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[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

it is between a mind (not a self) and everything it thinks about whether attentively or nonchalantly. It is the core of the act of awareness. There are many types of awareness: perception, imagining,

I have to go out soon and before I google that Nexus thing, I just want to say when you said "mind" that looks as if you presumed mind as an entity apart from brain. My contention is it's brain-mind that thinks attentively, nonchalantly , or indeed hallucinatedly, meditatively, or drowsily. The brain-mind thinks , okay?

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

it is between a mind (not a self) and everything it thinks about whether attentively or nonchalantly. It is the core of the act of awareness. There are many types of awareness: perception, imagining,

I have to go out soon and before I google that Nexus thing, I just want to say when you said "mind" that looks as if you presumed mind as an entity apart from brain. My contention is it's brain-mind that thinks attentively, nonchalantly , or indeed hallucinatedly, meditatively, or drowsily. The brain-mind thinks , okay?

Yes, I did/do indeed presume mind to be an entity apart from the brain. And I think I have always presumed that you don’t think that. I have presumed that you are either a Neutral Monist, which is the idea that mind-words and brain-words both point to a third thing what is neither mind nor brain, but is instead a neutral third. That third thing being the reality. Or you are saying that all mind-words are just abbreviated ways of pointing to the brain and its processes. In that case the brain in the reality, not the mind. That last is reductionistic materialism.

I think neither of those views about mind-brain unity will hold up under analytical scrutiny.

Here’s how I see things. My way is phenomenological, that is to say that I stay with the phenomena that are present to my viewing mind. I do not speculate about unseen causes, forces or urges. I look about and I see a world. And I am aware of my awareness of that world. One of the things I see in that world is my brain, and your brain and all those other brains, human or otherwise. Brains exist. I can see them and I can see their physiology. As for my awareness, it comes in many flavors: perceiving, imagining, remembering, doubting, wondering, questioning and on and on. That is all directly known. I am directly aware of all that, no speculating.

I also notice that we live in a subject-predicate world. That is to say that we see individuals having properties. In symbols, x is F. Moreover, I see that the x and the F are always tied together. That being tied together is pointed to by that little word “is”, x is F. That tie is given the Latin name of Nexus. The Nexus of Exemplification, in this case.

Now for mind. That x is F is a fact. A fact is composed of three things: x, F, is. A fact is a complex, while the things that make it up are three simple (not complex) things. Facts vs. things. A mind consists of ideas. For example I perceive that my coffee is cold. There you have a fact, a complex consisting of a bare x, which individuates, the two Forms of coffee and cold and Exemplification. (Of course there is much more to it, but I speak schematically.) Then when I phenomenologically examine my perceiving, I see that it consists of the property of being a perception and the idea that my coffee is cold. In symbols, the idea that x is F can be written [x is F]. Those brackets show that the idea is a simple thing. It is a property that is exemplified by the bare particular that is my mind. An idea is a simple universal Form that is of a complex fact. A one-many arrangement. I contend that ideas exist. They are universals that are exemplified by particulars. That preserves the subject-predicate form of the world.

Now obviously ideas are not just floating around unconnected to the world. Every idea is of a fact in the world. Whether of not every fact has an idea associated with it is another question that I will no go into here, but it is mighty interesting. Do you see that little world “of” in the sentence Every idea is of a fact. That word “of” names the Nexus. The Nexus of Intentionality. Without that the ideas that are our mind could never make contact with the world. We phenomenologically observe that the mind and the world are united. It is the Nexus that accomplishes that. That is my ontological analysis of mind. Actually it is not “my” analysis, but the analysis of the phenomenological realists that I read. What I do in my writing is expand on that analysis. I take it as far as it will go. To the limits of analysis. And then the deluge.

BTW, I contend that we are directly, phenomenologically, aware of the various Nexus. Other philosophers of my ilk say be aren't and we must only infer their existence. Such is philosophical argument. Ain't life grand!

[GaryLouisSmith]

I have to go out soon okay?

I'm sure that the long piece I just wrote on the Nexus will leave most readers cold. Even though this is a site dedicated to philosophical argument, what I wrote is too far away from the thinking of most of the people here. Ontological analysis is way out of fashion. It was a modernist idea, not postmodernist. In my own writing I am post-postmodernist which is a bending back to the past. I am almost Medieval. Anyway, if what I wrote means nothing to you, that's fine. You are a product of your time and not of my wandering outside the wall.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

My way is phenomenological, that is to say that I stay with the phenomena that are present to my viewing mind. I do not speculate about unseen causes, forces or urges. I look about and I see a world. And I am aware of my awareness of that world. One of the things I see in that world is my brain, and your brain and all those other brains, human or otherwise. Brains exist. I can see them and I can see their physiology. As for my awareness, it comes in many flavors: perceiving, imagining, remembering, doubting, wondering, questioning and on and on. That is all directly known. I am directly aware of all that, no speculating.

But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

My way is phenomenological, that is to say that I stay with the phenomena that are present to my viewing mind. I do not speculate about unseen causes, forces or urges. I look about and I see a world. And I am aware of my awareness of that world. One of the things I see in that world is my brain, and your brain and all those other brains, human or otherwise. Brains exist. I can see them and I can see their physiology. As for my awareness, it comes in many flavors: perceiving, imagining, remembering, doubting, wondering, questioning and on and on. That is all directly known. I am directly aware of all that, no speculating.

But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

Yes, of course they correlate or as I like to say, they are associated. Correlation and association, though, are neither identity or causation in the sense of creation of one by the other. 'There is the simple fact that if I close my eyes, I cannot see. And if I take aspirin, my headache goes away. I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis.

[Sculptor1]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:



But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

Yes, of course they correlate or as I like to say, they are associated. Correlation and association, though, are neither identity or causation in the sense of creation of one by the other. 'There is the simple fact that if I close my eyes, I cannot see. And if I take aspirin, my headache goes away. I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis.

LOL
What more do you actually need?

[Sculptor1]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:



But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

Yes, of course they correlate or as I like to say, they are associated. Correlation and association, though, are neither identity or causation in the sense of creation of one by the other. 'There is the simple fact that if I close my eyes, I cannot see. And if I take aspirin, my headache goes away. I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis.

Simple?
Yes, no matter how many times your car runs out of petrol, you insist that there is no proof that a car needs petrol to work!
You are hilarious.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

Yes, of course they correlate or as I like to say, they are associated. Correlation and association, though, are neither identity or causation in the sense of creation of one by the other. 'There is the simple fact that if I close my eyes, I cannot see. And if I take aspirin, my headache goes away. I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis.

Nevertheless constant conjunction is the only means we have for predicting.

Do you want to know the neurological cause of why you cannot objectively identify the changes in you own brain-mind? For there is a neurological cause of this phenomenon.

[Karpel Tunnel]

But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

So did radio programs and radios. If you didn't know what was broadcasting, you might conflate the radio as the programming.

[Belindi]

But brain events and mind events correlate. Sleep labs and CAT scans are two methods that demonstrate the correlations.

So did radio programs and radios. If you didn
t know what was broadcasting, you might conflate the radio as the programming.

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

Yes, of course they correlate or as I like to say, they are associated. Correlation and association, though, are neither identity or causation in the sense of creation of one by the other. 'There is the simple fact that if I close my eyes, I cannot see. And if I take aspirin, my headache goes away. I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis.

Nevertheless constant conjunction is the only means we have for predicting.

Do you want to know the neurological cause of why you cannot objectively identify the changes in you own brain-mind? For there is a neurological cause of this phenomenon.

Please tell me. Also I would change your last sentence to read, Do you want to know the neurological correlate of why you cannot objectively identify the changes in you own brain-mind? For there is a neurological correlate of this phenomenon" I think by change correlate to cause and then having a non-Humean understanding of cause, you have rigged the meaning of your sentence. If by cause, you mean one thing brings another thing into existence, then you have become mystical. There is no evidence that one thing can bring another thing into existence. You have left science and entered the land of magic.

[GaryLouisSmith]

So did radio programs and radios. If you didn
t know what was broadcasting, you might conflate the radio as the programming.

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

As you guys might suspect, I am going to give a realist analysis, not a nominalist analysis, of what is going on here. Consider the Nightly News on the radio. The same program is being heard all over the land. The same electronic process is taking place inside the hardware of the radio. A realist will say that one and the same Form of program and process is exemplified by many particulars. A nominalist will say there is no one Form, but only many instances of program and process that are all similar. So now for a realist the question concerns the connection between the Form and the many bare particulars that exemplify it. He will insist that all of that exists external to the mind. The nominalist will say that the Form, insofar as we can say it exists, is only a concept and mental abstraction. Therefore, for a nominalist, the connection of particular to Form or concept is "falling under". This particular falls under the concept of a radio program. After that, for the philosopher, but not for anyone else, the question concerns just what a concept is and how we might know them. I personally don't think there are any such things as concepts or mental constructs. I do insist that the Form and the particular exemplifying it are two and not one. I would also say that the Form is not in time, time being only time-relations exemplified by bare particulars.

I feel justified in writing all that because this is after all a philosophy blog.

[Karpel Tunnel]

So did radio programs and radios. If you didn
t know what was broadcasting, you might conflate the radio as the programming.

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

[GaryLouisSmith]

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

In the philosophy of Logical Analysis, which I do, there is no such thing as coming into existence out of non-existence, nor is there falling out of existence into non-existence. There is in fact no such thing as non-existence. That is the vision of Parmenides, the father of metaphysics.

Think of film which is a strip of still pictures and the movement we see is illusory. If you are wondering why we seem to see coming into being and passing out of being, then the only answer to your wondering is that we don’t really see that.

Given all that, does consciousness and thought emerge or rise up out of the workings of the brain? No. Consciousness and thought do not come into existence and pass out of existence. It’s logically impossible.

Here’s an excerpt from the Poem of Parmenides, the poem that began philosophy. http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenidesunicode.htm

Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my
saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that
can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is
impossible for anything not to be, is the way of. conviction,

5 for truth is its companion.. The other, namely, that It is not,
and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a
wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not - that is impossible - nor utter it;

III

For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

[Belindi]

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

In the philosophy of Logical Analysis, which I do, there is no such thing as coming into existence out of non-existence, nor is there falling out of existence into non-existence. There is in fact no such thing as non-existence. That is the vision of Parmenides, the father of metaphysics.

Think of film which is a strip of still pictures and the movement we see is illusory. If you are wondering why we seem to see coming into being and passing out of being, then the only answer to your wondering is that we don’t really see that.

Given all that, does consciousness and thought emerge or rise up out of the workings of the brain? No. Consciousness and thought do not come into existence and pass out of existence. It’s logically impossible.

Here’s an excerpt from the Poem of Parmenides, the poem that began philosophy. http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenidesunicode.htm

Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my
saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that
can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is
impossible for anything not to be, is the way of. conviction,

5 for truth is its companion.. The other, namely, that It is not,
and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a
wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not - that is impossible - nor utter it;

III

For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

Doesn't possibility get a look in? There's not only kinetic energy there's also potential energy.

Consciousness and thought do not come into existence and pass out of existence. It’s logically impossible.

From the perspective of the eternal now consciousness and thought are constantly now. From the perspective of space-time consciousness and thought are not universals but are discrete events.