Well, my creditors certainly think I do.
They need to lay off "The Matrix"....
I should get a life maybe. Didn't mean to start a smartie-pants thread. I just get tired of reading "Yay Colts" and "Gay Marriage" threads. Thought I'd try something different.<--- I like this little guy
Cogito, ergo sum.
Put his butt in the middle of the road and send an 18 wheeler towards him and see if his neurons fire and tell his mass of cytoplasm to move.A fascinating issue of Time came out a couple of weeks ago. [I know, I know; I am behind on my bathroom reading] It was all about the human brain. In one article Steven Pinker interviewed an array of his fellow materialists, getting their insight on the relationship of the brain and the mind. Several of the contributors (most notablly Daniel Denton) put forth the idea that "you" as a person do not actually exist. Whatever concsiousness you experience is nothing other than the result of firing neurons. There is no "you" sitting at the controls of your consciousness taking in all that the senses provide and reacting accordingly. No soul; no individual identity; just chemical reaction in the brain.
Nothing in the article was particularly new; the ideas put forth there have been around for years. I thought it was interesting to see it in a mass forum like time. Anyhow, it got me to thinking again. If there is no "me" aside from the biology of my brain, how am I to account for the choises I make? Or is that a moot point? What of love, hatred, joy, morality, beauty, pleasure, immorality, pain, etc etc? Do they exist? Do they matter?
To start, I do think there is much we have yet to learn about our brains, and how the brain and the mind connect and overlap. Yet such a minimalist view of identity (whether you are a religious person or not) seems too simple. Anybody else spend cold winter days thinking about such things?
I think it's a great question. (and, I'm behind on my TIME reading too).
Here's my initial response, especially because these ideas about reducing the experience of "self" or "perception of self" to neurons made me think about the experiments of French Impressionist artists during the late 19th century. (seems like a stretch as first, but just follow me for a second...)
Painters like Monet and Renior were trying to capture light in their canvases; they painted very quickly with dabs of color and fast brushstrokes to capture a moment in time, the "impression" of light on a landscape as seen by the human eye. They wanted to bypass the subjectivity of the artist (their personal interpretation of "tree") and capture the scientific effect of light on the actual tree (light "impressed" on the eye's retina).
So, one day Monet and Renoir go to the same frog pond, set up their easels, and paint the same "impression" of the landscape from the exact same angle. Same stimuli, same neurons firing.
But, when you look at thier canvases, they're quite different. Some individual subjectivity found its way into each painting. They were more than what their eye could record.
We are more than our biological existence. And if I ever doubt that, there are many museums full of art that give me evidence of a world beyond mere scientific fact.
(I hope these links turn into images.)
Monet's La Grenouillere
Renoir's La Grenouillere
My brain hurts just reading this.
She's still a good friend now despite the fact that she's now a philosophy professor at Gallaudet. Nobody's perfect. I almost never see that.It's gonna haunt you forever!OMG! That is the issue of Time magazine that I "borrowed" from the doctor's office!
I started a thread last week about how I found that issue so interesting and I didn't have time to finish it while waiting at the doctor's office, so I just took it with me when I left.
Wow--philosophy in mainstream news.
I probably agree with the materialist view the OP described.
