The Mind-Body problem

[Anonymous No.10514480]

So let's talk about one of the most fascinating mysteries of the universe: the mind-body problem. Are we (meaning our existence as mental beings) simply products of neurological interactions or is the mind a separate object that exists and functions, at least in part, independently from the biological stratum?

Now for anyone that thinks this is a non-problem or that it is not scientific enough, there is good empirical evidence for both sides: There is plenty of literature about the effects of neurological decay or brain damage on the cognitive capacities of individuals, yet there are plenty of entirely psychological phenomena that exist only "in the mind" to which the body responds.
An example of this second case is observable physiological reactions to suggested stimuli under hypnosis: If the mind was entirely reducible to brain processes, hypnosis would not be able to "trick" the brain as it is not providing any real stimulus that would elicit that certain reaction.
Another example is the physological modification of the brain in response to uniquely psychological changes, that can be observed in transexual people (in which their brain quite literally gets feminized or masulinized), mentally ill people or people that suffered psychological trauma like bullying, social rejection or heavier stuff like PTSD.

[Anonymous No.10514520]

>>10514480
I don't believe my body and mind are discrete entities. I don't believe the universe and my body are discrete entities. My body is a brief wave of organisation in a sea of ever accelerating entropy. I am the universe experiencing itself.

[Anonymous No.10514536]

>>10514520
The... problem remains though: Are you a property of the material or a mind that allucinates the physical?

[Anonymous No.10514546]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXX-_G_9kww
http://cogprints.org/6613/1/Dualism0409.pdf

[Anonymous No.10514559]

>>10514536
I can't prove it but I believe the platonic realm doesn't exist, only the physical.

[Anonymous No.10514565]

>>10514480
I was trying to invent spherical reasoning the other day to help you with this exact class of problem. It'd also have resulted in a framework that would allow multiple observers to test a magic-based hypothesis simultaneously. Current epistemology just can't answer these questions.

[Anonymous No.10514568]

>>10514480
https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html

[Anonymous No.10514574]

>>10514546
Dualism is entirely non-satisfactory for me. It shifts the problem without really resolving it.
If you hypothesize the existence of a separate "mental universe" then you have to provide a justification not only for their separate existence, but also for their interaction. Neither of those problems can be easily solved by the dualist model, while they are immediately obvious in a monist model (be it mind or matter centric).

[Anonymous No.10514578]

>>10514568
That's entirely irrelevant to the problem.

[Anonymous No.10514580]

>>10514559
I do agree, but physical reductionism is no more solid than a purely phenomenological hypothesis.
>>10514565
>spherical reasoning
Care to expand?

[Anonymous No.10514586]

>>10514480
define mind.

[Anonymous No.10514594]

Are we bones or bodies?

[Anonymous No.10514599]

>>10514586
the subjective (conscious and subconscious) experience and elaboration of external and internal stimuli.

[Anonymous No.10514603]

>>10514480
>idealism
>materialism
>dualism
>physicalist
>monist
>substance based ontology
BRAINLET

[Anonymous No.10514606]

>>10514603
I, too, know how to use wikipedia, fellow internet user.

[Anonymous No.10514610]

>>10514606
>he doesn't know

[Anonymous No.10514611]

>>10514599
define 'conscious' and 'subconscious'.

[Anonymous No.10514614]

>>10514480
I heard on 4chan a few years ago of a guy who tried to do a body swap operation by literally ripping the entire head of a person and sewing it back together on another body. What came of that? I think he originally wanted to transplant limb by limb and organ by organ till he created a new body for the person in need.
Sounds exceptionally simplistic yet practical if we are to go by the idea of organ transplants.

[Anonymous No.10514615]

>>10514603
this.
if you are mildly intelligence, you'd opt for radical immanence
if you truly have a brain, you'd realize that ontological nihilism is simply the only logical and most parsimonious position

[Anonymous No.10514626]

>>10514611
The mental processes that are either experienced directly and with awareness, or indirectly and with no awareness of the process but at most its final product.

[Anonymous No.10514628]

>>10514615
>ontological nihilism
Brainlet

[Anonymous No.10514630]

>>10514615
>This is what radical centrism does to the brain.

[Anonymous No.10514637]

Ship of Theseus, every atom in your body is different than when you were born, so you're obviously some temporal stream of consciousness from the void waiting for your flesh prison to decay so you can return.

[Anonymous No.10514640]

>>10514626
what a roundabout way of saying 'the brain'.

[Anonymous No.10514642]

>>10514637
So does the Ship of even exist in the first place or was it just an illusion to begin with?

[Anonymous No.10514646]

>>10514640
Not really, but if you can't be bothered to think beyond that, OK...
>>10514637
But the ship is still a material object, regardless of what it is made of.

[Anonymous No.10514656]

[Anonymous No.10514665]

>>10514480
The problem would become considerably easier to solve once most people would realize that free will is an illusion.
As long as the majority still insists on believing in some obscure notion of free will I don't see much reason to discuss the matter at all.

[Anonymous No.10514671]

>>10514665
Free will being an illusion requires to assume a priori that the mind doe snot exist or is at most a mere product of the brain, which is the problem we are discussing.

[Anonymous No.10514672]

>>10514480
Like any ideal object, mind can only exist on a carrier, and that carrier is obviously the body.

[Anonymous No.10514681]

>>10514480
>>10514671
A sense of consciousness obviously exists which we may call the mind. You may disagree but there isn't really more to mind or being than what one senses immediately at the moment.

I did not say that the will was a product of the brain. It however must be the product of something whatever it is except you believe in ex nihilo creations.

[Anonymous No.10514685]

>>10514665
A comparison between redpilled edgelords and brainwashed normies is an obvious proof that free will is not an illusion.

[Anonymous No.10514695]

>>10514671
No. Free will requires you discard the notion of a "driver", a soul, driving the body. That's easy to discard given the modern understanding of the brain has no need for a "soul" for a functioning brain. Don't confuse the mind with a soul. A mind could simply be how the body processes information, without requiring any causality breaking agent.

[Anonymous No.10514703]

>>10514695
All references to soul refer to mind, so there is no reason to assume they are different. Magic is just a wrong theory of soul.

[Anonymous No.10514765]

>>10514695
>That's easy to discard given the modern understanding of the brain has no need for a "soul" for a functioning brain.
Meaning what exactly?

That aside however, the question remains. If the mind is purely a product of the brain, why have it? You yourself said that we do not need any "guiding entity" yet we can all attest the fact that we do have a mental life, that is at least in part conscious. Plenty of animals and even our machines do not need any kind of consciousness, or even subconscious activity, to function perfectly.

That actually I think is another very interesting question, if not more interesting: What is the point of being aware of one self? Awareness that drags along with it most of what we consider our mind, or at least the higher forms of thought that we associate with our "exceptional" humanity.

[Anonymous No.10514772]

>>10514765
The question of why is a dumb question. Evolution follows mutation and those that help the foundation for survival. Sometimes changes have no function other than random mutation passed along. There is no God creating a soul and putting it in a body.

[Anonymous No.10514784]

>>10514765
>If the mind is purely a product of the brain, why have it?
Mind has better adaptation capabilities because it's more flexible.

[Anonymous No.10514792]

>>10514765
Teleological or causal argumentations are of little use because that would require an argumentation beyond the scope of one's own mind. However since everything except the sensing of the phenomena itself is unprovable in the first place, you can't use that approach to prove anything.

The question of consciousness is ultimately closely linked to the question of qualia and both may fall together entirely. I believe so.

[Anonymous No.10514809]

>>10514772
>>10514784
>>10514792
I explained myself badly: If indeed we accept the reductionist hypothesis, that the mind is non-existent or at most a reflection of the brain's activity with no agency on the biological, then it follows that either consciousness is equally illusory or can be substituted for an algorithm that does the same job (and equally well) with no need for awareness.

To be more clear, if the mind is reducible to the matter, we must assume that it is possible to replicate all the functions of a mind in a generic programmable machine, which would not have neither need nor ability to be conscious or aware. Therefore, the question remains, why have conscience?

[Anonymous No.10514816]

>>10514809
you answered your own question.

[Anonymous No.10514818]

>>10514816
Yet I am conscious

[Anonymous No.10514824]

>>10514809
Suppose such a machine would be constructed. I raise the following question. How do you know, that the machine isn't conscious?

I'm not defending the point of view that consciousness is a emergent property of materia and if supposed that materia is nothing but little particles that move around and interact the way particles with mass should interact according to Newton laws, then it is very unlikely that consciousness would arise out of that. I already implied before that mind is something that is constructed by something rather than something that constructs.

[Anonymous No.10514829]

>>10514809
Consciousness/awareness comes from sensory organs + communications with the mind.

In the absence of sensory organs being cut off from the mind, you'd still have the mind but would not be able to distinguish this from that as the distinction comes from various levels of data processed by the senses. The function of conscience is to further navigate the world.

[Anonymous No.10514832]

>>10514829
*To further navigate the world (in reference to the body).

[Anonymous No.10514934]

>>10514818
Possibility of unconscious machines doesn't preclude conscious machines. You're simply the latter.

[Anonymous No.10515120]

>>10514480
The self is an illusion. Buddhism easily solves this.

[Anonymous No.10515125]

>>10514665
I'd take it further and say they need to also realize the self (with a core identity) is an illusion. Humans just like to simplify things by assigning identities/labels.

[Anonymous No.10515150]

Why people always assume that there is a free will?

[Anonymous No.10515238]

>>10514480
/sci/ doesn't do enough drugs, lol
>Asks questions about muh brain
>Refuses to do experiments on their brain<div class="like-perk-cnt"><img alt="" width="451" height="75" src="//s.4cdn.org/image/temp/dinosaur.gif"></div>

[Anonymous No.10515251]

>>10514574
>hen you have to provide a justification not only for their separate existence
The fact that I can observe my qualia directly, and therefore know that I am not a philosophical zombie.
>but also for their interaction.
The fact that I am able to talk about qualia. If epiphenomenalism were true, there would be absolutely no correlation between the things I am typing and my internal qualia, and the things I am typing would be no deeper in meaning than the chirps of a bird. Yet I am able to actually communicate things about my qualia.

[Anonymous No.10515289]

>>10515150
>>10515120
>>10515125

your assertion that we don't possess free-will is the same as the old assumption that there is a finite number of resources on the planet.

it's just an extension of the ignorance we have concerning the subject of the brain and the nature of consciousness.

I cannot think of a more defeatist ideology. you are literally tricking yourself into believing you're tricking yourself.

what happens when we prove that free will is an illusion? where does this put us? as nothing greater than simple animals, destined and doomed to nothing more meaningful or self-actualizing than mindless consumption and nihilism?

i choose to believe that the human-consciousness is just an eventuality of evolution, a truly potent end-game evolution that has clearly outstripped anything else nature has achieved before.

perhaps I just don't understand. but what drives you if not free will? how does all this ridiculous hilarity exist if humanscan't actually think for themselves? and what the absolute fuck does it even matter one way or another?

[Anonymous No.10515380]

How about where is the body or mind?

[Anonymous No.10516752]

>>10514671
this,if we take a look at a person that have his hippocampus removed(hr) notice that he can't form a new memories and always forgot despite his effort to store those memories

[Anonymous No.10516759]

Not even a problem, consciouness is your thalamus, hippocampus creates your memories and so on.. metavirgins still want to screech about things that can be entirely explained by pure materialism.

[Anonymous No.10516788]

>>10515289
then why do people need repetition can't they just learn those quickly? no the brain need to process the information first if free will exist then everyone can do anything without the physical limits of their brain

[Anonymous No.10516797]

>>10514480
The mind is not in the body the body is in mind(not your mind)
-https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20543665-why-materialism-is-baloney
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrxrE6eW04
Bernardo kastrup outlines this well.

[Anonymous No.10516803]

>>10514480
You're a fucking fool to even think about this.
The mind and body are the same thing and the body can build the mind, so, too, can the mind build the body (obesity, muscularity, etc).

[Anonymous No.10516814]

Everyone is so human-centred. An organism without a brain is it's body, but a human isn't because we're special snowflakes?

Our mind is nothing special, it's just an organ that performs a biological function like our lungs. Are we our lungs or our body? Shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.10518064]

>>10514480
I can't prove any of this, of course, but since we're just discussing it, I'll bite. I think the mind can operate beyond the physical properties of the brain but it cant act without the brain.
Also, I'm not sure if hypnotism is a good arguement for the mind because most hypnosis involves some sort of physical hypnosis through one of the senses and one could argue it is, in a way, "physically" interacting with the brain.
As for the trans thing or any other weird stuff we can believe and illicit physical change in our brain/body, idk. However, I think someone could argue that some "physical" presence maybe perpetuated those thoughts to begin with, i.e. would a person have ever gotten the idea of being trans if they never heard about the idea from another physical source like hearing a person speak on tv or seeing and reading the words on an article?
I think we have a decent idea of how neurons work and we can see there is different activities done in different parts of the brain, but we don't reaaalllyyy know how every little thing works. I feel like as we continue to get a better understanding of it and start to lean away from the psychological side of the brain, we'll start to get a better understanding and maybe be able to explain the "mind" through hard science to a better capacity. When or if we can ever fully explain the mind through the body is another journey.

[Anonymous No.10518100]

>>10515238
You're not qualified to do experiments on your own brain. You're just giving yourself brain damage, as evidenced by your post.

[Anonymous No.10518103]

>>10516803
>You're a fucking tool to even think
The spirit of /sci/

[Anonymous No.10518576]

>>10516814
>Everyone is so human-centred. An organism without a brain is it's body, but a human isn't because we're special snowflakes?
But if we treat the problem this way, then it is really easy to reach metaphysical conclusions n the opposite end: what differentiate conscious animals from unconscious animals? Where is physically the concept of the self? What differentiate a dead mind from an alive one? What differentiate living beings from inanimate things?
To answer these question you have to either consider the existence of something more than pure mechanicism, or assume that everything, dead, alive or inanimate, is alive and conscious.

[Anonymous No.10518589]

>>10518064
I don't think anyone is denying that our mind is a physical construct as much as our brain, in the sense that there is no separate mental universe or mental dimension that is not affected by matter or energy.
>most hypnosis involves some sort of physical hypnosis through one of the senses and one could argue it is, in a way, "physically" interacting with the brain.
Of course we are no telepaths, so there must be some physical stimulation, but the point is that by merely soliciting a certain psychological response, we are able to make the body react in a way that is not congrous to the stimuli it is receiving. Sure the hypnotist is talking so he is stimulating the ears of the subject, but the meaning of the words he is saying are not inscribed in the biology of the brain the same way the reaction to a wound is, in fact they are entirely psychological in origin.
The fact that our imagination can force our brain (and body) to react is significant, because it proves that there is at the very least the possibility that the mind is cause and not consequence of its biological base.

Same thing for the neurological changes in the brain in trans-people. Yes, there is of course physical stimuli required (and you correctly say that someone needs to know what a trans-person is to become one, or at the very least he is far less likely to transition without knowing it), but the meaning of it all is an entirely psychological construct: the gender of a person is a psychological entity, the meaning of being of the wrong gender another one yet... and again the biological base responds to purely psychological changes rather than the opposite.
To be fair, there is evidence that gender disphoria may have some genetic base, but I think that is not particularly significant for our discourse, because regardless of predisposition the idea of gender identity is psychologically born and molded. The biology of a person may favor an outcome or another, but it does not determine it.

[Anonymous No.10518595]

I believe we are both at the same time, I believe we are and are not at the same time cuz we are not two.

[Anonymous No.10518599]

I have a sole in my body

[Anonymous No.10518600]

>>10518589
“The fact that our imagination can force our brain (and body) to react is significant, because it proves that there is at the very least the possibility that the mind is cause and not consequence of its biological base.”

Nope. The mind can affect the mind, and the mind is biological.

[Anonymous No.10518608]

>>10518064
>>10518589
Furthermore I have doubts that neuroscience can effectively "explain" everything. Not in the sense that there is some metaphysical substance that cannot be measured, but because of epistemological and methodological reasons.

What neuroscience today is trying to do is akin to trying to reverse-engineer a piece of software by measuring the voltage of single transistors. Some things are inr ange of this method, namely mechanical components that are directly controlled by these changes, in such a way that I can obsrve causality directly: I can find the pattern that allows the processor to activate and manage the monitor or the keyboard and slowly build a library of possible interactions (and that is what we are doing with brain-machine interfaces, which is awesome stuff).
But I cannot understand the significance of those values by themselves, without knowing a priori the software and the history of parsed data that may have already modified the software's parameters). And if I cannot understand their significance I cannot understand their role in the wider scheme, which means that the algorithm itself cannot be deduced.
In human terms, I can understand how the brain is moving my arm, but I cannot understand why, if I am just looking at my action potentials firing off.

[Anonymous No.10518628]

>>10518608

I once heard of a facinating little mental experiment: If we took humanity and completely erased all knowledge from their brains, from memories to motor abilities to thought patterns, would they still be humans? How long would they survive? Would they be able to keep the species from going extinct?

We often don't think about this, but much of our "genetic heritage" when it comes to our minds is really cultural, in the sense that it is part of an immense baggage of basic knowledge that we implicitly transmit to others. The idea of the other (in the sense that there exist some other living being that is separate from me and the inanimate environment) is cultivated and developed by interacting with the other and not created ex-nihilo in the brain. The idea of the future and the past as well, in the sense that there exist a constant flow of stuff called time that is irreversible and eternal (in human scale at least). The idea of individual as a separate being from its species/tribe/group is another (actually quite recent) idea. And this is not to say anything about higher stuff.

It is entirely possible that conquests in the cultural sphere guided our biological development, in a very literal sense. After all the fact that we possess a specialized module to recognize faces that is separate from the general visual interpretation network is clear sign of this, not to mention the old assumption that gender dimorphism is pushed forward by the "gaze" of the other as much as environmental factors. This is probably how we developed our innate (and awkwardly underdeveloped) understanding of math, a mind that was better equipped to count faster had more chances of surviving than one that did not, but already that implies the presence of a mental representation of objects that was entirely separate from direct external stimuli (in other words, entirely psychological).

[Anonymous No.10519110]

ignore these brainless brainlet metafag schizo post

[Anonymous No.10519131]

>>10519110
Do you actually have something to say or did you just bump this thread for ironic purposes?

[Anonymous No.10519144]

>>10519131
i was just bumpin obviously

[Anonymous No.10519200]

>>10514480

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beuRUpcfYT8

[Anonymous No.10519490]

>>10514536
Why not both? Cant they be interdependent?

[Anonymous No.10519758]

>>10514480
>An example of this second case is observable physiological reactions to suggested stimuli under hypnosis: If the mind was entirely reducible to brain processes, hypnosis would not be able to "trick" the brain as it is not providing any real stimulus that would elicit that certain reaction.

That's only the tip of the rabbit hole. Look up lucid dreaming, you can find yourself in a perfect recreation of the real world, some even report it feeling realer/more vivid than real life, heightened vision, heightened sensation because the brain is not taking in external stimuli it is generating its own stimuli instead and they are not limited by filtering, processing speed, etc the way it may be in the real world.

Then of course beyond lucid dreaming (which is scientifically verified) we have the more fringe topics of out of body experiences and projection, many practitioners report acquiring information through projection that they would not be able to via their normal senses as they were effectively unconscious and asleep, yet they were still able to verify information later that corresponded to what they saw when projecting. The existence of OBE/AP alone would prove mind is more than body, but of course thats something very difficult to objectively proof to the standards of scrutiny required by science.

Still if you had a personal OBE experience and witnessed something you weren't aware of and were then later able to remember and verify it once you awoke then it would be quite difficult for you to disprove it even from an objective sense, especially if follow-up experiments resulted in similar outcomes, the way I see it its worth swallowing your pride and trying these things out for yourself just to gain new insight and verify their validity yourself, since modern science won't do it and you can't trust others personal anecdotes as solid proof.

Though the existence of lucid dreaming provides an explanation for OBE/AP experiences, burden of proof is heavy.

[Anonymous No.10519776]

>>10519758
youre an idiot. 40 lines of drivel.

[Anonymous No.10519964]

>>10519776
27 meaningless letters, why don't you actually try explaining whats wrong with my post instead of a meaningless strawman?

[Anonymous No.10519977]

>>10514665
"Free will doesn't exist" and "Time doesn't exist" are big red flags for pseudointellectual brainlets who do not understand what they're talking about. Do not bother with them.

[Anonymous No.10519979]

>>10516752
>brain damage causes memory loss, therefore free will does not exist
What?

[Anonymous No.10520015]

>>10519964
There is no possibility of the mind being separate from the brain

[Anonymous No.10520026]

>>10520015
You can't say this with absolute certainty, we're literally discussing it in this thread because it isn't a known truth.

[Anonymous No.10520033]

>>10520026
It is a known truth. Dont understand how you people can even entertain it.

[Anonymous No.10520034]

>>10520033
>known truth

Well shit what are we having this thread for even then, post the proof then.

[Anonymous No.10520036]

>>10514480
Define
>are

[Anonymous No.10520061]

>>10520034
Its common fucking sense. Cognitive neuroscience wouldnt be a discipline if it wasnt. brain damage wouldnt be a thing. The existence of invisible dwarfs hasnt been disproven, doesnt make it a reasonable idea to entertain.

[Anonymous No.10520862]

>>10514656
Damn thats so true

[Anonymous No.10521284]

dualism is for fags