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thrax

The fact that you can ask the question is, paradoxically, the answer. Your mind is computed by your brain.

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How do you know the mind is computed by the brain? Maybe the brain is just an antenna for the mind.

Let's not leave the tangible positivistic discourse for the alluring sirens' call of metaphysics.

What if metaphysics is tangible?

E.g. here's an experiment I ran with an EEG. Seems pretty tangible.

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/12/playing-tetris-shows-that-tru...

Tangible metaphysics is an oxymoron by definition of metaphysics (something beyond/above physical, i.e. tangible). If it's tangible, it's not metaphysics. If you can subject it to the scientific method, it's not metaphysics. Your EEG experiment is nowhere near metaphysical, it's as positivistic as can get - you very crudely measured cognitive load using EEG. Well, of course, if you consider psychology to be metaphysical, you are only partly true - Freud, for example, can be neither validated, nor invalidated. Skinner or Pavlov, however... and anything published in respectable journals for the last 30 or 40 years.

Why can't the metaphysical interact with the physical and be detected that way? Most of science today is like this, indirect observations of reality we cannot perceive with the naked senses. If the brain is the metaphysical mind's antenna, then my EEG experiment is observing the mind's operations through the waves it generates in the brain. What remains is to determine of those waves can emerge purely within the brain, or if the waves are beamed in from elsewhere, i.e. the mind. Analogous to looking at my TV antenna and determining whether all the TV channels are being generated by the antenna alone, or whether the antenna is receiving them from elsewhere.

I honestly don't understand why these sorts of ideas receive so much friction. I cannot think of logically coherent objections to them. They seem very scientifically testable to me.

> Why can't the metaphysical interact with the physical and be detected that way?

Because then it stops being metaphysical and becomes physical.

Now as to your central problem, conciousness being beamed to brain. The reason why it gets so much friction is that it flies agains a massive amount of tangible evidence and research that brain generates conciousness. It also falls to Occams' razor very easily (like the idea of ether medium did - a PhD in electrical engineering should know this). And in it's core it is basically the same as "soul" - intangible, immeasurable, unknown entity with scientifically unknowable properties.

In order to bring it from the realm of metaphysics (matters of souls, virtues, etc - read Thomas Acquinus and continue towards antica via Augustinus to better understand what metaphysics is and how it is different from scientific knowledge), you have to propose both a full hypothesis on how this "brain as a receiver" works, and a set of reproducible experiments to show your theory to be true.

Jesus Christ, I never thought that I, a person with no degree, will ever explain the basics of epistemiology and scientific method to a PhD on the internet...

I'd be very curious to know your evidence that the brain generates consciousness.

I'd like to know your definition of consciousness.

A necessary property is 'aboutness'. Consciousness is always about something else, or perhaps about itself as in the case of self consciousness. No material object has any inherent reference to anything else. For example: the words in this comment are nothing but pixels on a screen. However, we interpret the words to refer to the content of the idea I'm trying to communicate to you.

Then why is the mind damaged in weird but predictable ways whenever the "antenna" is damaged.

Or simply, why do people behave differently when they are drunk? I mean, it's only their body that is drunk, not their soul (or wherever the mind supposedly resides), so how can alcohol have an impact on the mind?

Isn't the answer to these sorts of questions pretty trivial? I don't understand why people think such questions are defeaters for the mind != brain hypothesis.

Why does bending my TV antenna have predictable effects on the signal I receive? Why doesn't this imply my TV signal is produced by the antenna instead of received by the antenna?

Answer these questions, then apply your answers to your questions.

When you fix the TV antenna, the movie continues with the original plot. When you get sober, you may not remember what you did when you were drunk.

The act of forgetting is itself interesting. How is the information removed from the immaterial mind, and why things like having enough sleep have an impact on how much the immaterial mind remembers?

Why do you get a bad recording if the camera lens is smudged, if the camera is not the lens? Why do forget stuff more easily if you don't write it down, if your brain is not your notebook?

I still fail to see how these sorts of arguments show the mind must be physical. We have many examples of interfaces, where damaging the interface can impact the transmission, but does not thereby entail the interface is the transmission.

On the other hand, why do amnesia victims sometimes regain their memories, and even more(!), after brain damage if the mind is just the brain? Why can people live normal, even high performing lives, while missing most of their brain if the mind is just the brain? How can we explain out of body experiences, where the person learns information they cannot have learned any other way, if the mind is just the brain? How can consciousness arise from non sentient matter? How can we think about immaterial, abstract concepts if mind = brain?

In my opinion, the arguments for mind = brain largely depend on logical fallacies, as explained above. And, there are also phenomena that are very difficult and even impossible to explain if mind = brain is true. Additionally, I haven't gotten into this, but there are a number of thought experiments that indicate mind = brain is logically incoherent. So, the most parsinomous explanation is that mind != brain.

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