Laurentius

yeah... very funny.
The "broken brain" argument proves the Brain and the Mind to hand in hand, like 2 pages of the same sheet, not that they are one and the same, or that one supersedes the other.
(I'll return.)
AVE

Amos

Skepticism is a good tool for the inquiring mind to lean on but this does not mean that a complete understanding of our own soul is impossible. If the concepts Final Form, Par-ousia, or final round of Samsara have any meaning at all they must have meaning because they are the end of our inquiring and when we arrive there "it will be as if we know the place for the first time."

Amos

The backdrop of "The Creation of Adam" (the Sistine Chapel) also outlines the human skull. Every detail of this painitng is relevant in the same way to even the colors (swirling green veil to represent vertebral artery, etc). A detailed description of this can be found in the "Medical Post," february 19, 1991, written by Dr. Meshberger, obstetrician/gynecologist.

Edited to add that the interesting part here is that "Adam" is outside this backdrop as if to say that our ego in not part of the the man identity but alienated from it. Hence the duality of man and human.

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Jonsey3333

Making a chart of materials doesn't prove a thing and is also inaccurate. Things don't exist in groups. Groups are a simplification of reality (i.e. Astrology).

Advancement is made due to cumulative efforts over several generations. Time alone solves nothing.

Au contraire. The physical laws are all that are needed. It's just very complicated and as of yet, unsolved. That doesn't make it magic.

Do you belive the chess board has a spiritual nature? Does your computer? What makes us so special to be the only member of the top tier in the hierarchy? I'd say it's just wishful arrogance.

Maybe so, but they advance with every study. Leaps of faith are shots in the dark. Science is reliable, if limited. Unless, of course, this spiritual master is just playing tricks with us by altering scientific studies. The bastard.

Amos

But as science advances so does onmiscience because it percieves things wholistically with the eye of the soul, the bastard!

NialScorva

Amos,

Hush, you're incoherent.

owleye

Laurentius...

I can appreciate the hard work that I'm sure you went through to come up with your ideas. However, they seem fairly superficial and for the purpose you have in mind somewhat difficult to apply. I might suggest as a starting point writers like Husserl, for a phenomenological orientation, or Davidson, having analytic roots, they each having very well thought out positions on the topic you are addressing.

Husserl, taking an idea from Brentano, understands the importance of 'intentionality' as the key structure that distinguishes mental activity from physical activity. That is, unlike physical activity (including the brain or central nervous system), mental activity is always "about something." Among the activities of minds include the list you draw from in the definitions you cite. And each one of them is such that it has the property of intentionality. Minds don't just believe. They believe in something. They don't just desire, fear, feel, sense, think, will, or any other act. They desire something, fear something, feel something, will something. Physical objects and activities, including the brain, do not have this feature. They are not about anything at all.

Davidson takes a different approach, where the same feature of 'intentionality' is brought within the concept of "propositional attitude." Knowledge, beliefs, hopes, and so forth, representing mental states, are propositional attitudes. They describe a particular relation that a subject has with an object. He then develops criteria I'd say makes for a high standard for "thought" or "intelligence" such that, in effect, no other species has it (though I suspect he could be persuaded to allow that chimps and possibly even gorillas have the rudiments of it). Moreover, though it is possible to develop robots that have the mental skills of "thought" its lack of an ability to perceive keeps robots from qualifying. One can understand that perception (which embodies consciousness) is what would make the activity of robots mental, and not just physical.

One final note, though Husserl's phenomenology draws important distinctions between minds and physical objects, he does not go so far as to say that the mind exists independently of physical bodies. indeed, except possibly for Sartre, who begins with a Cartesian dualism, I'm not sure any contemporary philosopher of note regards the mind in this way.

Your suggestion of "supersede" as a way of characterizing this may be new (if not it would be good of you to cite where you got the idea), but there has been at least one long standing view that I'm aware (originally from Plato and taken up by Freud and many others) that makes use of levels or stages of consciousness. Indeed consciousness in this view is said to rest on top of a sea of subconscious (or "unconscious") activity. Superseding may or may not best characterize this, but without more elaboration of how it is used in this context I can't be sure you've really put your finger on it. The property of supervenience, on the other hand, has a fairly long history, and as such may actually characterize what you have in mind.

owleye

Laurentius

AVE
Following my busy agenda, I'll briefly attempt to outline what the mind is in relation with the brain.

MATTER
First, the mind is a product and manifestation of matter. My position is by no means idealist. It is not reductionist either.

ORGANIZATION
The mind does not simply stem from inert chaotic matter, but from higly organized one. Many people on this forum have time and again emphasized this characteristic of the brain and I couldn't agree more with them in this respect.

SELF-CONSERVATION
There are several forms of highly organized matter, such as the brain or contemporary human artifacts. The activity of human artifacts fail to have any resemblance with the mind in that their high organization is not self-preserving. The mind grounds on the living matter that actively preserves its structure during its lifetime against the natural factors in the environment, under which any structure tends to reach the highest degree of entropy.

WILL
The mind arises from the self-conserving organized matter that manages to ensure itself a greater degree of independence through the manifestation of will. The presence of will indicates that the living matter is capable of more than just actively preserving itself against the destructive natural phenomenona - it has succeeded in giving it a greater power of adaptation to wide range of environments that the living thing can test and change at will.

SELF-REFLECTIVITY
This is usually the main characteristic that one takes into consideration when defining the mind: the ability of being aware of itself - consciousness. But, as we have seen, a larger number of requirments must be fulfilled for the matter to lead to the emergence of the mind.

A first working definition would thus be:
The mind is the manifestation of highly organized matter that (a) is able of self-preservation and development to the highest degree of complexity its structure alows and (b) can analitically view itself within the environment, all of these with the result of the entity bearing the mind being endowed with increased independence from the constrictions of the environment that it employs for self-fulfillment.

(Allow me to return later for additons and corrections.)
AVE

Christopher Lord

I agree.
Agree.
Starting to get contentious. First, the patterns are the organization. The media (matter) is not important. Therefore a human brain carved into silicon will still function as a human brain (after the bugs caused by the media change are worked out). A dualist claims this silicon replica would have no soul, and is thus a zombie. The soul is implanted into the brain at some indeterminate time by a non-descript power. This is something I find detestable. Basically, I hold that any sufficiently complicated system can express a mind given the right software. That our computers do not have a mind yet is only testament to their lack of complexity and software. And even now, the concept of self-conservation can be put into a computer. Evolution placed it in the animals because it’s simply a good way of getting genes passed on.
No argument.
Requirements such as education, biology, and environment all contribute. Having awareness of one’s self doesn’t strike me as a difficult task, though. Most primates can do it, and any animal that cleans itself also does in a more limited way. Even very simple animals are always looking out for number 1. You may object that the animal cleaning itself is not actually self-aware, but is merely bending to its genetic predisposition to clean. I agree, but I’m also saying we do the same thing on a slightly larger scale. If you are saying we are somehow different from animals in this regard, please expound.
Would an AI that fits this definition have a mind then?

Laurentius

NialScorva
Yes, there is. Try to describe a chess game in terms of strict space coordinates, natural time, solids, gravity, friction, and so on, and the accurate account of what is physically going on there will make nothing but a grotesque picture - you'll miss the game, actually.
Let me follow this logic. You cut off the senses, there's no chess game. This can be valid only before the chessmaster learns the game; when he's become a chessmaster, he won't necessarily need them for the chess game to still be played in his mind.
Plus, all the physical circumstances in which the chess game is performed (board, pieces, senses) make up a complex connection line between the abstract game of chess and the mind of the player.
That's right. The problem is no physical model fits at the moment. All I hear is: "The brain is like a computer running a program...". No, it's not. One can at most use this as an analogy, otherwise it is simply abusive presuposition in which put as much faith as Christians put in their Saviour. Or they say something like: "Scientists will soon figure everything out - they're already doing it, just wait..." Same faith.
From where I stand, it does. Just look around. There's a random plan of reality (the material) and a volitional one (all the minds that make the mankind). The fact that you would never know the former without the latter seems to give the mind the right to be accepted as a phylosophical principle.
AVE