Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!sable.ox.ac.uk!shil0124
From: shil0124@sable.ox.ac.uk ("Peter J. King")
Subject: Re: BRAIN... Neural Circuit or Computer 
In-Reply-To: <pW-dC8D.scanlonr@delphi.com> 
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Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950501181210.23332B-100000@sable.ox.ac.uk>
References: <pW-dC8D.scanlonr@delphi.com> 
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 18:16:31 +0100
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On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, Ray Scanlon wrote:

> Neural activities may be described as an electrochemical events. The mind 
> is subjectively aware of these events as thoughts and feelings. 

	This is an odd way of putting it; you're saying that on the one 
hand there's the mind, and on the other there are thoughts and feelings - 
the former being aware of the latter.  This modelling of thought and 
feeling on perception is surely wrong and misleading; in perception, 
there's a gap between the perceiver and the thing perceived, while in 
thinking and feeling there's no such gap - I just *have* the thoughts and 
feelings.

> The exterior world sees the neural activity as behavior.

	Surely it sees behaviour as behaviour; it sees neural activity as
neural activity.  You might want to say that there's a causal connection
between the two, but that's another matter. 


> "What is thought except a movement that is not connected to a motor
> neuron."
>           Attributed to Walle Nauta

	I'm not sure that I understand this.

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Peter J. King, St Hilda's College, Oxford  OX4 1DY, U.K.
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