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From: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: mind vs. brain
Message-ID: <1794@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 22:55:19 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1794
Posted: Fri Oct 25 22:55:19 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 20:57:25 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27

Let me suggest the following analogy: mind is to brain as digestion is
to stomach.  (Somebody else recently used this analogy in a net
article.  I'm borrowing it.)  Nobody ever talks of digestion/stomach
dualism.  Nobody ever wonders whether digestion is just a function
performed by the stomach, or whether digestion exists, perhaps,
somewhere outside of physical reality, on some "digestive plane" of
existence.  Nobody ever writes articles claiming that "no machine can
produce digestion".  Why not?

Because everybody understands that the word "digestion" is a word we
use to describe activities performed by the stomach, ie. the stomach
digests food.  This is made easy to understand by the fact that, for
the noun "digestion" denoting activities, there is a handy verb,
"digest", which denotes the same activities.

The noun "mind", similarly, denotes some activities performed by the
brain.  Unfortunately, our language doesn't provide us with a handy
verb to denote these activities, so many people tend to sucked into
thinking of "the" mind as a "thing".  So people waste millions of hours
wondering if "the" mind exists, where does "it" exist, etc.

The important thing to remember is that the lack of a handy verb to go
with the word "mind" is a feature of the language with which we attempt
to describe reality, and doesn't imply anything about the reality we
are attempting to describe.
-- 
David Canzi, an entirely physical phenomenon.