that's argument from analogy. Analogies don't prove anything and arguing from them to prove somethign is a fallacy.there is no way to prove that brain = mind because there is no way across the epistemological gap. you can't get outside your own perceptions and check them. When they try to make that kind of augment they start using bait and switch. The substitute brain function for conscoiusness.
That's highly ideological potion anyway. The whole naturalistic world view depends upon that bait and switch. you are ideologically compelled to deny the basis of reality as mind.
asking an atheist to think fairly about that is like asking a John Bircher to think fairly about the Communist Manifesto.
Originally Posted by blondie
Nope. no evdience to support and lot that goes against it.The attempt to discredit evidence is just an attempt to equate things that are not true with stuff that is true. I believe this form of apologetics is very weak because it can obviously be applied to things which you will reject out of hand.
when it's against atheism then it's unscientific and it's wrong.
free thinking means slave thinking. when it's against them it's fine when it's against us then it makes you a lunatic and new age wirdo and it's unscientific.
9 comments:
Gotta love those atheists!
http://physicalismisdead.blogspot.com
yes, to be a real Christian you got to.
Actually it's a very good argument. You know that something physical can change your personality. It adds weight to the idea that the mind is not separate to the brain but a result of the brain activity. It's only theists that hold this view as they have to be dogmatically associated to this view.
Science marches on regardless of what you think of it...
the proof that he offers is based upon argument from analogy. you say i it's a good argument, its officially a fallacy. Your "good argument" makes the assumption that if mind doesn't add weight then it's non existent. that's ludicrously stupid.
"something physical can change your personality" is a stupid argument. It's an argument that shows you don't understand the basics of the issues.
no one says brain chemistry is not involved in consciousness, being involved to access is not the same as proving that ultimately reduces to it.
If I take a base ball bat and beat the crap out of my monitor and hard drive I can't access the soft ware any more. that doesn't prove that soft ware is just another word for hard ware.
"If I take a base ball bat and beat the crap out of my monitor and hard drive I can't access the soft ware any more. that doesn't prove that soft ware is just another word for hard ware."
True, but isn't "software" just a word humans have come up with to describe the physical attributes of a physical object, namely a disk? In the case of a magnetic disk such as your hard drive, "software" describes the magnetic properties of a certain area of the disk's surface. In the case of an optical disk such as a CD or DVD, "software" describes the surface imperfections on part of the disk.
Carrying the analogy further, what's so wrong with thinking about "mind" as a word humans use to describe some of what the brain does? (It does a lot of other stuff we're not consciously aware of on a daily basis, unrelated to the "mind" or "thinking.") Do animals have minds? I think it would be hard to support an assertion that they don't, but it's certainly not hard to support a claim that animal minds aren't the same as human minds. After all, their brains are different.
The software capabilities of a 3-1/2 inch floppy disk are significantly less than the software capabilities of a DVD for purely physical reasons. Nothing divine required for that.
I'll agree that the software=physical stuff analogy doesn't get us all the way to mind=what the brain does, but the continuing advances in neuroscience don't give me any reason not to think the analogy holds.
brap I think in the computer world there is a useful distinction between soft ware and hard ware. The program is not the monitor.
Carrying the analogy further, what's so wrong with thinking about "mind" as a word humans use to describe some of what the brain does? (It does a lot of other stuff we're not consciously aware of on a daily basis, unrelated to the "mind" or "thinking.") Do animals have minds? I think it would be hard to support an assertion that they don't, but it's certainly not hard to support a claim that animal minds aren't the same as human minds. After all, their brains are different.
that's ok but you can't reduce consciousness to brain chemistry, especially when it's ill defined, merely on the basis of issues like access.
the arguemnt that hitting someone i the head proves consciousness is just brain chemistry is just plain stupid.
argument form sign.
"I think in the computer world there is a useful distinction between soft ware and hard ware. The program is not the monitor."
I agree that the distinction between hardware and software is very useful. But it's useful because it would be impractical, not impossible, to have that distinction. It would obviously be very difficult andy cumbersome to describe the arrangement of those magnetic bits or those surface imperfections in terms of their physical properties ("hardware") instead of in terms of what they do ("software"). But it could be done, so it seems to me like software reduces to something physical. The word "software" is a shorthand way of describing something physical.
The word "book" is a shorthand way of describing a physical object that consists of mostly paper and ink (before ebooks, anyway). I believe words like "mind" and "consciousness" are shorthand ways of describing what the brain does. Since I have four or five books about the mind, consciousness, and the brain sitting on my table right now, patiently waiting for my eyes to focus on the ink between their covers which will then lead to a series of events resulting in physical changes within my brain, there's no point in my getting too much deeper into this topic. I hope my current knowledge on this subject will seem infantile to me in the near future.
For now, I think the hardware/software analogy holds, although the brain/mind relationship is orders of magnitude more complicated. But there was a time in history when people thought it would never be possible to describe how the stars got in the sky, or how the earth was formed, or how humans could have evolved from other species. History seems to indicate there may not be anything that is impossible to know.
I'm going to answer this one in the main thing too. you getting blog pieces on both my blogs. you really need to start posting on my boards.
I'll do the one on Meatcrock's blog tomorrow.
Post a Comment