Where Does Your Mind Reside?: Crash Course Philosophy #22
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- Today we continue our unit on identity by asking where the mind resides. Hank explains the mind-body problem and several approaches to the question of where our minds reside, including reductive physicalism, substance dualism, and mysterianism.
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"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."
--Lyall Watson
Meanwhile, I'm choreographing a dance about thinking.
It's a nice paradox.
@Thijs Van bosch It's cute, like catchy lyrics and that's ok. We know that whole volumes become condensed with time, into single concepts.
@Thijs Van bosch
Because a neural network made up of more neurons can be in more different states, than one with less. Eg a human brain can describe a complex environment better, than a CNS made up of a single neuron. If the system you want to describe is just on/off, a single neuron is sufficient and more do not improve the description, but as the system to be described increases in complexity, more neurons become necessary to describe it.
Otherwise I perfectly agree with your opinion that the quote is massively flawed, on first glance it just appears to be rational and even smart but on a second glance it becomes obvious how naive and flawed it i s. Eg chaotic (highly complex) systems can be described by rather trivial, just non-linear equations. Cryptography is another example where trivial transformations are just applied over and over again, until the result is no longer easily understandable. Fractals are another example. It's obvious that the brain is also made up of very simple patterns, we just don't understand yet how they affect each other, because that's simply not trivial. Claiming this would be impossible just because we currently don't understand it is of course not smart but either naive or intentionally misleading.
If I had a hole in my head and lost an eyeball I guess I'd be pretty pissed off as well
My thoughts exactly. Lmao
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Gage didn't just become more aggressive. His speech was impaired, he started showing inappropriate sexual behaviors etc.
exactly, that could just be his adjustment to now being handicapped and physically disfigured. I've seen amputees who had complete personality changes after the operation.
exactly
I have a friend who is color blind. She recently got a pair of special glasses that allow her to perceive differences in color that she was previously unable to. Her first few weeks were filled with exclamations about how the clouds are pink during a sunset and please tell me what color this flower is, e.g. She understood color, she understood that others had a wider experience of color, but until she was able to distinguish pink clouds from yellowish clouds, she didn't know what seeing a full color spectrum was like. That knowledge and the experience of gaining it were quite literally a wonderful thing for her.
When you walk into a room, this is called roomism
Lol
funniestcommentism.
I would also change my attitude if I got a freaking rod through my body.
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+Mark Mark that was my reaction
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When Mary saw color for the first time, didn't her brain form images from light rays reflected on her retina which is essentially a physical process? Doesn't that mean any new information she receives is also physical and hence the knowledge she was lacking had nothing to do with dualism?
I've been binge watching Crash Course Philosophy. Im so confused now.
The more I know, the less I know.
"Everything psychological is simultaneously biological" -Hank Green, Crash Course Psychology
Learning everything there is to know about something but never experiencing it.. Sounds like my sex life.
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@@TamannaDas .
same
Haha, weak :')
That's a pretty profound analogy, actually.
The mind body problem was the first philosophical thought I ever stumbled across as a teenager. It just struck me one day like why do I need to be aware of myself and this body, when I'm not aware of being anyone else and their body, and yet they can live pretty much just as well?
Sometimes, I like to lie down in my neighbor's yard and pretend that I'm a carrot.
"Our brains just don't have a compartment that can piece together those different modes of evidence." My mind has been blown once again. Thanks Hank, can't wait for the next one!
Mary did learn something new. She learned what her subjective experience of color is through her perceptual filters. Why would that necessitate something other than physical stuff? Perceptual filters are arrangements of neurons that pick important pieces of information out of our sensory input, everyone's are slightly different, but no less physical than a muscle or the color of your eyes.
IMO, the argument that qualia is nonphysical is akin to arguing that fingerprints are nonphysical, simply because of variance.
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Tell me about it, man. Modern-day dualists confuse me...
Oliver Burke They also forget to define what nonphysical stuff is, because the word stuff implies physical matter by definition... What does it mean to be made of nonphysical stuff? How does it interact with physical stuff? Can it? If it can't, how does our mind tell our body how to act? Also, if it can't, then it shares all properties with something that doesn't exist, how do you differentiate them? And if it can, why can't we detect it? And what makes it different from matter in that case? Would it not then just be a different kind of matter/energy, rather than something that isn't matter/energy?
I don't get dualism, it's a pointless convolution.
If we accept that she learned something new then we accept that there is something to learn that isn't exhausted by her super-end-of-science knowledge of brain and body science. The question becomes: what is that new thing? If we accept that it can't be a scientific fact about the brain or perceptual mechanisms (since, if it were, she wouldn't be learning) then it must be something else. Non-physicalists argue that the best candidate is a non-physical property or substance.
Catfactory Information gained through sensory input is modified by structures in the brain that are unique to your brain. The reason she didn't learn it in that room is that the room cannot contain all of the information about color, because learning everything about color includes learning what colors look like. The experiment is designed to indicate dualism, it is biased.
I found the hypothetical with Mary to be extraordinarily unsatisfying as a case for any kind of substance dualism. I don't see how qualia is any kind of evidence for substance dualism.
The hypothetical is stating that Mary learned *everything* about color. So if "Everything" does indeed refer to everything, then walking outside and seeing color for herself would indeed be uninteresting to her. But that's not the way these things work in practice. And that's because, as it's been kinda addressed already, the way we experience things and the way we learn things (in an instructional sense, rather than a hands-on sense) are just fundamentally different. Realistically, Mary could never actually learn everything there is to know about light because the qualia cannot be explained. How color looks to you cannot be shared with anyone else (at least for now, anyway). She's only able to learn the facts because humans are unable to share the qualia. It's much like how a computer user interacts with everything through some form of GUI, with no understanding of the binary code, logic gates, or any of the other processes that turn binary information into visual information. How the binary code translates into visual information, and the visual information itself, are separate things. Does that mean that computers require some kind of non-physical stuff to explain this? No. It's all just a matter of how the components interact. Our ability to understand these components, be it computers or be it our brains, doesn't demonstrate anything about substance dualism, it just demonstrates the limited capacity for our ability to learn and teach without hands-on experience.
I thought the same thing
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The Mary case isn't an argument for substance dualism, but many take it to be a good argument for property dualism.
Catfactory
Based on the basic description I just read online, I'd say I have no real issue with property dualism, other than that the mind is a subset of physical reality; the mind is generated by the interactions of matter.
Well done Crash Course. This in an incredible amount of philosophy to pack into nine minutes. Loving this series.
My philosopy teacher needs to watch ur vidios so that she can learn how to TEACH
And Charley Brown’s teacher says “Wah,wah,wah, wah wah wah!
where u study at if i may ask?
Why not just ignore your teacher and learn from the cute Hank?
my philosophy teacher wrote this script LOL
philosophy teacher starts playing video, scrolls down to see comments..
I used to watch Yu-Gi-Oh... I think most of them were duelists. ;-)
Shame. Shame. Shame. 🔔Shame. Shame. 🔔Shame. Shame. 🔔
Bruce Dunn Nope.
Badum tss!
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Hank must have been so happy when he found out he got to talk about phineas gage
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This was the most intriguing episode yet. I have never been able to come to an answer through my own reflection but after seeing this I kind of lean towards the solution of mysterianism.
I love how you explain things so simply with humor! More power!
I have such an appreciation for CC! Huge thx for creating these videos. They tremendously help me make sense of otherwise incredibly complex topics. Thank you!
This course is one of the best thing ever made on UA-cam, probably on the whole web. I put it side by side with Cosmos. Thank you Hank Green for making me starter every day.
i watched all these videos for the philosophy section of my a-level religious studies course, but still every now and then come back to them, these videos are awesome and stimulate one’s mind in a wonderful manner, thankyou
"Is Your Red The Same as My Red?"
- Vsauce
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I think you mean
"Is your red the same [dramatic pause, eyebrows] as my red?"
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The better question is, does it matter?
Have you ever thought of how other people see color? Is your red the same as someone else's red?
Amazing series so far! Can't wait to see the videos to come!
I'm a physicalist and a therapist. Something I find interesting is that folks easily attribute medication to changing brain chemistry, but they often feel the work we do (talking through problems, changing behaviors to change feelings, etc) is working on the mind. This distinction has always seemed odd to me. Sure, my arm muscle will get bigger if I eat spinach, but it will also get bigger if I flex it repeatedly. I am in the business of brain workouts... lol. This may not be a perfect comparison, but when you practice use of a new neural pathway (change your thoughts), you are changing the composition of your brain... A mind is unnecessary in my work. The distinction simply seems like cognitive dissonance to me- doc works on my brain, therapist on my mind... It's an unwarranted distinction.
I believe that, as you've said countless times in the Crash Course Psychology series, "the mind is what the brain does"
the creator of the thought experiment mary’s room himself said that qualia can be explained through physicalism in a later re-evaluation
Not sure whether I'm a physicalist or dualist, but I do think these are some of the biggest questions we need to make some progress on solving.
Where can I find a class for this in high school? Can I petition to create one? Because I have never been more interested in learning in my life about learning things
Sure. Some highschools offer a class in philosophy that touches on this stuff. It's also widely available at universities.
I wish I could take a philosophy class at my high school! I'm so glad that there are so many resources on the internet and books to learn from though until I can hopefully take a philosophy class in college.
yeah ikr!!!
You won't find one because school teaches you what to think, not how. It's unfortunate .
It is quite unfortunate :(
i really enjoy the way you ask questions at the end. they make me realise that i have learnt some small things, but more importantly i have learnt /of/ things that i did not know before, and need to think about some more. it makes my mind tick. thankyou.
I know I have a soul, since the automatic door always opens for me at the Kwikie Mart.
But does the glass fog up when you breathe on it.
'Way to breathe, no breath'.
Lmao.. it opens for stray baskets...
@@androsp9105 Nope! No reflection either. And Idk what to do since you don't need an invite at Kwikie Mart.. 😊🖤❤
@@TaunellE Who needs the Kwikie Mart? Let's hurl a bricky mart.
@@TaunellE this explains why I've long had a spiritual affinity for shopping carts... I see now, that they have souls too... Such a relief, this expands my dating pool exponentially!
I think this is like how a child cannot comprehend their parents as children just like them. It is simply beyond our comprehension no matter how hard we think about it or how much we attempt to disconnect.Because it remains at the core of our being until we die, we are never able to truly view it post hoc.
My mind is inside my central nervous system
Finally the question I have been waiting for!
I love all your videos but this one... It made my day. Thanks crash course.
Mary does gain understanding when she sees color - she understands what it really looks like.
Before she left the room, she understood what caused it, what it's general purpose was, but she didn't actually know what it looked like. That all changed once she went outside.
What I don't understand is this: Mary knows everything there is to know about colour but before stepping out of her room she had only seen black and white. So when she steps out, despite knowing everything there is to know about colour, how would she distinguish which colour is red, yellow, green, etc? Yes, she will be able to see all the colours but how will she know which is which? I mean if I study everything there is to know about cups but never saw them and then suddenly I did, due to its physical properties, I would know it's a cup. Colour does not have the same physical properties. So wouldn't she be learning something new?
Mary can't learn everything about color in a room without it.
yes, she can, we know everything about ultraviolet colors despite not being able to see it.
ThreeDaysOfDan do we really know everything about them then?
So that means you don't know everything about ultraviolet colors, cause you've never actually seen ultraviolet colors. you've never experienced how it's like to see it and that means you don't know everything about ultraviolet colors. Seeing the color is also learning something new and you have never seen that, so you don't know everything about ultraviolet colors.
she can know everything about the color, but that is very different from knowing how the brain constructs an experience of color based upon photochemical input
Ultraviolet frequency is beyond the visible spectrum frequency band, therefore there is nothing called ultraviolet colour...
I like to think of my mind as a model of my brain, in the scientific sense. It's a useful, accurate way of describing how something works, even if it doesn't deal with the underlying absolute reality.
We just talked about this in class! I love this stuff.
I'd also like to try and chime in with my own solution to "What Mary didn't know."
I think there's a physical difference between knowing how something works and experiencing that something. If Mary's experiments were simply about knowing how color works and how the body perceives it then she would never have the physical experience of color and her physical brain would never be altered chemically as one is when it does experience color. But, if Mary's experiments changed her brain chemistry and gave her the experience of what it was like to see color, then she would actually see color in that black and white room (kind of like how a schizophrenic experiences people/things that aren't there).
I think, when thought of this way, both outcomes support physicalism. If Mary's brain is never altered physically to perceive color, then she never does until she walks outside and is changed physically. Or she changes herself physically in her experiments and does experience color before seeing it for real (although she did see it like a schizophrenic would). Either way, physicalism can be used to make sense of the question.
Could you please make a book out of all these mini-episodes? Would be awesome!
I'm surprised the placebo effect wasn't given greater mention, it's always seemed to me to be fairly decent evidence of the mind affecting the body
Great video once again ! Thanks !
Where is my mind?
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind
Because all things can be answered with The Pixies
Way out in the water hear them singing
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Is there a particular meaning to it? it's been one of my favourite songs for years but I still don't understand - is that the point?
In those videos where colorblind people try on the colorblind-correcting glasses, they always seem to know what color they're seeing. They say, "IS THIS PURPLE?! IS THIS GREEN?! OH MY GOD!" The difference between knowledge and experience is mind-blowing.
You been awesome help for my philosophy class keep up the good work.
one of the best videos so far this series. great brain food.
I love to watch these episodes in the morning and break them down to a level a child might understand. Then, I take my new knowledge to the kids at my work and talk with them about it.
About a week ago one kid said: "At school we always have to give just one correct answer to a question. It's great to sometimes not have answers at all."
The mind is just the Operating System or the organic computer that we all are. Constantly being reprogramed and updated with new "software". Lets call it "selfware".
of*
or 'Self Aware'. Consciousness. I like the analogy.
The brain isn't hardware, it's wetware!
That said, if the mind is like software and the brain is like hard/wetware, is multiprocessing possible? ;) A computer can really only do as many things simultaneously as it has cores. My macbook has 4 cores, but it can seemingly run 175 processes simultaneously. Is there any way to do something similar with the brain/mind?
***** The symbols are just the syntax and encoding, the same way that 2 different neural structures can encode the same semantics each given a different signal. Writing a program in Python vs Lisp will have very different syntax and encoding, but they have the same semantics.
The mind isn't the OS, it is the user. The OS is our personality and character.
I've been waiting for philosophy of the mind!
Keep doing work, the world is changing slowly but surely
I'd love to hear about Alfred North Whitehead, and the idea that matter can be conscious.
learning philosophy in quarantine kind of feels like the cave analogy but not to that extent
these are so helpful for my a levels, thanks so much
Perfect. Good job!
I may have an answer for the experiment of Mary using the physicalism argument: when Mary learns about color in her B&W room, her brain learns it through her temporal and frontal lobes (areas responsible for learning and thinking); however, when she sees colors, her brain learns them through occipital lobe (responsible for vision). The fallacy of the presented physicalism argument is that it assumes the brain is a single being. However, it is not! Learning through temporal/frontal lobes is different from learning through the occipital lobe. This can explain why Marry learns something when she walks out the room using the physicalism argument. (BTW, thank you for your grrrreaaaat course! I'm really enjoying it!)
Are you a neuroscientist?
what is the mary problem? The qualia like every other perception and memory is an electric process in the brain, so when you see red it's a different physical process. So yeah she learned something new by experiencing it, what it's like to experiencing it.
Technically, by learning everything about color, she can learn what it is like to experience color. Therefore, when going out, she can predict all the experiences that she's going to have.
I think the real problem with mary is that language is limited. She has trouble book learning what it's like to experience seeing colour because we lack the tools to communicate experiences except by comparing them to experiences we've already had. If we had a perfect way to communicate I don't think mary would learn anything new when seeing colour for the first time.
imaytag The effectiveness of that communication is the forgotten assumption of the thought experiment.
But that's not how Brains woirk, at least not right now
You can't use laguage to explain everything and your brain does not work the way tghe porblme poses, you can't just leaarn everythoing about guns and shoot one flawlessy, but that's because we are not as developed as we need for such actions
With simulated interactions via Brain-machine interfaces you might feel a color or an experience without it being really real, juts a bunch of signals in your brain
+WingedWyrm But she can not learn what it's like to experience color without actually experiencing color, because color is a subjective sensation and can not exist outside of experience. There is no way to know what it's like to see the color red apart from actually seeing it.
Thank you for getting back to philosophy
OMG at 5:35 reference to Ceasar being betrayed was perfect !
estoy viendo de nuevo todos los capítulos amigoooo, que dios te bendiga jaja 💛💜
I had these question my whole life, and now I leared other people thougth about it to, its called Dualism. Im so happy to know that i'm not a wierd dude with strange thoughts !! 😂Thanks for the vjdeo!
I always think this watching his videos
That thought experiment is easily answered. Mary wouldn't learn anything new about a color just because she is seeing it for the first time; she is learning what it's like to actually see the color. It's not something she learns about red, but something she learns more-or-less about her eyes: "This is how my eyes perceive red."
10/10 series.
Is marry a black and white person ?
Blood is red
She could be colour blind
Even if colored blind in a legit black and white sense, walking outside, there would be just as little color, plus she wouldn't have know *everything* about color if she was still subjected to new experience. That requires a lack of knowledge.
It's a thought experiment, not a realistic scenario. So yes, she would have to be. The animation here making her colored when stepping outside is making this unnecessarily confusing.
Maybe she's really pale with black hair, and there are no mirrors, so she can't see her eyes.
After I fell 70 feet off a cliff, I experienced life detached from my body, so I know from personal experience that mind is separate from body. However, I couldn’t go back to my body very well-once I rejoined my body, I had to wait for months before my mind actually began to function normally again. So I guess the mind is separate from the body, but physical things that affect your body also affect your mind. Gosh dang it, minds are weird, with dual citizenship both within the physical world and without it!
You did not, it was an illusion. Look into neuroscience to understand these things.
Substrata85 do you not think I have? Obviously, I am interested in neuroscience, especially after experiencing a coma! I’m saying it’s weird that there’s more than just physical reality within the mind, but you don’t have to believe me! However, leave me alone if you don’t buy it. I’m not going to suddenly realize that I was wrong by studying neuroscience. I have, and based on my experience and my knowledge, I have formulated my belief. It’s okay if you think I’m wrong, we’re entitled to our opinions, but you don’t have to be such a know-it-all and say that I’m wrong and that I should study neuroscience.
0:55 MINDBLOWN!!!!!!!!! MY ENTIRE REALITY SHATTERED
the intro is well done. good work composer
Oh my gosh this was so satisfyingly mind-blowing. The mind and the brain are so freaking amazing they can't even begin to fathom themselves by themselves lol
Mind is a process that arises from our brain.
You left me hanging in there, omg. I want to know more :( my mayor is not related to this at all but I will learn anyway!! :)))
Very informative
Mary did learn something new, however the non physical mind is still physical, and here is why: When Mary learned about color her brain activated particular regions constituting memory, and the brain recorded very specific nural patterns. This is what we experience as memory and associative memory. Lets say this pattern is represented by the following code: 1234. Every time Mary attempts to recall the information she learned and mentally visualizes the tv, her brain repeats this code. When Mary steps outside for the first time she sees color. Her brain identifies color but does not truly understand what red looks like, nor does she have any 'nueral code' associated with the visualization of red. Seeing the color red activates what she knows about color (1234) but adds a new sensation. Emotion, visual representation, and connections between them. The code 1234 is changed. For example now instead of thinking of red and visualizing/ recalling wavelength and properties, she now recalls what a red flower looks like, 2345. So now when she thinks of color, instead of 1234 being recalled, she recalls 12233445.
This is the same reason that when you smell a particular smell, taste a particular taste, or otherwise interact with the 5 senses, you recall memories with images, and other sensory information attached. An easy way to confirm this would to be to ask a man who is 30 and was colorblind from birth, what the color blue looks like. He will be unable to give you any description. Then teach him the wavelength, frequency, and other quantifiable information about the color blue. After he knows this information ask him again what the color blue looks like. He will still be unable to give you an answer. Here is why: Memory is a physical process (like emotion, taste, smell, touch, and sound) that our brains represents as non tangible information we can identify. (like in a dream)
All this information is based on first hand experience with said information. When Mary learns about color, she interacts with the IDEA of color which is not tangible in of itself. But the first time she interacts with it, Mary has discovered new information, which gets added to "the same data banks" as the intangible information. If the Mind and Brain were both tangible and intangible, we would be able to separate this information in 2 different places, and it would be recalled separately. Because this does not happen, and all information is pulled from the same physical location, it must be tangible. Ergo, the mind is physical, not intangible. To back up these statements take for example this: Exposure to elements of the physical world shape the way we think, feel and act through repetitious cycles of specific chemicals released in the brain. Sex feels good, because dopamine is released by the brain when you have sex. If sex does not feel good, this is because your dopamine centers are not working properly. Fetishes make sex feel better because our brains have a connection to elements of said fetish that further induce dopamine release, causing a more intense pleasure.
To simplify the above this is what I consider to be the proof required to disprove the non physical or intangible mind
Information is the exposure to variables using one or more of the 5 senses. >>>Information does not have to be true or correct, only observed
The mind is the data bank of all exposures and how they are interlocked with other exposures. >>>This is how we generate thought, ideas, and basically our identity
If you remove the 5 senses, you would be unable to become exposed and therefore lack any information >>>You cannot imagine what a Sganalgibarf is without using at least 1 of 5 senses, even if you provide an idea to what it could be, that too is dependant on exposure to reading the word Sganalgibarf and is conceptualized by previous information on what your brain may consider relavent information. AKA the 5 senses
Without information you cannot construct thought >>>If you can imagine you not existing, (Which you cannot) this is what the lack of the 5 senses would feel like. AKA you wouldn't even know you are alive
Without thought you have no mind >>>I Think, Therefore I am
Boyo you wrote a lot. But I have a paper due tonight on the Mind-Body problem tonight for my philosophy class so I appreciate it, haha.
My cat, who was sitting on my lap while I was watching this, approves of this video.
This is a stellar piece; akin to a book that was celebrated for its depth and understanding. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove
Yay for bringing up Frank Jackson's Knowledge argument and qualia! Surprised you didn't mention David Chalmers' hard/soft problem of consciousness and p-zombies though.
If Mary learned something new when she saw color, that doesn't prove substance dualism true. That just suggests that Mary didn't really know everything about color, thus making the premise false.
Marcos Piérola
Jackson's argument is misrepresented here, he said that Mary learnt all of the _physical_ facts about colour, i.e. all the information science could give. The question is then if there is more to experience and consciousness than merely the physical, if she learns something then dualists would argue that the answer is yes.
@@justtheouch she learnt how her brain would perceive color through her eyes tho. if the brain structure can output different interpretations of red then the argument fails. all we know. for now is that output must return an non null value. so red must have a visual representation.
@@cosminroman5878 but she hadn't perceived color itself yet, just everything known about colors, their frequencies, what parts of the eye render those facts, etc.
@@cosminroman5878 She would know how colour would be perceived through specifically her eyes in a scientific way because that's something you can physically know about colour.
@@dazzasenchy she didn't know how her brain would process the experience of color. our experience of consciousness is a whole, but the physical brain is made up of many distinct electrochemical signals (not a single whole), suggesting that the physical reality is not all that exists.
I’m so much of a physicalist that I don’t believe in free will.
My friend(s) hate when I use that as an excuse to listening to the voices in my head. 😅
Gratitude has been shown to rewire your brain and body on a physical level. So beliefs and notions can in fact change your physical states, however slowly!
so glad you got back to substance dualism, I was wondering if you would bring up Descartes again
Philosophy removes the good minds from brains and replaces them with confused minds.
When Mary was in the room she learned about colour, but gained only projections of them. Jackson was inconsistent.
I agree, Mary did learn about the scientific properties of the color red: its wavelength, what its made up of, etc. If by projections you mean false representations, then I would agree that Jackson was inconsistent, but this thought experiment was saying that Mary is given every true explanation for the physical properties of the color red (in this case). So assuming that she understands how the color red worked physically, would she have understood the color red any better by having the experience of actually seeing red? In what way would the material brain change when Mary stepped outside of the room?
In my personal opinion, I think that her brain wouldn't have changed physically (at least not in any significant way), but instead she would learn something new by gaining an experience about what color looks like.
The Mary's Room experiment presents the challenge of considering SUBJECTIVE QUALIA as opposed to OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. No-one can ever ''learn'' what their own subjective experience of anything will be like until they have actually experienced it. And once having experienced it for themselves, no-one is ever able to convey the actual EXPERIENCE to anyone else - only the REPORT of it. So, Mary DOES learn something new from going outside the room.
thanks for this man ur awesome
I think Mary learned something because she was able to learn what the colors actually looked like. Correct me if I am wrong
You've pretty much summed it up even neater than they did in the video :-)
The physicalist would say, suppose Mary's understanding of neuroscience is much more advanced than our own. She is able to determine the exact neural firings that accompany the perception of the color red. Being also versed in electronic enginering, she devises a machine that causes her brain's neurons to fire in exactly that way. She has "seen" red and will learn nothing when she steps outside.
If she did learn something new then she didn't know everything about the visible spectrum, right?
True, however I don't see how this is an argument for duelism.
I think she learned something but what she learned could be summed up buy the emotions she feels which stem from chemicals in the body and her seeing the colors is just her eyes processing the information they've recieved
Is "first-person experience" synonymous with "conscious experience?"
well done
wonderful!
Physicalist here.
IMO the mind is a continuous and sustained process (of a brain), not a substance or object.
Yup. The brain produces the mind.
+Shark Horse
Mind you (no pun intended), do you mean that the brain produces the mind (therefore there is is some separation between the two but not substance wise, I believe called property dualism) or are the brain and mind one and the same (i.e. the brain doesn't produce the mind, but what we consider to be our mind is actually the processes of our brain, such as neurons firing in a distinct pattern)
To clarify, is a thought _caused_ by firing neurons (implying thought is seperate to the brain) or is it _actually_ the neurons firing (implying thought and brain processes are the same thing)?
Josh Cottle Don't know. Such details are best left to someone more qualified, like a team of neurologists and psychologists working together.
Out of curiosity - does it have to be a brain? E.g. why couldn't a computer RAM be a mind [also a a continuous and sustained process]? Or what about brain-like objects in alien life forms that are silicon-based and not carbon-based, these brain-like objects are not brains, because brains are biological entities based on carbon, but it seems to me that they could think just like us?
This is shown through how we are coming to understand memory. Where we thought memory may have had storage space, it turns out that it is more likely that there are simply trails left in our nuero-pathways that allow neurons to fire faster. Over time these chemical trails will fade unless they are continually used and more chemicals are distributed.
This is part of why you can't just clone a brain cell for cell and have the same person. Your personality and memories are the state that the makeup of your brain are in and not a physical aspect of the cells themselves.
AW YEEE CRASH COURSE PHILOSOPHY TIME TO LUBE UP
you got me through uni human anatomy exams now my philosophy essay thank u
Simply understanding how something works is only one part of knowledge, observation is something completely different and equally valuable. Mary could not possibly have understood how colour functioned since she had never had a chance to see them and compare them.
I'm disappointed you didn't include idealism
Paladin Christian SAME!!!
Yeah, where's my Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Bradley, Sprigge as a contemporaneus and etc
Or Panpsychism!
Consciousness scientists: "Challenge accepted."
Lmao
I think that in most thing the best explanation is holistic explanation. both sides are necessary.
I recommand reading William Jaworski's «Introduction to the Philosophy of the Mind» for a wider introductionnary reading about this subject in which you might learn about other kinds of physicalism (eliminative and non-reductive), Hempel's dilemma, substance dualists attempt at solving the mind-body problem such as divine intervention and parallelism, and other dual-attribute theories like emergentism and panpsychism and an indrotuction to the hylemorphist theory of the mind.
That was a very pretty cat.
the "mind" is just the brain braining
This kid understands
Or maybe the kid is kidding.
+Lukas don leave
Or...the mind is what the brain does.
lol this is my favorite way to say this now
Consciousness is an emergent phenomena that results from the multitude of brain and body activity. This is how it can have cause and effect relationships without being an integral part of the brain or body.
Your courses have saved my grades