On the mind. – There is no metaphysics, that is, there is no mind. It “exists” insofar as a concept and as a process. It has no physical existence that can be found other than physical procedural evidence.
Tag: philosophy of mind
Type/token
A type is a word who’s general meaning is derived from its sum token usages. Types are similar to universals and innate ideas which seemingly have a stable unchanging meaning when in fact they are derived categorisations of concepts. This error in understanding has been the root of the problem with Western philosophy from the very beginning. The ground of contention is in thought which is grounded in language. The nature of meaning, form, thought, and communication has to clear in order to understand the problem at hand.
What Phineas Gage can tell us about what the self is
Today, we know a lot about the brain from case studies of brain damage of specific areas and the cognitive functions associated with these areas.
It was not all that long ago that we had no idea what the brain was. Although we must had some clue we were never completely sure. Damage to the eye would impair vision, to the ear, hearing, and so on. Lose an arm and you still function as cognitively. We must have guessed that the “seat” of thinking was in the head. Sometimes the mind has been placed in the heart. We knew the functions of these – the brain and the heart – were vital to life. Often they are confused.
The case of Phineas Gage [warning: gruesome details in link] was one of luck for neuroscience (but not for him). [warning: more gruesome details ahead] In 1848, he was injured in a railroad accident. An iron rod was driven through his prefrontal cortex by an explosion, causing him to severe social impairments. Since then thousands of case studies have been documented to pinpoint the functions of which were affected by the neurological damage. The point being, if we were not physical neurological beings, then the damage to the brain should be no different to damage to the arm, leg, or stomach – our personalities would not be affected.
But how we act and how we think of people ultimately comes down to their brain function. The personality, self, and soul ultimately resides in the brain as a product of the brain. To think that damage to the physical self would not cause neurological change would contradict the evidence. Nothing of the self exists after death, only our thoughts of those who have died remain as our thoughts of them as a self.
Coma, time, idealism
Within a comatose state the body is without wakefulness and awareness of the eternal world. Is this a kind of idealist-rationalist bliss? If such a mind can survive without having to deal with the outside, would it remain in this state to do so?
It is interesting that coma patients when they recover do not know how much time has passed since they became comatose. Is this not evidence that time is only known observation of the change in the relationship of things. In other words, do we not have to be awake and aware of the environment to know time?
Philosophical projectionism
What is philosophical projectionism?
Projectionism is the theory (my theory) that perceived objects have not qualities as such but that qualities are projected onto them by the perceiver. This naturally means an object can have as many projections upon it as there are perceivers of it. The object does not “change” in any way, and it is not directly affected it by the perception of it. Objects remain the same whether perceived or not. Qualities therefore do not exist accept for within perception. Projections are concepts. They are conceptualised. The end of all conceptualisation is the end of the concept, but not the end of the object.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the last mind
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the latin title of Wittgenstein’s first and only work published within his lifetime. It translates roughly to A Treatise on Logic and Philosophy.
The stance then is that of logic.
I do not agree that logic is the best place to start. Logic, to me, seems to be an activity of the mind. And the mind is physical object take performs such processes. To me, place to start is ontology and then epistemology.
Someone commented in a previous post that it is ironic that one must use logic to even start to ask ontological and epistemological questions. I agree. And that tells us something about the inescapability of the act of thinking in order to get to the understanding. Logic, in other words, is a physical act. Logic cannot occur without the availability of the body or mind. This extends to knowledge (the epistemological act) as well. Logic and knowledge do not exist without a mind perform these acts. When the last mind extinguishes form this world so too does logic and knowledge. What continues to remain is the physical world, the reality. And logic and knowledge will restart when another mind comes into (for lack of a better word) being.
Thoughts on the Mind
To me, there is no doubt that the mind is product of the physical brain that is of the physical world. Without the physical world there is no mind. By extension all concepts are therefore a product of the physical world by way of the physical brain. Once every living sentient thing disappears (if that is at all possible) from the physical universe then all concepts disappear. What remains is a physical universe without sentient being. That is quite possible because there is no law that says there must be sentient beings. In fact at the very beginning after the Big Bang it was quite possible that the universe did not contain a single sentient entity whatsoever. This being the case then it is possible that there can be a time in the future without sentient beings as well.
signature103 