everything we can know about the universe is a brain map.

And here's where we differ:
I see the brain creating maps and representations about body states (this includes sensory input from eyes, ears and body senses) as well as memories, dreams and ideas.

The third-order representation or the Self observing itself in juxtaposition to the representations of body states is our subjective experience of what we are. It is still a map.
Do you see a difference between a map and the terrain?

We are more than that. We take and utilize energy, we grow, we move, we are interacting with material things. A brain alone is not capable of doing this.

Saying that you are your brain is silly for two reasons.
The first one is that if you were your brain, you could not say anything.
The second one is that nobody in this world has the knowledge of whether an isolated brain preparation would be conscious or human in any sense. It does not exist. It never will.

Using your reasoning, a person who can not speak, or who cannot see is less of a person than those who can.

 

[lemurien]

You are confusing again, the body with the brain.

Let us take a brain dead persons. The body will eat (thru tube) / excecrate and even breath alone in some time. It is a "terrain" without "map". Is that a person ? Medicinal science certainly don't seem to think so.

The site of consciousness is the brain. It is not only the necessary , but it is also the nothing Beyond so. With advanced enough science you could theoretically have the brain in a jar, with the sensory input replaced by mechanic part, and little cute wheel under the jar. The brain would still be "you".

The difficulty is that right now, the brain cannot function in stand alone, it needs non conscious part to handle the dirty job : a mouth to input fuel and oxydant, a lung to take in the oxydant and expell reducted material, an oesephage and intestine system to process the fuel, a blood system to bring the fuel where it will be used, muscle and skeleton to support and make the whole mobile.

All that makes up a human. But the Necessary and Enough site of consciousness is and is ONLY the brain. If you want to give evidence that the site of consciousness is more than the brain, you would have to give evidence that consciousness is addled when those other part are damaged. An evidence that it is not the case for limb, and some sensory input organs, is that when anaesthetised locally consciousness is not altered. We do not have evidence for all those add-on organs, but we have evidence for ENOUGH of them to show that the SOLE consciousness holder is the brain. Heck you can even strike out part of the brain stem in the vertebrae because people routinely get in accident severing those, and do not get their self or consciousness , personality changed.

You , the conscious one are just a brain. Without the brain you are just a body. Without the body, you are still you as demonstrated when part of it is hacked/Anaesthetised off.

So no, the evidence provided is enough to say that "you" is solely the brain. No terrain , no map analogy will help. The support stuff for the brain, known as the the body, has no active part in consciousness beyond giving sensory impulse.

I never said that the body without the brain would be a person.

As clearly as I could, I tried to say that you need a body and a brain to make a normal functional human being. Also, they have to be connected to each other as they are, with intimate chemical and electrochemical connections.

Your argument about the brain preparate in a jar is a null argument because no such thing exist. Unlike in philosophy, in biosciences you cannot just presume that a preparate or a population or whatever biological entity will function in an expected (especially cave layman's expectations!) way.
No. You have to have some documentation.

What you think just isn't good enough.

Now, let me get this clear.
Are you really saying that consciousness is a human being?

 

[joobz]

This simply establishes that your brain is a necessary condition for you (see how strange that sounds? That's why I said "personhood", but no matter). A necessary condition means that in order for you to be you, you need your brain. Likewise, fire cannot exist without heat. Heat is a necessary condition for fire. That doesn't mean that heat IS fire, you just can't have fire without heat.

ONce again, you have a false analogy.
We have examples of heat emerging from things that are not fire. You have no example of me emerging from something that is NOT my brain.

You're making a much stronger claim here, that you haven't backed up, and is causing you all sorts of problems. You're claiming your brain is a necessary and sufficient for you (again, personhood would be a better word here). You've got the necessary part, no one's really denying that, but the sufficient part is mere assertion on your part. Lemurian has valid objections to it: Simple claims like "you ate a sandwich" become nonsensical. Does your brain have a mouth?

If I don't have a mouth, am I less of me?
You keep asserting things that we have quite clearly moved beyond in medical science. It was at one time a fear that if you replaced an organ, you would replace that person's personality. This was proven to be false. Why you haven't adjusted your opinion to the reality of the evidence is not my problem.

If your brain is your consciousness, then what happens when you're unconscious? Are you brainless?

It IS your consciousness because that is where it resides. you alter your brain and you alter your consciousness. You alter your consciousness,and you see alterations in your brain. That's it.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean the converse is true. If I cut off your finger are you not going to mind because I didn't damage your brain?

Yes I'll mind it, but clearly I'm still me. Now, damage my frontal lobe and see what happens.

Doing anything to me will change the physical nature of my brain. Simply talking to me will. New sensory information will come in, synapses will fire, etc. What you should say is


(this is consistent with your position that you are your brain}
How, exactly, does that work?

I made my argument, which you were unable to addresss. Instead, you create a strawman which uses an equivocation on the term "hurt".

I described mechanistically (albeit loosely) how the brain and "you" are linked. How effecting one effects the other. THAT goes to show how much you are your brain. Certainly you are the emergent behavior that resides in the functioning of your brain, but that doesn't need to be said explicitly every single time because I have already said that.

Again, that's a claim for a necessary, not sufficient condition. I don't think DOC would disagree with you. I'll argue for him:
Fine, consciousness is dependent on the brain. I don't disagree. It's also dependent on souls. No souls, no consciousness. We're all conscious because we have brains and souls.

Provide evidence for a soul, and we can discuss.
Until then, you are merely asserting something that doesn't exist and has never had ANY evidence to exist.

 

[joobz]

I'm not claiming anything. It's a hypothetical: assume there's a mechanical neuron that is functionally identical to a biological neuron. Assume that we can stop your brain acticity without killing you and replace one of your neurons with a mechanical neuron. All synaptic connections are preserved. Are you still you? If no, how are you still you when one of your neurons dies? If yes, how about if I replace two neurons... three? 50 million? At what point are you no longer you?

Yes, they're functionally equivalent. They behave just like biological neurons.



Why would I tell you those aren't related? Just because I disagree that "you are your brain" doesn't mean I'm claiming your brain has nothing to do with who you are. Is that what you think disagreeing with you entails?

If you could recreate the exact replica, Than I would think you would still be you. Afterall, using your words, it is an exact replica. as such, as you are your brain, you haven't changed.

Let's go one step further, Let's say you made an exact replica of me and killed the original. That would still be me. I think you have the harder problem of telling me how the soul transfers from the original to the replica.

 

[lemurien]

Using your reasoning, a person who can not speak, or who cannot see is less of a person than those who can.

Negative. Non sequitur.

Of course, if you lost your eyesight right now, your personality would change radically.
It has been shown that congenitally blind people recruit the visual cortical areas for the use of touch and proprioception. The anatomical changes are there, so there is also a reason to believe that these people 'are in the world' differently from you or me. Their world rewards different skills.

As to those with impaired hearing, I found the following:
In sum, the implication of the research of the last fifty years which compared the IQ of the deaf with the hearing and of subgroups of deaf children indicates that when there are no complicating multiple handicaps, the deaf and hard-of-hearing function at approximately the same IQ level on performance intelligence tests as do the hearing.

If you take intelligence as a measure of human value (which I do not) it seems that hearing disabilities do not compromise one's humanity, either.

I have a hard time understanding the joy of putting words into other people's mouths.

I prefer finding things out.

 

[joobz]

Negative. Non sequitur.

Of course, if you lost your eyesight right now, your personality would change radically.

Yes. Here is a great opportunity to prove me wrong.
If you can find someone who has had a changed personality without a change in the brain structure/function, my argument becomes invalid and I will admit error.

It has been shown that congenitally blind people recruit the visual cortical areas for the use of touch and proprioception. The anatomical changes are there, so there is also a reason to believe that these people 'are in the world' differently from you or me. Their world rewards different skills.

As to those with impaired hearing, I found the following:
In sum, the implication of the research of the last fifty years which compared the IQ of the deaf with the hearing and of subgroups of deaf children indicates that when there are no complicating multiple handicaps, the deaf and hard-of-hearing function at approximately the same IQ level on performance intelligence tests as do the hearing.

If you take intelligence as a measure of human value (which I do not) it seems that hearing disabilities do not compromise one's humanity, either.

I have a hard time understanding the joy of putting words into other people's mouths.

I prefer finding things out.

I didn't put words in your mouth, I simply extrapolated what your argument was showing. AS you now seem to agree with me that your body isn't you, There is no need to discuss this point further.

 

[lemurien]

Like Stephen Hawking can't say anything?

The Stephen Hawking I have seen on photos and videos has a body.
He used to walk before catching his terrible disease. His brain has developed for more than twenty years under a normal flux of neuronal flow.

You think that he is just a brain?
Or that his speech device is ported directly to the Broca's area of his left hemisphere?

No. Google some.

 

[lemurien]

Joobz: I didn't put words in your mouth, I simply extrapolated what your argument was showing.

You did not extrapolate anything.
You made a value judgement about the worth of human beings.

 

[lemurien]

double posting, server error

 

[Dancing David]

Funny, that's what I said.


Funny, that's what I said.

I is not my body.

I is self.

I is brain process hear me roar

 

[lemurien]

I is brain process hear me roar

I am a human being.
My brain is I.
My brain is a human being.

Now that's logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_being
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain

hmph

 

[Dancing David]

You duck to protect your flesh.

No, you duck to conditioning and meory of past perceptions, all brain processes, teh concept o body protection is yet another abstracted concept IE a brain process.

Your Self thinks that the flesh is an essential part of Dancing David and likes to keep it intact. It does not hesitate, it knows right away who should duck.

false premise, that is a learned response, and such learning occurs in brain processes.

In fact he has executed the movement before the autobiographical Self has even realized the danger.

All more brain process.

Except the muscle enervation and action.

These are the subroutines we inherited from our ancestors.

false unprovena ssumption with no demonstrated basis in fact.

Fast, robust and efficient.

Unrue, speed and accuracy is aquired through more brain processes.
{quote]
Playing any sport or an instrument would be impossible with only the rational mind.
[/quote]
You inserted rational not me, still brain proecsses.

It takes too much time to activate all the association cortices and value applicators and then formulate the action.

it is still brain process, the cerebellum is not in your abdomen.

Animal automatisms fare much better in simple, repetitive tasks.

That makes no sense in human application.

Of course, they can modified and learned. In the course of learning less and less effort is needed and when the learning process was documented in fMRI, the amount of brain tissue exceuting the task had diminished by 80%

Unknown what you are trying to say.

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing Dave: And you are wrong, without the brain you can not "eat, talk, play games, make love or play instruments", that is the locus of action, you can not make those acts without a body, but without the brain, they don't happen at all.


I wrote: Brains don't eat, talk, play games, make love or play instruments.
Only a body-brain does all this human stuff.
Misquoted. I hope not on purpose.

I did not misquote you ate all, I inserted your statement to make the point I intened.

PS Is english your first language? This is not a misquote in the way I am using it in. I made the point that as stated all those things require the brain. I did not change or alter the meanings of teh words I quoted not did I mis-characterize them, in fact I used them exactly as you used them in your sentence, to just make a different point.

 

[Dancing David]

Seems like this is a given when one says "brain", but you are correct.

I have been down this road before.

 

[Dancing David]

in the similar vein:
Gun = gun+gunshot.

If you think that this kind of logical limping saves your face, OK then.
Point taken.

The issue is again in the common straw argumets based upon fallacies of construction that are common in these discussions.

 

[Akhenaten]

Like Stephen Hawking can't say anything?

The Stephen Hawking I have seen on photos and videos has a body.
He used to walk before catching his terrible disease. His brain has developed for more than twenty years under a normal flux of neuronal flow.

Yes, I know.

You think that he is just a brain?

Just??? Hardly.

Or that his speech device is ported directly to the Broca's area of his left hemisphere?

No, not directly, but closely enough for my analogy to make sense.

No. Google some.

And deprive you of the opportunity to tell me what a dunce I am?

That doesn't seem very sporting.

 

[Dancing David]

That just means a brain is a necessary condition for personhood. Even I might agree with you (well, probably not). You are making a much stronger claim: your brain is a sufficient condition for personhood. Lemurian is rightly pointing out there are problems with this.

Interesting, what else is required?

I would say 'sensory input and interaction'.

 

[Dancing David]

Suppose I replace one of your neurons with a functionally equivalent mechanical neuron. The synaptic connections are all preserved. Are you still you? Suppose I replace another neuron. Still you? And another...

At what point do you cease to be you? 10% 50% 100%? Or are you still you with a functionally identical mechanical brain? Now suppose I take all the neurons I've slowly taken from you and reassemble your brain. Is it you?

This happens as a basis of fact every day, molecules turn over,