spendius
The neurologist Antonio Damasio sustains a materialistic view on the problem mind/brain in his book "Descartes' Error". To him, the neuronal activity is not only the cause of an idea, but is the idea itself. Like you said, the message and the medium are the same.
However, I think there is a problem in such a conception. When you describe an idea as the pattern of a given neuronal activity, you are using ideas. I mean, you can only discuss the nature of reason by using reason. It is a case where the subject and the object of the research are the same. Worst, they must be expressed in a language model, previous to the research.
I am ready to agree that ideas have the correspondence in patterns of neuronal activity. But saying that ideas are the neuronal activity seems to me like some kind of paradox.
