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Article 7205 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Message-ID: <1992Oct11.154359.2872@meteor.wisc.edu>
Date: 11 Oct 92 15:43:59 GMT
References: <1992Oct8.230422.5045@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> <1992Oct9.040228.2117@meteor.wisc.edu> <BvvGDF.861@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science
Lines: 46

In article <BvvGDF.861@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.040228.2117@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>...........
>>of birth and death. My claim is not that consciousness is independent of
>>brain function. It is only that brain function is insufficient to produce
>                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>consciousness by virtue of any known or plausible objectively verifiable
>>physical phenomenon. Similarly, your examples of the fascinating qualia
>>that result from various brain injuries miss the point. Clearly the brain
>>has something to do with it. My point is that we are still utterly
>>mystified as to what that might be.

>This is a very strong and totally unsupported statement. 

It may seem strong to you; to me it seems like a reluctance to make a
strong statement. As such, there is nothing unsupported about it.

>Yes, we have no
>idea how known physical phenomena may give rise to consciousness, but there
>is a long way from there to stating that they are insufficient.

I did not say that they were known to be insufficient, I said that there
was no plausible hypothesis how they might be sufficient.

> Our ignorance
>does not make them insufficient. It is more plausible to assume our ignorance
>of how known physical laws combine in such a complex system (there is plenty
>of evidence of similiar situations in other fields, even less complex) then 
>invent mysterious, ethereal phenomena for which there is NO evidence.

As long as you admit that this is an assumption, you are talking science.
Once you announce that the assumption is verified, you are just appplying
experience from unrelated areas. That is, you are applying faith in the
completeness in physical science. There is not the smallest indication
that the rules of physical science can span the phenomena of consciousness:
opinions about consciousness are genuinely orthogonal to physical and 
mathematical science, and that is (in part) why a nonentity can play chess.

There already is a mysterious ethereal phenomenon: I am it, and I hope
and suppose you are it too. We proceed from opposite assumptions about
whether this phenomenon can be reduced to physical science. Neither
assumption is any stronger or more unsupported than the other, as long
as we are honest enough to state that our expectations are just that, and
not results.

mt


