Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.

Can we solve the mind-body problem?

No, the "hard problem" of consciousness will never be solved
19
22%
Yes, a future revision of science/physics will allow us to solve it
37
43%
Other-please specify
31
36%
 
Total votes: 87

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Bohm2
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Bohm2 »

Gertie wrote: 'The mind/body problem' is just a short-hand for that, pointing to the fact that we understand (in principle) how brains and bodies work, at least at a certain level of resolution which is coherent and predictable, but not how this experiential phenomenon results from those understood physical processes.
Do you mean by presently understood physical processes? We don't have a full understanding of those "physical" processes. Physical processes change as our physics changes. How can we unify something (experiential phenomena) with something that is still work in progress. Maybe the more so-called "fundamental" science is wrong (hasn't that been the norm?) and that's why unification can't proceed. And I'm not saying that we are guaranteed to succeed. It may be beyond our understanding. But until someone provides a precise definition of "physical", then the question is sorta pointless. How can you say we have a mind-body problem when we don't even have a complete picture about what body/matter is?
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Bohm2 wrote: We don't have a full understanding of those "physical" processes. Physical processes change as our physics changes. [...] But until someone provides a precise definition of "physical", then the question is sorta pointless. How can you say we have a mind-body problem when we don't even have a complete picture about what body/matter is?
Bohm2, I think you give up too easily. Exactly what you said could be said about digestion or reproduction. How can we understand digestion without truly understanding what is happening at the quantum level? How can we understand what DNA is doing until we have a precise definition of "physical"?

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Bohm2
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Bohm2 »

JamesOfSeattle wrote:Bohm2, I think you give up too easily. Exactly what you said could be said about digestion or reproduction. How can we understand digestion without truly understanding what is happening at the quantum level? How can we understand what DNA is doing until we have a precise definition of "physical"?
Digestion and reproduction and the discovery of DNA are phenomena open to a third person perspective. This isn't the case with experiential stuff. Moreover, even with the processes you mention, it wasn't until the unification of biology with chemistry that even that could occur (biochemistry). We are not close to that with mental phenomena like the experiential. Our current predicament of mental phenomena is more akin to where chemistry was before the revolution occurred in physics:
The unification of biology and chemistry a few years later can be misleading. That was genuine reduction, but to a newly created physical chemistry...True reduction is not so common in the history of science, and need not be assumed automatically to be a model for what will happen in the future. Prior to the unification of chemistry and physics in the 1930s, it was commonly argued by distinguished scientists, including Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, that chemistry is just a calculating device, a way to organize results about chemical reactions, sometimes to predict them. Chemistry is not about anything real. The reason was that no one knew how to reduce it to physics. That failure was later understood: reduction was impossible, until physics underwent a radical revolution. It is now clear-or should be clear that the debates about the reality of chemistry were based on fundamental misunderstanding.
file:///C:/Users/Kroll/Downloads/A500%20(1).pdf
Tamminen
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Tamminen »

Atreyu wrote: Thoughts will never be experienced like material objects. This is quite impossible. Subjective experience will never be like experiencing things said to be "objective", i.e. actually existing outside of the self. Experiencing a rock or a tree will never be like experiencing dreams, thoughts, and feelings.

Finding a correlation between thoughts and physiology in no way solves the mind-body problem, nor does it even approach it as a solution. The whole mind-body problem lies in reconciliating our subjective experiences with what we objectively say is "true" or "the facts", not in merely asserting that the one is really the other....
Most of what you say I agree with, but I would put it this way:

We are in relation to the material world. When I see a tree, the subjective component of that relation is the perception, the objective part the tree, light waves, my brain processes etc. When I think of the tree, the subjective part is the thought, the objective part the corresponding brain processes. I think there is really no other mind-body problem than studying the correlations, i.e. the parallelism between mental and physical events, because the relation is one and the same, only the levels of description are ontologically incompatible. Is your 'reconciliation' something else?
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Present awareness
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Present awareness »

Only when a knife is able to cut itself, will the mind-body problem be solved. Using consciousness to search for consciousness, is like getting into your car to go look for your car.
Even though you can see me, I might not be here.
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Bohm2 wrote:Digestion and reproduction and the discovery of DNA are phenomena open to a third person perspective. This isn't the case with experiential stuff.
I respectfully disagree. Digestion is just as subjective as consciousness. Only I can digest my food. You can watch (maybe) and see what molecules are breaking down into what and releasing how much energy where, but it's still only happening to me. Consciousness is just harder to suss out because the important component in the pertinent interactions is harder to pin down, and that component is information. The fields that need to be integrated are neurology and semiotics.

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Ranvier
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Ranvier »

I'm in the 34% of those who answered "other" to the survey question, which depends on the criteria for an acceptable answer to the "mind-body" problem. Only then such question may have a meaningful answer. It all depends on our description of the "reality" or what can we accept as real. Are thoughts real? Or are individual thoughts only real because of the physical reality? Can physical reality exist outside of thoughts and can thoughts exist outside of the physical reality?

1. If we conclude that the physical reality is independent of thought, then our consciousness is an illusion of the physical reality (brain). Has a solution in negating the mind-body problem.

2. If thought is dependent on reality but can exist outside of the physical reality, then our consciousness is a real non-physical process of mind and will. Has a solution that may not be acceptable to some people.

3. If neither can be concluded, then there is no solution to the mind-body problem.

Personally, with own subjective understanding of the universe, I would subscribe to the second option.

-- Updated September 12th, 2017, 5:54 pm to add the following --

BTW, the survey question is a fantastic idea. We can trace the progression of opinion within the debate spread over time:
As of September 12, 2017 the results of the survey are:

1. 23%
2. 43%
3. 34%
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Commonsense2
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Commonsense2 »

Commonsense2 wrote: Science is able to demonstrate that thought processes are visible on certain high-tech scans. There are areas in the human brain that light up on such scans when a person is viewing and reacting to images that are being presented on a screen. The particular areas that light up correlate to the particular images being viewed.
By difference in degree, not by difference in kind, specific thoughts will eventually be correlated to specific neurons and synapses. Thoughts will be identified on sight. They could also be felt by microscopic probes. It may even be possible to smell or taste them—yuck!—as well as to hear them vocalized as is the case presently.
In the future, thoughts will be experienced like other material objects. We will be able to look inside a skull and actually see thoughts. Given that thoughts are no longer to be considered immaterial, this calls into question the entirety of the immaterial universe, does it not?
Perhaps I assumed too much in my earlier post, a reductive argument, to be sure, but one that fairly reduces thought to something that has material qualities.

If areas that light up on a high-tech scan, such as the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, can be taken to mean areas of increased brain activity, then the areas that light on such a scan are doing more of what a brain does.

What the brain does is think, of course, but is it a thought that is being demonstrated on a scan or is it the process of thought? A fallible analogy I’m sure, but where is the separation between a baseball and the process of a baseball being struck? The process is joined to the object. The process of striking a baseball requires a baseball. The analogy—defeat it if you will, or, better still, replace it with something stronger—is that the process of thinking implies a thought.

These areas are thinking more, but what they’re thinking is another matter. If the thinking is in regard to the experience of viewing a specific image, then at least the topic to which the thinking pertains is known.

In other words, upon viewing an image of an apple, the thinking might be, “Apples are red” or, “Some apples are red” or, “This apple is red” or, “I like apple pie.” Painstakingly, an entire lexicon could be formed, in order to distinguish one thought from another, starting with fruits and colors, baked goods and the like, and proceeding from there.

If an area of the brain can be correlated to an image being viewed, then part of an area can be correlated with part of an image. Painstakingly, a lexicon for each part of an area could be constructed.

If part of an area of the brain can be observed lighting up, then a single axon or dendrite could be observed lighting up. And a lexicon for each axon and dendrite could be created.

If what is being observed by physical means, by a high-tech scan, is the output of the tiniest component of the brain, and if that output is a thought, then a thought can be observed by physical means.

Furthermore, if the output of axons and dendrites could be mapped to bits of language, then one could look inside a brain, by means of a scan, witness thoughts and translate those thoughts into language, thus making it possible to conduct actual mind reading. It is conceivable that future advances may make it possible to look inside a brain without a scanner.

Thoughts will be experienced in a similar manner to the way physical objects are experienced, i.e. they will be accessible through sensory organs. In that way the experience of a tree would not be alike to the thought of a tree, but the thought as well as the object will have qualities that can be observed.
Tamminen
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Tamminen »

Commonsense2 wrote: If what is being observed by physical means, by a high-tech scan, is the output of the tiniest component of the brain, and if that output is a thought, then a thought can be observed by physical means.

Furthermore, if the output of axons and dendrites could be mapped to bits of language, then one could look inside a brain, by means of a scan, witness thoughts and translate those thoughts into language, thus making it possible to conduct actual mind reading. It is conceivable that future advances may make it possible to look inside a brain without a scanner.
If we can read others' thoughts in the future, which I doubt, this will happen through our brains, but we will not find them in our brains, because they are not there. Our language is full of these misleading metaphors: 'heart' means feeling, 'head' means thinking etc.
Present awareness wrote:Only when a knife is able to cut itself, will the mind-body problem be solved. Using consciousness to search for consciousness, is like getting into your car to go look for your car.
This is why there is no mind-body problem, only the problem of mind-body correlations.
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Ranvier
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Ranvier »

Commonsense2

As far as I know, each brain is different. There may be "generalized" areas for a specific brain function: Broca's area or Wernicke's area necessary for peach, or Primary Sensory Gyrus and Primary Motor Gyrus but there is no "general" rule for a specific location or neuron activity for a given thought, such as "I like an apple pie". Additionally, PET scan reveals the "brain activity" but doesn't offer any insight about the quality of thought. Similar to watching someone "burn in place" with plenty of activity but very little of actual accomplishment in "action", in this case "thought". Finally, the most recent research in neuroscience, hints that the "meat" of the thought is actually in the neuroglial cells and not in the neurons bursting with the electrical activity. The neurons seem to be simply the "highway" of traffic in axons between soma of gray matter but the actual "concepts" of an apple and pie, may be in the neuroglial cells.

If what you suggest where to be possible, it would require an extensive "mapping" of each individual brain and even then the outside "perception" of the "thought" would only be a statistical approximation of the actual thought. But who knows, in my mind anything is possible.

-- Updated September 16th, 2017, 5:07 am to add the following --

Interesting how the brain works...

*speech not peach :)

-- Updated September 16th, 2017, 5:18 am to add the following --

*were possible... gees, mind-body disconnect or a brain hiccup?
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Commonsense2
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Commonsense2 »

Ranvier wrote:Commonsense2

As far as I know, each brain is different. There may be "generalized" areas for a specific brain function: Broca's area or Wernicke's area necessary for peach, or Primary Sensory Gyrus and Primary Motor Gyrus but there is no "general" rule for a specific location or neuron activity for a given thought, such as "I like an apple pie". Additionally, PET scan reveals the "brain activity" but doesn't offer any insight about the quality of thought. Similar to watching someone "burn in place" with plenty of activity but very little of actual accomplishment in "action", in this case "thought". Finally, the most recent research in neuroscience, hints that the "meat" of the thought is actually in the neuroglial cells and not in the neurons bursting with the electrical activity. The neurons seem to be simply the "highway" of traffic in axons between soma of gray matter but the actual "concepts" of an apple and pie, may be in the neuroglial cells.

If what you suggest where to be possible, it would require an extensive "mapping" of each individual brain and even then the outside "perception" of the "thought" would only be a statistical approximation of the actual thought. But who knows, in my mind anything is possible.

-- Updated September 16th, 2017, 5:07 am to add the following --

Interesting how the brain works...

*speech not peach :)

-- Updated September 16th, 2017, 5:18 am to add the following --

*were possible... gees, mind-body disconnect or a brain hiccup?

Awesome! Thank you, Ranvier, my myelinated accomplice
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Ranvier
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Ranvier »

:)

Commonsense2, I had a feeling that you'll make the connection to the "name".
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Atreyu
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Atreyu »

Tamminen wrote:
Atreyu wrote: Thoughts will never be experienced like material objects. This is quite impossible. Subjective experience will never be like experiencing things said to be "objective", i.e. actually existing outside of the self. Experiencing a rock or a tree will never be like experiencing dreams, thoughts, and feelings.

Finding a correlation between thoughts and physiology in no way solves the mind-body problem, nor does it even approach it as a solution. The whole mind-body problem lies in reconciliating our subjective experiences with what we objectively say is "true" or "the facts", not in merely asserting that the one is really the other....
Most of what you say I agree with, but I would put it this way:

We are in relation to the material world. When I see a tree, the subjective component of that relation is the perception, the objective part the tree, light waves, my brain processes etc. When I think of the tree, the subjective part is the thought, the objective part the corresponding brain processes. I think there is really no other mind-body problem than studying the correlations, i.e. the parallelism between mental and physical events, because the relation is one and the same, only the levels of description are ontologically incompatible. Is your 'reconciliation' something else?
Yes, it is.

Your error is not to see that it is all subjective....

Even the idea of a "tree", light waves, and brain processes are subjective. Not just our perceptions, but also our cognition, is subjective. How we think and feel is also subjective, just like the direct images we perceive all around us.

So when science studies the correlations between the mind and body, they think they are comparing and contrasting the "objective" with the "subjective", but actually they are only correlating one "subjective" with another "subjective", one of the two of which is assumed to be more objective, but which actually is just as subjective as the other. Thinking about a tree and explaining a tree (conceiving a tree) is just as subjective as the image of the tree which is presented to our awareness (perceiving a tree).

But this is precisely what most scientists do not want to admit....
Steve3007
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Steve3007 »

Atreyu:
But this is precisely what most scientists do not want to admit....
So you're saying that more than 50% of scientists know, but refuse to admit, that the act of observation affects the thing being observed, yes?
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Atreyu
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Re: Can we solve the mind-body problem?

Post by Atreyu »

Steve3007 wrote: So you're saying that more than 50% of scientists know, but refuse to admit, that the act of observation affects the thing being observed, yes?
No. I'm saying that most scientists (actually people in general) assume that they can be objective. They know that our direct perceptions and sensations are subjective, but they like to think that they can sort of "get around" that subjectivity by thinking objectively about what they perceive. They fail to see that their cognition (how they think about what they perceive) is just as subjective as everything else.

In other words, they fail to see that "being objective" would actually entail a fundamental change in their being, a fundamental change in how they perceive and cognize the world. As we are we cannot become objective. Objective consciousness cannot be attained via subjective thinking, no matter how "clever". It's attained by learning to think objectively, and knowledge of how to do that cannot be found via ordinary thinking. One could only learn to think this way by learning from a Mind which has already attained this state. The subjective Mind, on its own, cannot get outside of its boundaries...
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