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Mind & Body
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Messages: 1 - 4 (4 total)
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TheWallflower
6/2/2006 5:58 PM
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1 out of 4 |
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It seems to me that the best solution to the mind/body problem is materialism: the mind is produced by physical processes in the brain.
However, I am aware that many philosophers reject this as simplistic. First question: Why is it considered simplistic?
I've also noticed that many who reject a materialistic notion of the mind likewise scoff at Cartesian dualism. But they may not be idealists either. Second question: What other possibilities are there besides materialism, idealism, and dualism?
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exploringinside
6/3/2006 4:04 PM
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2 out of 4 |
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Good questions, Wallflower
Here is the link to the Objectivist discussion on metaphysics and the Mind/Body dichotomy is one of the sections of this article:
Metaphysics
Perhaps the reason that some philosophers found the problem simplistic is their choice of metaphysical positions provided them an explanation on the nature of the human that could not be viewed any other way. Those that observed an essential conflict between a human’s spirit and their body, assumed the mind and body were separate entities, the body wishing to pursue a state of physical pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and the mind wishing to rise above the limitations of the body and suppress the body’s “baser” urges to pursue more important spiritual goals. Objectivism holds that the mind and body are an integrated unit, each radically dependent upon the other.
There exists a classification of metaphysical ideas that we might group under the term “metaphysical relativism.” These views hold that the universe is divided between objective reality, subjective reality and/or some spiritual realm that is “dimensionally different” than any physical or mental reality. In some of the Eastern philosophies, there is a denial that objective reality even exists, and physical events can be reduced to special kinds of mental and/or spiritual events or also identified as Phenominalism (and in Western thought the similar position is identified as Subjective Idealism). Most of the major religions (which are actually simple philosophical systems) claim there exists a supernatural spiritual realm that interacts with the materialistic and non-spiritual realm to form some kind of composite existence, and it is only available to be perceived spiritually by “enlightened individuals.” To acquire this enlightenment, one must “divorce themselves” from their body and utilize their spiritual abilities to gain the perceptions. Their view of the mind is somewhat akin to a bird where the soul provides the wings.
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Faustus5
8/3/2006 5:09 PM
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3 out of 4 |
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Richardbts wrote, “The mind has consciousness, the purely material brain doesn't.”
That, of course, is the fallacy of begging the question against the materialist or mind/brain identity sympathizer. What you need to first establish is that the mind is separate from the body.
“Materialism wants to reduce everything to material objects.”
Modern materialists have no trouble at all with the idea that matter turns out to be interchangeable with energy, or even that particles are merely strings vibrating in multiple dimensions. See Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition by Richard Vitzthum.
Since to explain anything is to explain it in terms which have different properties, it was inevitable that to explain matter you’d have to do so with entities that don’t seem material. Examples: liquidity is explained through the structures of atoms and molecules that aren’t wet, inheritance is explained through elements that don’t have brown eyes or sturdy chins, mental events are explained through physical events in the brain.
“But lately, with quantum physics we encounter "information" something beyond matter and energy.”
Information is nothing more than a measure of physical parameters. See Programming the Universe: A Quantum Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd.
“A kind of intelligence, not accounted for by mere matter or energy.”
Science shows nothing of the sort.
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