Posted on 12/07/2002 9:46:51 AM PST by beckett
I will that such things as pain, including "psychic" pain, are real, but I do not accept that they are non-physical. If they were non-physical they would not respond to chemicals.
I will grant that the pit of our ignorance on the subject appears bottomless, but that does not mean it has no bottom.
A small aside: I have a nephew with schizophrenia. It was first noticed when he was about 18. His father (my brother) is a psychiatrist.) He managed to get through college with high honors and was accepted into a graduate program with full scholarship. Then his life fell apart. He lost a number of part time jobs because he complained about things that his co-workers couldn't see. He aquired several guns and talked about suicide. He scared the heck out of everyone around because he hinted (in written notes he left lying around) that he would take others with him. He was hospitalized several times and had lots of counselling.
He has been stable for over a year now, has married, works part time as a children's tutor, can hold a conversation about many topics, and seems happy. The one big difference in his life is medication. He still gets counselling and needs it, but the medication has allowed him to manage his own affairs and live independently.
How can this be if the mind is not embodied in the brain?
Because, as Alamo-Girl has suggested, perhaps the brain no more "embodies" the mind than a radio transceiver "embodies" radio signals. Similarly, this may be a case of "play-through" rather than some kind of sui-generis "play-in."
If the radio transceiver is damaged, it won't "play right." But that has nothing to say about the quality of the radio signals per se. Perhaps if you fix the radio, then the signal can come through correctly.
Do your thoughts change when you line your hat with tinfoil?
Of this I am convinced: someone or something really does try to alter our thoughts with radio waves. Sometimes I'm totally alone in the car and I hear voices. Usually, they tell me to go to stores and buy stuff.
I can play this game too. I assert that material existence is outside space and time, has no beginning and no end, is co-extensive with God, embodies God and God's thoughts, and that we are, as it were, neurons in God's mind.
Prove me wrong.
Every analogy is good to a point. If our consciousness deals with personal beings, we will need another analogy, at least to show how one person can be conscious of someone or something and another person not, without attributing it to damage.
Howdy, VR! :^) Do my thoughts change when I line my little jeanie-beanie with tinfoil? Why, I just don't know, VR. Haven't tried it! Maybe I should design an experimental test...but then, what value would that have really, since I'd be experimenting on myself?
Yes, I hear those "voices," too. But I gather I'm not terribly suggestible; for I absolutely loathe "shopping." Mostly I find most of what I hear and see carried on the public airwaves as just a bunch of irritating, aggravating noise, with very little signal filtering through.... And a whole lot of the signals that do get through are even worse than the noise.... Argghhhh!
Do you think the application of tinfoil would help me with this problem at all?
But it seems that this concept of pain -- as dependent on bodily causation -- will not be able to understand or explain what might be called psychic pain -- e.g., guilt, regret, the anguish of losing a loved one, anxiety, loneliness.... These kinds of pain are real, too, though they do not appear to have a bodily cause. But they are so real, in fact, that they can themselves be the causes of bodily effects.
I agree completely - and I understand that was the reason the author mentioned it (based on the first sentence of that paragraph.)
For the materialistic worldview he challenges, pain must have a bodily (biochemical/anatomical) cause, i.e. we must biochemically/anatomically choose to be in physic pain (grief, hurt feelings, regret, fear, etc.)
I'd smash any radio that got that monotonous.
I wouldn't dream of "proving you wrong" with respect to this formulation. I would simply pat you on the head and say, there, there js1138, dear -- you're just having a bad dream. :^)
You might want to take this up, however, with the Irish Idealist philosopher, George Berkeley. He and John Locke got into a little epistemological dispute once upon a time, and Berkeley's counterargument looks pretty close to what you want "proved" here. Suffice it to say, Locke was wrong (QM proves this); and Berkeley -- well, no one knows whether he was "right" or "wrong," because it appears impossible to verify/falsify his argument, scientifically speaking.
I've been thinking about this "dispute" lately. Maybe I can flesh out some of the details and write back a little later?
;^)
If the radio transceiver is damaged, it won't "play right." But that has nothing to say about the quality of the radio signals per se. Perhaps if you fix the radio, then the signal can come through correctly.
I absolutely agree with your statement. I would add that people have been astonished at documented cases where extensive knowledge had accrued despite an obviously malfunctioning brain. Though not conclusive, the phenomenon fits my contention that knowledge is assembled apart from the transceiver-brain, i.e. in a non-temporal consciousness.
Define malfunctioning. I have two malfunctioning brains among my close relatives, not to mention my own.
I once took a class in teaching handicapped children. The teacher asked us to imaging things that would be difficult to a person who had no thumbs. After a dozen or so responses, a girl in the back said, "I don't have any thumbs, and I don't have any of those problems."
The brain isn't wired like a typical computer. It can bypass injuries, just as we overcome physical handicaps. There are studies that show that people who ar born blind, learn to use the "visual" parts of the brain to process language. This does not require a hypothesis of something non-physical.
If our consciousness deals with personal beings, we will need another analogy, at least to show how one person can be conscious of someone or something and another person not, without attributing it to damage.
Perhaps you can explain this in a bit more detail - because to me, the radio-wave/conscious does not require all information to be gathered from the transceiver/brain. Awareness, reasoning, imagining, etc. are self-contained. The conscious would however require a transceiver/brain to physically communicate.
Define malfunctioning.
The example I used was of an idiot savant who is mentally incapable of functioning in all but one area where his knowledge is extraordinary.
Of course there are many different types and degrees of malfunctions. Some are physical impairments, others chemical imbalance and still others, of the psyche (such as not being able to distinguish right from wrong, suicidal personalities, etc.)
Some malfunctions can be bypassed, alleviated or cured by medical treatment or drugs; some, by counseling. The former are treating what I would call the transceiver/brain; the later, the psyche.
If the sun looks at you, and you are blind, your sight perception would be limited from receiving the sun's rays. Your sight, we could say, is damaged.
But if another sun has a will, it may shine on you or not. In fact, if the sun has any talent, it could shine on you, and not on your neighbor standing next to you. And so, neither you or your neighbor is damaged. Its all the sun's fault because the sun is able to execute what it wills.
Apart from these analogies, we can also add, as Ortega did, that consciousness when in relation to other sentient beings is contingent and not self-contained. But notice Ortega's reaction to German idealism and the "philosophy of Culture and of Consciousness":
"Life in society as well as all other forms of culture make their presence felts as members of the species of individual life" The rest is "abstract, generic, schematic," secondary, and derivative as compared with each man's life, with life as immediacy. But this fundamental reality that is one's life consists not in "consciousness," in Bewusstsein, but in a fundamental unitary duality . . . Our life, the life of each one of us, is a dynamic dialogue between "I and my circumstances."
And so it happens that consciousness is understood variously. The term is rooted in a history. And our speech, like velcro, picks up its traces. Ortega rejects the self-contained idea of consciousness as something that is primary.
And so we have some who refuse to engage, because they could care less about what another says. And there are others who refuse, as I understand Cohen refused
I have torn everyone who reached out to me
And this is what Montgomery noticed about Joyce's Stephen, and even Joyce himself. "The young Stephen is setting out as artist in the direction of the fancy as the supreme virtue of awareness, as the principal weapon in a manipulation of being."
Ortega's notice of the consiousness as relational helps me connect the dots: there is common confusion as to when we are speaking of the action or passion of the one, or the action or passion of the other. Even if we set aside the slip of the sinful moment when we did not make ourselves clear, there still remains the revolutionary jack in the box or the cameleon, the poikilos, who plays the game well, now preferring to talk about the one and now the other in an attempt to outwit existence as he wishes it.
Or the sun, willy nilly, snips the precise circuit that shuts out sunny signals, allowing you to receive rays while your neighbor sees only darkness. (There's a name it: Great Ray Accepting Circuit Enhancer (G.R.A.C.E.).
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