From: John Maher (jozabad2001@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 00:00:34 GMT
Hi Patrick,
YOU WROTE:
> With all due respect, aren't the neural events we
> can 'see' in the
> laboratory totally different things than our
> cognitions? To me they are
> as irreduciable to each other as wood is to marmer.
> They're simply two
> different things. They have no obvious relationship
> as between 'sound
> and grooves'. If you think there is, show me!
With equal respect, they are not totally different
things and they do have an obvious relationship.
Indeed if one maintains otherwise then one is simply
being blind to cognitive neuroscience:
". . . in 1880 only the rudiments of neural
functioning were understood, and a reasonable person
could have doubted that all experience arises from
quivering nerve tails. But no longer. . . . The
evidence is overwhelming that every aspect of our
mental lives depends entirely on physiological events
in the tissues of the brain."
(Stephen Pinker - The Blank Slate - 2002 - BCA - pg
41)
"Every emotion and thought gives off physical signals
and the new technologies for detecting them are so
accurate that they can literally read a persons mind
and tell a neuroscientist whether the person is
imagining a place or a face."
(Ibid pg42)
This is not a matter of faith, it is scientific fact
reproduced in experiment after experiment and attested
to in peer reviewed journals.
Most neuroscientists I have looked at would not agree
with your description of their findings. Worse, your
out of hand dismissal of monist understandings (simply
calling them 'word games' is not an argument BTW)
makes it almost pointless to give you contemporary
non-Cartesian philosophers (of which there are
dozens)simply because you have already decided that
they are closet dualists. But, being one who prefers
science to philosophy I would suggest Pinker as a
start.
John
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