I don't think I made myself clear here.
I am not doubting that you have a good and proper scientific understanding
of the brain activity associated with thinking and decision making, I am
sure you may even have an excellent causal model of the action of this
mechanism. What I am asking is this: What leads you believe that just
because this brain activity occurs alongside with, and in intricate
connection to, decision making that it actually *is* thinking?. In normal
science we do not have to deal with the difference between the description
of an object and the object itself - no one would say that the equations
that describe a turbulent flow actually *are* a turbulent flow but the
description and the "thing" that they are describing are used
interchangably. You talk about a turbulant flow and then illustrate your
scientific insight with equations - the numbers are not a turbulent flow but
a representation of it.
Now with your normal 3D "solid object" type of science then this presents no
problems in every day procedure - we have ways of "pinning" the
representation on to the object - we know that certain things occur
"because" of the actions of the object due to our innate understanding of
the nature of reality. But we can never see a thought - how do you know
that the decision ensues "because" of the brain activity instead of the
brain activity ensuing "because" of the decision. How do you know that they
are not both caused by a third "invisible" occurance? How do you know that
the causality we are referring to operates in the same direction of time
that we do? (I have read that experiments _have_ observed of effects
occuring before causes due to the symmetry of the laws of Physics in time).
In short while I bow down to your superior knowledge of science's
*description* of the activity in the brain I do not see what prompts you to
make the enormous leap of faith that makes you think that this activity
explains or even causes thinking and decision making.
Normally when confronting these problems science can rely on our native
intuition of causation, but when it comes to "thinking" we have no such
intuition. Who intuitively "knows" what "causes" them to think in the same
way that they "know" what "causes" a ball to move when it is struck? I
agree with the point I think you were trying to make that in normal everyday
science these questions are largely irrelevant - but when it comes down to
the mind and thinking then I believe that the central questions of
description and causation take a much bigger part to play. For example - If
you break the pack in a game of pool then you can say of a particular ball
"motion is occuring". You can then remove the rest of the pack, induce the
same conditions in your pool ball and still say that "motion is occuring".
If however you take a "chain", seperate it from the rest of the brain and
then induce it into the same state it was in when I thought "I fancy a
curry" then can you say that "thinking is occuring" in the same way? I
can't see a way that you can do this that is consistant with my own innate
experience of my own conciousness of decision making. If again you are
going to say that that is because the parts of my brain decide and then
report it to "my soul" (some magical thing that feels like it is in control
but isn't and that can observe without interacting) then you must have a
very different experience of existance to the one that I have!
Joe
P.S. Also :
>The level of activity in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus is dependent
>on the past history of bad and good and on the wiring constructed by the
>DNA. If I have an active constellation, a thought, and the reticular
nucleus
>of my thalamus is inhibited, I know truth. This is how I know I am right
and
>it is how you know you are right. Thus there is room in the world for many
>truths. There is also absolute truth as wired by the DNA.
>
Erm.... the point I was making is that science never allows you to "know"
anything and in fact the assumption that there is any concept of "truth"
associated with anything scientific is rather sketchy. Basically I think
that neuroscience, particle physics and AI as case studies of whether
science is actually valid present very interesting avenues of thought (I am
not questioning science's usefulness - a rule of thumb can be very useful
while not being valid!)
>This argument is best evaluated by a computer engineer who has had
>experience in microprogramming and has a foundation in neuroscience, it is
>both a partial explanation of how the brain works and a partial
description
>of a machine brain.
>
Well I'm afraid I'm just a computer scientist who has a foundation in the
philosophy of science and physics - my knowledge of neuroscience in
particular is not that great - I never pretended it was - but my whole point
is to question whether neuroscience is at all relevant
when you try to go from a description of the brain to an explanation of it!
