Is the Universe Deterministic?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

@Eddie is determined to think of the universe as determined.

It was inevitable that you would say that.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

First, I would call the brain an organ rather than a system.

You never heard of the central nervous system?

@Eddie

Second, you have made a jump from “mind” (which was talking about) to “brain” (which I wasn’t), as if it’s just obvious that the two can be equated. You make a large metaphysical assumption, apparently without noticing that you do so.

The only metaphysical assumption is that there is a mind separate from the brain.

[DaleCutler]

“You have to believe in free will, you have no choice.” I.B. Singer

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@T_aquaticus

The only metaphysical assumption is that there is a mind separate from the brain.

@T_aquaticus ( cc: @Eddie ):

If I may be so bold…

There are a number of analogies that have been brought to bear on the issue of what is the
Brain to Mind relationship:

1. The Brain is to the Mind as the Light Bulb Filament is to Light
   (i.e., the light comes and goes with the existence of a properly energized filament); or

2. The Brain is to the Mind as the firehouse is to water
   (i.e., the brain is a conduit of the mind, where the mind comes from elsewhere), or

3. The Brain is to the Mind as the Hot Water Heater is to Hot Water [I know… that’s awful]
   (i.e., where the brain is able to modulate the incoming water… but cannot make the water itself).

Maybe there are some others that can be recommended? The more the merrier !!!

So… having the mind separate from the brain is really just the start of the metaphysics…

[T_aquaticus]

@gbrooks9

The Brain is to the Mind as the Light Bulb Filament is to Light
(i.e., the light comes and goes with the existence of a properly energized filament); or

In this analogy, the light bulb produces the light, and in the same way the brain produces the mind. Is this correct? Is the mind an emergent property of the physics of the brain?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

You never heard of the central nervous system?

Yes, of course. I remember my high school health classes very well. I also remember that there is a difference between a system, and an organ which is part of that system. The brain is an organ that is part of the central nervous system. It isn’t the whole system.

@T_aquaticus

The only metaphysical assumption is that there is a mind separate from the brain.

What you don’t seem to perceive is that it is just as metaphysical to claim that the mind is reducible to the activity of the brain.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

I also remember that there is a difference between a system, and an organ which is part of that system.

There’s no difference. All you have at this point is semantics, as usual.

@Eddie

What you don’t seem to perceive is that it is just as metaphysical to claim that the mind is reducible to the activity of the brain.

Right back atcha. You don’t perceive that the brain is an objective fact. You are making the additional claim that there is something called a mind which is separate from the brain. The burden of proof lies with you to evidence the existence of this separate mind. The burden of proof does not lie with the skeptics who doubt your assertions.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

There’s no difference.

I see. So there is no such thing as the cardiovascular system? The whole system is just the heart, or just the lungs? I suggest you get out a basic textbook on anatomy or physiology, and review the usage of terms by people in those fields. I think you’ve been staring too long at microbes – or genome maps – and have forgotten what multicelled organisms look like, or act like.

@T_aquaticus

You are making the additional claim that there is something called a mind which is separate from the brain.

Descartes, one of the founders of modern science which you praise so highly, was quite certain there was a mind separate from the brain. And of the course the evidence for the existence of mind is available to all human beings, every day. The onus is on those who think mind is illusory, or a mere epiphenomenon of brain activity, to demonstrate this.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

I see. So there is no such thing as the cardiovascular system? The whole system is just the heart, or just the lungs? I suggest you get out a basic textbook on anatomy or physiology, and review the usage of terms by people in those fields. I think you’ve been staring too long at microbes – or genome maps – and have forgotten what multicelled organisms look like, or act like.

As usual, just semantics and no substance.

@Eddie

And of the course the evidence for the existence of mind is available to all human beings, every day.

Where is the evidence for a mind that is separate from the brain? Assertions aren’t going to do it.

@Eddie

Descartes, one of the founders of modern science which you praise so highly, was quite certain there was a mind separate from the brain.

“Nullius in verba”–motto of the Royal Society

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

Where is the evidence for a mind that is separate from the brain? Assertions aren’t going to do it.

Where is the proof that mind is “nothing but” the activity of the brain? Assertions aren’t going to do it.

@T_aquaticus

“Nullius in verba”–motto of the Royal Society

Which does not deal with Descartes’s arguments.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

Where is the proof that mind is “nothing but” the activity of the brain?

What mind? You need to show that the mind exists as a separate entity from the brain.

@Eddie

Which does not deal with Descartes’s arguments.

It does.

The Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’ is taken to mean ‘take nobody’s word for it’. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.
History of the Royal Society | Royal Society

“Because Descartes says so” is going to be ignored. You need evidence.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Thanks for providing some alternate analogies, George. There is too much 19th-century reductionist thinking around here – particularly among the biologists, who seem (as is often the case with members of their profession) to be suffering from deep “physics envy”, and appear to think that the more reductionist one is, the more scientific one is. It almost as if they think that by being at outrageously materialist as they can possibly be, they will finally prove that biology is a science on an equal footing with physics and chemistry. But for the true scientist the goal is always to explain the phenomena, not to uphold the metaphysics of materialism.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

What mind? You need to show that the mind exists as a separate entity from the brain.

Every time you use the word “I” you are tacitly conceding the existence of at least one mind – your own. And when you sign a legally binding contract, who is the “I, the undersigned” who undertakes to carry out the terms of the contract? Your brain? And when you took your wedding vows, and promised to be faithful to your wife, was it just an epiphenomenal froth spewing out of your brain that made that promise? Are you morally bound to follow promises made by epiphenomenal froth? And should Leopold and Loeb have been found innocent, because they had no free will but were driven by the irresistible actions of their brains? All of human life is conducted under the premise that there is a “self” which thinks, considers alternatives, is tempted, can be shamed, is subject to virtue and vice, and in the end makes decisions for which it is responsible.

@T_aquaticus

“Because Descartes says so” is going to be ignored. You need evidence.

Of course I never said that we should believe something because Descartes says so. I keep forgetting your aversion to books, which will prevent you from ever reading Descartes’s arguments and learning the reasons why he thinks as he does.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

Every time you use the word “I” you are tacitly conceding the existence of at least one mind – your own.

How so?

@Eddie

And when you sign a legally binding contract, who is the “I, the undersigned” who undertakes to carry out the terms of the contract? Your brain?

Me, as a whole physical individual. Nowhere does it say, “My mind, the undersigned”.

@Eddie

Of course I never said that we should believe something because Descartes says so. I keep forgetting your aversion to books, which will prevent you from ever reading Descartes’s arguments and learning the reasons why he thinks as he does.

You have an aversion to presenting evidence.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

Me, as a whole physical individual.

But you, as “a whole physical individual” still have to think about what you are signing, and decide whether or not you should sign. The faculty, part, or aspect of human beings which does such things (thinking, deciding, evaluating, making moral judgments, etc.) is by convention called “the mind.” It’s quite obvious to me that I have a “mind” in this sense. And if someone offers the speculation that what I call my “mind” is merely an illusion, a trick my hormones or my neurons are playing on “me” to convince “me” that “I” exist, it’s up to the reckless speculator to provide a demonstration.

@T_aquaticus

You have an aversion to presenting evidence.

What I have an aversion to is conversations with scientists who appear never to have read any philosophical works on the subject, making pronouncements about whether or not the mind exists. There is an extremely sophisticated body of philosophy-science literature on the question, some of it written by, e.g., trained neurologists, but all you have to offer is the usual scientistic reductionism. If you had any real intellectual interest in the question, you would want to read Descartes’s discussion on the subject (starting with the Meditations), out of natural curiosity about what the leading minds of the world have had to say, and follow that up with readings in science-informed philosophers. But instead, you lay down your usual stipulation that no one should accept anything exists unless it can be proved scientifically. Well, your love for your wife and children can’t be proved scientifically, so I guess it doesn’t exist, either, by the standard you are setting for the existence of “mind.”

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@T_aquaticus

Where is the evidence for a mind that is separate from the brain? Assertions aren’t going to do it.

@Eddie & @T_aquaticus

I dont think there is much value in discussing metaphysical flowcharts with confirmed atheists.

[John_Harshman]

@AlanFox

Jerry Coyne is the only biologist I can think of who posits strict determinism with regard to human choice.

I do. So that’s two.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

But you, as “a whole physical individual” still have to think about what you are signing, and decide whether or not you should sign. The faculty, part, or aspect of human beings which does such things (thinking, deciding, evaluating, making moral judgments, etc.) is by convention called “the mind.”

That is what the brain does. You are claiming that the mind is separate from the mind. It is the separation of the mind from the brain that you need to evidence. Simply pointing to the output of the brain doesn’t do it. You might as well claim that digestion is something separate from the small intestine, or circulation is something separate from the heart.

@Eddie

What I have an aversion to is conversations with scientists who appear never to have read any philosophical works on the subject, making pronouncements about whether or not the mind exists.

We have an aversion to people who can only refer to books without discussing the material within them.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

That is what the brain does.

You haven’t established that only the brain is involved in thinking.

@T_aquaticus

It is the separation of the mind from the brain that you need to evidence.

It’s more complicated than this. “Separated” is an equivocal term. I haven’t insisted on an absolute dualism, i.e., that the mind is a ghost which floats about freely inside the bodily machine. All that I have said is that mind appears to have its own reality, however it may be anchored within the physical body; it is hardly a “fact” of modern science that the mind is nothing but the activity of the brain. Anyone who thinks that modern science has “proved” this cannot be well acquainted with debates among neurologists, etc., not all of whom support reductionism.

It would also help if you did not make outright errors, saying, e.g., that the central nervous system and the brain are “the same thing” – when in fact any biology or medical textbook will tell you that the central nervous system includes more than the brain. And that’s not mere “semantics” (as you tried to paint it), but an important question of biological fact.

@T_aquaticus

You might as well claim that digestion is something separate from the small intestine, or circulation is something separate from the heart.

No; the cases aren’t parallel. We are talking about the phenomena associated with consciousness. Digestion and circulation aren’t conscious processes. This is another case where even elementary acquaintance with philosophy would prevent you from saying something that is silly.

In the intellectual circles I have traveled in, no one would be caught debating in public about the mind-body relationship without having read Descartes. (Among other things.) It would be like someone debating about evolution who doesn’t know what DNA is or doesn’t know what “the geological column” means. So, regarding your complaint that I don’t discuss the contents of books, it’s a bit hard for me to discuss Descartes Meditations with someone who not only hasn’t read it, but doesn’t even see the importance of reading it. If you’re expecting me to be a sort of walking Cliffs Notes for you, giving you summaries of works you haven’t read (that you should have read before offering strong public views on various subjects), so that you can argue about subjects with almost no preparation time, you can forget it. Go read Descartes, as I have; do your homework, as I have; then, with some common reading under our belt, we can discuss what he says. I’m not saying that you have to agree with Descartes, but you’re not a responsible commenter on the mind-body question until you have read him.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

You haven’t established that only the brain is involved in thinking.

You are the one claiming that something else is involved, so the burden of proof lies with you.

@Eddie

All that I have said is that mind appears to have its own reality, however it may be anchored within the physical body;

Where is the evidence for this claim?

@Eddie

No; the cases aren’t parallel. We are talking about the phenomena associated with consciousness. Digestion and circulation aren’t conscious processes.

The use of analogies seems to be beyond your understanding.

@Eddie

So, regarding your complaint that I don’t discuss the contents of books, it’s a bit hard for me to discuss Descartes Meditations with someone who not only hasn’t read it, but doesn’t even see the importance of reading it.

I have read it. My guess is that you still won’t discuss it.