Re: The problem of intelligence.

"JPL" <park avenue> wrote:
> "Curt Welch" <curt@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:20060108213941.091$gR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Risujin <risujin@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Curt Welch wrote:
> ...
> > The mind and the brain are one and the same. There are not two things
> > here, it's only one.
>
> Agreed, in the sense that mind is brain activity. But why do they appear
> as "two" ?

I don't understand why you would ask that as if I didn't already give you
my answer. The 200 line message you are replying to was written entirely
for the purpose of explaining why they appear as two. It's because we
can't normally hear, see, small, taste, or touch the brain activity
assocated with our "thoughts" so that brain activity appears separate in
nature from all the other brain activity which we call "the physical
world".

> Although I agree that language can play a lot of tricks on us,
> I believe that the idea that language is the only "culprit" that bugged
> us into mind-body dualism is naive.

I've never claimed it was _only_ a language problem. The langauge problem
is what blocks people from believing the truth with it's shown to them.
The problem started simple because we can't see, hear, taste, smell, or
touch, the brain activity which is connected with our private thoughts.
All the brain activity is very physical, but we don't know it's there
because without the help of other equipment, we can't see, hear, touch, or
smell all this physical acitivty happening in our head. If we can't sense
it as being part of the physical world, we assume (incorrectly) that it's
not part of the physical world.

> In my view, the sense of mind-body
> (mind-matter) dualism is a natural consequence of how the brain is wired
> to it's environment via the (myriad) senses.
>
> I think the core reason that we have a sense of mind-brain duality is
> simply organic - and actually quite easy to understand and explain. Just
> as, analogously, cross eyed vision makes people see two objects whereas
> in fact there is only one. Language only comes in later where the
> cross-eyed person can identify two identical objects verbally.

Yes, I agree the core reason this myth got started and continues to be
believed is simply physiology. It's because the brain activity is
physical, but yet we can't sense it with out normal external senses, so we
think it must be caused by something non-physical.

But if we can't sense our private thoughts, how do we know it's happening?
The fact is, we can sense it because it wouldn't exist if we couldn't sense
it. We can sense our thoughts just as easilly as we can sense light and
sound. But once again, our langauge is all messed up so we don't normally
use the word "sense" to talk about out ability to sense our own thoughts.
We "sense" light, but we "have" thoughts. Why isn't it the other way
around, why don't we "have" light, and "sense" thoughts?

It's just more errors in the design of our language which makes it that
much harder to correctly understand what's happening in our head. It's
hard for me to correctly describe what's happening because the langauge I
use is a mess of errors.

We need to change the normal meaning of the word sense to make it correctly
describe what is happening. We sense light and we sense brain activity.
Every neuron in our head is in fact a sensor which is sensing the activity
of other neurons. We don't have 5 senses, we have 100 billion senses.

When I see a cat, the fact that I know it's a cat I'm looking at happens
becuase by "cat" sensor has been activated (along with thousands of other
sensors all working in parallel telling me it's a grey young house cat
etc).

When I hear a cat, the fact that I know it's the same cat I'm looking at is
because some of those same cat sensing neurons have been activated.

But when I think about a cat at times when I don't hear or see a cat, how
does the brain know that I'm thinking about a cat and not thinking about a
dog? It's because some of those same cat sensing neurons have once again
been activated. Once again, the brain is just sensing "cat".

But what is the cause of those thoughts about a cat? The brain can't sense
the cause of the cat thoughts. They just happen for reasons which we can't
sense.

When we see a cat, we understand that the cause of the cat thoughts was
that our eyes turned in the direction that allowed them to pick up a visual
signal of a cat. When the cat walks out of the room, we understand that we
cna no longer see the cat because it's no longer in view. So it's the view
of the cat that is causing the cat thoughts we have when we see the cat.
And all the things the brain can identify as the "cause" of these cat
thoughts, exist in the domain we no of as the physical world.

But when we have private thoughts about cats, we can't sense the cause of
those private thoughts. So we just make up a name for it and we call that
cause "our soul". Or just "self". Well, the real cause of the thoughts is
the physical activity our brain just like the cause of the cat vision was
the cat. But because we can't see hear taste or smell that physical brain
activity, we don't know that it's happening in the same domain as the cat
which walks around our room exists in.

But we do know enough about the brain now to know that it is the cause of
our our thoughts, and we do know that it exists in the same domain as the
cat does. And we have know this for close to 100 years now.

So why is the mind brain body still such a mystery to so many people? It's
because they have been brainwashed by our langauge to believe that the mind
and the brain are different. The very fact that we have two words for the
brain (mind and brain) when there is only one thing here is the root cause
of why so many people have a problem understanding the mind brain split
problem even though the answer was uncovered 100 years ago. The answer is
that there is no split - the language is just wrong. We don't have two
things, we only have one thing. You can call it a mind or a brain, but
it's one and the same thing either way.

And of course, brain and mind are not the only words in error. There are
thousands of words that all support the same fundamential error - the error
that activity in the mind is not physical.

To help break your mind of this error, just understand that every thought
we have is in fact, just the activty of your neurons buzzing in our heads.
Our "thoughts" are nothing more than us sensing the buzzing of the neurons
in our head. When we think about "cats" it's just the buzzing of nurons
like a million little gears turning in our head. When we look around the
room and see all sorts of stuff, it's not the "stuff" we are seeing. It's
the buzzing our our neurons that is happening in response to the light
falling on our eyes. So the stuff we see in the room, really isn't in the
room at all. It's just the activity of neurons in our head. The stuff in
the room triggered all this activity in our head, but it's not the stuff we
are really "seeing". All we are "seeing" is the physical activity of the
neurons in our head.

So, as we look around and see all this information around us, there are
multiple neurons firing in our head for every fact we know about the room
around us. We can't know anything, without a nueron firing in our head.
And everything we knonw, or sense, or understand, is the result of brain
activty. I say what I see my hand, but in fact, I just see a ton a neural
activity which representes the idea of my hand.

The more we learn to think like that, the easier it becomes to undestand
that we don't have both a mind and a brain, we have only one device, and
it's a physical device which is the location of all the physical stuff we
call mental activity.

One confusion in the mind brain debate is that people see the materialistic
argument as a denial of the obvious dualism that exists. As I argue above,
we don't have both a mind and a brain, it's just one. There is no split.
The problem however is that dualism is real. That is, everything
"external" like cats do exist, and yet we can also have private thoughts
about cats. So what exactly is the nature of this dual sensory existence?
What happens when I see a cat which is different from thinking about cats?

The answer is that qualia are real. When I see a cat, both the cat exists,
and my mential activity which represents the cat is real. But the mental
activity which happens is nothing more than the physical activity happening
in my brain, in resposne to being exposed to the vision of a cat.

However, the confusing part here is that the "real cat" only exists to each
of us, as our own brain activtiy. Everything we know, and can sense, about
cats, is nothing but brain activity happening in our own head. So
everything I understand about the universe, exists only in my head. Part
of my brain is used to deal with what I know about cats, and another part
of my brain is used to deal with what I know about brains. Part of my
brain is used to deal with direct sensory signals coming from cats and part
of my brain is used to deal with the abstract idea of cat from any sense.

So the real dualism exists in a few different ways that people keep
confusiong with each other. First, there is the brain, vs the universe.
An obvious and real split that creates the observer, and the observed. But
of course, the brain is able to observer itself since it is part of the
universe it is observering.

Then there is the physical mental split. But in reality, that split exists
as different parts of the physical brain. When we sense a cat, either a
phyiscal cat or a thought about a cat, some of the same parts of the brain
are being activated. But there are different parts of the brain which are
activated when we see a cat, or hear a cat, or think about cat. And yet
another part of the brain which is activated when we start to talk about
the active of seeing a cat. So much of what people want to label as
dualism, is in fact, just different parts of the physical brain at work.
The dualism is real, because we use different parts of the brain for
thinking these different types of thoughts. But those forms of dualism are
nothing more than a physical division of the brain.

In all cases, what people choose to talk about as dualism, ends up being a
physical partitoning of the universe. It's either outside vs indside the
head, or just different parts of the brain they are talking about when they
talk about the dual nature of things.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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