Posted on 07/11/2005 6:48:41 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Let's try it again, here is their logic.
The mind is what the brain does: brain > mind.
Therefore the mind causes things to happen: mind > things.
The only way their logic can be repaired is by reformulating "the mind is what the brain does" to "the mind is the brain and the brain is the mind". But then they would have a ghost "of" or "in" the machine which Pinker expressly forbids.
I certainly agree with you though that the answer is to be found in the autonomy to which I would add the information (successful communication).
IOW, I assert that it is the autonomous successful communication which causes things to happen. The brain is no more than a biological instrument, the equivalent of a car or a gun in the metaphors you've been using.
A gun kills things.
Shooting is what a gun does.
Shooting kills things.
The only way their logic can be repaired is by reformulating "the mind is what the brain does" to "the mind is the brain and the brain is the mind". But then they would have a ghost "of" or "in" the machine which Pinker expressly forbids.
I solved the puzzle.
I was thinking
Thinking solved the puzzle.
Does this mean I am identical to thinking? No, it does not. it means that thinking was the mechanism by which I solved the puzzle. Likewise the mind is the mechanism by which the brain acts.
No. A computer program may be an "epiphenomenon" of the hardware, but it can turn itself off or even reprogram itself in response to external stimuli. The mind's dependence on the brain doesn't make it unable to cause events, at least no more than anything else can cause events.
It is not you or I who have separated the mind from the brain but rather Pinker himself when he hypothesized "the mind is what the brain does". IOW, he says the brain causes the mind.
If he had said "the mind and the brain are one" there would be no epiphenomenons. The downside to him would be that the mind would be the ghost in the machine.
It seems to me that your syllogism is also an undistributed middle. The only connection between thinking and puzzle is "I" - you've not made a distribution.
It would work better this way:
I solved the puzzle
Therefore, I was thinking
The entire issue is causality. Is there any way in Pinker's hypothesis "the mind is what the brain does" that the mind can cause anything to happen?
Why not? Is the mind less attached to the brain than a program is to its hardware?
In his view the brain causes the mind. They are two different things in his hypothesis. The mind is left dangling as an epiphenomenon - an effect which doesn't cause anything. The brain is doing the work, moving the muscles, processing the sensory inputs, "doing" the mind, etc.
My preference would have been to define the mind as autonomous successful communication (information) and leave the mind/body question to the philosophers. As it is, he has set himself up to be knocked down by both philosophers and all the various investigators who have found "mind" where there is no brain.
Pinker chose to address duality head on declaring there is no ghost in the machine pulling the levels, that the mind is what the brain does. His hypothesis is "fair game" to be falsified from several directions.
You are seeing a problem where none exists. The claim "the mind is what the brain does" in no way precludes the mind from "causing" something to happen (at least as far as anything is causal.)
A scientist who does not support the scientific method shouldn't be suprised when he faces ostracism by his peers.
But Pinker presupposes "there isn't any immaterial soul or spook or spirit that magically pulls the levers of behavior."
Thus when he says "the mind is what the brain does" he is being quite literal. The mind is one thing, the brain another. The brain causes the mind. Nothing immaterial "pulls the levers of behavior". The brain's "doing" is the mind, i.e. an epiphenomenon.
It is not you or I who have separated the mind from the brain but rather Pinker himself when he hypothesized "the mind is what the brain does". IOW, he says the brain causes the mind.
I disagree. And I have read Pinker, and not merely in selective quotiations.
But concerning whether your assertion was a logical construction, that is certainly what it appeared to be on my reading of it at post 402.
It appears that we must conclude our discussion as we often do, in the agreement that we disagree.
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