The mental and the physical.

The dichotomy between "physical" and "mental" needs to be rejected.
It may be that it arises as an epiphenomenon of "language" in humans whose image of "themselves" as "causative agents" are requirements for the workings of a macro-structure in "social space". The mistake may be to assume such social macro-structures should be reducible to the scientifcism of "the physical" (a bottom up endeavour) rather than to see "physicalism" as itself a product of of a common desire to predict and control (a top down approach). Therein lies sub-problem of what constitutes a "satisfacory explanation".

Given that "causality" itself is philosophicaly nebulous, I see no other way of tackling the issue.

What do you mean by "macro-structure"?

A macro-structure is a structure composed of other structures. E.g. "The body" is a macro-structure of "organs". Note that the "function" of an organ is understandable only with respect to the body. Similarly "selves" may be "understandable" relative to "social groups", not vice versa. The fact that individuals (bodies) may be involved in different social groups may account for the fragmentaey nature of "self" (as discussed elsewhere).

A macro-structure is a structure composed of other structures. E.g. "The body" is a macro-structure of "organs". Note that the "function" of an organ is understandable only with respect to the body. Similarly "selves" may be "understandable" relative to "social groups", not vice versa. The fact that individuals (bodies) may be involved in different social groups may account for the fragmentary nature of "self" (as discussed elsewhere).

It seems that when we defend the idea of "physicalism" we do so with an implicit "mentalism"; and the defense of "mentalism" generally involves--however implicitly--physicalist assumptions.
I like the saying "no matter; never mind."

I think the distinction is exagerated...

Like flipping a coin and thinking of it as an entirely different coin....

Good, Cyracuz. It DOES seem that when we discuss "mind" in terms of brain functions and "brain" as an idea, we think we are in entirely diifferent--indeed, in opposed--domains of discourse (different coins) rather than just taking different perspectives (different sides).

It does seem like that.

I've noticed it many times. Those who believe the answers are found in neuro science seem to think that everything can be explained in terms of chemical processes in the brain.

While that may be so, it doesn't account for the fact that when I'm having a bad day it really helps to just pick up my guitar and sing the blues... :wink:
What's the chemical signature of Clapton's Crossroads?


A simple way to explain how I veiw the relationship between mind and brain is to compare it to a computer. The brain is the equivalent of the computer's hardware, while the mind is the software.

If my computer software malfunctions, replacing a piece of hardware will not fix the problem. The problem is in the programming, not in the machine's capacity to execute the program...

But I do realize that this comparison has it's limits. A computer is a primitive thing compared to the human "brainmind"....

Right. Like all analogies, the hardware-brain comparison is limited, a very important recognition. But it does point us to the importance of learning (which includes art and psychotherapy) and philosophical work, the analog of improving one's software.

The theory of mind known as functionalism makes comparisons with brains to computational systems.

Functionalism holds that mind is a function of the brain. Someone speaks to me (input), and then I select a response from my memory and respond (output).

The difficulty is that computers are programmed to respond in an appropriate way, whereas we humans may not respond in an appropriate way. Humans have free will, computers do not.

But according to functionalism if something behaves with the same input output functions as a human,then it can be classed as a person.

By way of contrast, in Maturana's view of living systems, including those we call "sentient", there are no "inputs" or "outputs". Such belong only in the second order realm of "observer discourse". In first order (biological) descriptions there are only internal states "structurally coupled" with external states ( a bit like mutual resonances). "Cognition" and "life" are synonymous involving successive adaptations of structure. There is no concept of "mind" except as dummy token in the seeking of second order causal descriptions of limited behavioral episodes.

I'm still working on Fresco's last statement, but I think I do appreciate his notion that function pertains to context. It has been said by sociological "functionalists" that functions are what structures do, that this applies to the contribution that (sub) structures make to the larger structures in which they "function" (i.e., make their operational contributions).
I take a pragmatic perspective on the epistemological question of physicalism versus mentalism. For example, I think neuroscience gains much from a physicalist perspective, one in which "brain" is the object of focus with the treatment of sensations as epiphenomena of brain operations. But I take a provisionally mentalist perspective on the character of my spiritual nature. Ultimately my "mind", my experience--including its ideas about "brain"--is an expression of Cosmic mysteries that transcend any physicalist paradigm. Nevertheless, both physicalism and mentalism are ultimately "wrong", mere standpoints relative to efforts for making the world provisionally intelligible.

Ye, so don't get too attached to your truths, because their strongest attribute is your desire to know them... :wink:

I see all attachments as dangerous: they deprive us of the liberating realization that all thoughts--including these--are provisional and artificial, to be entertained as tools (working models) rather than as pictures of reality.

This seems like an interesting thread. I'll have to jump in here at some point when I have more time (it's exam week at my university...) I'm not that up on philosophy after the mid-1970s, and it sounds like some of what's being talked about here is in the performative direction that focuses more on provisional utility rather than making placing the emphasis that post-modernism did on ignorance and the diffusiveness of systems. It's nice to see that there is beginning to be a positive role for knowledge again that is hopefully neither naively realist nor pessimistically critical.

As one comment, though, I have tended to favor this kind of neutral monism. I think there is some recent Hegel scholarship that is working trying to investigate an interpretation of his work that is more rooted in a kind of epistemological category-theory rather than claiming that the universal and particular elements of the dialectic are somehow ontologically "real," though I'm not sure if that's true or who is doing that work. Terry Pinkard and Robert Pippin come to mind... but don't quote me on that.

Odd JL, I said something very similar to the last half of your quote in another thread (that is, a tool is an implement used for a practical purpose).

As for attachments - we can't get away from holding them, because at the very smallest increment of an attachment - any idea we have is attached to us. We can only realise that the ones we hold are by our choice and held for our use, not for their reality - as you said, a tool.

Vikorr, attachments, in the buddhist sense, are very tricky things. A common characteristic of many novices is an attachment to the goal of non-attachment. There is no way to be unattached except to be intimately aware of that state. That awareness--without any attempt to "achieve" detachment--is non-attachment.*

*as I see it, detachment and non-attachment are very different.

One lets experience wash over them, and reacts to the universe intuitively without being attached to any concept of it. Contrary to Vikorr's claim, this is possible, though the novice or the completely ignorant can not do it.