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0 pointsaldoushuxley0016y ago0 comments

> Your mind and your body are the same thing.

That is incorrect, but unfortunately a very common misunderstanding.

The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. It’s easy to see this is the case because the brain is made up of a qualitatively different material than the mind. While the brain is composed of biological cells / chemistry / atoms, the mind is composed of things like sense-perceptions (like colours, smells, sounds, etc), emotions, etc.

Which is to say that the mind is composed of material that is fundamentally different from the brain. Of course they’re highly correlated but they are in fact separate entities composed of different materials.

You may say that the fundamental materials of the mind are reducible to the same things as the brain, but that would be confusing correlation for the thing itself.

Take for example the colour red, which is present in the mind but not the brain. Yes the brain enables the perception of red but it is not red itself. Eg a photon with a wavelength of approximately 620-750nm is often confused for red but in fact it’s just a photon which, when it hits the back of our eyes causes a chemical cascade from the relevant cone cells. So it’s abundantly clear this photon in itself is not red because it just causes a specific chemical cascade at back of our eyes. So is this chemical cascade red? No it’s just a chemical cascade that is highly correlated with red appearing in our mind.

The right answer, I believe, is simply that red is highly correlated with specific pathways of chemical cascades in our brain. The point remains that the brain and the mind are separate and distinct entities made up of qualitatively different material.

If you disagree with this assessment, please tell me what is red?

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kerkeslager6y ago

Your argument falls apart where you claim something is abundantly clear, when you can't even clearly describe what you think is abundantly clear.

You're claiming red light isn't the perception of red. I can be on board with those semantics, but they are just semantics. In that case, I'd say the phenomenon described by the terms is that red light is the electromagnetic radiation in the long range of the visible spectrum, and the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation of L-cones and ending with the firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

You keep saying that red light and the perception of red are "highly correlated" with red, but I'm saying, there's no evidence for anything besides red light and the perception of red. You're saying that the brain and the mind are made up of qualitatively different material, but I'm saying, "qualitative" implies "observable", and you've yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly the mind.

Either the mind is indistinguishable from the brain, in which case we don't need a second term for it, or it's a distinguishable phenomenon that you've failed to actually demonstrate exists. It's not clear which is the case, because you haven't made it clear what observable phenomena you are calling "the mind".

mrr546y ago

Do you agree that orange light isn't the same as the perception of orange? After all, the perception of orange can exist without orange light, as demonstrated by the RGB monitor you are most likely using to look at the header at the top of this web page.

The mind is a distinguishable phenomenon from the brain because I can observe other people's brains (although I hope I never actually do) but I can't observe other people's minds.

aldoushuxley001OP6y ago

Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be?

> the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation of L-cones and ending with the firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

So this quote illustrates the gist of your thinking, but I think you've got some muddled terms. For you there is "red light" and "the perception of red". So for you:

"red light" is the photon & "the perception of red" is the chemical cascade.

Whereas, I would break it down as follows:

"red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm (though I'd caution that despite calling this photon "red light", there is in fact no "red" associated with it - except that it can cause the perception of red if it hits and excites specific cone cells at back our eyes, but it is still just a photon, albiet with a specific energy level but the point is this photon has no quality "red")

Where we differ is I believe:

The chemical cascade is the chemical cascade & "the perception of red" is "the perception of red"

So I think the real problem with your understanding of this is your confusing the chemical cascade caused by a 620-750nm photon to be "the perception of red".

In a sense, you are claiming that this chemical cascade is 2 things: 1: a chemical cascade and 2: the perception of red (i.e. the subjective sensation of looking at red); whereas, I would say the chemical cascade is just a chemical cascade... that's all it is, because of course chemicals can't be chemicals AND sense perceptions - that's the real incorrect leap of faith in your argument.

I believe it makes much more sense to consider sense perceptions to be a separate distinct phenomenon. You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. Sure, in the brain there's electrochemical activity within the visual cortex, but you won't find a red triangle in there, because the red triangle is made up of fundamentally different material - i.e. the sense-perception of red in the shape of a triangle. Now, I have no idea what red actually is, except that I know it is a qualitatively different material than the brain and is fundamentally irreducible.

If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle? Because I think it's patently absurd to say the red triangle IS a chemical cascade in your brain. No, it's not. It's highly correlated with a chemical cascade in your brain, but it is an objectively distinct and separate entity/object; it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain. Ultimately, as I said before, I believe you're confusing 2 correlated processes/things for a single process/thing: the chemical cascade and the sense-perception.

kerkeslager6y ago

> Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be?

Well, light can be modeled as either a wave or a particle[1]. When talking about colors, it makes more sense to talk about light using the wave model of light than the particle model of light--not that either way of talking about it is wrong, it's just that the particle model is way more complicated for modeling this particular phenomena.

> "red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm

No. If you're talking about wavelength you should be using the wave model. It absolutely makes sense to say "red light" when you're talking about a wave.

There's no such thing as a red photon because photons don't have color by themselves--red light is made up of many photons, which have a frequency.

It sounds like your argument is basically that you don't know how to represent color with the particle model of light, so you assume the answer is "the mind". Not only can you go learn how to represent color using the particle model, but even if that weren't possible, assuming that anything you don't understand is "the mind" is pretty premature.

> In a sense, you are claiming that this chemical cascade is 2 things: 1: a chemical cascade and 2: the perception of red (i.e. the subjective sensation of looking at red); whereas, I would say the chemical cascade is just a chemical cascade... that's all it is, because of course chemicals can't be chemicals AND sense perceptions - that's the real incorrect leap of faith in your argument.

People who have the chemical cascade experience red. People who don't, don't--even if red light is there (i.e. if they are colorblind). Do you have any reason for believing these are different phenomena?

> You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. [...]

> If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle?

It's also in the brain, because the mind is just the brain.

This isn't hypothetical. We can read (very) fuzzy images from people's brains using neural-imaging[2]. I'm not aware of any experiments that specifically has read a red triangle, but I don't see any reason to believe that this image is uniquely in the mind and not the brain.

Again, it seems like you're just defining "the mind" as anything that happens in the brain where you don't know how it happens. And again I'll say, even if we didn't already know how it happens, concluding that this is "the mind" rather than some physical process we haven't yet discovered, is premature.

> it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain.

If it's qualitatively different, what are the qualitative differences?

As for the parts of your post I didn't respond to directly: declaring things irreducible, patently absurd, and declaring that you know things, all ex nihilo, is not a persuasive argument.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

[2] https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

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lanstin6y ago

From the viewpoint of the mind, red is an illusion or perhaps a conventional way of organizing experiences. From the view point of the body, red is an emergent phenomena. Color is an interesting example because people literally don’t see colors that their languages do not differentiate: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/21121...

mcguire6y ago

"The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain."

... in roughly the same way that a process is not a processor. Or a program, for that matter.

kerkeslager6y ago

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist.

However, I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "mind", and using the word "mind" brings with it a lot of baggage, so I'd prefer to use a more descriptive term, like "sequence of events".

mcguire6y ago

"Sequence of events", to me, doesn't capture the relationship between subsequent states of either the brain or the mind. Also, "states of mind" have an explanatory power that "states of the brain" don't have, even though the former are theoretically reducable to the latter.

vanniv6y ago

I think it is at this part of the debate where the ship of Theseus becomes interesting.

The sequence of events in the brain are what make up the mind. But, if you replace the brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous, you have a new brain and the same mind.

Or maybe just the same brain. Ship of Theseus and all that.

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kerkeslager6y ago

Your argument falls apart where you claim something is abundantly clear, when you can't even clearly describe what you think is abundantly clear.

mrr546y ago

The mind is a distinguishable phenomenon from the brain because I can observe other people's brains (although I hope I never actually do) but I can't observe other people's minds.

aldoushuxley001OP6y ago

Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be?

> the perception of red is the chemical cascade starting with the stimulation of L-cones and ending with the firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

So this quote illustrates the gist of your thinking, but I think you've got some muddled terms. For you there is "red light" and "the perception of red". So for you:

"red light" is the photon & "the perception of red" is the chemical cascade.

Whereas, I would break it down as follows:

Where we differ is I believe:

The chemical cascade is the chemical cascade & "the perception of red" is "the perception of red"

So I think the real problem with your understanding of this is your confusing the chemical cascade caused by a 620-750nm photon to be "the perception of red".

kerkeslager6y ago

> Is it not abundantly clear that a photon is just a photon? What else could it be?

> "red light" is the photon as well - ie a photon with wavelength between 620-750nm

No. If you're talking about wavelength you should be using the wave model. It absolutely makes sense to say "red light" when you're talking about a wave.

There's no such thing as a red photon because photons don't have color by themselves--red light is made up of many photons, which have a frequency.

> You say that I have yet to present an observable phenomenon that is clearly in the mind, but just imagine a red triangle, boom there you have it - that red triangle only exists in the mind. [...]

> If you still disagree with this, tell me where is the red triangle?

It's also in the brain, because the mind is just the brain.

> it's simply made of qualitatively different material than the brain.

If it's qualitatively different, what are the qualitative differences?

As for the parts of your post I didn't respond to directly: declaring things irreducible, patently absurd, and declaring that you know things, all ex nihilo, is not a persuasive argument.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

[2] https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

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lanstin6y ago

mcguire6y ago

"The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain."

... in roughly the same way that a process is not a processor. Or a program, for that matter.

kerkeslager6y ago

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist.

mcguire6y ago

vanniv6y ago

I think it is at this part of the debate where the ship of Theseus becomes interesting.

The sequence of events in the brain are what make up the mind. But, if you replace the brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous, you have a new brain and the same mind.

Or maybe just the same brain. Ship of Theseus and all that.

1 more reply

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