On Monday, February 10, 2014 1:55:12 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > > On 9 February 2014 22:50, Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> Neuroscientists assume that we think with our brains just as cardiac > >> physiologists assume the heart pumps blood around the body. It's > >> possible they are wrong, but you would have to have a very good reason > >> to challenge these assumptions. > > > > > > One good reason is that the absence of the experience of thought is just > as > > consistent with our model of physiology and neuroscience as the presence > of > > such an experience would be. > > That's not a reason. It could still be that thought is entirely > dependent on a functioning brain. >
You're smuggling in the expectation of "thought". My point is that if we limit ourselves to what neuroscience actually tells us, there is nothing dependent on a functioning brain except a body's functions in the world (the body's world). > > > Another good reason is that there are persistent claims of veridical > OBEs > > and NDEs. > > That would be a reason if it were true and it could be shown that > thought persisted even though brain activity was absent. At present, > the scientific consensus is that this is crackpottery. > It doesn't matter whether it is true, it only matters that there is something which is fairly common and very mysterious. The fact that there is something to be labeled crackpottery in the first place means that there is something that we don't understand and have affected a defensive posture to protect our ignorance. The accusation of crackpottery is very similar to the accusation of witchcraft. A lot of old men who are afraid of the mysterious aspects of nature. > > Another good reason is that if all of our experience is manufactured > within > > the tissue of our brain as a kind of cinematic illusion, then the brain > > itself, and our understanding of it, would also be just as illusory as > any > > fictional story. > > But that could be so whether thought was generated by the brain or > not, so is not a reason. > If our experience is an illusion, then the brain is also. > > > Another good reason is that matter in general has no plausible potential > to > > generate intentions or illusions of itself. > > That's begging the question, and not a reason. > It's not begging the question, it is the foundation of the question itself. If we could see that imagining the smell of fruit makes part of the brain smell like fruit, then we would have reason to suspect that matter does indeed generate phenomenal qualities. Craig > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
