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To: WOSG
Even HUme discounted "Cogito ergo Sum" - can you prove your identity over time?

If our fundamental apprehensions were wrong then that would effectively make God a liar. And we know that God exists because truth exists.

Can you really say there is a "you", when your mind is a bunch of nueral firings?

No, which is why materialism is incoherent and self-refuting. But this problem doesn't exist if the mind is properly understood to be a simple spiritual substance.

71 posted on 09/09/2003 12:32:21 PM PDT by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: Aquinasfan
Can you really say there is a "you", when your mind is a bunch of nueral firings? "No, which is why materialism is incoherent and self-refuting."

Actually, what becomes incoherent is *not* materialism, but skepticism (if you treat it as a conclusion and not as a method of uncovering assumptions). But I was applying skepticism not to state conclusions (we are indeed more than mere neural firings) to point out hidden assumptions ... To conceive of the mind you have to define it and classify it. To say that reality exists because you perceive it leaves as assumptions that (a) you exist and (b) your perceptions are of reality. This kind of "bootstrapping" is what Descartes wrestled with until he boiled it down to: Cogito ergo sum. Meaning, the thought itself carries the implication of existence. (Although this is conscious existence only).

But this problem doesn't exist if the mind is properly understood to be a simple spiritual substance. Alas that only introduces new problems, aka the mind/body problem. Does Prozac work on the spirit mind, the body brain, or both?

83 posted on 09/09/2003 4:33:10 PM PDT by WOSG
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