h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sooo, TimeLordOrchy who quite rightly blames 2legs for just about everything(bad?), believes that the body and mind could be irreducibly distinct.

Karl Marx is reported to have said "Religion is the opium of the people". I suppose he meant that mankind has an inborn sense of insecurity. ie. our consciences recognise that we don't control the universe, and there exists something superior to us. This causes us to look for spiritual truth, particularly when in difficulty or are in tune with our environment. Selfish greedy behaviour kills this, and causes us to focus on worldly success. ie. power and wealth
My former wife came from North Wales and she visited India due to a spiritual journey with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the 70's. This 'sect' promoted western people to be free and 'do whatever you like', along with meditation.
She found truth eventually, although not through me.

Yes, the body and mind are irreducibly distinct, IMO.

Warner.

I decided to give your Haldane quote a bit more thought.

First of all I plugged it into google to find out the context, and found it chillingly quoted of about a dozen creationist and apologist websites, probably because it is a quote attributed to Haldane reprinted by the famous Christian apologist C.S.Lewis.

The gist of the apologist 'argument' seemed to be to get someone like me to admit either that my beliefs are not reliable, or my minds are not material, nor evolved randomly.

Well guess what I'm not going to play that game, I'd rather set out the case for neurological understanding and dismantle the objection in the Haldane quote.

I'm not sure when Haldane was speaking, but I'm willing to bet, that neurology has approaching a century of development on him, which is medical science terms is HUGE.

Now in modern neurology, there is little disagreement mind-states are caused by brain states.

We can see this most vividly when something goes wrong in the brain and there is a corresponding alteration in perception. There are epileptics who don't recognise people by sight but by hearing their voice. there are patients who after strokes cannot process anything of the left side (even recalling objects from memory) they will draw half the right half of the Mona Lisa, list the shops down the right side of the street, but turn them around and of course the street has changed all the former shops are gone and a bunch of new ones have appeared. Interestingly there are temporal lobe epileptics who suffer a surge of peceptive and emotional sensitivity so intense, it is described as a religious experience, with some coming to believe they are prophets from god or indeed gods themselves convinced that if they spoke to a crowd of their deep understanding and atatchment to the world people would follow on their every word (because they are god)

Something to think about.


So let's look at Haldane's argument.


"If my mental processes are wholly determined by the motion of atoms"

Well first of all although everything material is made of atoms (that is to say electrons and some combination of quarks) the description Haldane uses it entirely false, atoms don't move within the brain, rather the brain is comprised of millions of neurons, cells which transmit electrochemical signals. The brain is modular, we know this because injury to one part does impair the whole thing but can result in highly localised effects. More recently imaging techniques let us see the brain actively working in discrete and localised ways. Finally, the brain's job is to represent experience.

Now how it does this is very curious, because the variety of tiny process that go on, say in recognising a face or attaching an emotion to a sound or processing visual information (like is that a tiger?) are all representations, that are going on unconsciously, consciousness - is still not understood fully - but the direction of travel seems to be that consciousness consist in paying attention to one or other of these processes at any one time (in an act of recognition or in discovering a large four-legged, orange-and-black, stripy thing in the long grasses.) And again it when there is a neurological disruption to the neruological processing of the electrical signal that the conscious awareness of those processes is confused, otherwise, when we are not consciouslly focussed on an act of cognition like recognising a face or a threat like a larg predatory animal, these proceses just tick along in the unconscious represention of perception.

In short consciousness is an emergent property of the brain's own operation., it is not a module within the brain , but is the 'paying attention to' of all the other modular representations that are occurring.


So since the premise Haldane posited is at best mistaken, we can discard the conclusion, but for completeness sake lets just press on.


"I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true."

Well, I think that's a logical fallacy. since we are shifting referents from the processes of the brain (which I have previously explained Haldane was wrong about) to one of epistemology, how can we know something to be true. The regrettable lapse of logic in the Halndane quote is to transpose one kind or sense of 'knowing' for which there is external and consistent evidence of the empirical kind and then (mis)apply it in a different context to knowledge in general.

Epistemolgy really would require a whole other post to explain, if you want to lowdown version of all the ins and outs go google the word or look it up in wikipedia.

Finally If I may offer another quote, this time from Stephen Pinker: "The mind is not the brain, but what the brain does"

This is what Haldane didn't (or couldn't) recognise in his quote and that's why it is false.

Now not to take anything away from Haldane - a great man, very important and influential in the theory of natural selection, and evolutionary genetics: but on this, he's flat out wrong.

Warner,

What is it with you and (mis)quoting people out-of-context?

>>Karl Marx is reported to have said "Religion is the opium of the people". I suppose he meant that mankind has an inborn sense of insecurity. ie. our consciences recognise that we don't control the universe, and there exists something superior to us. This causes us to look for spiritual truth, particularly when in difficulty or are in tune with our environment. <<

Karl Marx did say it, or rather he wrote it down in his book from 1843 'Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right', criticising - yup you've guessed it - Hegel's philosophy.


This is the full quote from the introduction:


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"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

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I don't see how you can conclude what you have above about the recognition of superior entities from that. Reads his words carefully and you'll see Marx is criticising religion as a shackle - the self consciousness of the lost man, the cry of oppressed creature, the call to give up your illusions.' This is the opposite of what you imagine, insecurity and a cause to search for spiritual truth? Pull the other one it's got bells on it.

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I'm really sorry TimeLordOrchy if my on-going debates with Warner are hijacking your thread, but this nonsense really needs to be opposed and corrected.

>>the body and mind are irreducibly distinct<<

So you are a dualist then?

Clive
I am aware that Karl Marx used the famous quote in an atheist context !
Perhaps I didn't express myself very well. Perhaps you can explain to me what he means by this:
"It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality."

>>"The mind is not the brain, but what the brain does"<<
I'm not impressed.
"The body is not the person, but what the person does". ie. When his body is dead, he does nothing

If you accept the above, then consider, as his brain is part of his body, it follows that his brain is not the person either.

as someone famous whose name escapes me at the moment said: I don't have a brain; I *am* a brain.

as I've asked, many times many ways, Is it possible . . . A42586266

If any of the apparent mind/body dualists about this place would care to explain the workings of the interface between the mind and the body, the material and the immaterial, the physical and the spiritual, the ghost and the machine, etc. I would be interested to read those thoughts, but I must say that in all the years of asking I've had little response and less that's coherent.

If it's not possible to construct the device between body and mind, does that prove that they're not distinct?

One more time:

Is there information transfer between the ghost and the machine? If so the physical body is able to detect the immaterial spirit, or, to put it another way, the soul is somehow able to have an effect on the physical world, i.e., the body. What is the means of this action? If the body can detect the emanations of the soul, would it not then follow that a physical device could be constructed to do the same thing? Or is there something magical about human body stuff that is different from other physical material?

to answer your question warner, no, it would not prove that they're not distinct. In fact, such a device would be (the first) empirical evidence that the soul *is* something distinct from the body.

Of course, if such a device could be constructed, it would also suggest that the soul is not actually immaterial, but rather, that it is just another bit of the physical universe.

Ditto for a device that could detect god intervening in the physical world.

>>explain to me what he (Marx) means by this:
"It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality."<<

Honestly, I think it's meaning needs to be determined in the wider context surrounding it.

I don't think the extract is necessarily atheist, first of all, it's certainly hostile to religion but not for the reason of disbelief.

Remember Marx is inverting and challenging Hegel; where Hegel was a dialectical idealist, Marx is a dialectical materialist.

That is one state of material being will meet it's antithesis, and in being annihilated form a new synthesis. His view was, I think I am correct in saying, that Philosophy was inadequate to the task of change (contra Hegel's idealism), and that in class struggle would society be over-turned and changed through the dialectic of the discordant forces between, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to the ruin of capitalism.

So in this book where unlike Das Kapital he's not setting out his ideological agenda, he's setting out his philosophical opposition, with a paragraph by paragraph critique of Hegel.

And this is important because he's challenging Hegel's view of 'human essence' consisting in the spirit (you may remember I raised this Hegelian 'geist' in our discussions about pantheism) so the phrase is not a idle one but has a specific referent in this case Hegel's concept of human essence.

For Hegel the essence of man lay in his realisation and dialectical progress of self-consciousness (you may have heard of the master-slave dialect, the unhappy consciousness and so on) well these are dialectical states that consciousness goes on it's its relationship with the world towards a being of self-consciousness ultimately to emerge as reason and a state of government.

Hegel therefore conceives of Human essence in the abstract, and Marx is arguing it is attained in the concrete, in the social acts and interactions, particularly for self-subsistence, in relation to the means of production.

So for Marx what constrains the human is not the dialectic of his consciousness but the dialect of material reality , and in order to overturn their consciousness (of themsevles as workers , proletariat etc) one had to look at changing society, it will not be accomplished otherwise.

Now this is a society in which there is religion, so his purpose is to examine and critique the role of religion. And the way he does it is to see it it as one of the ways that people interpret the brutal and difficult situation they found themselves in and then accept it.

And so he starts:

"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world."

He then starts listing the things religion is, and without wanting to go through them one-by-one the gist is that religion is a yoke of control, control not specially in the repressive sense rather a lens of explication a stupefying cotton wool of soothing explanation so he says it's an encyclopaedia, is the general theory of the world - that sets up this idea that it is a way of interpreting the world around you. Then he shifts gear: religion is not merely a way to see the world it moralises it (eg the protestant work ethic), it consoles (life may be terrible but work hard for eternal life) and justifies (there is a natural hierarchy, the bourgeoisie are at the top and you are at the bottom.)

and then we come to the line you want me to explain:


"[Religion is] is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality."

I'm going to suggest fantastic in this sense is to be rendered as fantasy not 'great and wonderful' and realisation is literally the 'making real'.

And remember at al times this is a response to Hegel not a diatribe in the abstract.

So we have: 'religion is the fantasy made real of (Hegel's) human essence, since it has not (and for Marx can not) acquire true reality, (because reality is vested in the dialectic material reality of the state.)

He then moves on: "the struggle against religion is the struggle against the world" [...] "Religious suffering is an expression of real suffering."

Then comes the famous bit:

"The sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Religion (as a part of the state) - i.e the lens though which the proletariat are kept docile with ideas of justified suffering and promises of eternal reward for hard work needs to be abolished. It too must for Marx be abolished with the changing of society (hence how Marx is confused with atheism)

Finally he ends that extract

"The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

i.e Religion is a product of the society, and in criticising that he is in fact critiquing the larger while of which this is a (dys)functional part.

after all that, I misread your question warner.

if it is not possible to construct the device I suggest, then one must explain why it is impossible. What is it about the physical body which makes it a special receiver for soul waves? It's made of the same stuff as everything else in the physical universe, isn't it. What's different?

if it is not possible to construct the device it does not prove that soul and body are not distinct, but it does suggest that soul may be fiction.

>>"The mind is not the brain, but what the brain does"<<
I'm not impressed. "The body is not the person, but what the person does". ie. When his body is dead, he does nothing.

If you accept the above, then consider, as his brain is part of his body, it follows that his brain is not the person either.<<


I don't understand your argument here Warner.

The body is not the person, [the body] is what the person does. that doesn't begin to make sense. I think you may even have got your terms backwards.

I hate to even ask: but I think to properly grasp your point, and I'm not being obtuse, but what do you mean by person, you mean their personality, their subjective experiences, their social relationships - is that it?

for what it's worth the idea of 'mind' I am working with is the kind I set out above of a subjective 'paying attention to' emergent consciousness of neurological modality, representing and perceiving external and internal stimuli.

So when I say the mind is what the brain does, I think that's reflected in my definition, the mind emerging from the operation of the neural pathways in the brain being active.

But I don't understand fully what you mean by 'person' in this your context.

>When his body is dead, he [the person] does nothing.<

Assuming we are talking about the same thing that seems pretty self-evident to me.

>consider the following: [if] his brain is part of his body, it follows that his brain is not the person either.<<

Assuming, again, that your definition of person is somehow similar to what I mean by mind (and that's not clear) then I disagree. The brain *is* part of the body and affirming the above, the midn is not the brain itself but what the brain does. I think mind and body are interrelated and co-dependent. You are the one who thinks dualism has some kind of merit, in contradiction to the neurological evidence, not I sir.

that's why your lack of being impressed strikes me as being a failure of imagination on your part,.

Mmm, very nice http://www.neuroskills.com/tbi/brainlobesmap.jpg

I can see plenty of design in that, myself.

More evidence that satisfies me; if I didn't believe in Almighty God, I would be the same person (soul), but my actions and behaviour would definetely be different. Having experienced both conditions, I know which one has benefit for me, and which one has danger for me.
In this life the soul (mind) and body do not act independently, but together, which is why mental health problems cause physical health problems, and vice-versa.

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>>>"""To have a mental health problem, there does not have to be anything physically wrong with the brain!!!"""<<<
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Both problems can cause a great deal of "pain" (mental torture) and there is a consequence for all our actions.
Although mankind has intellect, he does not have the power to see the consequences of all his actions, without guidance. As a child needs guidance from his parents. After all, when we're young, we confidently think "I know how to do it", and when we get older, we realise we didn't. Hopefully, as we gain experience in life, we are in a better position to evaluate our actions. That process can be repeated for eternity.

Clive
>>Now how it does this is very curious ... consciousness - is still not understood fully<<
You're starting to sound like the apologists
"The trinity is a mystery ..." Was Jesus omniscient?

Well i would like to here everybody elses theorys of life & death

conception...good
birth...messy but good
life...its up to you
death...may be sudden and bad but at the end when its all too much...good
after death....worm food, the high king goes back into the land and the cycle turns again

warner:

you find design in a general map of the lobes of the human brain? Brain stem at the bottom in front of the cerebellum, temporal lobe right there at the temple (hence the name), frontal lobe at the front, parietal lobe on top at the back beside the parietal bone (hence the name) and the occipital lobe at the back of the head (hence the name, Latin occiput, 'back of the head')

Where's the design?

Unless you mean the pretty colours.

I'll second your theory of life and death, Taff.

hmmm, i still believe that conscience goes somewere, i find it hard to believe when you die your conscience will cease to be.