Lets try this another way: if you have faith the brain creates the mind, and that mind depends on brain, can we please see your logic and evidence?

[1137]

Claim: the brain creates the mind. The mind depends on the brain. When the brain dies mind dies. Etc.

Evidence: ?????

 

[Yerda]

What would we expect if the brain created the mind?

I would expect that changes in the brain cause changes in the mind. And they do.

I would expect to never encounter a mind where there is no brain. And I don't.

I would expect that memories are dimmed over time as the neural configurations that encode them decay. And they do.

I would expect that conscious practice improves as neural pathways are reinforced. And they do.

These seem like good places to start.

 

[John D. Brey]

Claim: the brain creates the mind. The mind depends on the brain. When the brain dies mind dies. Etc.

Evidence: ?????

Why couldn't we say that a lack of evidence ---in this case ----is perfect evidence? In other words, just show us a mind gallivanting around after its brain has died?

Then again, we could say, borrowing Dawkins' lingo, that if memes are in fact disembodied mind, then when someone like St. Paul, or Luther, receive their new body and brain, then the memes they produced way back when, which have been prodigiously proliferating, should they come home to roost, would produce brain/mind corporations of mindbogglingly biblical proportions.

In other words, imagine if all the thought St. Paul's epistles have spawned over the last two-thousand years came home to papa when he receives his resurrection brain. It's hard to imagine there'd be enough space for papa to house them?

John

 

[Alien826]

I didn't participate in the other thread, but I did read your arguments. I'm not sure that I, or anyone, has to show that thinking is the function of the brain, as it just seems pretty obvious. See @Yerda's thoughts above to establish probability. I suppose we can hold the door open a crack to allow other possibilities, particularly as so much of human belief and culture hinges on it, but generally we assume what seems most obvious, pending evidence to the contrary.

 

[1137]

What would we expect if the brain created the mind?

I would expect that changes in the brain cause changes in the mind. And they do.

I asked for evidence brain creates mind not that they are connected.

I would expect to never encounter a mind where there is no brain. And I don't.

So now instead of simply supporting physicalism you also need to refute theism, paranormal activity, etc. I look forward to this!

I would expect that memories are dimmed over time as the neural configurations that encode them decay. And they do.

Again I'm not asking for evidence the two are connected but that one creates the other.

I would expect that conscious practice improves as neural pathways are reinforced. And they do.

See above.

These seem like good places to start.

So your argument is that correlation = causation. Lets test if this is special pleading:

do you blame the decline of pirates for the rise in global temperatures?

Why couldn't we say that a lack of evidence ---in this case ----is perfect evidence? In other words, just show us a mind gallivanting around after its brain has died?

Another for presuppositionalism.

Then again, we could say, borrowing Dawkins' lingo, that if memes are in fact disembodied mind, then when someone like St. Paul, or Luther, receive their new body and brain, then the memes they produced way back when, which have been prodigiously proliferating, should they come home to roost, would produce brain/mind corporations of mindbogglingly biblical proportions

Can you elaborate on what he means?

I didn't participate in the other thread, but I did read your arguments. I'm not sure that I, or anyone, has to show that thinking is the function of the brain, as it just seems pretty obvious.

And "it seems subjectively obvious" is good for any position, or only thise you agree with?

See @Yerda's thoughts above to establish probability. I suppose we can hold the door open a crack to allow other possibilities, particularly as so much of human belief and culture hinges on it, but generally we assume what seems most obvious, pending evidence to the contrary.

So 3 users with no evidence at all to provide.

 

[LuisDantas]

The best discussion of the matter that I know of is this.

A Ghost in the Machine - Daylight Atheism

Part 1: Introduction / Where is the Soul Hiding? Part 2: The Argument from Mind-Brain Unity Part 3: The God Part of the Brain Part 4: Philosophical

www.patheos.com

 

[John D. Brey]

Then again, we could say, borrowing Dawkins' lingo, that if memes are in fact disembodied mind, then when someone like St. Paul, or Luther, receive their new body and brain, then the memes they produced way back when, which have been prodigiously proliferating, should they come home to roost, would produce brain/mind corporations of mindbogglingly biblical proportions

Can you elaborate on what he means?

In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed that thought's that proliferate outside a person's mind are equivalent in some sense to genes in that they, "memes" (a word he coined to make mind-products rhyme with "genes") can mix with other meme's, like genes mix with other genes, thereby causing mind-products to reproduce and survive just like genes.

Genes are housed in a biological body, as are memes for the most part. And when a person's body dies, then their genes can still proliferate through their offspring, if they have any. Similarly, memes (a person's thoughts) can proliferate not just through their biological offspring, but they can proliferate in the mind of any person who gives them thought.

We could say, with the prophet Isaiah, that in the case of the proliferation of memes, more are the offspring of the barren person who never fathered or mothered any biological offspring than are the sons and daughters of biological breeders. Jesus and St. Paul could then be said to be prodigiously promiscuous in that more are the offspring of these two celibate men than the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Muhammad, combined and doubled.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Then again, we could say, borrowing Dawkins' lingo, that if memes are in fact disembodied mind, then when someone like St. Paul, or Luther, receive their new body and brain, then the memes they produced way back when, which have been prodigiously proliferating, should they come home to roost, would produce brain/mind corporations of mindbogglingly biblical proportions

Can you elaborate on what he means?

In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed that thought's that proliferate outside a person's mind are equivalent in some sense to genes in that they, "memes" (a word he coined to make mind-products rhyme with "genes") can mix with other meme's, like genes mix with other genes, thereby causing mind-products to reproduce and survive just like genes.

Genes are housed in a biological body, as are memes for the most part. And when a person's body dies, then their genes can still proliferate through their offspring, if they have any. Similarly, memes (a person's thoughts) can proliferate not just through their biological offspring, but they can proliferate in the mind of any person who gives them thought.

We could say with the prophet Isaiah that in the case of the proliferation of memes, more are the offspring of the barren person who never fathered or mothered any biological offspring than are the sons and daughters of biological breeders. Jesus and St. Paul could then be said to be prodigiously promiscuous in that more are the offspring of these two celibate men than the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Mohamed, combined and doubled.



John

 

[viole]

Claim: the brain creates the mind. The mind depends on the brain. When the brain dies mind dies. Etc.

Evidence: ?????

What do you remember of yourself 1000 years ago?

ciao

- viole

 

[John D. Brey]

What do you remember of yourself 1000 years ago?

. . . Biden doesn't remember where he was less than a year or two ago. Does that mean he's a disemminded body?




John

 

[Revoltingest]

Claim: the brain creates the mind. The mind depends on the brain. When the brain dies mind dies. Etc.

Evidence: ?????

Experiment....
1) Insert long ice pick into brain.
2) Swish it around thoroughly to mix up all the gray matter.
3) Determine if mind is still there.
4) No longer there.

 

[viole]

. . . Biden doesn't remember where he was less than a year or two ago. Does that mean he's a disemminded body?




John

no, it means that without a good functioning brain, your mind is not there. Because the mind is nothing but the healthy working of a brain. It is so self evident, that I wonder why there is any need to postulate something beyond that.

when you have no brain, you have no mind, when you have an old, out of whack brain, your mind forget things.

so, do you think you do not remember things 1000 years ago, because your brain is out of whack, too?

ciao

- viole

 

[Alien826]

And "it seems subjectively obvious" is good for any position, or only thise you agree with?

First add a word ("subjectively") to what I said, then sneer. I won't dignify that with a direct reply.

Did you read the link @LuisDantas provided? It's a lot to take in, but adds a lot of detail to the idea that all thinking is a function of the brain. The more you read, the more "obvious" it will be. Try it, I think you will find your correlation/causation claim doesn't survive long.

 

[John D. Brey]

no, it means that without a good functioning brain, your mind is not there. Because the mind is nothing but the healthy working of a brain. It is so self evident, that I wonder why there is any need to postulate something beyond that.

Descartes and Nietzsche, to name two famous thinkers, constantly remarked on how the unserious person is wont to constantly think things are easy and easily resolved when they're nothing of the sort. This is that in spades since many very brilliant and well-educated atheists and agnostics are now aware, and willing to point out, that the human mind can be proven (yes proven) to transcend not only its physical frame/brain, but even the laws of physics.

Yes Virginia, there's not only a Santa Claus but a disembodied Mind.

when you have no brain, you have no mind, when you have an old, out of whack brain, your mind forget things.

so, do you think you do not remember things 1000 years ago, because your brain is out of whack, too?

When, at first I read Moses' writing, I felt so close to it that part of me thought he was plagiarizing my thoughts. I have thus spent more time correcting misunderstandings of what we, he and me, mean, in the Torah, than most people have spent watching re-runs of Seinfeld.

Persons accepting a given text, or canon, are passive, or at least so they are supposed to be at the primary steps of their spiritual development. The structured letters structure unstructured men. With spiritual evolution, the person becomes more and more active in relationship to the text, which gradually, becomes less structured until the strong interpreter reaches the point that he can structure the letters that were formerly untied from their affinities to meanings in a given text or a given word. This process is paralleled by the gradual growth of the mystic's spiritual component which is, at the beginning, indebted to the canonic text or ordinary language, but is freeing itself from the bonds of nature and is able to liberate the divine letters from their bondage in the canonical text. The more spiritual a man is --- in our case, the more free he is in relation to the ordered text-- the more spiritual is his interpretation.​

​

Professor Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, p. xvi.​

What the Professor is calling a "mystic" is merely a person who frees their mind from it's mistaken belief that it's a product of the brain it experiences as a womb of sorts. The non-mystic is a permanent momma's boy so to say. He or she never strays too far from momma and papa or reverend so-n-so. Once a mind is freed from the shackles of its brain, it realizes, as Einstein realized when the umbilical cord from his mind to mamma brain was severed, that not only is the distinction between past and future just a stubbornly persistent illusion, but so is the falsehood that me, Moses, and Einstein, are utterly separate personages.



John

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I asked for evidence brain creates mind not that they are connected.

So now instead of simply supporting physicalism you also need to refute theism, paranormal activity, etc. I look forward to this!

Again I'm not asking for evidence the two are connected but that one creates the other.

See above.

So your argument is that correlation = causation. Lets test if this is special pleading:

do you blame the decline of pirates for the rise in global temperatures?

Another for presuppositionalism.

Can you elaborate on what he means?

And "it seems subjectively obvious" is good for any position, or only thise you agree with?

So 3 users with no evidence at all to provide.

When you are wedded to your beliefs, rather than evidence put before you, no evidence will ever satisfy you. I decline to be bothered.

 

[1137]

The best discussion of the matter that I know of is this.

A Ghost in the Machine - Daylight Atheism

Part 1: Introduction / Where is the Soul Hiding? Part 2: The Argument from Mind-Brain Unity Part 3: The God Part of the Brain Part 4: Philosophical

www.patheos.com

Any chance you have an objective source, rather than a physicalist blog? And what are you hoping I take from this article?

If you don't have a better source I'll address this one but like... it's like citing the Vatican that Satanists are a real threat.

 

[viole]

Descartes and Nietzsche, to name two famous thinkers, constantly remarked on how the unserious person is wont to constantly think things are easy and easily resolved when they're nothing of the sort. This is that in spades since many very brilliant and well-educated atheists and agnostics are now aware, and willing to point out, that the human mind can be proven (yes proven) to transcend not only its physical frame/brain, but even the laws of physics.

Yes Virginia, there's not only a Santa Claus but a disembodied Mind.

This is, only, in your dreams. Which will also cease when you brain vanishes.

So, act like those mysterious well educated and brilliant atheists, however they are and prove it. It should not be difficult, if it can be proven.

And there is nothing, with not even the most negligible shred of evidence, that transcend physics. Unless you can show it to me.

When, at first I read Moses' writing,

Moses writing?

What the Professor is calling a "mystic" is merely a person who frees their mind from its mistaken belief that it's a product of the brain it experiences as a womb of sorts. The non-mystic is a permanent momma's boy so to say. He or she never strays too far from momma and papa or reverend so-n-so. Once a mind is freed from the shackles of its brain, it realizes, as Einstein realized when the umbilical cord from his mind to mamma brain was severed, that not only is the distinction between past and future just a stubbornly persistent illusion, but so is the falsehood that me, Moses, and Einstein, are utterly separate personages.

I wonder what that same mystic would think when his mind has been influenced by chemicals. Like 20 shots of vodka. Would it be still so smart? I doubt it. It can only get smarter .

And what about Einstein? Did you put it there hoping to scare us? What did he say about disembodied minds, exactly?

I think you are desperate, and like all desperate (as they should be) dualists, you are making things up.

Ciao

- viole

 

[We Never Know]

Claim: the brain creates the mind. The mind depends on the brain. When the brain dies mind dies. Etc.

Evidence: ?????

IMO.. you can have a brain with a mind or a brain without a mind(vegetative state). However you can't have a mind without a brain.

 

[LuisDantas]

Any chance you have an objective source, rather than a physicalist blog? And what are you hoping I take from this article?

If you don't have a better source I'll address this one but like... it's like citing the Vatican that Satanists are a real threat.

I don't know why you call that a "non-objective" source. Nor do I care.

 

[1137]

In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed that thought's that proliferate outside a person's mind are equivalent in some sense to genes in that they, "memes" (a word he coined to make mind-products rhyme with "genes") can mix with other meme's, like genes mix with other genes, thereby causing mind-products to reproduce and survive just like genes.

Genes are housed in a biological body, as are memes for the most part. And when a person's body dies, then their genes can still proliferate through their offspring, if they have any. Similarly, memes (a person's thoughts) can proliferate not just through their biological offspring, but they can proliferate in the mind of any person who gives them thought.

We could say, with the prophet Isaiah, that in the case of the proliferation of memes, more are the offspring of the barren person who never fathered or mothered any biological offspring than are the sons and daughters of biological breeders. Jesus and St. Paul could then be said to be prodigiously promiscuous in that more are the offspring of these two celibate men than the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Muhammad, combined and doubled.



John

I'm not sure what makes Dawkins seem crazier here, lamarkian evolution or rhyming genes and memes.