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Article 6996 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Thought? Physical processes? Inside? Outside?
Message-ID: <exukjb.199.717033025@exu.ericsson.se>
Date: 20 Sep 92 23:50:25 GMT
References: <1992Sep17.204023.20400@meteor.wisc.edu> <JJ.92Sep17171659@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1992Sep19.133328.22892@meteor.wisc.edu>
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In article <1992Sep19.133328.22892@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
>Subject: Re: Thought? Physical processes? Inside? Outside?
>Date: 19 Sep 92 13:33:28 GMT

>In article <JJ.92Sep17171659@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu> jj@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu (John Josephson) writes:
>>
>>>> There seems to me to be no evidence that awareness has anything
>>>> that can reasonably be called a location.
>>
>>There is plenty of evidence that awareness goes away when the brain
>>stops working.  And plenty of evidence that awareness ``gets funny''
>>when certain chemicals are ingested that appear to have their major
>>effects in the brain.  In fact the evidence is so overwhelming that
>>awareness is brain-dependent, that it takes a special sort of
>>blindness not to see it.

>Obviously the brain has something to do with it. That doesn't mean
>awareness is "in" the brain, any more than these ideas are "on" your
>newsserver's disk drive. A bit pattern is on the disk, and it
>through well known processes causes an image on your screen and some
>impulses in your neurons. But how the _impulses_ in your neurons
>get translated into an _idea_ "in" your awareness is utterly mysterious.

>That this process is reducible to physical events is an assumption,
>not a result.  As it stands, there is no useful objective definition
>of awareness that could be used in such a theory. I maintain that this
>alone is sufficient evidence that such a theory is not imminent.

>In fact, I fail to see how an ojective definition of awareness can
>exist: nothing can be more subjective than experience itself. Accordingly
>I fail to see how a theory of consciousness that is reducible to physics
>even _can_ exist.

>It seems to me that the assumption that there is nothing extrinsic to
>physics involved in the mind/body problem is generally treated as an
>article of faith among the scientific community. This is rather
>ironic. 

>mt

Mind-brain event/state correlation is not the same as identity and in fact 
presupposes nonidentity.
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