Immaterial Mind versus Material Mind

[YonatanBlum]

Do you believe that one’s mind/consciousness is immaterial or material? In immaterial mind, I mean thought and consciousness that is not directly a part of the material body; a soul, you may call it, but it does not have to be so. A material mind would be thought and consciousness that is directly connected with the material body, i.e. the brain; every single mental state would have a parallel state in the brain.

 

[Perfection]

To use a computer metaphor: The mind is the software, the brain is the hardware.

I'd say you could hypothetically transfer the mind to a different brain or something that is not a brain, but the mind is still going to require existance in some physical material.

 

[warpus]

There is no evidence whatsoever that the mind is immaterial in any way, so I'm gonna have to go with "material".

"We don't really understand it therefore it must be supernatural" is not really a good argument.

 

[obliterate]

Material. The brain is a system of electrical impulses and chemicals.

 

[YonatanBlum]

Well, there does not seem to be much evidence for the mind being completely material, either; most materialists, (in the philosophical sense) would say that the connection between mental states and brain states are merely "yet to be discovered." Although I tend toward materialism, I think that dismissing the concept of the immaterial mind as "supernatural" is just not that simple.

 

[Perfection]

Well, there does not seem to be much evidence for the mind being completely material, either; most materialists, (in the philosophical sense) would say that the connection between mental states and brain states are merely "yet to be discovered." Although I tend toward materialism, I think that dismissing the concept of the immaterial mind as "supernatural" is just not that simple.

I'd disagree! I'd say there is plenty of evidence of the mind being intimately tied to the brain. If you damage a brain through disease or injury you damage the mind. Now some might say "well, maybe it's just you causing the mind to lose connection to the brain, not actual damage to the mind", but that doesn't work either, because they damage certain componants of the mind, you for example can damage memory but leave reasoning intact. How could an immaterial mind be damaged by material damage to the brain?

It seems to believe in an immaterial mind, you have to have an elaborate conspiricy theory to explain how the material appears to damage the mind but in fact does not.

 

[ummmm........]

I'm going with material. But it can feel immaterial, and that's what matters to most of us . . .

 

[ArneHD]

Material, but soon to be cybernetic!

 

[DNK]

I'd disagree! I'd say there is plenty of evidence of the mind being intimately tied to the brain. If you damage a brain through disease or injury you damage the mind. Now some might say "well, maybe it's just you causing the mind to lose connection to the brain, not actual damage to the mind", but that doesn't work either, because they damage certain componants of the mind, you for example can damage memory but leave reasoning intact. How could an immaterial mind be damaged by material damage to the brain?

It seems to believe in an immaterial mind, you have to have an elaborate conspiricy theory to explain how the material appears to damage the mind but in fact does not.

I don't think that he's saying that there's no connection between material states and immaterial states, just that the actual mechanism between the physical sensation of, say, "red" has yet to be connected to the subjective experience of red.

There is an obvious referent with "red", which is the experience of red, but no "language" we can think of to connect "red" with red. Why red actually looks red is beyond science for now. I'd personally argue it's simply beyond science.

There's a rather large elephant in the scientific room, and I have a hard time seeing how some people can't see it

 

[Narz]

If you damage a brain through disease or injury you damage the mind.

How about that kid who's barely got any brain (a thin film or some schnit) who went thru college? Sorry I don't remember his name. [/

's advocate]

Re : OP

I'd really like to believe the mind is immaterial but there is no way to know one way or another. Well, besides extensive scientific research on near death experiences - testing whether clinically dead people can truly "remember" things going on in the operating room that they can supposedly "see" from above or whatever.

 

[obliterate]

I don't think that he's saying that there's no connection between material states and immaterial states, just that the actual mechanism between the physical sensation of, say, "red" has yet to be connected to the subjective experience of red.

There is an obvious referent with "red", which is the experience of red, but no "language" we can think of to connect "red" with red. Why red actually looks red is beyond science for now. I'd personally argue it's simply beyond science.

There's a rather large elephant in the scientific room, and I have a hard time seeing how some people can't see it

'Red' is only a name for a colour. The only reason that there is any correlation between red and the colour red is because we have been taught it.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I'm not sure about immaterial, but it's certainly not materialistically material.

 

[Fifty]

There is a broad philosophical consensus that the mind is material (using a certain specific sense of material... I dont think its material in the way a chair is physical. see perf's software analogy), notwithstanding the historical debates that are always introduced but don't accurately reflect the current debates in the phil. of mind.

Now some philosophers hold that mental states are not physical, but that does *not* mean that they are somehow supernatural.

And the connection between mental states and brain states is not "yet to be discovered" in some wide open sense. Everybody agrees that once you fix the brain-facts, you fix the mind-facts (i.e. there is a supervenience relation between the mental and the physical). There may be some problems characterizing the exact nature of the supervenience relation, or in finding out how best to characterize the nature of mental states, but the brain-mind connection is obvious, and not really disputed outside of religious circles.

 

[ummmm........]

There's a rather large elephant in the scientific room, and I have a hard time seeing how some people can't see it

Same reason religious people can't see the elephant in the religious room: blind, unadulterated bigotry.

I used to find it frustrating too, but then it occurred to me how boring the world would be if everyone's field of vision wasn't so narrow . . .

 

[DNK]

'Red' is only a name for a colour. The only reason that there is any correlation between red and the colour red is because we have been taught it.

Right. So what does red look like to you?

 

[DNK]

Same reason religious people can't see the elephant in the religious room: blind, unadulterated bigotry.

I used to find it frustrating too, but then it occurred to me how boring the world would be if everyone's field of vision wasn't so narrow . . .

I'm not quite sure what you're saying about religious people, but I agree that narrow vision makes the world more interesting (and scary)

 

[ummmm........]

I wasn't saying anything in particular about religious (or scientific) people; just that people who define themselves narrowly (as, e.g., religious or scientific) tend to view the world narrowly, and that provides a focus for them that is ultimately beneficial to the rest of us . . .

 

[Fifty]

There's a rather large elephant in the scientific room, and I have a hard time seeing how some people can't see it

I think it is unfair of you to imply (at least, it seems to me that you are implying) that scientists should spend their time caring about qualia. They are interesting philosophically, and a full account of the mind will have something to say about them, but it seems like they aren't really the sort of things that scientists ought to care about.

 

[ummmm........]

I think it is unfair of you to imply (at least, it seems to me that you are implying) that scientists should spend their time caring about qualia. They are interesting philosophically, and a full account of the mind will have something to say about them, but it seems like they aren't really the sort of things that scientists ought to care about.

Which is the same thing I said, just with more words . . .

 

[DNK]

I wasn't saying anything in particular about religious (or scientific) people; just that people who define themselves narrowly (as, e.g., religious or scientific) tend to view the world narrowly, and that provides a focus for them that is ultimately beneficial to the rest of us . . .

I see. Agreed, I suppose: any identification necessarily creates limitations.

I think it is unfair of you to imply (at least, it seems to me that you are implying) that scientists should spend their time caring about qualia. They are interesting philosophically, and a full account of the mind will have something to say about them, but it seems like they aren't really the sort of things that scientists ought to care about.

I wasn't implying that scientists should spend time caring about qualia since I don't think it can be studied, and at any rate is far less important than aging, cancer, etc. Consider us agreed on that.

I was just saying that I have problems when the subjective or "immaterial mind" is thrown out despite the fact that there is a very large hole in our understanding of existence. I was responding more to pure physicalist arguments that seem to suggest that everything can be explained by neurology, or that mistake the level of discussion altogether.

These discussions are pretty confusing at any rate, and I'm never sure both sides are really discussing the same thing.