Colin McGinn - What is the Mind-Body Problem?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 มิ.ย. 2023
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How does the brain produce the mind? This is one of the most difficult problems in science, because how can physical qualities, no matter how complex and sophisticated, actually be mental experiences? Electrical impulses and chemical flows are not at all the kind of stuff that thoughts and feelings are. The physical and the mental are different categories.
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Colin McGinn is a British philosopher, currently Professor of Philosophy and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami. He previously held teaching positions at the University of Oxford and Rutgers University.He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, and is the author of over 20 books on this and other areas of philosophy.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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I listen to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, 2nd Adagio Movt every morning, and trying to explain where the feeling I get everytime comes from is, a profound experience with no locality in the brain.
How would you feel that without a brain?
@@nihlify ordinarily our minds are conditioned and rely on sense organs. but skilled ppl would be able to perceive things with the mind directly without such dependence. such things have been studied for the first time by neuroscientists when a monk enter tukdam for over 30 days in taipei 2020.
Remove your brain and put it into the microwave. Now listen and report back.
How would you know that?
@@brad1368 again search tukdam taipei 2020
monk post clinical death for over 30 days monitored and being tested by neuroscientists his body didnt decompose for over 30 days, the body and skin remaining supple, produced a sweet fragrance, and the heart region maintained heat in the region for the duration. these are standard sideeffects of someone in concentration post clinical death and has occurred 10,000s of times in the past throughout history but this was the first time it was available to scientists. they collected lots of data but it is bizarre and useless to them as physicalists since they have no response when they for example detect spontaneous brain activity activation weeks post clinical death in someone.
Great stuff from Colin. I really like the way he squares up to the problems rather than pretending (as some others do) that "if you just think about it like this, the problem disappears". These problems of free will, consciousness, the self and intentionality really are problems and what makes philosophy interesting is that they just don't have good answers.
Yes professors. Thanks for clearing that up. Multiple MIND / BODY problems (plural) . . . rather than simply ONE such problem.
This talk is worth listening to several times! "KNOWING EVERYTHING ABOUT THE BRAIN" is likely to be impossible. Each and every brain is wired independently of all the others. There seems to be general pathways that can be studied but there will always be differences at the neuronal level. This HAS to be the case #1 because we all have differences in our genetic code, and #2 we all have had different experiences and so we will have different connections that have been made.
Well worth watching several times! Great observation!
I think it seems likely that we'll know everything about the brain sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. Though whether or not we'll know everything about the _mind_ is still very much an open question. And yes, of course every human brain will differ from each other by slight degrees, but those little variations in our individual neuronal wiring - the axons, the synaptic pathways, and the ion channels etc. will only ever be trivial in nature. At least insofar as it comes to explaining human brain functions and their relationships to human behaviour. We like to believe that we're all _individuals_ in the truest sense - that we are unique. And, at least in terms of our individual psychological microstates then that is indeed true. "Nobody else is screwed-up in quite the same way as I am!" Haha. But again, minor individual neurosis aside, humans are all pretty much wired the same. For example, you can predict with very good accuracy how someone will react to a given stimuli simply based on key physiological imperative's - add a little information about their cultural background, geographical environment, and socio-economic status, and the level of predictive accuracy jumps to 97% or higher. Capitalism couldn't function unless people were inherently predictable at the individual level. There wouldn't still be productions of Shakespeare's Hamlet if human nature varied in any real way based on metrics like age, gender, generations or geography. Yes, we are all a _tiny_ bit different from each other, but the closer you look, the more you realise that people are all pretty much the same.
But then of course we are - we all evolved from the same relatives. If you are a Caucasian then you are descended from Charlemagne. If you are from anywhere on Earth other than East Africa then there are surprisingly few generations seperating yourself from every other person with non-African ancestry alive today. Around 3 million years ago a single female ape gave birth to two daughters. One went on to become the grandmother of all modern apes, and the other went on to become the grandmother of all modern humans. We like to think that we're unique individuals, that there's no-one else quite like us. But that's simply not the case. Don't get me wrong, we are all individually _special,_ - every human life is, or at least should be, sacred - we just aren't individually _different._
With all that being said though, you made some quite good points! Sorry for the 'book'. Have a great day!
@@simesaid Consciousness is a fundamental element of the universe. That's why stars and rocks evolved to become Living organisms.
Simple organisms don't have brains but can communicate, can defend themselves, have understanding , and even evolve to have the correct defense mechanisms including mimicry like pretending to be a snake , a flower pretending to be an animal , an animal pretending to be a plant , etc
@@dongshengdi773 To suggest that stars and rocks are conscious requires a strange definition of "consciousness". I can't buy panpsychism. Sorry. If you want to say there is an all inclusive consciousness in the universe, I'm good with that, because you are referring to God, even if you may not intend to.
The only problem is people being unwilling unable to imagine or accept that the body is a complex idea made of simpler ideas.
Extremely eloquent and easy to understand. Great video.
Colin McGinn is captivating.
Because there are literally tens of thousands of academic “philosophers” who adhere to the above misconception of what is an ACTUAL philosopher, I am loath to nominate a single person of whom to make mention. However, because the former University of Oxford scholar, Mr. Colin McGinn, claims to be the “best” philosopher in the history of humanity (a claim he has repeatedly made on his own website), I therefore have no reservations about using that fool as an ideal example for my position in relation to academic “philosophers”. In order to preface this case study, it should be noted that Mr. McGinn’s area of expertise is in the philosophy of mind, and he has written extensively on the subject.
However, near the beginning of a videographed dialogue posted on the Internet, Colin admitted that he was unable to even proffer a cogent definition of the word “mind”! The fact that Colin garnered a Master of Arts degree in psychology from a prominent English university did not seem to help with his understanding of the mind, despite the fact that psychology is concerned entirely with the psyche! I am quite certain that there are several teenagers in Bhārata (India) who understand the topic more clearly than Mister McGinn, since they have been trained in Vedānta (see that Glossary entry). In fact, there is very little doubt in my mind that my precocious second daughter, Sītā Anna, would have much more fully understood the concepts of mind and consciousness by the time she had reached the age of TEN years, had she not been (effectively) kidnapped by a devilishly-wicked, evil, demonic, violent criminal organization known as the “Federal Government of Australia”.
In the same video, Mr. McGinn claimed that homosexuality was not immoral for the reason that most persons (though I am sure that he meant most persons in the decadent Western countries) accept perverse sexuality to not be immoral - a very blatant example of the logical fallacy known as the “Argumentum ad Populum” (appeal to popularity argument). Also, Mr. McGinn claims to be a supporter of animal rights, although whether or not he is a genuine vegan is, at the time of writing this chapter, unknown, since he has either not received the Emails I have sent to him, or else he has not bothered to reply to any of them. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would guess that he is not an actual vegan, judging by my vast experience in the (so-called) vegan community on the Internet. Very few of those who claim to be vegan are, in fact, vegan, sad to say. Most are either plant-based eaters (in other words, definitionally-strict vegetarians) or they do not adhere to the one and only definition of the word “veganism”, as coined by Mr. and Mrs. Donald Watson, and when asked for a definition of the term, in virtually every case, tender a rather inaccurate explanation of what constitutes “veganism”. Is it possible to be a vegan if one does not know what is a vegan? Yes, indeed it is, but highly improbable, since only one who resides in a remote region of earth would be unfamiliar with the word. Apart from his claim to be the greatest philosopher in history, Colin believes that his writing style to be among the clearest of any philosopher in history, despite his articles and books containing copious syntactic and vocabulary errors. There are a number of other truly idiotic remarks and assertions of McGinn that I can quote, such as his inane positions on free-will, metaphysics, and politics, but those mentioned above should be sufficient to convince an ACTUAL philosopher of his abject ignorance in relation to all branches of philosophy and psychology.
Furthermore, Mr. Colin McGinn’s books on morality and ethics would have seemed far more authoritative if he had refrained from sexually-harassing one of his female graduate students during his tenure at the University of Miami. Rather tangentially, I have personally sent Emails to literally HUNDREDS of academic philosophers (most all of them professors at major Western tertiary “education” institutions), yet not a single one of them, including Mr. McGinn, has accepted my generous offer of a free electronic copy of this book, “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”. Just see how incredibly closed-minded are the so-called “thought leaders” of our society! I honestly believe that the “problem” with these academic philosophers is that they are members of the working-class, which implies that it is their nature to work for a living, whereas actual philosophers are members of the Most Holy Priesthood, who, by definition do not “work”, but who are impelled to teach truth to humanity, with no regard of the cost to themselves. In my own case, I have been subsisting entirely Providentially for almost four decades.
Tremendously intriguing. Been watching this series. Immensely enjoy it while learning. Appreciate immensely your dilligent efforts to bring such knowledge and questions.
My Question is " what is that is immaterial?" and is there solid proof of
"immateriaism ".
Pls discuss and enlighten us all kon this matter kindly 😀..
Because I personally don't believe in anything immaterial. I m all in for Material only. We are all delusional 😀😀. But I have high regards for all involved in persuit of this subject 🙏🙏👍👍
the material mechanical concept has been invalidated since the time newton discovered that nothing is mechanistic, everything from atoms to planets being governed by 'occult forces'. the situation has only gotten more severe against the view of a mechanical material world, in case you havent noticed. the rampant physicalism is just standard institutional groupthink. these are the ppl who went kicking and screaming against their religious belief that lucid dreaming doesnt exist and that the brain persists statically. in other words theyre complete idiots, and ppl like dennett frankish churchlands etc even resort on relying on the fact that they have no method of rigorously observing the mind thus relying on the ordinary obscured mind as proof for its nonexistence.
Well, you are in “troubles”, because quantum physics now is discovering that matter does not exist. There are only energy and information. Matter is just “condensed Energy” with certain information.
Deeply in the atoms,there is a HUGE emptiness. 99.99% of atoms are made of NOTHING
At the end we have this question again: what is materialism?….if we probably are just immaterialism really
Amazing convo
Consciousness and the self is a single particle receiving information from other particles in the form of electromagnetic energy. Your particle labels other particles with a unique qualia to distinguish it from the others.
what a great introduction by lawrence...
Excellent program. I highly recommend this channel. I hope I live long enough to understand how QFT fits with Jungian psychology. There is a crossroads out there somewhere...and on the other side of that crossroads will be a new level of scientific understanding. Information is imbedded at the most fundamental levels. Matter, including life forms, receives and projects that fundamental information. Such a complex programming language.
I wonder if good Robert, has considered the Buddha teachings - the Nikayas. Or, a great introduction and zeroing in on the core teachings of the Buddha book called 'The Doctrine of The Buddha' by George Grimm.
I became quite interested because of learning Buddha does via negativa.
It seems that through empathy, we can experience things without having a living experience of things. As long as we have imaginations, we can experience things without having lived them. It doesn't seem like an imagination that is very well developed would experience anything that is different from what a real living experience would be. It is not beyond possibility that an imagination can experience something more intensely than what a real experience does, therefore a well tuned imagination should be able to perceive an event exactly like a real event.
“Your imagination is far richer than your limited experiences.” - Stella Adler
Colin McGinn presents the problem in a way that doesn't seem so paradoxical. He has clearly thought a lot about what 'physical world' might mean and that just because the mind might not be of the physical world doesn't mean it's some mystic, ethereal realm. It's part of the whole, not separate or aloof.
It is possible to be closer to truth through bypassing concept-mediated "understanding." As long as you are understanding through conceptualization, you are wuite likely not to be close to truth. There is something much more direct.
There is also another form of intelligence that is tremendously more alive than the usual forms. It is a direct, living, non-conceptual perceptive sensitivity that is qualitatively more energized and alive.
experience and knowledge are different.
Agree, they confuse this in the Mary's room based arguments all the time.
Can patience be the flipside placeholder for a state of depression? ... Rather if for a moment the body would want to notice something it is incapable of seeing. Would the mind create an alternative method for finding red? Say patience rather than depression was Mary's grey room and the objects inside it where the tones of black, white or grey. Where in the brain would crafting metallic bracing around a black pearl be a better echo device for seeing a quality of sound that correlates to red? Is it a particular combination of body to mind feature that is organising from a primal instinctive or intuitive withdraw state? Maybe its a combination of the buddist silence matrices. Idk like a magnetic orientation or memetic space of literacy. Its an impractical view I suppose, in a sense because the practical is more enduring... with less chaos in this digital era.
glad that there are scientists to understand....
It's like being an expert in light. You know every aspect of it, every detail, but you were born blind.
The roulette wheel problem. Is the ball free to fall in any of the thirty-seven slots or must it of necessity fall into the slot it has fallen into? Now for sure it is not falling into slot twenty-one because that is the slot I have filled with bubblegum.
2:37 "Neurons don't have content"
I could scarce believe my ears when I heard him say that!
Surely the discharge frequency of neurons
is the very means by which thoughts are encoded?
How about 'Neurons, as such, don't have any content'. Content would be in the configuration of neurons activated in contrast to other neurons that are unactivated.
@@arthurwieczorek4894 The discharge frequency of a brain neuron is controlled by,
on average,
20,000 synapses.
Thus we can understand that
frequency encoded information/representation/analogy maintained by brain neurons
is accomplished in a widely distributed fashion.
And not only that but
the frequency may be adjusted with sub nanosecond precision thereby making the range of meaning both vast and subtle.
Now add to this the concept of FM modulation and
we can see there is available a whole meta level of additional encoding.
And there may be other levels of encoding that exist atop of this.
I find it quite likely that language processing is happening on a meta level.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL One of the principles I believe is important is Lee's Elucidation. An finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities. I wonder if this could have any relevance to what you are saying about neurons?
@@arthurwieczorek4894 I googled "words in English language" and found...
"If we want to talk about how many words there are in English, there are three key numbers to remember: more than a million total words, about 170,000 words in current use, and 20,000-30,000 words used by each individual person".
Sense organs transduce impinging environmental energies into
neural discharge frequency that are analogous (or representative) that
subsequently modulate the discharge frequencies of neurons in the brain
via numerous synapses.
(Emphasis on the fact that the world is represented in *encoded* form.
One could reasonably assert that
the frequencies traversing neurons from the sense organs to the brain
are in fact what we mean by thoughts
(though in the case of the sense neurons
these thoughts would still be unconscious.
Being conscious of the world around us happens only after the sensed input has rippled a considerable distance though the neural network) obviously).
Consider sense thoughts to be the base level in which the world is encoded.
Now if the ears are encoding speech vibrations
then the neural discharge frequency patterns are modulated
in a far more complex way
than if the ears were encoding a single tone for instance.
Those far more complex patterns are in which the meaning is encoded.
The meaning is encoded in the patterns!
Of course the meaning of the speech is not extracted until well after
the patterns have been compared to memory and recognition happened.
Those far more complex patterns are to what I was referring
when I mentioned 'meta level of additional encoding'.
An individual has to learn to crawl before they enter a marathon.
Repeatedly trying and failing creates data and relational equations to derive movement, balance, efficiency, and etc.
Taking one's first crawl step, is a step to understanding one's spatial information and altering this spatial info for a purpose.
Most of the mind is continuously deconstructing and reconstructng meaning through sensors and historical data that has been synthesized to function in nature and society. Sometimes it projects into the future.
Knowing the wavelength of red and experiencing red while although seperate are relational to a more complete understanding of one's idea to a nonphysical self in relation to an external and physical universe.
Very few people understand every atom and it's relationship involved in an automobile. But, people still drive. Most are unable to explain how the brakes actually work, but have an idea. That idea translates to slowing and stopping. From a very basic understanding, society says it's okay to drive at fast speeds around others without fully understanding the mechanics. However, individuals and societies continue to function even when death occurs from improper use of automobile brakes
Some will want to know to the mechanics, others just have to get from a to b. Then there is an individual's understanding of this deep understanding and how the individual translates their role in the universe with respect to external models.
Why step on the brake pedal? Why understand red?
The answers to these questions are the building blocks to one's self.
What if I told you that there is no mind-body problem? What if - at 3:55 - I told you that both the dualists and the materialists are wrong?
What if the foundations for all that exists begins with the phenomenology of the void (cube-root scaling to subatomic levels releases matter from its classical Newtonian constraints)? And revolves around single cells as agents, association (associative learning) at all levels, and the impulse to self-organize into collective behaviour, as the basis for bottom-up causation. Within this subatomic domain, the CHNOPS of life are predispositions, not billiard-balls.
What if association *is* free will - the free will to attribute meaning to the choices made in the contexts of experiences encountered? For cells, neurons, ants, bees, bats, dogs & humans.
The real mystery is not the mind-body problem. The real mystery is binding, and the ability of cells to access collective information, in order to self-organise with fidelity into purposeful structures. In this light, Mind and Body are one, mind-bodies inevitable, the mind-body problem merely incidental.
In this light, life is inevitable, anywhere and everywhere where the conditions are right. As it is over here, so too it is over there, stars and galaxies away.
That's why I'm obsessed with the basis for accessing collective information at the cellular, identical-DNA level, my strongest hunch being for DNA entanglement.
Like the question: Are tangible stuff the same as abstract thoughts? My view is NO. Tangible identities are defined in physics as the presence of elementary particles (standard model) evolving according to Newton's approximation, Lagrange & Hamiltonian, Maxwell, QM, relativity, etc equations. Meanwhile, the abstract entities are not physical, they are not composed of elementary particles neither composed of dark matter nor dark energy. For their existence, some physical entity is needed, like software needs a computer or thoughts need a brain. Without tangible stuff, abstract entities won't exist. For example, logical steps such as equal, greater than, if, nor, etc are not a physical process; nature just follows the evolution described by physical equations. Concepts of numbers and math, logic and ethics, moral values, and imaginary entities (such as superheroes, legends, etc) belong to the abstract existence meanwhile there is a physical entity that supports them. For example, all the existence following the big bang was physical; abstract existence just became into account since the animal kingdom and we humans. In my opinion, free will is a mixture of abstract reasoning acting over the physical world... hope this will help, regards
They're talking about "the physical world," but in reality there are no physical objects. The world is describable as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and everything that can physically perceived is an adjective (properties) or verbs (their changes). Nouns are thoughts in the mind, not physical.
Do they know they are in a used chair storeroom?
Each of those mind-body problems can be described as packets of information bits in 4D navigation and learning.
I’ve had an accurate and precise working model for freewill. My dunnekruger effect has been in effect for 20 years of field work using it.
It’s both idealism and materialism. Both. Both. Both. Both. Spacetime and law of large numbers requires both.
Duelism and materialism.
The brains is a genius but the mind is very distracted by the myth of matter, that matter is the only thing that matters.
The mind body problem seems demonstrative of the notion that " the whole is more than the sum of its parts". What, How and Where still does not quite add up to the WHY.
There is a bird that incubates its egg by regulating the temperature of a self built compost heap. The moment the hatchling opens its shell the parent leaves and the hatchling is independent. Therefore the knowledge of a complex nesting system must be passed genetically and according to the latest knowledge, genes only code for protein.
I do not know why the mind/body issues Mcginn describes are not resolved in pointing to are capacity for complex language. We all watch animals REMEMBER stuff, dogs and cats and deer acting the same way at the same time everyday or geese flying south every winter. We dont imagine their inner lives involving translations or experiences of red but they act just like we do except for "language generated" cooperative behavior. Once we begin personal REFLECTIVE thought in a language, this after we have established over thousands of years a deep rich meaningful communication system, what im actually doing now, then we gt the MIND BODY issue. In other words we learn words with our memory becuz we remember and perceive and then we want to know how it is that the nervous system allows us to remember and perceive. Surely a scientific question today, not a philosophical one. But here is an answer anyhow. The nervous system remembers and perceives in the same way that water "remembers" to turn solid at 0 degrees.
Humans are the unicorn in the universe, even on this planet. They are the only being that can masticate all bits into smaller bits.
Not just change behavior to eat but question why their hungry, what to eat, how to make it and also the nature of reality.
"the only being...?" ants or dolfins might be unicorns too from their pov...
It seems answering the problem, comes down to, “it’s true by definition” doesn’t take you very far. Conscientiousness is the unexplained issue/problem. Maybe that’s a good thing.
N.B. Before reading the following Glossary entry, it is absolutely imperative to understand that the term “mind” is being used according to the definition provided by the ancient Indian philosophical paradigm (in which it is called “manaḥ”, in Sanskrit), and NOT according to the manner in which the term is used in most all other systems (that is, as a broad synonym for “consciousness” - e.g. “The mind-body problem”).
mind:
Although the meaning of “mind” has already been provided in Chapter 05 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, it shall prove beneficial to further clarify that definition here in the Glossary. It is NOT implied that mind is the sum of the actual thoughts, the sensations, the memories, and the abstract images that inhabit the mental element (or the “space”) that those phenomena occupy, but the faculty itself. This mental space has two phases: the potential state (traditionally referred to as the “unconscious mind”), where there are no mental objects present (such as in deep sleep or during profound meditation), and the actualized state (usually referred to as the “conscious mind”), where the aforementioned abstract objects occupy one’s cognition (such as feelings of pain).
Likewise, the intellect and the pseudo-ego are the containers (or the “receptacles”) that hold conceptual thoughts and the sense of self, respectively. It is important to understand that the aforementioned three subsets of consciousness (mind, intellect, and false- ego) are NOT gross, tangible objects. Rather, they are subtle, intangible objects, that is, objects that can be perceived solely by an observant subject. The three subsets of consciousness transpire from certain areas of the brain (a phenomenon known as “strong emergence”), yet, as stated above, are not themselves composed of gross matter. Only a handful of mammal species possess intelligence (that is, abstract, conceptual thought processes), whilst human beings alone have acquired the pseudo-ego (the I- thought, which develops in infancy, following the id stage). Cf. “matter, gross”, “matter, subtle”, “subject”, and “object”.
In the ancient Indian systems of metaphysics known as “Vedānta” and “Sāṃkhya”, mind is considered the sixth sense, although the five so-called “EXTERNAL” senses are, nonetheless, nominally distinguished from the mind, which is called an “INTERNAL” sense. This seems to be quite logical, because, just as the five “outer” senses involve a triad of experience (the perceived, the perception, and the perceiver), so too does the mind comprise a triad of cognition (the known, the knowing, and the knower). See also Chapter 06.
Nota Bene: There is much confusion (to put it EXTREMELY mildly) in both Western philosophy and in the so-called “Eastern” philosophical traditions, between the faculty of mind (“manaḥ”, in Sanskrit) and the intellect (“buddhiḥ”, in Sanskrit). Therefore, the following example of this distinction ought to help one to understand the difference between the two subtle material elements:
When one observes a movie or television show on the screen of a device that one is holding in one’s hands, one is experiencing auditory, textural, and visual percepts, originating from external objects, which “penetrate” the senses of the body, just as is the case with any other mammal. This is the component of consciousness known as “mind” (at least according to the philosophical terminology of this treatise, which is founded on Vedānta, according to widely-accepted English translations of the Sanskrit terms). However, due to our intelligence, it is possible for we humans (and possibly a couple of other species of mammals, although to a far less-sophisticated degree) to construct conceptual thoughts on top of the purely sensory percepts. E.g. “Hey - look at that silly guy playing in the swimming pool!”, “I wonder what will happen next?”, or “I hate that the murderer has escaped from his prison cell!”. So, although a cat or a dog may be viewing the same movie on the screen of our electronic device, due to its relatively low level of intelligence, it is unable to conceptualize the audio-visual experience in the same manner as a primate, such as we humans.
To provide an even more organic illustration of how the faculty of mind “blends” into the faculty of the intellect, consider the following example: When the feeling of hunger (or to be more precise, appetite) appears in one’s consciousness, that feeling is in the mind. When we have the thought, “I’m hungry”, that is a conceptual idea that is a manifestation of the intellect. So, as a general rule, as animals evolve, they develop an intellectual faculty, in which there is an increasingly greater perception of, or KNOWLEDGE of, the external world (and in the case of at least one species, knowledge of the inner world). In addition to these two faculties of mind and intellect, we humans possess the false-ego (“ahaṃkāraḥ”, in Sanskrit). See Chapter 10 of "F.I.S.H" regarding the notion of egoity.
Using the experience of "red" as evidence of "redness".existing in "the mind" and not as a cause of brain function is belied by the fact that our physiology (in this case the number and type of cones) determines what colors we can see. So, I would say that "red" does exist in the physical world and, in fact, one could even say that without physiology (brain) "red" cannot exist. It seems to me, that if your metaphors don't hold, you should be reconsidering your thought experiments... his arguments would favor the frame that brain composition and activity generate mind.
I agree that we don't know that we CAN'T develop ways to directly experience what other brains are experiencing and it seems altogether reasonable to predict that someday we will be able to. It may turn out that we may never be able to and there many be some immaterial substance that makes up the mind but, at this point, leaning on our subjective intuitions about consciousness seems to be a false first step. It seems to me the first thing to do is to try and develop technology/ instrumentation/ experimentation to try and falsify the claims of monists/materialists/naturalists.
I'm obsessed with this question and I know I'll never know the answer. Sigh.
I never get this about people who make these claims about AI or whatever. It doesn't matter what something "knows" if it doesn't have experiences. "Know" can only be a metaphor in that case - oh, this data storage pattern is similar to someone knowing all that data. But it's not the same as knowing it. It's not the same as having an experience of knowing.
I don't rule out that AI could become conscious or develop actual "mind." But it seems to me that can only happen after some point that it has developed a sense of I-ness that can experience things directly and tell us about those experiences. I don't think that has happened yet.
By the same token, I disagree that someone or something could "understand the experience of red without having experienced red." That's just word games about what it would mean to know everything, which is an unreachable hypothetical anyway. You couldn't know what an experience is if you have not experienced anything -- if there's no "I" there yet to experience things.
“I” is a veeeery deep word.
The distinction between mind and brain is known from the vices, which arise from the flesh and are intrinsic in the decision-making power of the body that do not always correspond to a rational mind. There is no such thing as enjoying it in the mind, there is only doing the logically correct thing. But by what logic, everyone has their own because it is corrupted by their physical desires and one does not fully see the divine logic behind the mind.
'... divine logic of the mind corrupted by the body.' What a curious way of looking at yourself and the world.
As an aside, I myself can't think of brain as an isolated central control, because we know that the brain is intimately wired with the entire body, and that the body has lots to do with what's going on in the brain. Who is the "self"? My body/brain together with the mind it produces. It is not static, but changes with every day. As for mind, fundamentally, biologically, my mind is the inside reflection of my body communicating/dealing with itself and the outside world it is interacting with. (see Drs. Solms and Damasio for details)
Talking about a mind-body problem is like talking about a game-computer problem.
Not at all
The question is, how are mind and brain synchronized or does the brain produces mind. In the case of the latter it would be impossibleor at least very unlikely to be a witness of the brain in deep sleep states and through all sleep stages, and you need a strong model to explain that.
Where would you propose the "mind" exists if it isn't some type of "operating system" that rises from brain function?
...any evidence of any of that? The mind as a field arising from quantum wave function...? Nope.
The Mind ... is an entity ... or ... the whole being, type, Kind ... which must include HAVING freewill, nature & consciousness and being self aware.
The Brain does produce thoughts, freewill etc ... but simply .. ENABLES an entity to have freewill, nature, thoughts, senses. feelings, consciousness.
The entire being or body ... of an Entity ... is the Mind.
Certain Animals & Man ... are Natural Entities .. with Natural Minds (body) ... with their own TYPE of freewill, nature & consciousness.
Man is the only known TYPE or Kind .. of entity .. that has the INTELLIGENCE to explain the origin of the Universe & Life .. and .. make, operate, improve, fine tune Functions ... for a reason/purpose.
Man has the Mind ( complete being) ... of an Intelligence.
Chimps only have the Mind (complete being) ... of an Animal (Primate).
Man & Chimps ... although similar & sharing 99% of genes ... do not have the same Mind (complete being) .. and Man is clearly not an Animal that has a Mind. Unless you are a Evolutionists who freely choices to believe so.
The Mind of an Intelligence ( and therefore Man) is more than a body composed of matter & energy.
The Function, Intelligence, Mind & Information Categories .. prove .. Man is a Natural Intelligence with a Mind ... made by ... an Unnatural infinite, timeless Intelligence with a Mind( whole being).
The Mind of an Intelligence is Unnatural (soul/spirit).
The Mind of Man .. is body & soul.
The Mind of Animals .. is body.
The mind of God ... is Spirit ... and always existed.
The Mind ... is the complete entity ... who has freewill, nature, memory, thoughts, senses, feelings & consciousness.
God is ... the Mind ... who made the minds of Man, Angels & Animals ... for a reason/purpose ... which obviously has to do with ... freewill( obey or disobey). And God with a Just nature ... must punish ... law breakers (body, soul/spirit).
This is how ... the Mind .. works in mysterious ways.
@@abelincoln8885 I can agree with most but not with free will. I can only find logic in a relative free will as freedom does not exist 100% on its own but always goes hand in hand with a degree of unfreedom.
@@brad1368 Consciousness is a fundamental element of the universe. That's why stars and rocks evolved to become Living organisms.
Simple organisms don't have brains but can communicate, can defend themselves, have understanding , and even evolve to have the correct defense mechanisms including mimicry like pretending to be a snake , a flower pretending to be an animal , an animal pretending to be a plant , etc
What does it mean to know “everything about the brain”? Suppose a child is raised by his family to believe that the color everyone else agrees is “red” is called “blue” and vice versa. When he goes to school, he will be very confused. If he insists he is seeing blue while everyone else says something is red, is it because his photoreceptors have rearranged themselves to see red light as blue? Obviously not. His color experience is exactly the same as everyone elses, he just associates that light with a different name. So is the experience of “red” the visual sensation or the word you associate with it? The point is, all the knowledge in the world cannot give you the sensory experience of red. That is not the problem in the mind-body problem. The mind body problem is an illusion because of what you think of as a material object. If you pound your fist on a table, you think your fist and the table are material objects. Yet they can both be turned completely into energy! No more material! What constitutes “material” is a stable pattern of energy in the form of atoms and molecules. What about the color “red”? What you call red is also a stable pattern of energy in your brain consisting of synaptic connections that cause you to answer “red” when someone asks you what color a stoplight is. You can consider that knowledge, and all memories, as a form of matter. You simply cannot prove that there is a fundamental difference between a stable pattern of connections in your brain that represents a memory of seeing the statue of “The Thinker” and the statue itself. Consider the Thinker as thinking of himself - what you consider the difference to be is just a convenient convention of words. You can know what you know, and you can know what you don’t know, but you can’t know what you can’t know. And you know what? You will never know the answer to the mind body problem because it is not a problem.
True believers will never be persuaded. It is like explaining calculus to the dog.
McGinn: The only way to know what red is is to experience the color red.
Kuhn: But what if . . . but what if . . . but what if . . .
Desperately seeking materialism. LOL
Dude, in another video someone said something similar, but opposite. That Kuhn is desperately seeking non-materialism. It is his way of discussing things. He always wants to exhaust every possibility, every option. And that is how is supposed to be. Ask for every detail, rigorously test every claim, and so on
@@milannesic5718 Khun has said many times that he is a materialist and hence believes that free will is an illusion. Why don't people pay attention?
@@Free_Will_Awareness_Unit No, he never explicitly said what he truly believes. I don't think he believes in god, yet he is making a series about him. He just says what is the most appropriate, depending who is his guest
@@milannesic5718 Yes, Kuhn explicitly says that he believes free will is an illusion, which can only be asserted from a materialist mindset (other than the loony belief system that says "she" (God) is doing it all, therefore we don't have free will and we're all just along for the ride - ala Gary Weber and the non-dualists). Obviously Kuhn is not in this camp.
See the first minute of the video: Seth Lloyd - Physics of Free Will
Moreover, in many, many of his videos Kuhn asserts that there is no evidence for God's existence, clearly implying that he doesn't believe there is a God. This is a standard materialist/atheist assertion.
Believe what you will, but this is his position. Cheers.
He's not desperately seeking materialism, he's desperately seeking God. He's spent years asking people to prove to him that God exists. Or at least that there is something more to the material universe than just the material. But forget the materialists or the religious believers, Robert. If you want to make any headway in this area, you need to interview people who are actually studying it, like Jim Tucker from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Division of Perceptual Studies. They have a comprehensive website and there are many excellent YT videos from him. Such as:
Does Consciousness Continue After We Die? - Jim Tucker - 4/26/23
or
Jim Tucker The Science of Reincarnation
There are many other well established individuals studying in this area as well, such as, Raymond Moody, Pim van Lommel, Peter Fenwick, and on an on.
If you knew everything about my gaming computer,
that would not tell you anything about "Far Cry 5".
They are nothing like each other in any detail.
The mind is not a substance, its a label for temporals processes within the brain
The mind is that which experiences vision. That which is aware of the visual experience. That which fully believes the things it experiences are out there.
The brain creates both. The mind and experience.
@@jackarmstrong5645 vision is not a substance either. Vision is the collective noun given to the process of experiencing light. The body experiences light, not the mind. The mind is a label for a set of processes carried out by the brain such as interpreting, experiencing, thinking, reasoning etc.. they are all actions. Being aware is also an action. Awareness is the noun given to the set of actions. Without time or motion, the mindis meaningless but a substance is time independent. The brain doesnt create the mind, the brain is the form of a specific amount of substance arranged in certain ways that interact with its environment and functions in certain ways. The brain has functions and the set of functions is given the label of a mind but the mind is not a thing in the way matter is a substance.
@@CMVMic "Light" is invisible energy that happens to cause retinal molecules in the retinal cells to transform from trans to cis. The brain creates the visual experience from information about the transformation of retinal molecules.
The brain knows nothing about light.
The world is not colored.
Only the visual experience of the world is colored.
@@CMVMic Exactly and which is why brain has to be "normal" working condition to experience the normal consciousness, because only that condition the brain processes can achieve that dynamical state. Under general anesthesia i.e. altered chemical state brain processes can not enter the "conscious" dynamical state. Consciousness is a conventional word that is a shorthand for certain class of processes brains do. And it is a spectrum. That is why in drunken state we have less consciousness. In damaged brain case (changed structure) or under drugs like DMT (once again a chemical change) very different and novel dynamical states are possible and hence the associated strange conscious states.
@@SandipChitale Yes, so I hold to a functionalist theory of the mind.
Newborn babies already have consciousness and free will that's why they survive inside and after birth. The mind and the brain are like the soul and the spirit.
🐟 11. FREE-WILL Vs DETERMINISM:
Just as the autonomous beating of one's heart is governed by one's genes (such as the presence of a congenital heart condition), and the present-life conditioning of the heart (such as myocardial infarction as a consequence of the consumption of excessive fats and oils, or heart palpitations due to severe emotional distress), each and EVERY thought and action is governed by our genes and environmental conditioning.
This teaching is possibly the most difficult concept for humans to accept, because we refuse to believe that we are not the author of our thoughts and actions. From the appearance of the pseudo-ego (one’s inaccurate conception of oneself) at the age of approximately two and a half, we have been constantly conditioned by our parents, teachers, and society, to believe that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and deeds. This deeply-ingrained belief is EXCRUCIATINGLY difficult to abandon, which is possibly the main reason why there are very few persons extant who are spiritually-enlightened, or at least who are liberated from the five manifestations of mental suffering explained elsewhere in this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, since suffering (as opposed to pain) is predicated solely upon the erroneous belief in free-will.
Free-will is usually defined as the ability for a person to make a conscious decision to do otherwise, that is to say, CHOOSE to have performed an action other than what one has already done, if one had been given the opportunity to do so. To make it perfectly clear, if one, for example, is handed a restaurant menu with several dishes listed, one could decide that one dish is equally-desirable as the next dish, and choose either option. If humans truly possessed freedom of will, then logically speaking, a person who adores cats and detests dogs, ought to be able to suddenly switch their preferences at any given point in time, or even voluntarily pause the beating of his or her own heart!
So, in both of the aforementioned examples, there is a pre-existing preference (at a given point in time) for one particular dish or pet. Even if a person liked cats and dogs EQUALLY, and one was literally forced to choose one over the other, that choice isn’t made freely, but entirely based upon the person’s genetic code plus the individual's up-to-date conditioning. True equality is non-existent in the phenomenal sphere.
The most common argument against determinism is that humans (unlike other animals) have the ability to choose what they can do, think or feel. First of all, many species of (higher) mammals also make choices. For instance, a cat can see two birds and choose which one to prey upon, or choose whether or not to play with a ball that is thrown its way, depending on its conditioning (e.g. its mood). That choices are made is indisputable, but those choices are dependent ENTIRELY upon one’s genes and conditioning. There is no third factor involved on the phenomenal plane. On the noumenal level, thoughts and deeds are in accordance with the preordained “Story of Life”.
Read previous chapters of “F.I.S.H” to understand how life is merely a dream in the “mind of the Divine” and that human beings are, essentially, that Divinity in the form of dream characters. Chapter 08, specifically, explains how an action performed in the present is the result of a chain of causation, all the way back to the earliest-known event in our apparently-real universe (the so-called “Big Bang” singularity).
At this point, it should be noted that according to reputable geneticists, it is possible for genes to mutate during the lifetime of any particular person. However, that phenomenon would be included under the “conditioning” aspect. The genes mutate according to whatever conditioning is imposed upon the human organism. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE for a person to use sheer force of will to change their own genetic code. Essentially, “conditioning” includes everything that acts upon a person from conception.
University studies in recent years have demonstrated, by the use of hypnosis and complex experimentation, that CONSCIOUS volition is either unnecessary for a decision to be enacted upon or (in the case of hypnotic testing) that free-will choices are completely superfluous to actions. Because scientific research into free-will is a recent phenomenon, it is recommended that the reader search online for the latest findings.
If any particular volitional act was not caused by the preceding thoughts and actions, then the only alternative explanation would be due to RANDOMNESS. Many quantum physicists claim that subatomic particles can randomly move in space, but true randomness cannot occur in a deterministic universe. Just as the typical person believes that two motor vehicles colliding together was the result of pure chance (therefore the term “accident”), quantum physicists are unable to see that the seeming randomness of quantum particles are, in fact, somehow determined by each and every preceding action which led-up to the act in question. It is a known scientific fact that a random number generator cannot exist, since no computational machine or software program is able to make the decision to generate a number at “random”.
We did not choose which deoxyribonucleic acid our biological parents bequeathed to us, and most all the conditions to which we were exposed throughout our lives, yet we somehow believe that we are fully-autonomous beings, with the ability to feel, think and behave as we desire. The truth is, we cannot know for certain what even our next thought will be. Do we DECIDE to choose our thoughts and deeds? Not likely. Does an infant choose to learn how to walk or to begin speaking, or does it just happen automatically, according to nature? Obviously, the toddler begins to walk and to speak according to its genes (some children are far more intelligent and verbose, and more agile than others, depending on their genetic code) and according to all the conditions to which he or she has been exposed so far (some parents begin speaking to their kids even while they are in the womb, or expose their offspring to highly-intellectual dialogues whilst still in the cradle).
Even those decisions/choices that we seem to make are entirely predicated upon our genes and conditioning, and cannot be free in any sense of the word. To claim that one is the ULTIMATE creator of one’s thoughts and actions is tantamount to believing that one created one’s very being. If a computer program or artificially-intelligent robot considered itself to be the cause of its activity, it would seem absurd to the average person. Yet, that is precisely what virtually every person who has ever lived mistakenly believes of their own thoughts and deeds.
The IMPRESSION that we have free-will can be considered a “Gift of Life” or “God’s Grace”, otherwise, we may be resentful of our lack of free-will, since, unlike other creatures, we humans have the intelligence to comprehend our own existence. Even an enlightened sage, who has fully realized that he is not the author of his thoughts and actions, is not conscious of his lack of volition at every moment of his day. At best, he may recall his lack of freedom during those times where suffering (as opposed to mere pain) begins to creep-in to the mind or intellect. Many, if not most scientists, particularly academic philosophers and physicists, accept determinism to be the most logical and reasonable alternative to free-will, but it seems, at least anecdotally, that they rarely (if ever) live their lives conscious of the fact that their daily actions are fated.
Cont...
That's what you think...not necessarily what is true.
You can know absolutely everything about a video game and how its in game mechanics work while being wholly ignorant of the underlying code that creates it.
how can you know "absolutely everything" about anything?
Well put
@@henkema22 damned if know. The point I was trying to make is that it's possible to have an environment where you can figure out how everything works within that environment but never be privvy to the substrate reality on which it actually depends on to exist.
@@gloaming4247 hi gloaming, your point is clear now, but imo you are making a generic statement.
I'm not sure. You may have played the game exhaustively - a million times - and think you've found everything and know everything about the game. That's great right up until you hit the branch that's only activated the million and first time you play. You play it again and this time something is different.
There may be states in the game not within your experience, no matter how much you've played. Without knowledge of the code, you can never be totally sure you know everything about it even if a Bayesian thinker might give it good odds.
There’s no problem. Only human beings see ‘problems’ in nature. And this is because only human beings see themselves as somehow separate from nature, they are ‘individuals’ who have experience ‘of’ nature. We say ‘I’ when there is no such separation between the individual and nature. We are nature. An experience of nature is nature itself.
The brain is a physical entity designed to hold a mind. And there's much more to things than the 'physical' world. The core issue of materialism is the insatiable desire to believe that we (humans) can define and control everything. Central to this belief (need) is believing if you cannot scribe out something it does not exist. Hubris at its finest.
Whatever he is asking as why we perceive colors and why we feel like a self have evolutionary reasons. Asking why with the same brain seems like a dog chasing its own tail. He is trying to think outside the box by thinking that he is inside the box while not realizing that he himself is the box. I am not convinced with his arguments. Evolutionary reasons are enough and why is not the right question to ask here. It is what it is and sit with it. That’s what meditation teaches you and is the right scientific approach.
N.B. Before reading the following Glossary entry, it is absolutely imperative to understand that the term “mind” is being used according to the definition provided by the ancient Indian philosophical paradigm (in which it is called “manaḥ”, in Sanskrit), and NOT according to the manner in which the term is used in most all other systems (that is, as a broad synonym for “consciousness” - e.g. “The mind-body problem”).
mind:
Although the meaning of “mind” has already been provided in Chapter 05 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, it shall prove beneficial to further clarify that definition here in the Glossary. It is NOT implied that mind is the sum of the actual thoughts, the sensations, the memories, and the abstract images that inhabit the mental element (or the “space”) that those phenomena occupy, but the faculty itself. This mental space has two phases: the potential state (traditionally referred to as the “unconscious mind”), where there are no mental objects present (such as in deep sleep or during profound meditation), and the actualized state (usually referred to as the “conscious mind”), where the aforementioned abstract objects occupy one’s cognition (such as feelings of pain).
Likewise, the intellect and the pseudo-ego are the containers (or the “receptacles”) that hold conceptual thoughts and the sense of self, respectively. It is important to understand that the aforementioned three subsets of consciousness (mind, intellect, and false- ego) are NOT gross, tangible objects. Rather, they are subtle, intangible objects, that is, objects that can be perceived solely by an observant subject. The three subsets of consciousness transpire from certain areas of the brain (a phenomenon known as “strong emergence”), yet, as stated above, are not themselves composed of gross matter. Only a handful of mammal species possess intelligence (that is, abstract, conceptual thought processes), whilst human beings alone have acquired the pseudo-ego (the I- thought, which develops in infancy, following the id stage). Cf. “matter, gross”, “matter, subtle”, “subject”, and “object”.
In the ancient Indian systems of metaphysics known as “Vedānta” and “Sāṃkhya”, mind is considered the sixth sense, although the five so-called “EXTERNAL” senses are, nonetheless, nominally distinguished from the mind, which is called an “INTERNAL” sense. This seems to be quite logical, because, just as the five “outer” senses involve a triad of experience (the perceived, the perception, and the perceiver), so too does the mind comprise a triad of cognition (the known, the knowing, and the knower). See also Chapter 06.
Nota Bene: There is much confusion (to put it EXTREMELY mildly) in both Western philosophy and in the so-called “Eastern” philosophical traditions, between the faculty of mind (“manaḥ”, in Sanskrit) and the intellect (“buddhiḥ”, in Sanskrit). Therefore, the following example of this distinction ought to help one to understand the difference between the two subtle material elements:
When one observes a movie or television show on the screen of a device that one is holding in one’s hands, one is experiencing auditory, textural, and visual percepts, originating from external objects, which “penetrate” the senses of the body, just as is the case with any other mammal. This is the component of consciousness known as “mind” (at least according to the philosophical terminology of this treatise, which is founded on Vedānta, according to widely-accepted English translations of the Sanskrit terms). However, due to our intelligence, it is possible for we humans (and possibly a couple of other species of mammals, although to a far less-sophisticated degree) to construct conceptual thoughts on top of the purely sensory percepts. E.g. “Hey - look at that silly guy playing in the swimming pool!”, “I wonder what will happen next?”, or “I hate that the murderer has escaped from his prison cell!”. So, although a cat or a dog may be viewing the same movie on the screen of our electronic device, due to its relatively low level of intelligence, it is unable to conceptualize the audio-visual experience in the same manner as a primate, such as we humans.
To provide an even more organic illustration of how the faculty of mind “blends” into the faculty of the intellect, consider the following example: When the feeling of hunger (or to be more precise, appetite) appears in one’s consciousness, that feeling is in the mind. When we have the thought, “I’m hungry”, that is a conceptual idea that is a manifestation of the intellect. So, as a general rule, as animals evolve, they develop an intellectual faculty, in which there is an increasingly greater perception of, or KNOWLEDGE of, the external world (and in the case of at least one species, knowledge of the inner world). In addition to these two faculties of mind and intellect, we humans possess the false-ego (“ahaṃkāraḥ”, in Sanskrit). See Chapter 10 of "F.I.S.H" regarding the notion of egoity.
the original distinction is not necessary. sense organs do not 'experience' in any of the western or eastern traditions, they merely function as contributing causes for the arising of a corresponding consciousness or what is called qualia. the physical stimulation of the external world is never a qualia.
@@5piles Because there are literally tens of thousands of academic “philosophers” who adhere to the above misconception of what is an ACTUAL philosopher, I am loath to nominate a single person of whom to make mention. However, because the former University of Oxford scholar, Mr. Colin McGinn, claims to be the “best” philosopher in the history of humanity (a claim he has repeatedly made on his own website), I therefore have no reservations about using that fool as an ideal example for my position in relation to academic “philosophers”. In order to preface this case study, it should be noted that Mr. McGinn’s area of expertise is in the philosophy of mind, and he has written extensively on the subject.
However, near the beginning of a videographed dialogue posted on the Internet, Colin admitted that he was unable to even proffer a cogent definition of the word “mind”! The fact that Colin garnered a Master of Arts degree in psychology from a prominent English university did not seem to help with his understanding of the mind, despite the fact that psychology is concerned entirely with the psyche! I am quite certain that there are several teenagers in Bhārata (India) who understand the topic more clearly than Mister McGinn, since they have been trained in Vedānta (see that Glossary entry). In fact, there is very little doubt in my mind that my precocious second daughter, Sītā Anna, would have much more fully understood the concepts of mind and consciousness by the time she had reached the age of TEN years, had she not been (effectively) kidnapped by a devilishly-wicked, evil, demonic, violent criminal organization known as the “Federal Government of Australia”.
In the same video, Mr. McGinn claimed that homosexuality was not immoral for the reason that most persons (though I am sure that he meant most persons in the decadent Western countries) accept perverse sexuality to not be immoral - a very blatant example of the logical fallacy known as the “Argumentum ad Populum” (appeal to popularity argument). Also, Mr. McGinn claims to be a supporter of animal rights, although whether or not he is a genuine vegan is, at the time of writing this chapter, unknown, since he has either not received the Emails I have sent to him, or else he has not bothered to reply to any of them. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would guess that he is not an actual vegan, judging by my vast experience in the (so-called) vegan community on the Internet. Very few of those who claim to be vegan are, in fact, vegan, sad to say. Most are either plant-based eaters (in other words, definitionally-strict vegetarians) or they do not adhere to the one and only definition of the word “veganism”, as coined by Mr. and Mrs. Donald Watson, and when asked for a definition of the term, in virtually every case, tender a rather inaccurate explanation of what constitutes “veganism”. Is it possible to be a vegan if one does not know what is a vegan? Yes, indeed it is, but highly improbable, since only one who resides in a remote region of earth would be unfamiliar with the word. Apart from his claim to be the greatest philosopher in history, Colin believes that his writing style to be among the clearest of any philosopher in history, despite his articles and books containing copious syntactic and vocabulary errors. There are a number of other truly idiotic remarks and assertions of McGinn that I can quote, such as his inane positions on free-will, metaphysics, and politics, but those mentioned above should be sufficient to convince an ACTUAL philosopher of his abject ignorance in relation to all branches of philosophy and psychology.
Furthermore, Mr. Colin McGinn’s books on morality and ethics would have seemed far more authoritative if he had refrained from sexually-harassing one of his female graduate students during his tenure at the University of Miami. Rather tangentially, I have personally sent Emails to literally HUNDREDS of academic philosophers (most all of them professors at major Western tertiary “education” institutions), yet not a single one of them, including Mr. McGinn, has accepted my generous offer of a free electronic copy of this book, “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”. Just see how incredibly closed-minded are the so-called “thought leaders” of our society! I honestly believe that the “problem” with these academic philosophers is that they are members of the working-class, which implies that it is their nature to work for a living, whereas actual philosophers are members of the Most Holy Priesthood, who, by definition do not “work”, but who are impelled to teach truth to humanity, with no regard of the cost to themselves. In my own case, I have been subsisting entirely Providentially for almost four decades.
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices i agree with much of what you said, i am merely indicating that the west's usage of 'qualia' can work in harmony with eastern systems of pramana (cognition theory) / consciousness. the vedanta samkhya and abhidharma + theravada buddhists assert sense organs make contact with actual external objects of color, sound, etc, which then condition and assist the production a corresponding consciousness or qualia based on the external object. so there is harmony between east and west in that respect.
however in modern science and in the systems of buddhist sautrantika and above ie. all the mahayana traditions, these all deny the existence of external colors, sounds, etc, in the external world. the position that such objects exist in the external world is called naive realism. instead what they accept is something does exist externally but it is not composed of color sounds etc, these exclusively only ever being consciousness/qualia.
introducing conceptional consciousness and language into this is as you know very complex and is the reason a buddhist geshe degree takes 20yrs to complete. it takes a good 7-10yrs just to get a good grip of it, another 5-10yrs to master the advanced levels of it, and then you are ready to spend a good 20-30yrs in perfect samadhi making full use of this territory empirically.
@@5piles
Idealism:
Metaphysical Idealism is the view that the objective, phenomenal world is the product of an IDEATION of the mind, whether that be the individual, discrete mind of a human subject, or else that of a Universal Conscious Mind (“Nirguna Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The former variety of Idealism (that the external world is merely the product of an individual mind) seems to be a form of solipsism.
The latter kind of Idealism is far more plausible, yet it reduces the objective world to nothing but a figment in the “Mind of God”.
Thus, both these forms of Idealism can be used to justify all kinds of immoral behaviour, on the premise that life is just a sort of dream in the mind of an individual human or else in the consciousness of the Universal Mind (and of course, they rarely speak of how non-human animals fit into this metaphysical world-view, especially in the case of the former kind of Idealism, subjective Idealism).
Idealism (especially Monistic Idealism), is invariably the philosophical position proffered by neo-advaita teachers (see that Glossary entry), probably due to the promulgation of the teachings in the West of Indian (so-called) “gurus” such as Mr. Venkataraman Iyer.
This may explain why such (bogus) teachers use the terms “Consciousness” and/or “Awareness”, instead of the Vedantic Sanskrit word “Brahman”, since with “Brahman” there is ultimately no distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. the object-subject duality).
At the risk of sounding facetious, anyone can dress themselves in a white robe and go before a camera or a live audience and repeat the word “Consciousness” and “Awareness” ad-infinitum and it would seem indistinguishable from the so called “satsangs” (a Sanskrit term that refers to a guru preaching to a gathering of spiritual seekers) of those fools who belong to the cult of neo-advaita.
The metaphysical view postulated in my book, a form of neutral monism known as “decompositional dual-aspect monism” ('advaita', in Sanskrit), is a far more complete perspective than the immaterialism proposed by Idealism, and is the one realized and taught by the most enlightened sages throughout human history, especially in the most “SPIRITUAL” piece of land on earth, Bhārata. Cf. “monism”.
Both Idealists and naturalists (which includes materialists and physicalists) negate Absolute Reality, since both consciousness (at least the form of consciousness advocated by Idealists) and matter are RELATIVE. For instance, when a materialist, such as the typical professional physicist, states that the foundation of reality is some kind of particle/field/string, those things are always in relation to something other than those things (either another particle or field, even if that scientist advocates for the Unified Field), or else, are in relation to nothing. Similarly, those who believe in the metaphysical schema of Idealism, claim that some kind of mind (either a discrete mind such as a human mind, or else a certain form of Universal Consciousness) is fundamental, even though (like all concepts) mind is a relative notion - mind is in relation to matter.
monism:
the view in metaphysics that reality (that is, Ultimate Reality) is a unified whole and that all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system; the doctrine that mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, the same ultimate substance or principle of being; any system of thought that seeks to deduce all the varied phenomena of both the physical and spiritual worlds from a single principle, specifically, the metaphysical doctrine that there is but one substance, either mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), or a substance that is neither mind nor matter, but is the substantial ground of both. Cf. “dualism”.
To put it simply, whilst materialists/physicalists/naturalists believe that the ground of being is some kind of tangible form of matter (or a field of some sort), and idealists/theists/panpsychists consider some kind of mind(s) or consciousness(es) to be most fundamental, MONISTS understand that Ultimate Reality is simultaneously both the Subject and any possible object, and thus one, undivided whole (even though it may seem that objects are, in fact, divisible from a certain standpoint).
The descriptive term favoured in the metaphysical framework proposed in this Holy Scripture is “Brahman”, a Sanskrit word meaning “expansion”, although similes such as “Sacchidānanda” (Eternal-Conscious-Peace), “The Tao” and “The Monad” are also satisfactory.
Perhaps the oldest extant metaphysical system, Advaita Vedānta, originating in ancient Bhārata (India), which is the thesis promulgated in this treatise, “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, is a decompositional dual-aspect monist schema, in which the mental and the physical are two (epistemic) aspects of an underlying (ontic) reality that itself is neither mental nor physical, but rather, psychophysically neutral. On such a view, the decomposition creates mutually-exclusive mental (subjective) and physical (objective) domains, both of which are necessary for a comprehensive metaphysical worldview. The mere fact that it is possible for Awareness to be conscious of Itself, implies that, by nature, Ultimate Reality is con-substantially BOTH subjective and objective, since it would not be possible for a subject to perceive itself unless the subject was also a self-reflective object. Therefore, it seems that the necessary-contingent dichotomy often discussed by philosophers in regards to ontology, is superfluous to the concept of monism, because on this view, BOTH the subjective and the objective realities are essentially one, necessary ontological Being(ness). In other words, because you are, fundamentally, Brahman, you are a necessary being and not contingent on any external force. This concept has been termed "necessitarianism" by contemporary philosophers, in contradiction to contingentarianism - the view that at least some thing could have been different otherwise - and is intimately tied to the notions of causality and determinism in Chapters 08 and 11. Advaita Vedānta (that is, dual-aspect Monism) is the only metaphysical scheme that has complete explanatory power.
Hypothetically, and somewhat tangentially, one might question thus: “If it is accurate to state that both the Subject of all subjects and all possible objects are equally ‘Brahman’ (that is, Ultimate Truth), then surely that implies that a rock is equally valuable as a human being?”. That is correct purely on the Absolute platform. Here, in the transactional world of relativity, there is no such thing as equality, except within the conceptual sphere (such as in mathematics), as already demonstrated in more than a couple of places in this Holiest of Holy Books, “F.I.S.H”, especially in the chapter regarding the spiteful, pernicious ideology of feminism (Chapter 26).
Cf. “advaita”, “dualism”, “Brahman/Parabrahman”, “Saguna Brahman”, “Nirguna Brahman”, “subject”, and “object”.
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices yea decent explanation, would require a lot of debate. my central interest is dawning anatman in the minds of those with strong realization of atman at least in the 1st and 2nd levels of the form realm.
but for your assertion regarding the notion of solipsism and idealism dismantles morality, yes solipsism does which is why noone assert it, whereas forms of idealism do not. this is because morality is the result produces by ones owns actions eg. killing others creates various mental lapses / impulses / karmas that produce corresponding results in the future. idealism does not mean everyone is in their own little world, they exist of the same nature as is the ground nature, there need not necessarily be posited a type of strict monism. in fact dual asect monism is accepted by highest buddhism but such monism quickly runs into absurdities of set theory, the nature of particulars in relation to universals, etcetc, unless anatman is understood. eg. the person is neither the same as the collection of mind and body nor different than mind and body. this explanation by the buddha points to the imputed nature that is the ground of existence. tibetan buddhists which is the continuation of indian nalanda buddhism spend 6h per day doing indian syllogism debates so that all these topics are thoroughly threshed out conceptually...very fun and effective and makes western education look like a trash bin.
Nope, there's just one mind-body problem and it's "meaning". You solve that, and I would strongly HUNCH that the other problems would immediately follow (prove me wrong, lol). I mean, what else could there be besides meaning, behind it all. And speaking of meaning: a Polish guy and an English guy "understand" the utterance "the cat is on the mat", in their native languages. Why can't it be the case, that if I see "red" in the environment and Cmdr. Data sees "red" in the environment, we see the same thing? I mean, if I play basketball with Data, and we both sink all the baskets (I'm a GOAT here), wouldn't it have to be the case that our spatial qualia convey the same meaning for us to sink all the baskets, so I could easily make the argument that qualia are identical to meaning states about the environment (not brain states), and that a meaning state could be implemented in diverse ways.
A key fact is hiding in plain sight in the discussions about self awareness and qualia. The very mechanisms that detect and internally classify the state of self awareness and of qualia are in the brain itself and for that the brain has to be in a appropriately working state. Of course when people are discussing these heady topics their brain is in a well functioning state and they implicitly forget that is the case i.e. their brain is working appropriately. Try having a conversation about self awareness with a person under general anesthesia or when you yourself are under general anesthesia. Why is that? Could it be that the very fact of the state of self awareness and qualia itself is the state of the brain, and thus can be registered only if the brain can access and process that state.
>>> "The very mechanisms that detect and internally classify the state of self awareness and of qualia are in the brain itself and for that the brain has to be in a appropriately working state".
@henkema22 If ones brain is not in normal working condition, one cannot experience self awareness or qualia. For example, under general anesthesia, or dead brain.
@@SandipChitale
Like a television for instance. A television relates information from one realm into another. When it’s damaged, that infor,action flow is damaged or cutoff.
Yet doesn’t prove anything about the source of that information.
@deanodebo Begging the question. You seem to be making an assumption about the fact that there is a source separate from the brain.
And even if for the sake of the argument, we assume that there is such a source, after the anesthesia wears off then that source could communicate what was the self experience when the brain was not functioning . I have been under general anesthesia, and that did not happen. I was truly gone.
@@SandipChitale
Actually you are begging the question. As a matter of fact, consciousness is prior to and a necessary prerequisite for brain.
“Brain” is a concept created by consciousness, and you are assuming the physical/material prior to concluding the physical is the source. That is literally begging the question.
If you do not assume your conclusion, then you will be challenged to even establish with certainty that anything physical actually exists - (whatever that is)
By the way, if you were truly “gone” then how do you know anything at all happened or that any time passed at all? (Now explain how you assume your conclusion)
i eat fruit peelings a mind supplies if more healthy to react quicker want stimulation or fact doesn't have to be or meening is relax at nothing as free will
Emergent properties are unique and not found in the composition of associated materials. A scenic ride through the countryside is not explained by the horse or bicycle you're riding!
A blind person can not experience or know what the color red is to a person with eyesight.
It's fun watching materialism fail.
"Mind body Problem" is not a problem.The Mind body Mystery I feel is a more appropriate term.
It’s a problem for people who assume their whole worldview is science, because they can’t know anything about the physical world
The word know has two meanings, one is understand and the other is experience. The same confusion happens in the case of Mary's room. What she knew (understood) about red color perception inside the room and what she knew (experience) when she saw the red object outside the room. Science is not about knowing in the sense of experiencing, but it is about knowing (understanding) how things work. We don't demand the theory of relativity to encode and capture a specific orbit of a specific planet around a specific star and for all such scenarios. It captures the compressed principle behind orbits of planets. For the talk of knowing (experiencing) new things we don't need dramatic scenarios like Mary's room. Any new experience is a new experience and that's that.
thats fine until you try to understand experiencing itself.
I don’t understand why Colin differentiates between “knowing” an experience vs “having“ an experience. He says repeatedly you can know an experience but still not have it. That is clearly wrong on its face. The only way we ever can know anything at all is via experience. Experience happens first and the knowledge is a result. You can never reverse the order, yet Colin seems to think in the case of imagining red that you can reverse the order. Imagining red is still not to know the experience of literally seeing red with your eyes. I wish he had better clarified what distinction he’s making because what he said can’t be right.
By knowing he means knowing all of the scientific facts. Like a doctor who specializes in treating a disease but has never had it.
Experience is purely subjective, it can follow common path, but it is inevitably subjective.
If humans want to understand their existence physically, they have to understand neuron connections, because that is what make our experience in large.
Dont expect it to happen any time soon though as it is universe with universe.
without experiencing biological sonar we are able to recreate it through technology.
aka still your 1st person awareness of some new 3rd person interaction.
Mind-body problem...first one us diabetes...minimal maximal matter of one stuff...
If someone is told all about a rollercoaster--what it consists of, how it works, the angles of all the turns etc.--they wouldn't have embodied the experience of being on a rollercoaster. That doesn't mean the rollercoaster doesn't exist as a physical object. This shows that Colin's example of the difference between being told about the color red and experiencing the color red doesn't go toward refuting materialism.
Guys keep out mind body fundamental problems when he shows baseless hipotesy. Mind body problems there arnt solutions in philosophy or phich so far. Most important are unpredicted conscience never picture mind body proceedings truly.
how could some indigenous Maya tribe know the monotheist god..
Without the sense perception organs, and the objects of perceptions and sensations, that very interaction had by the three, there would not be states of mind, or brain states - the consciousness by senses. This fact is why jivahood or conditioned embodiment is acknowledged - both the body, therefore the mind, and the objects of perceptions and sensations, thus mentations, are all conditioned. Too, Maya, the phenomenal plane, thereof a conception is had, that is an illusion, that of a snake, when in real reality, is verily a rope. Our ignorance, that is to say, identifying with body and utilizing an erroneous contrast of a conditioned mind and perceptive objects or duality, keeps man in a revolving door going in circles; samsara.
The Wiseman state: must overcome the mind - which is very very difficult to do. Again, both the body(jivahood) and the objects of perceptions & sensations are conditioned. This too, is what we call 'information' or where it derives from. And is very important to know that man's essence is not the body, the mind, brain, thoughts etc ; Anatta, the via negativa realization of the Atman. Man's essence is not tangible.
(5:40) *CM: **_"To deny that our thoughts have content is to deny that we can think at all."_* ... For those who boldly claim, _"It's all just the brain!",_ consider the following: All you have ever known is "Existence." You have never subjectively experienced nonexistence, and it is impossible for you to even "imagine" your own nonexistence. Any description you attempt of your own nonexistence requires your existence as the observer.
Even when you are placed under anesthesia, the time you are unconscious is unrecognizable to you. All you experience is that you closed your eyes for an instant ... _and then opened them back up._
The moment you were born, your mind became an essential part of existence, and what happens in existence stays in existence.
Yet you were once non-existent, by definition, therefore there will come a time where you are non-existent once again.
colin mcginn has a razor like mind that explains incisively what the problem is and therefore why the proposed solutions can miss the point - this is the mark of genius
The discussion became uselessly ambiguous in the last couple of minutes when they were musing about complete knowledge of the world, instead of complete knowledge of the physical brain. Would complete knowledge of a bat's brain allow us to understand what it's like to be a bat?
@@saigopala : The last part would have been the juicy part if they'd focused instead on knowledge of the brain. "World" is poorly defined, and lacks a consensus definition. It's a vacuous tautology to say that if you know everything about everything, then you know what it's like to be a bat.
The real question is: Is it possible (in principle) to learn enough about a bat's brain to correctly predict what it would be like to be a bat?
@@saigopala : His earlier No answer was clearly misleading and based on poor reasoning: He said No is "evidently" correct because understanding red & batness hasn't yet been done. Robert immediately recognized that "not yet done" does NOT imply "impossible" and this is what prompted Robert to ask whether it would still be No in the future after much more is learned (about the brain). Unfortunately, Robert didn't articulate that question well... there was no need to consider the extreme, implausible case of "complete knowledge" rather than the more modest case of "more neuroscience knowledge about the brain than we have now." Assuming the Hard Problem can someday be solved, it will require more knowledge than we have now, but it won't require complete knowledge of the world (an unattainable goal).
@@saigopala : Koch & Chalmers have made a new 25-year bet. But there's reason to believe it won't get settled: Twenty years ago, I asked Koch about the possibility that neuroscientists will discover enough about how the brain works that the discovery could then be weaponized (using nanotech or a designer virus) into a tool of global mass mind control that would transform nearly everyone into compliant slaves. He told me this discovery was a few decades away. His lost bet shows he's not very good at predicting the pace of neuroscience discoveries, but if he was right about when mind control will be achieved, then there probably isn't enough time left to solve the Hard Problem.
The Mind ... is simply a complete ENTITY ... that has freewill, nature, thoughts, senses, memory, feelings & consciousness.
The Function, Intelligence, Mind & Information Categories ... prove .. the Universe & Life are Functions composed entirely of Functions ... and were designed & made .. by an Unnatural Infinite & timeless Intelligence with a Mind.
The Mind .. is the complete ENTITY or being or kind.
God really is infinite, eternal & always existed ... and did create Man in His image with a Mind that is body & soul ... with freewill & nature ... to obey or disobey God.
Man is a Natural Intelligence with a Mind ... made by .. an Unnatural Intelligence with the one & only MIND.
Everything is Function ... with purpose, form/design, processes & properties .. which are all INFORMATION that every Function possesses to exist & to function.
Information is an an abstract construct ... that can only come from the Mind ..... of an intelligence.
This is why there is not & never will be any evidence proving Nature & natural processes can make & operate the simplest physical function 13.7 or 4 billion years ago .. a quantum particle, field or force ... a atom, element or molecule ... space, time, Laws of Nature, matter, energy ... or ... any Function made by Man (intelligence).
Everything ... originates .. from the Mind of an Unnatural, timeless & infinite Intelligence. But an Entity with a Mind .. is responsible for anything he/she thinks, says & does .. and will answer to ... God for their choices.
@@saigopalaI think the problem of qualia may be tractable with current knowledge, it may just require a shift in perspective. To me experiencing qualia isn’t just knowledge or information like a database record, it’s undergoing a process. I see qualia as encompassing connections between our senses, imaginative faculties, memories of past qualia and related experiences. It’s a process of relating those things. So it is a process on information and functional neurological systems such as vision and emotional centres and such, not just static information. It’s more like running a software function that accessed data and peripheral systems than just an entry in a database.
Lol
The 'Mind-body'- invention is just an excuse,
for speculative videos.
I don't accept that there's a problem. We are biological creatures pure and simple. Everything we are can be traced back in the fossil record to the primordial ooze.
not according to tukdam in taipei 2020. good try tho fella, you recited the thought of every 10yo who thinks they are their mind right on queue. also spoilers, your 19th century model of physics youre using to make your assertion is not reality.
opinions do not matter. Reason, Dialectic, a priori , exposition, facts, evidence, hypothesis, synthesis, matter only.
Knowing that you come from monkeys answer's nothing.
"We're the brain, we come from monkeys; governments give us freedoms, babies come from hospitals, electricity comes from the powerplants, education makes us smart". Derp derp derp.... simple as that
@@5piles
Boohoo, don't cry too much. You know that you're just a biological creature, but refuse to admit it for whatever special interest you're promoting.
@@5piles...so what do you propose?
@@brad1368 do real science by developing real methods of rigorously observing consciousness to see what it actually is and how it works. not simply to rely on endless neural correlate mapping supported by the demented metaphysics and sloppy logic of dennett searle churchland etc. frankish at least is lucid and intellectually honest. science excels and makes its primary advances when it gets good at finding anomalies, which physicalists actively ignore, and when they develop methods of rigorously observing the object needed to be investigated, in this case consciousness, which again physicalists also actively ignore. in fact they use their folk introspection which certainly is obscured as proof that consciousness is an illusion. physicalists are failures in that they would rather accept this metaphysical position than spend any effort in the opposite direction.
Materialism is dead ...
Evidence?
@@TurinTuramber Metaphysics do exist and persons react to them.
@@jairofonseca1597 Metaphysics is just a code word for abstract nonsense. If you disagree then by all means demonstrate your claim.
How so?
@@TurinTuramber Math exist per se, it does not need humans, matter or the universe.
Good series but I have to unsubscribe after finding out that the author participated in China's state propaganda footage.