logical bob wrote:You trying to prove a point? Perish the thought.

Cito di Pense wrote:

logical bob wrote:Could James accept that maybe subjective events are in a causal relationship with physical ones? That when a certain type of brain state occurs, a certain type of subjective event occurs? If that were the case we would be able to identify the subjective with the physical in the sense that no non-physical explanatory factors would be needed.

I don't know that James could accept it, and I wouldn't even accept it without the proviso that we do not know at the present time that identifying a subjective state with a physiological state is one-to-one and onto.

I think the point that looms large for the nonnies is the suspicion (or hope) that no such rigid correlation exists, and that this opens the door for subjective states that do not map to any physiological state, unique or otherwise. It makes about as much sense to talk about mapping subjective states as is does to try to debunk religion. Surprisingly, this is not OT for humans as evolved machinery.

If all that can save you in arguing with the nonnies is a rigid one-to-one, then the conceptual expression of a "materialist" model for "experience" is naive and incomplete. A person used to thinking about complex dynamical systems knows that only certain kinds of systems don't cross their own tracks, or cross their own wires. There's no requirement that brain states be mathematically pure in a particular sense.

Redundancy, massive parallelism, and so on. They may be useful concepts without having to apply them globally. But what do we gain from wibbling about it in trying to get a nonny to STFU? The template for nonny-ism is never having to STFU, and scientific models that come to a conclusion and move on are not seen in a very good light in this context.