We, all of us, have a nervous system that lights up our lives. Why not
pay attention to it, rather than this "mind" that none can exhibit? I
have outlined a small set of structures that subsume the mammalian
nervous system. A system that can hesitate, weigh alternatives, and
decide. Is this not enough?

This is a conjecture about how a nervous system might work.
If you are interested in the nervous sytem, you might look at:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/rscanlon/brain/brain.htm

Ray

People are said to "hesitate," "weigh alternatives," and "decide." To say
that such behavior is explained by saying the brain does these things says
nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

rscan@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1189358579.756017.52670@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...


We, all of us, have a nervous system that lights up our lives. Why not
pay attention to it, rather than this "mind" that none can exhibit? I
have outlined a small set of structures that subsume the mammalian
nervous system. A system that can hesitate, weigh alternatives, and
decide. Is this not enough?

People are said to "hesitate," "weigh alternatives," and "decide." To say
that such behavior is explained by saying the brain does these things says
nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

This is a conjecture about how a nervous system might work.
If you are interested in the nervous sytem, you might look at:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/rscanlon/brain/brain.htm

Ray

We, all of us, have a nervous system that lights up our lives.

This is a conjecture about how a nervous system might work.
If you are interested in the nervous sytem, you might look at:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/rscanlon/brain/brain.htm

Mind is brain, in the eyes of many, and all we experience is an
interaction between various brain zones. If you like, mind is the
bridge between the sections and nothing more.

"Panther" <gmmiller795@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189370507.782471.306940@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...

Mind is brain, in the eyes of many, and all we experience is an
interaction between various brain zones. If you like, mind is the
bridge between the sections and nothing more.

Perhaps Mind is whatever the person doesn't yet understand.

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind, just figure out how to
develop a noninvasive high resolution real time brain scanner which any Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the physical activity of his
brain which correlates with the mental events he is experiencing in his
mind. Anyone that spends enough time playing with such a machine will no
longer be able to see his mental events as anything other than physical
brain events and the mind body problem will be solved for that person.

Curt Welch wrote:

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind, just figure out how
to
develop a noninvasive high resolution real time brain scanner which any
Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the physical activity of his
brain which correlates with the mental events he is experiencing in his
mind. Anyone that spends enough time playing with such a machine will no
longer be able to see his mental events as anything other than physical
brain events and the mind body problem will be solved for that person.



Weren't there some crude proto-types of that invented several millenia
ago? Like getting bonked on the head and becoming unconscious, or
ingesting mind or behavior altering substances of one sort or another?
No matter what the correlation, Average Joe still seems to stubbornly
interpret the assertion that "All those thoughts, emotions, images,
sounds, odors, and etc that you're experiencing are really brain
tissue" as somewhat equivalent to saying that "this 1000-page written
description of Paris is the Paris you visited on vacation".

So the mind is as real today as it ever was simply because we still have
this very real split in our sensory domains. Further understanding of how
the brain works does little to change our personal view of our own sensory
experience as being split. Those of us with a very strong belief in
materialism and physicalism just force ourselves to understand that the
mental events we sense happening are actually just sensations created by
the physical brain. Our belief in materialism doesn't actually make the
mental event seem very physical because our brain is still not seeing a
temporal correlation between them. This is just because we can't hear or
feel or smell or taste our own brain activity. Our brain doesn't buzz and
vibrate as it works.

"Panther" <gmmiller...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189370507.782471.306940@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...

Mind is brain, in the eyes of many, and all we
experience is an interaction between various
brain zones. If you like, mind is the bridge
between the sections and nothing more.

Perhaps Mind is whatever the person doesn't yet
understand.

That's not a bad point. It does work much like
that these days doesn't it. As new understanding is
reached about the operation of the brain, it's all
assigned to the brain, and removed from the mind.

But the entire concept of mind I'm pretty sure
evolved from the simple fact that we are able to
sense events happening in our own brain (thoughts,
etc.) but others around us are not able to sense
any physical events which correlate with what we
sense, and we as well, can't sense any physical
events which correlates with our sensation of our
own thoughts (in normal day to day life without
the help of other tools like brain scanners).

Because of this lack of correlation between
physical events and our own private thoughts,
everyone naturally split the world up into two
domains to match the two sensory domains which
had no correlations (the physical and the mental).

The brain is the physical thing in our head
which is part of the physical sensory domain,
and the mind is the name we gave to the root
cause of all the sensory events we are aware
of in the mental domain.

So the mind is as real today as it ever was
simply because we still have this very real
split in our sensory domains. Further
understanding of how the brain works does
little to change our personal view of our own
sensory xperience as being split. Those of us
with a very strong belief in materialism and
physicalism just force ourselves to understand
that the mental events we sense happening are
actually just sensations created by the physical
brain. Our belief in materialism doesn't actually
make the mental event seem very physical because
our brain is still not seeing a emporal
correlation between them. This is just because
we can't hear or feel or smell or taste our own
brain activity. Our brain doesn't buzz and
vibrate as it works.

However, I believe anyone who was given the
opportunity to be connected to a high resolution
brain scanner, and who could experience first
hand the neural correlates of various mental
events, would form the association, and would
start to see the mental events as physical events.
But for that to happen, the physical output of
the brain probe (whatever form it was in) would
need a direct temporal correlation to some aspect
of the person's thought. If for example, you
could wire sensors in the brain to detect whenever
the person thought of a concept like "dog", and
on a computer screen the words "dog neural activity"
would flash up - the person would quickly learn to
see his mental thoughts of "dog" as being nothing
more than some aspect of his brain activity. But
there has to be temporal correlation between the
physical event (the message flashing on the computer
screen) and the mental event, before the brain would
form this association, creating a bridge from the
mental sensory domain, and the physical sensory domain.

This is the type of sensation that most of us don't
get to experience first hand, and the lack of being
able to directly experience such a correlation is
what keeps the sensory domain of the mind separate
from the sensory domain of the physical for most
people. It's what gave rise to the entire concept
of a non-physical mind, and it's what keeps it alive
and well in the brains of so many people today.
No matter how much neuroscience tells us about the
brain, we will each still sense that we have a
nonphysical mind unless we can be hooked to such a
brain scanner and experience for ourselves the
temporal correlations between mental activity and
physical activity.

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind,
just figure out how to develop a noninvasive high
resolution real time brain scanner which any Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the
physical activity of his brain which correlates with
the mental events he is experiencing in his mind.
Anyone that spends enough time playing with such a
machine will no longer be able to see his mental
events as anything other than physical brain events
and the mind body problem will be solved for that
person.

On Sep 11, 2:15 am, c...@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
"pico" <pico.pico.pico> wrote:
"Panther" <gmmiller...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189370507.782471.306940@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...

Mind is brain, in the eyes of many, and all we
experience is an interaction between various
brain zones. If you like, mind is the bridge
between the sections and nothing more.

Perhaps Mind is whatever the person doesn't yet
understand.

That's not a bad point. It does work much like
that these days doesn't it. As new understanding is
reached about the operation of the brain, it's all
assigned to the brain, and removed from the mind.

But the entire concept of mind I'm pretty sure
evolved from the simple fact that we are able to
sense events happening in our own brain (thoughts,
etc.) but others around us are not able to sense
any physical events which correlate with what we
sense, and we as well, can't sense any physical
events which correlates with our sensation of our
own thoughts (in normal day to day life without
the help of other tools like brain scanners).

Because of this lack of correlation between
physical events and our own private thoughts,
everyone naturally split the world up into two
domains to match the two sensory domains which
had no correlations (the physical and the mental).

The brain is the physical thing in our head
which is part of the physical sensory domain,
and the mind is the name we gave to the root
cause of all the sensory events we are aware
of in the mental domain.

So the mind is as real today as it ever was
simply because we still have this very real
split in our sensory domains. Further
understanding of how the brain works does
little to change our personal view of our own
sensory xperience as being split. Those of us
with a very strong belief in materialism and
physicalism just force ourselves to understand
that the mental events we sense happening are
actually just sensations created by the physical
brain. Our belief in materialism doesn't actually
make the mental event seem very physical because
our brain is still not seeing a emporal
correlation between them. This is just because
we can't hear or feel or smell or taste our own
brain activity. Our brain doesn't buzz and
vibrate as it works.

However, I believe anyone who was given the
opportunity to be connected to a high resolution
brain scanner, and who could experience first
hand the neural correlates of various mental
events, would form the association, and would
start to see the mental events as physical events.
But for that to happen, the physical output of
the brain probe (whatever form it was in) would
need a direct temporal correlation to some aspect
of the person's thought. If for example, you
could wire sensors in the brain to detect whenever
the person thought of a concept like "dog", and
on a computer screen the words "dog neural activity"
would flash up - the person would quickly learn to
see his mental thoughts of "dog" as being nothing
more than some aspect of his brain activity. But
there has to be temporal correlation between the
physical event (the message flashing on the computer
screen) and the mental event, before the brain would
form this association, creating a bridge from the
mental sensory domain, and the physical sensory domain.

This is the type of sensation that most of us don't
get to experience first hand, and the lack of being
able to directly experience such a correlation is
what keeps the sensory domain of the mind separate
from the sensory domain of the physical for most
people. It's what gave rise to the entire concept
of a non-physical mind, and it's what keeps it alive
and well in the brains of so many people today.
No matter how much neuroscience tells us about the
brain, we will each still sense that we have a
nonphysical mind unless we can be hooked to such a
brain scanner and experience for ourselves the
temporal correlations between mental activity and
physical activity.

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind,
just figure out how to develop a noninvasive high
resolution real time brain scanner which any Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the
physical activity of his brain which correlates with
the mental events he is experiencing in his mind.
Anyone that spends enough time playing with such a
machine will no longer be able to see his mental
events as anything other than physical brain events
and the mind body problem will be solved for that
person.



I doubt those who know about brains believe that the
content of their consciousness is any more than something
going on physically in their brain. You are really
bashing a strawman. I for one have no notion what you
might mean by non-physical. If it exists than for me
it is physical, be it a magnetic field, or a virtual
particle. If it has an effect it is physical and is
definable by its effects. To the extent something has
no physical effects is the extent to which, for all
practical purposes, it has no physical existence.

I believe in a physical world just as much as you do
but I don't imagine that my brain's model of that world
is anything but a model and the real world is unknown
although it must correlate in some way with each model.

In getting a true understanding of complex systems some
take the extreme views, atomism or gestaltism. You take
the atomism extreme view.

If we take some blocks (atoms) then an arch is "nothing
but" three blocks,

But the arch has properties not directly inherited from
the properties of its parts in any simple way.

The properties
of the arch also depend on the arrangement of the parts just
as the properties of a protein depend on the sequence of
amino acids peculiar to each protein. Same amino acids,
different sequence, different protein. The letters L and T
are "nothing but a vertical and horizontal line ... no they
are also a spatial arrangements of a vertical and horizontal
line and that is important in knowing what they are.

When you say consciousness is "nothing but"

the firing
of neurons and than go on to say everything is conscious
it is like saying a T and an L are both the same.

Your challenge has been in what way is a "conscious"
activity different from an unconscious activity (in
what way is T and L different) and then declared that
a lack of specifics means there is no difference
despite our experience to the contrary.

That consciousness was falsely attributed to a soul doesn't
make it go away when we realise that is not the case anymore
or mean that is no different to any other physical activity.

You dismiss what might be an interesting question, what is
the physical basis of a conscious experience.

Put in machine terms think of a machine that prints BLUE
when shown a blue card and RED when shown a red card.
Does it have a "conscious experience" of color. Of course
it must, just like T and L are the same thing... not!!

Those who don't dismiss the question as a hangover from
the religious world view will be in a better position to
find the causal links between an internal activity and
the output of a machine being "why do I experience things
this way?"

There is I am sure a physical answer and those who wish
to pursue the question will move beyond the "just is"
answer to something that we can actually understand and
prove without needing to "force ourselves to understand"
as you put it. Well you can't force yourself to understand
anything you can only force yourself to believe something
as an act of faith and that is religion not science.

--
jc

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind, just figure out how
to
develop a noninvasive high resolution real time brain scanner which any
Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the physical activity of his
brain

Curt Welch wrote:

If you want to kill the myth of a non-physical mind, just figure out
how to
develop a noninvasive high resolution real time brain scanner which any
Joe
from the street can experiment with and see the physical activity of
his brain

Brain scanners show only gross electrical activity. Watching your brain
to learn your mind is like watching your feet to learn how you walk.