Please use this thread for discussing Ch. 14: Mind Speculations.
![Hmm :hmm:](https://www.booktalk.org/images/smilies/ges_hmm.gif)
In total there are 17 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 17 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
Most users ever online was 871 on Fri Apr 19, 2024 12:00 am
But why? Burton does not explain this and I can't figure out why he feels this is so.DWill wrote:
The mind/body or dualism question arises from the necessity for our
selves to feel as though they are independent from our brains/bodies. It is highly probable, he states, that our brain indeed creates this sense of a self, but we simply don't feel it that way. We could not even have a self unless we experienced a separation from our bodies.
"Trapped within our biology, we cannot escape the mind/body dualism"--that is, the feeling of it.
I think that "mind/body" dualism can be a confusing phrasing, because it seems to refer to our being aware that we have bodies, that each of us is a non-physical self plus a physical body. To be aware of this entails separation--but not necessarily in the sense of estrangement from the body (if this might be partly how you're interpreting "separation"). So I don't see much that is surprising or controversial in "mind/body" dualism. When we use "mind/brain" dualism instead, that gets us to the still contentious matter of whether our minds are nothing but a product of our brains' neurochemistry ("the mind is what the brain does"), or whether there is some ineffable, non-physical dimension to mind. This is basically the same problem as the religious one of whether a soul exists, some non-corporeal aspect of us.Saffron wrote:But why? Burton does not explain this and I can't figure out why he feels this is so.DWill wrote:
The mind/body or dualism question arises from the necessity for our
selves to feel as though they are independent from our brains/bodies. It is highly probable, he states, that our brain indeed creates this sense of a self, but we simply don't feel it that way. We could not even have a self unless we experienced a separation from our bodies.
"Trapped within our biology, we cannot escape the mind/body dualism"--that is, the feeling of it.
Well, I'm not sure exactly. I have felt that if the mind exists in someway separate from the brain or body than that is what soul is. I feel less sure of having a soul all the time. I definitely feel that I am a self, but the older I get the more I feel that myself and my body are the same. When I think of it, this is how I remember feeling as a child -- all of me, toes, knees, belly, nose and hair -- all me, inseparable from the thinking.DWill wrote:
So what do you believe? Is there anything non-physical about our minds? Is there is a dualism?