Problems wiith experiments 1
File problems with experiments 11:48 pm August 19 1999
@@@@@@@@@@@Put into chapter about problems
Problems with these rational experiments:
Many problems with these rational experiment with replicas exist. I will break these problems down in to two major kinds the religious - philosophical, and the scientific. I will consider three of the religious / philosophical problems to begin with. In the first place, how do the identically functioning human bodies come to exist, and exist at the same time? Some people would argue that the way people came to exist would effect if they had a mind and consciousness at all. For instance, someone arguing some religious points of view, might say that a person does not have a mind if he does not have a spiritual soul, and a person only has a spiritual soul if he was given one by god. Another argument could be that a person does not have consciousness and a mind unless he is alive, and he can not be alive unless he was produced from other living human beings through the normal reproductive process of conception, fetal development, birth, growth, and environmental experiences. In this argument "life" is like an entity that is passes from one living being to the next through a very specific way i.e., reproduction of living organisms. The third argument is that of philosophical Dualism. To have consciousness and a mind a body must have a mind substance what I will call a material soul. The first argument I will call a religious type argument. It is basically of the type that the mind and consciousness is dependent on god's or more than one god's (depending on the religion used) will, in at least one way. The second type is a natural type argument where consciousness is dependent on its direct ties to natural phenomena. In this argument there is the belief that there is at least one special property of nature that consciousness and the mind have to be linearly tied to. To overcome these types of arguments we must either ignore them or set up the experiments in such a way as to satisfy each individual argument. This may be possible but is beyond the scope of this book. What we can strive to do, and what is the purpose of this book, is to use what science already knows about the mind / brain relationship and not add any unnecessary "ghosts in the closet" like a soul or spirit. @@@@@@@@@@
Problems with these rational experiments:
Many problems with these rational experiment with replicas exist. I will break these problems down in to two major kinds the religious - philosophical, and the scientific. I will consider three of the religious / philosophical problems to begin with. In the first place, how do the identically functioning human bodies come to exist, and exist at the same time? Some people would argue that the way people came to exist would effect if they had a mind and consciousness at all. For instance, someone arguing some religious points of view, might say that a person does not have a mind if he does not have a spiritual soul, and a person only has a spiritual soul if he was given one by god. Another argument could be that a person does not have consciousness and a mind unless he is alive, and he can not be alive unless he was produced from other living human beings through the normal reproductive process of conception, fetal development, birth, growth, and environmental experiences. In this argument "life" is like an entity that is passes from one living being to the next through a very specific way i.e., reproduction of living organisms. The third argument is that of philosophical Dualism. To have consciousness and a mind a body must have a mind substance what I will call a material soul. The first argument I will call a religious type argument. It is basically of the type that the mind and consciousness is dependent on god's or more than one god's (depending on the religion used) will, in at least one way. The second type is a natural type argument where consciousness is dependent on its direct ties to natural phenomena. In this argument there is the belief that there is at least one special property of nature that consciousness and the mind have to be linearly tied to. To overcome these types of arguments we must either ignore them or set up the experiments in such a way as to satisfy each individual argument. This may be possible but is beyond the scope of this book. What we can strive to do, and what is the purpose of this book, is to use what science already knows about the mind / brain relationship and not add any unnecessary "ghosts in the closet" like a soul or spirit. @@@@@@@@@@
The term consciousness refers more to the awarepath and the term mind refers more to the mentapath. No matter how short a time frame one talks about, for the mind or consciousness to exist, they have to span a period of time. This means that there is change that could have been different. Thus the term path as one of many possibilities. All the consciousness that goes on in the brian we may not be aware of. The mental path that a brain could produce could contain more than one awareness. What ties mentality together into consciousness?
The functioning brain is the physipath