Is the Mind Physical?: Dissecting Conscious Brain Tissue

[Impenitent]

if the mind wasn't physical, lobotomies wouldn't work...

-Imp

[Dalek Prime]

if the mind wasn't physical, lobotomies wouldn't work...

-Imp

Nor drugs, psychiatric or other.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Well, I have to say that I am impressed, once again, with your ability to created and sustain an argument. I find myself at a complete lost to find words to build a counter argument.

If the mind isn't the process created by the physical brain, and thus defined and dependant on it, what is it then? Some bullshit 'soul'? A ghost? I'm waiting.

Why are you trying to pretend I'm a dualist?

[Hobbes' Choice]

Unfortunately in the course of my various physical ailments I've had to undergo a number of surgical procedures under general anaesthetic. I have a close friend who is an anaesthetist and she reckons general anaesthesia is precisely analogous to death. I'm more than willing to believe it because it is a complete cessation of any form of consciousness whatsoever, especially one's awareness of the passing of time. One minute a pretty nurse is asking you to count backwards from 100 and the very next minute a different pretty nurse is smiling at you and offering you a cup of tea. You could have been out of it for 10 hours or fifty years and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I assume death will be much the same without the pretty nurses.

I know this purple perfection. On waking, it's like you are re-booting and accessing your memories to seek the meaning of your surroundings. You have to re-built your raison d-etre, your identity.

Death would be much the same without the cup of tea, ever.

[Hobbes' Choice]

if the mind wasn't physical, lobotomies wouldn't work...

-Imp

I was hoping that the article would consider split brain syndrome; where the two halves of the brain become separated.
In such individuals when experiments are done, one eye can see what the other cannot, and the "individual" is incapable of communicating the information the other half has. If the mind were immaterial dualism would have to account for how it is that two minds seem to be in place, in experimental conditions as simple as covering an eye with a patch,.

The article omitted to include such evidence.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Unfortunately in the course of my various physical ailments I've had to undergo a number of surgical procedures under general anaesthetic. I have a close friend who is an anaesthetist and she reckons general anaesthesia is precisely analogous to death. I'm more than willing to believe it because it is a complete cessation of any form of consciousness whatsoever, especially one's awareness of the passing of time. One minute a pretty nurse is asking you to count backwards from 100 and the very next minute a different pretty nurse is smiling at you and offering you a cup of tea. You could have been out of it for 10 hours or fifty years and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I assume death will be much the same without the pretty nurses.

You won't remember what a pretty nurse is when you're dead, so you won't miss that part anyways.

Happily, in my 51 years, I've managed to avoid requiring general anaesthetic.

You don't know what you are missing. It's a hoot. Waking is perfection. A feeling I can only describe as purple. Interestingly the Matrix idea of a blue and a red pill, seems to come together here. This pill is both simultaneously. Not the constructed reality of society, nor the gross cold reality of necessity, but something that is at the same time both and neither.

[Obvious Leo]

Hobbesy. You have literally and physically experienced what I am talking about. This is not scary stuff. Tea is only tea.

[Obvious Leo]

You don't know what you are missing. It's a hoot. Waking is perfection.

So good to hear it said. Waking is a rebirth, like all that's passed before is a reminder of the truth of our own mortality. Our science and our technology have enabled us to comprehend the truth of our existence and we spit in the face of ourselves if we refuse to acknowledge it. We only get one go.

[Obvious Leo]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

[Dalek Prime]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

Well Leo, I won't let you dismiss my core philosophy so easily. I disagree that you can't compare the two. I think it's just counterintuitive for you, as for most, and what shapes an antinatalist is that shift in perspective. It's not simply the opposite, like -3 vs +3. And people reject talking about it because they reject words to compare nothing, in a legalistic manner.

[Hobbes' Choice]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

Existence has no opposite. There is no symmetry. Here or after. It's not black or white; empty or full. It is or it is not.

[Hobbes' Choice]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

Well Leo, I won't let you dismiss my core philosophy so easily. I disagree that you can't compare the two. I think it's just counterintuitive for you, as for most, and what shapes an antinatalist is that shift in perspective. It's not simply the opposite, like -3 vs +3.

There are no degrees to nothing. Its just nothing; not a minus.

[Dalek Prime]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

Existence has no opposite. There is no symmetry. Here or after. It's not black or white; empty or full. It is or it is not.

No shit Sherlock. I just said that by using the numberline example of -3 vs 3, and saying its not a negation. Now, stop interrupting a decent conversation with Leo, with your chatter.

BTW, that's why Benatar call it an asymmetry. Go read it.

[Hobbes' Choice]

You sort of have to have been there, Dalek, much as though I respect what you're trying to say from your purely abstract point of view. There is existence and non-existence and there is no valid basis for comparison between the two. Existing is what we do until we stop doing it.

Existence has no opposite. There is no symmetry. Here or after. It's not black or white; empty or full. It is or it is not.

No shit Sherlock. I just said that by using the numberline example of -3 vs 3, and saying its not a negation. Now, stop interrupting a decent conversation with Leo, with your chatter.

Or you could go and fuck yourself.

[Dalek Prime]

Lol!

Hobbes, if I had the cure for cancer (and nonexistence is), I would consider refraining from discussing it with you, just to save myself frustration on both counts (having to explain it, and having to explain it to you.) Just saying.