Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbsck.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!petrus!sabre!zeta!epsilon!gamma!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!cbosgd!cbsck!pmd From: pmd@cbsck.UUCP (Paul M. Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: mind vs. brain Message-ID: <1435@cbsck.UUCP> Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 13:56:14 EST Article-I.D.: cbsck.1435 Posted: Mon Oct 28 13:56:14 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 23:41:45 EST References: <1794@watdcsu.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 67 There is another useful analogy on the distinction between "mind" and "brain". Donald M. MacKay (a British scientist) makes it in his book _Science and the Quest for Meaning_ (Eerdmans 1982). He describes the "bogey of determinism" (in this area) as arising from a confusion of levels at which the operation of the mind is described. The analogy he uses deals with a computer. When a computer is used to compute our income tax and we ask the operator how the computer functioned in doing so, she would take certain pains to show that the calculations were done according to certain laws of arithmetic and income tax laws based on your income bracket, etc. Ask and engineer who designed the computer the same question, however and you might be shown the computer's internal workings and be given a description of how the computer works according to the laws of physics operating on the mass of transistors and copper that make up the "brain" of the computer. Both descriptions are accurate at their own levels and the fact that all the calculations of the computer have some physical/mechanical representation does not take away from the meaning of those actions implied by the operators description of the computer's calculations. To say that it does confuses levels of description. It is like saying that the words appearing on your CRT can be explained by the computer's instructions to light up certain dots on the screen and that they have no significance beyong that-- they're "nothing but" dots on your screen. MacKay goes into the problem of "brain" vs. "mind" a little more. I'll append the following quote from the book cited above (p. 25): Assume for the sake of argument that all that you believe and know and feel and think is represented in some sense by the physical configuration of your brain. I have shown elsewhere (for example, in _Brains, Machines and Persons_) that even if that configuration were fully mechanistic in its workings, no complete specification of your brain would exist that you would be bound to accept as inevitable, unless the specification were of its past. [This possibility would have no bering on the free will question since that is exercised in the present (or "immediate future"). -- PMD] In particular, no complete specification of the immediate future of your brain could have an unconditional claim on your assent, even if your brain were as mechanical as the workings of a clock. The reason for this, of course, is that if all your mental processes are represented in your brain, then no change can take place in any mental state of yours without a change also taking place in the physical state of your brain. And therefore the validity of any complete specification of your brain depends on whether or not you believe it. So it doesn't have an unconditional claim to your assent. No matter how clever I might be in preparing the specification, it can't be equally correct whether or not you believe it. If I accurately describe the make-up of your brain at the moment you read or hear my description, it will be incorrect by the time you've accepted its truth, because the simple act of acquiescence will have changed your brain's make-up. Alternatively, if I can allow for the effects of your believing the description, so as to produce one that you would be correct to believe, then its correctness will *depend* on your believing it--so you would not be mistaken to disbelieve it! In that sense, then, the immediate future or your brain is open to *you*, undetermined for *you*, and would remain so even if the physical elements making up your brain were as determinate as the solar system. ... The book MacKay refers to does go into more detail on this and is also well worth reading. _Brains, Machines and Persons_ is also published by Eerdmans (1980). -- Paul Dubuc cbsck!pmd