I can likewise say that I have never taken a dime from another taxpayer in spite of decades of apparent unemployment. :-)
Is electro-chemical activity in the brain the same thing as a thought?
That is the question ... I think. I would say not. To say what thought is is as difficult as to say, exactly, what mind is. To some there is really no difference. Thought is mind.
Where it really gets difficult is when it is suggested that every perception and, more than just perceptions, everything conceptual is mind. But what else is any perception or concept, whatsoever, no matter how much solidity one might attribute to it, other than a thought?
What is the brain then and what does it have to do with mind and thoughts? IMO it is simply an organ whose function is to control the body and serves as a biological interface and filter between mind and the physical body. But not necessarily the sole physical interface.
I am certainly glad to know that you have made an honest living. LOL ;-)
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My advisor lo those many years ago suggested that not all of those who graduated with a degree in philosophy need teach or philosophize for a living. He knew I just wasn’t that deep, nor that into philosophy for philosophy’s sake. I studied it just to get girls. Until I fugured that I misheard the conversation I was eavesdropping on - I should have been a guitar player (although I am and was back then and that never got me girls either).
There is a school of British philosophy (those wacky linquistic philosophers) who suggest that a discussion of mental event (thoughts, feelings, ideas) is simply a discussion about electro chemical processes in the brain. That mind/body dualism is thought to be the case due to the lack of the proper terminology about which to speak of these mental events.
Some who study the philosophy of science are in the same boat, and that our resistance to the notion of monism is that ideas and electro chemical processes just seem different.
My advisor would be so proud right now :-)