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As I said earlier, I am not hostile to your thesis, but you have arrived at it by an illegitimate route. To say ideas or consciousness do not exist in fact is absurd.
The "something that it's like" to be a bat is not any sort of entity or substance we can find and label as consciousness, because that something is the bat itself.
I'm familiar with Nagel's essay and Dennet's work. They don't exactly say the same things, do they? Dennet is trying to show that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a by-product of automatic processes in which free will plays no part; Nagel, if I recall correctly, is clear that qualia are real and are components of something real, whatever it may be.
This is pure, groundless assumption — not much better, I'm afraid, than 'The Mind is a word and or idea.'
A perfectly healthy, perfectly functioning human body is not a mind unless your definition of mind is something like 'that which has thoughts'. And if so, you could just as easily define a brain, or a building full of people, as a mind. You'd be just as right and just as wrong, because, you see, the qualification 'perfectly functioning' assumes all the necessary inputs and outputs.
NiNjABackflip
Then I must ask what, outside of assumption, shows that there is a mind? I feel that there is sufficient concrete evidence that living human organisms are "the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences". If not, what else could that element be?
What does the word 'awareness' point to?
NiNjABackflip
reply to post by Itisnowagain
What is it the word "awareness" labels?
Then I must ask what, outside of assumption, shows that there is a mind?
Astyanax
People don't have their own thoughts any more, it seems.
Astyanax
As Nietzsche pointed out, Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum is easily refuted by the realisation that 'I' do not control my thoughts; they appear unbidden.
I thought that is precisely the matter about which doubts were being raised? Your position, although you may not have realised it, is one that proclaims the identity of body and mind. You're saying 'mind is body'. Before we go that far, we have to show that mind exists in some sense. You have not shown that yet.
Prove that mind exists (if you can).
Then go on to prove that mind is body (if you can).
I don't normally waste time arguing with itsnowagain, but his or her point about mind being something present in awareness is definitely salient. As Nietzsche pointed out, Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum is easily refuted by the realisation that 'I' do not control my thoughts; they appear unbidden. Where do they appear? Conventionally, we say they appear 'in the 'mind'. So 'mind' is the concept inside which conceptions appear. Well then, where does the concept 'mind' appear?
You are now beginning to feel the sting in the nettle you've grasped. Good luck!
Astyanax
Oh, no. The video curse has descended.
There's an end to intelligent conversation on another thread.
People don't have their own thoughts any more, it seems. They have other people's YouTube videos.
Forget about minds, NinjaBackflip. The question is whether human beings even have brains.edit on 13/12/13 by Astyanax because: of a prepostion nobody would have noticed or cared for except me.
If you watch the Krishnamurti video you may learn something about the subject.
NiNjABackflip
Thought is performed by thinking. Thoughts are of no material consequence until they are written down or expressed. When one thinks a thought, he is merely thinking. Thinking is an action.
Now I might have to critique "thoughts" to better understand them.
NiNjABackflip
By necessity, if it is performed by the agent it is therefor an action. This is what I also believe of mind; even if the agent is unaware that he is thinking, say in sleep or something, he is still performing the act of thinking, like digestion or breathing.
1Learner
"Are you saying that the mind is an agent?"
NiNjABackflip
No I am saying an agent is required to perform mind, that mind is an action.
1Learner
"But what directs the body to perform?
If it is directed to perform, can it be said that there is an agent for the body?"
NiNjABackflip
If we consider that everything within the body is of the body, we can say that the body is that agent. But then again, the body then requires many elements for itself to perform.
NiNjABackflip
When I think of an action, say running, I must imagine something performing it. So I am not really imagining an action called running, but something moving its legs in a manner that is familiar to what we define as running.
The video is not about Krishnamurti.
Astyanax
reply to post by DrunkYogi
If you watch the Krishnamurti video you may learn something about the subject.
- I already know all I need to know about Krishnamurti, thank you very much.
When I want to learn something, I go to a book or to an authoritative web site on the subject. I prefer to get my learning, like my dinner, myself; I have an aversion to ingesting what others have digested and regurgitated