The reality of mind in the future.
This thread is about the new knowledge of the mind. If science does find a complete answer to the mind-body problem, what then?
For a long time we as humans have been trying to work out what the mind is and some of us(not necessarily me) have been trying to work out how it connects to the physical brain. How is it that our mental processes cause neurons to fire. There is now emerging evidence that glials also play a part in intelligence.
Mental processes such as thinking, rationalizing, desire, imagination, volition and emotion are to name but a few of the functions that our mind/brain performs daily and hint at the complexity of this so called mind-body problem.
Even if science does find the answers - will the proof be enough?
Plato said something like, our intelligence could not be defined in terms of our body. I guess it is possible to use the information that is the translation between the mind and the body to help define it; but how would we know for sure? How would we know that what is encoded is sufficient to explain what the mind is?
I see a lot of troubling questions arising if science is to claim they have found the answers to what the mind is. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not actually against science in general - especially good science. I noticed a shift in the paradigm of science around 2000 to 2005 - a subtle shift that was more sensed than anything else. I am skeptical that science is capable of answering all of life’s questions.
I have always viewed science more of a toolkit than anything else and philosophy as the guardian(in my ideal world) of this toolkit. That is one way I could put it and I hope the sentiment is coming across well enough to be understood.
Given that we are capable of coming up with dualistic and monistic views of mind - something tells me, there is something “more than meets the eye” when it comes to the topic of mind.
I think I am rather dualistic when it comes to mind. I think therefore I am . . . I would of course be willing to cross to the other side so to speak if I had solid proof of what science would have to say.
Anyhow I will save the rest of my ‘babbling’ for the thread.