The Mind-Brain relationship

There has been alot of talk on whether the brain creates conciousness/mind or whether our conciousness/mind controls our brain. What are you positions on this?

There is evidence to point toward the mind being independant from the brain (eg NDE's and OBE's), but there is also evidence that says that the brain controlls the mind (eg. brain damage influences conciousness). What is your response to those claims?

Hi, well i've done some philosophy, and i've quit philosophy, over this very issue!!

The debate still rages, but the majority of conservative philosophers decree that there is NO MIND, its all physical. At this end of the argument you have examples like Daniel Dennet's book 'Consciousness Explained'. People in philosophy departments actually go around citing this stuff, bragging that they have it figured out and its only time before medical science, neuro-physicists etc can prove all this.

All a bunch of absolute BS in my humble opinion. These same people will tell you that there is no such thing as free will, as the universe is causal and determined..... without any spontaneous non-casual events whatsoever..... er, except for the big bang, which was both uncaused and spontaneous... etc..... so.... total BS once again, IMO.

On the other side of the argument you have stuff that points to the soft mushy and inexplainable world of experience itself... as phenomenal properties of the mind.... hence the field of 'phenomenology'.... based on experiential qualities.

On this side we have really cool stuff like Thomas Nagel's article 'What is it like to be a bat?' in which he points out that, no matter how much hard bat-science a analytic bat research scientist might perform, they will NEVER ever ever know what it feels like to be a bat, to swoop fly and sense things with that audio sonar thingy.


Also is F. Jackson's famous 'something about Mary' argument about the science genuis (Mary) who grows up locked in a black and white room. No matter how much informatioin about colour, eyesight, brain hardware and physics that she can learn, she does not know the colour green untill she leaves the room for the first time and sees the grass.

So basically we can argue that things like green, love, and feelings, are phenomenal properties that cannot be seen with microscopes in brains.

Thats where the debate starts!

The way I see it is that there is an 'us' that exists that interacts with the physical body. We are shaped by our physical side, and it is shaped by our 'Spirit', 'Essence', "Soul", "Higher Self", "Us", whatever you wish to call it. Our existance seems to touch levels of energy and life that we really do not comprehend yet.

Science, being focused on what can be proven, reproduced, and peer reviewed simply has not gotten anywhere close a full understanding of the totality of human existance. Stories of different forms of reincarnation have always been with us, and I have examined the psychological reasons for humans to want this to be true. It seems to me the stories have some basis beyond human need for Immortality.

I do not believe Life is Pre-Determined, but it do see it as a beyond the level of human comprehension type of causes and effects. When people talk about the 'Big Bang' I can only think how interesting it is that we somehow have a real handle on the Infinity of Space despite the fact that we can see or even sense, only some tiny fraction. Perhaps once we have seen the level of organization that is a step or 10 above Galaxy we might begin to think about how it all formed.

I think it is of importance to Science to think about the big questions, but when I hear the 'Big Bang' mentioned I hear religious music in the background.



A.T
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