hughfarey wrote:"Some might classify this as evidence that mental states are reducible to physical states, yet this only demonstrates that the mind is causally connected to the brain and not that they are identical."
Well, I would say it demonstrates ignorance of how the mind relates to the brain, not that it is, or isn't, directly derivable from it.
Ignorance? I think there are strong positive reasons for reject the mind being dependant upon the brain. The common argument for dependency is normally something like Bruce Hinrichs notes in his book
The Science of Readings Minds:
- "When a person reads a sentence, hears a speech, experiences an emotion, or thinks a thought, a cluster or network of brain cells fires in a certain pattern with particular intensity and timing."
All of us have no doubt also heard of experiments of one’s brain being touched with an electrode, causing a mental experience such as a memory to occur. Does that mean as many want to believe, that
we really are determined by, reducible to a physical chemistry of sorts?
Some like yourself consider this evidence that mental states are reducible to physical states, yet this only demonstrates that the mind is causally connected to the brain and not that they are identical.
Further, you have conceded the distinctiveness of mental and physical states when I said, "
Mental properties are quite radically different from anything physical..." you responded with "
True..."
It seems obvious that physical properties do not have the same features as mental properties. I.e., mental events such as thoughts, feelings of pain and sensory experiences do not contain physical qualities like mass, spatial dimensions and space location, are not composed of chemicals, and do not have electrical properties. As Keith Maslin summarised in
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, "
physical occurrences do not just appear to be different from consciousness; they are utterly different, so utterly different in fact, that it is inconceivable how the physical could produce the mental."
If you agree with this, then it follows you ought to agree with self-awareness, that is, self-presenting properties and the subjective nature of experience (in other words "consciousness", there you go Audie it's been defined).
What do I mean by self-presenting, well consider the following example:
- Perceiving a ripe tomato may mean one visually experiences red. There is a qualitative difference between how red looks to us and green. Coconut milk may offer a sweet taste and, once again, there is a qualitative difference between the taste of coconut milk and the taste of bitter beer. (George Graham, Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction. 2nd edn. [Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998], 201)
Mental properties such as the taste of beer, having the thought that a tomato is ripe, or experiencing red, are "self-presenting properties." They present themselves directly to the subject, they are psychological attributes, they are directly present to a subject because that subject simply has them immediately in his field of consciousness.
We have "private access" to our own mental life—a privileged first-person perspective of knowing our own thoughts and felt sensations. In other words, we are self-aware and aware to other things around us. Our mental states “incorrigible,” that is, in a way we cannot mistake. If one sees Graham’s ripe, red tomato, it seems impossible for them to be mistaken that they are consciously experiencing a red sensation. Right?
Yet, the science tells us what one perceives as a red tomato is actually a tomato which absorbs and reflects different wavelengths of light! That is the physical explanation. Yet, this does not destroy the fact that a red quality was incorrigibly "subjectively experienced."
Howard Robinson notes that:
- The notion of having something as an object of experience… does not figure in any physical science. Having something as an object of experience is the same as the subjective feel or the what it is like of experience. (Howard Robinson, Matter and Sense [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], 7)
It's true isn't it, that the actual
object of experience is categorically something that can't be explained in physical terms? Maslin comments on object of experience:
- All that is essential to pain is the way it feels. What may, or may not be taking place neurologically is irrelevant, since all that is required is that if a sensation seems to you to be painful, then it is painful… Because mental states are not necessarily identical with brain states, since we can genuinely imagine the one without the other, they are not identical at all.
Do you see clearly now, how the distinctive difference between physical and mental states or properties, the existence of self-presenting properties and subjective states of experience, is a strong argument against any kind of physical reductionism i.e., reducing mind to mere physical matter?