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From: holland@uiucdcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Mind and Brain - (nf)
Message-ID: <33300004@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 1-Jul-84 21:15:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.33300004
Posted: Sun Jul  1 21:15:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Jul-84 02:19:30 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:proper:-139600:uiucdcs:33300004:000:2426
Nf-From: uiucdcs!holland    Jul  1 20:15:00 1984

#R:proper:-139600:uiucdcs:33300004:000:2426
uiucdcs!holland    Jul  1 20:15:00 1984

> 
> /**** uiucdcs:net.philosophy / gam@proper /  2:40 am  Jun 30, 1984 ****/
> > From: gek@ihuxj.UUCP (glenn kapetansky)
> > Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
> Here is a free bonus: I've said that there is no mind because its
> existence has not be measured, and that the only thing we can measure
> and observe is behavior.  Is behavior itself enough to justify the
> existence of mind?
> 
> In the behaviorist realm, I believe, this question is quietly ignored.
> All such arguments go back to attempts to show that a mind exists, when
> in fact we have no evidence to hypothesize its existence (?yet).
> (Creationism, anyone?).
> 
> Further, behavior is accepted as a characteristic of animals (a priori)
> so this is where the science of behavior begins.  So let us just look
> at behavior and make our hypotheses from that, rather than impose
> a view of the ``mind'' which we would like to have exist but as
> of yet have not demonstrated.
> -- 
By imposing measurement you choose to look at certain dimensions of the
whole, and to call their cartesian product "behavior". Your choice of
dimensions (dimensions, which, in the behavioral sciences especially
are only roughly understood or even as-of-yet unrecognized) speaks to
you as the definition of the object, as a paradigm for the object, or
whatever. Nothing that cannot easily be distilled from your choice of
dimensions is easy to see.

Nobody denies that we have brains, or even that the mind-as-we-can-attempt-
to-define-it lives mainly in the brain. (Falls mainly on the plain?)
But to reduce the mind to a physical object, which is what I think you
are trying to do when you talk of the "brain", seems to be in the wrong
spirit. It means that when looking at yourself you are compelled to
see yourself in terms of "brain", and ultimately, in terms of the physical
processes which bring about the brain. Fine, assuming science gets there,
which someday it will. But knowing the brain in this way tells you
very little unless you're trying to diagnose a brain injury. In this
representation of the brain I would imagine that such things as mood
would be so far removed from any explanation (except for the superficial
chemical one of which chemicals at what site, which is very limited 
information).

I prefer my understanding in different terms, as imprecise as they are,
in terms of metaphor even. 



			mike hollander		parsec!uiucdcs!holland