Interesting Ian

Thinking is a mental activity. Why are you conflating it with a physical activity?

DRFseven

Because it IS "conflated". We know that disruptions in the mechanistic process cause disruptions in thinking; we can even watch the neural mechanism of choice via functional MRI studies. Are you saying that you think the mechanics are extraneous or serve some other purpose?

Note: this is not about what sensation is. I certainly don't deny the mental experience of thinking.

the_cave

I've never understood this claim. First of all, surely experience contributes inputs into the mind that are not memories--they could become memories, sure, but when they first happen, they aren't. Right?

Secondly, it is true that if thoughts occur at the scales of quantum mechanics, there could in principle (though not necessarily) be uncaused thoughts, in the sense that there are uncaused quantum events (this has been discussed on other threads as well)--or, to be more explicit, in the sense that their outcome, or even occurrence, is not absolutely determined (that is, there are a range of values that such thoughts could take on, each one assigned a probability 0>p<1) I'd be willing to call such thoughts "free".

Note, however, that this might not mean that thoughts weren't "mechanical"; it is called quantum _mechanics_ after all. But quantum mechanics are not exactly what most people mean by "mechanical" processes. Ah, yes, once again, a debate over the meaning of terms it's what it so often boils down to...

Interesting Ian

Are you asserting that thinking literally is a physical process? I'm afraid that doesn't make sense to me.

DRFseven

When information enters the system through sensory channels (say, it's visual - a pig is trotting down a city sidewalk; photons strike the pig, bounce off, and strike the eyes), certain groups of neurons respond by firing and changing their chemical makeup. This is referred to as a change in action potential, which is the process that determines what becomes memory. The cell now has potential to fire again, when triggered by the firing of associated cells (like other "pig" cells or "sidewalk" cells in the brain). A week later, someone mentions pigs, and that same cell group begins firing again in that pig-on-the-sidewalk constellation. This is memory - the same neuron groups firing that fired during the original experience, and it is that original experience that determines the action potential, and thus, potential for future group firing (memory). Without it, there is no way to think about pigs on sidewalks or about anything. Sure, information enters on a first-time basis, but it has to go into short-term memory immediately (this means a certain part of the brain is signaled to jump in and keep those neurons firing in a cycle) or it's gone; there is nothing with which to think about that experience. During old age, associative pathways between neurons thin out and disappear, making memory retrieval from certain cell groupings difficult or impossible, though the more times a particular memory pathway is activated, the more robust the associated pathways, and the less likely it is to forget (which means it can't be accessed at some given time).

There is no thinking without memory; to even put a name to a thought (to think about pigs or sidewalks or free will) requires memory; all thoughts are bootsrapped by knowledge upon bootstrapped knowledge.

Quote:

Secondly, it is true that if thoughts occur at the scales of quantum mechanics, there could in principle (though not necessarily) be uncaused thoughts, in the sense that there are uncaused quantum events (this has been discussed on other threads as well)--or, to be more explicit, in the sense that their outcome, or even occurrence, is not absolutely determined (that is, there are a range of values that such thoughts could take on, each one assigned a probability 0>p<1) I'd be willing to call such thoughts "free".

But even if there were "quantumly" occuring impulses, they wouldn't be coherent without memory of things known. Say, the pig-on-the-sidewalk group suddenly fired in tandem, out of the blue. Well, the "thinker" would have no idea what pigs or sidewalks were and no way to think anything about them. It would be disconnected sensation with no coherence.

John Page

supervenience

A kind of dependency relation. One set of properties is supervenient on a second set when they are so related that there could not be a difference in the first without there being a difference in the second, though there could be a difference in the second with no difference in the first. It has been argued that mental properties are supervenient upon, rather than nomically identical with or related to, physical properties.

My italics. From the Oxford Companion to Philosophy.

Cheers, John

jpbrooks

Sorry for the late response, but I really need to catch up on my long neglected reading.

Briefly, you are correct in pointing out that memory is a necessary "component" of thinking.
However, even if it is granted that memory is a completely physical phenomenon, that still does not rule out the possibility that some "immaterial" entity that could be stipulated to be the "center" of our consciousness is simply using the changes in neurons to process sense data from the physical environment in the same way that we are using the RAM and processing units of our computers to process communicated data from the internet.

Mechanism seems to fall under Physicalism which, according to some critics, doesn't seem to be able to provide a complete reduction of psychological / mental phenomena to neurobiological phenomena. If physicalism is true then such a reduction should be possible, at least in principle.

Philosoft

But once divorced from the "hardware," how would the "immaterial entity" access the memories therein?
Is there a reason to think mental reductionism is not possible in principle?

phaedrus

What is free will?

DRF

Will we ever be able to reduce everything to certain physical processes and be able to construct an "experience" from those electro-chemical processes? As Nagel said will we ever know “what it is like to be a bat”? Will we ever be able to find the neural correlate of consciousness? Can our "mind" study itself?

DoubleDutchy

This hits the mark !
The answer is yes (obviously so),but ..

But in doing so it creates a selfreferential system. These are fine and extremely useful but inevitably give birth to undecidable anomalies. The oldest example is the Epimenides paradox: It is perfectly valid to make statements about statements until I come up with the statement 'This statement is a ly'. This is true when false and false when true.. weird.
Determinism vs free will runs into the same kind of problem:
In a chess game I can view my opponent as a deterministic machine: his moves are predictable in principle. As soon as I am able to predict them in practice I will prevent him from making them. His moves are only predictable as long as I cannot predict them.. weird.
Read Escher Gödel Bach
and the world never will look the same again..
I am serious, it happened to me some 20 years ago.