Do minds exist?

[blastula]

The Wiki page has links to all the concepts involved. If that doesn't suffice, then you're just a denialist.

Now, how about YOU proving what a thought is any better than that?

 

[none]

The Wiki page has links to all the concepts involved. If that doesn't suffice, then you're just a denialist.

Now, how about YOU proving what a thought is any better than that?

okay, I have read the bullshit about minds on wiki before
if you want me to debunk the shit line by line YOU HAVE TO DO THE LEG WORK AND BRING IT, I am not going to to that for you.
you care about what a thought is, at this time I don't.
if i need to explain what a thought is to you I might do it.
have a nice day.

 

[blastula]

Sorry, your denialism is not very impressive. That you aren't convinced about anything has no special significance about the facts.

 

[none]

Sorry, your denialism is not very impressive. That you aren't convinced about anything has no special significance about the facts.

or you can bitch and moan.
either way the question is do minds exist?
I say no they don't and if they do they are fictional and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise.

 

[blastula]

Your view has been noted and duly disregarded.

 

[none]

Your view has been noted and duly disregarded.

good for you, now move along.

 

[blastula]

HAhaha. What?

 

[none]

HAhaha. What?

you want a medal or a chest to pin it on?

 

[blastula]

In your mind, do you even think you're make any sense?

 

[untermensche]

To be purposeful requires the world makes sense.

The world doesn't make sense unless the cacophony of potential stimuli are turned into intelligible "structures" that can be acted on.

So "turning into intelligible structures" is your definition of make sense?

That makes sense but doesnt show why that couldnt be done by computers.

You can make a computer that mimics the external behaviors of humans so it may appear as if it has the same internal milieu creating those behaviors, but the crucial part of a mind is the internal milieu, and without that there is no real mind, only a trick.

 

[untermensche]

The mind is not a "figment of the imagination". It is the most real thing there is.

It is subjective so we can't look at one from the outside, but things with minds know they have minds. There is no doubt.

If you didn't have a mind you couldn't engage in things like this.

It seems to me your argument amounts to: Because minds are generated by brains they somehow don't exist.

It is ludicrous.

again you proceed with bold claims and no substance.

Yes, a claim that I have direct knowledge of my mind.

Certainly we must begin with: If an entity has a mind they will know they have a mind.

Unless you can tell me how it is possible to have a mind and not know it.

With what could one decide if they have a mind or not except by using a mind?

a cursory study of a brain would inform you more about the brain than you have done about the mind in page after page of ranting.

This is clearly way beyond you.

You need to develop your mind some more before you might have something intelligent to say here.

All you have is some juvenile hostility and no desire to learn or ability to teach.

 

[Juma]

So "turning into intelligible structures" is your definition of make sense?

That makes sense but doesnt show why that couldnt be done by computers.

You can make a computer that mimics the external behaviors of humans so it may appear as if it has the same internal milieu creating those behaviors, but the crucial part of a mind is the internal milieu, and without that there is no real mind, only a trick.

And yet you fail to show that computers cannot perform what a mind does (except for the "qualia").

A computer could (in priciple) very well reason, think, argue, make sense, build concepts, understand, etc.

None of these behaviors is necessarily unique for a himan beng.

They are "only" information processing.

 

[none]

again you proceed with bold claims and no substance.

Yes, a claim that I have direct knowledge of my mind.

Certainly we must begin with: If an entity has a mind they will know they have a mind.

Unless you can tell me how it is possible to have a mind and not know it.

With what could one decide if they have a mind or not except by using a mind?

again a bold claim and a question to change the subject.
either you can support your claims or you can't and apparently you can't support or explain your claims.
the problem is the mind is fiction and you have to prove it isn't otherwise you are just rambling.

a cursory study of a brain would inform you more about the brain than you have done about the mind in page after page of ranting.

This is clearly way beyond you.

You need to develop your mind some more before you might have something intelligent to say here.

All you have is some juvenile hostility and no desire to learn or ability to teach.

again bold claims and no substance.
I have the sound proposal that the mind, minds, and a mind are fiction and that a brain is responsible for motor control and thought.
I can prove it: your mind is fictitious because I thought it up, it isn't real, and if you alter your brain your thoughts change.
there I explained it to you something you have yet to do for your proposal.

 

[George S]

Yes, a claim that I have direct knowledge of my mind.

Certainly we must begin with: If an entity has a mind they will know they have a mind.

Unless you can tell me how it is possible to have a mind and not know it.

With what could one decide if they have a mind or not except by using a mind?

again a bold claim and a question to change the subject.
either you can support your claims or you can't and apparently you can't support or explain your claims.
the problem is the mind is fiction and you have to prove it isn't otherwise you are just rambling.

a cursory study of a brain would inform you more about the brain than you have done about the mind in page after page of ranting.

This is clearly way beyond you.

You need to develop your mind some more before you might have something intelligent to say here.

All you have is some juvenile hostility and no desire to learn or ability to teach.

again bold claims and no substance.
I have the sound proposal that the mind, minds, and a mind are fiction and that a brain is responsible for motor control and thought.
I can prove it: your mind is fictitious because I thought it up, it isn't real, and if you alter your brain your thoughts change.
there I explained it to you something you have yet to do for your proposal.

To have a human mind requires a human brain. Hopefully we might agree that what it feels like to be human, thou and I, is the same for us both. Although each unique, my red is probably your red. To feel able to be apart from the body --to take an outside perspective -- a guiding mind. It is a meaningful word. You had no problem understanding my use of 'mind' in the last sentence fragment.

 

[blastula]

again a bold claim and a question to change the subject.
either you can support your claims or you can't and apparently you can't support or explain your claims.
the problem is the mind is fiction and you have to prove it isn't otherwise you are just rambling.

I already showed what a mind is and you just denied it with a handwave. It doesn't look you even know why you deny it.

Mind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mind /ˈmaɪnd/ is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory—a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms.^[3][4]

Prove you know what you're talking about and give a good reason why anyone should deny that humans possess that set of cognitive faculties.

again bold claims and no substance.
I have the sound proposal that the mind, minds, and a mind are fiction and that a brain is responsible for motor control and thought.
I can prove it: your mind is fictitious because I thought it up, it isn't real, and if you alter your brain your thoughts change.
there I explained it to you something you have yet to do for your proposal.

You are very confused since the brain is responsible for the mind, which includes thought. Looks like you're operating from a dualist conception of the mind, but existence of a mind doesn't require dualism.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

I'm skeptical about minds. As I see it...

We think, feel, and remember, but we do not have thoughts, feelings, or memories. We experience things, but do not have qualia. We perceive, but not have perceptions. There are no minds. There is no mental content.​

Can you change my "mind" about minds?

You get this feeling because you subconsciously realize our thoughts are distorted because of too much yielding to the thoughts of those in high positions. It's similar to being in the Matrix, except the reality is genuine but what we are told to conclude from it is illogical.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Don't Let Anyone Impose on You and Lie to Them About Why You Refuse To

This does not make sense. I'm out.

Which parts are unclear or incomprehensible? If you let me know, I might be able to remedy them.

It is self-denying and submissive to others if we don't think we possess our thoughts. No one has the right to be told the truth by us if we consider that as our property. From such a perspective, others have to earn the right that would make us volunteer to share our knowledge or thoughts with them.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Who Benefits If We Question Our Abilities?

Light of a certain wavelength is no more blue than a block of wood is pain.

Blue and pain are experienced. They exist as experience and as nothing else.

Mind is all we have. What we have lost is the Cartesian notion of "body".

Well since even that is based on presumptions I guess we can do away with that concept.

Look. A rock is acted upon it 'responds' to whatever force it was that acted in a way that is appropriate for the rock's physical situation.

Life on earth gathered enough scope of sense that it could distinguish thing from other. That machinery is the way beings react beyond how rocks react. Mainly its because beings have limbs, move through metabolically fueled processes, all of which are little rocks in action, if you will.

Now men are trying to say that because we are very advanced biological beings, can distinguish between thing and other, that with our capacity to recite what we experience, we have mind? That's exactly what we're doing here by the way.

We don't have mind. Its not a thing. We have very good machinery that records plays back and discriminates things from other. I call the capacity I just described articulated awareness by a social being. Its much more apt than a thing we need to defend by playing the "what is blue" record.

You said earlier that rocks or geological things don't evolve. Tell that to a geologist who's has studied planetary evolution. Just run the process through its physical capacities and consequences and you've got evolution.


Things don't need to be hard unless we insist we are unique.

Because a nail is mindless, it can't move out of the way when it sees a hammer coming. Sure, it has no eyes, but our own eyes would be useless if we had no minds to take action on incoming data about light rays.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Decadent 20th Century Science's Motto: "If It's Weird, It's Wise"

The light energy reflected hits the back of the eye. It doesn't hit the brain.

The light energy is transformed into a language the brain understands by receptor cells in the eye.

Then the blue "shows up".

In the mind.

Colour isn't product of our experiences, it is a consequence of detecting certain kinds of information in our environment. Look at it this way, we can tell that one object is heavier than another by picking them up or by placing them on scales. We can detect that one is heavier than the other because one is heavier than the other. It is not information that our minds construct because they don't need to. The same holds true for colour.

No.

Mass and shape and density are definitely properties of discrete objects, but color is not. Color is like sound. It is created by the brain.

Color and sound are transmitted by energy moving through the air. The energy exists but color and sound have no objective existence. They are subjective creations of individual brains.

You can measure the wavelength of light that reflects off an object but you can't measure the color experienced.

Quantum Theory is a branch of physics. When I think of physics I do not associate it with idealism. You may be an expert in QT, but I've come across so much Quantum Quackery in my time, that I've become skeptical of most claims regarding QT. Can you tell me about any quantum physicists who are idealists?

But even basic quantum evidence like something can be in two places at the same time contradicts Descartes notion of "body".

It's the same object moving back and forth through a different dimension so fast that it appears to be in two places at once.

 

[untermensche]

Yes, a claim that I have direct knowledge of my mind.

Certainly we must begin with: If an entity has a mind they will know they have a mind.

Unless you can tell me how it is possible to have a mind and not know it.

With what could one decide if they have a mind or not except by using a mind?

again a bold claim and a question to change the subject.

I can only deal with so much of your babbling so I'll just address this.

A bold claim that I have direct knowledge of my mind?

There is nothing bold about it. It is the most ordinary claim a human can make. If I tell somebody that I have thoughts that they can't hear there is no surprise.

And the only way to have a thought is to have a mind that experiences it.

And the questions are not to change the subject. They are for you to try to answer.

So either try to answer them or not, I don't care. You're not at a place where you can teach me anything.