As you often claim, no one can know what is in another person's mind, in reference of intention. I want to say that you are wrong in claiming I intend contempt in my responses about dualism. I have no contempt for anything that doesn't include my sorrow as well. Since I have no sorrow for ideas I have no contempt for them either. My contempt is your interpretation of something I wrote but where do I express it, exactly? Dualism is a very appealing concept, a Cartesian fancy that resolves the riddle of mind-body and sits at the pituitary center of the Western Man Identity. I love it but I can't justify it and will certainly read the book you mention, hoping to find the flaw in my counter intuitive doubt.
I am interested in getting to the most basic assumption that undergirds the distinction between material cause and immaterial effect. All of the examples you give are faulty because materiality is present in both cause and effects. The one possible exception is gravity since as yet no one can account for it in specific terms. But I think both of us would agree that when gravity is fully defined and described, it will not be done by theologians but by physicists. I agree that it is intuitive to suppose that the physical brain gives rise to immaterial thoughts. But those thoughts can't exist independent of a living brain and as you argue, nothing guarantees that those thoughts are ever transmitted intact from one brain to another because they require some medium and the medium itself 'colors' the translation, not only from one brain to another but to the same brain moment to moment. I am not sure whether the medium, image, language, symbol, grunt, gesture, is a product of 'thought' or is thought itself. I am inclined to say that we have no thoughts independent of the medium that we claim transmits them but in fact may create them. I think/believe that language is fundamental to thought. When people say that an experience is indescribably or beyond words or can't be imagined, I reply that they their so-called independent experience of sheer emotion or feeling or whatever is merely a mass of neuronal activity and not really an 'experience'. To be an experience in the proper sense, it must be defined or described --- an exclamatory ouch! would be an example as would a poetic oration on love. I shrink back in fear knowing that my view seems to contradict the Bard: "Word fly up, thoughts remain below Words without thoughts never to heaven go" Maybe the Bard and I could agree, however, if he were to explain that words ARE thoughts and thus can't be divided into immaterial heavenward thoughts and earthbound words. Could there be a Shakespeare without words? Is not Shakespeare equivalent to his words? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, May 16, 2012 11:06:29 PM Subject: Re: "...The realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation." I presume you know you convey contempt, and intentionally do so. I again urge you to spend some time in Chalmers's PHILOSOPHY OF MIND anthology. It may not win you over, but perhaps it will convince you some people of noncontemptible intelligence have mounted considerable arguments for dualism. > The question is can something material give rise to something immaterial? > That's not THE question but it's certainly A question. And it has the hint of conceding that neural matter and consciousness are two different sorts of entities. A magnet is material, but how about the magnetic field it gives rise to? A physical mass is material; how about gravity? A dark, inert piece of coal when inflamed give off heat and light. But of course the dualist answer would be yes, of course, neural excitation gives ise consciousness. > People have always claimed that magic for themselves but do they claim it > for > other creatures and any living thing at all? Wait, some people even say > inanimate things without brains, like rocks, can have thoughts or can have > feelings. > > I very deeply want to be a dualist. It would solve a lot of issues > that make it > more comfortable to be a human being. > wc
