The idea was that his ability to form intentions was significantly impaired. Inhibitory functions of the frontal lobes were fucked, and it took him a long time to regain control. The point being that it isn’t a far cry from what you just suggested, given that it was done by launching a tamping rod in the general direction of some guy’s face. You have to imagine that with some tinkering and scalpels instead of sticks we might have some greater changes, were we unethical enough to try them.
Are you suggesting that we could create good citizens out of, say, hardened criminals through tinkering with their brains - were we unethical enough to try this? It seems important that you have been describing change of the degraded sort - towards death, in a way. Which makes sense given the injury.
Yeah, I’m suggesting that it could be possible. I wouldn’t do it for ethical (moral) reasons but for the sake of argument here, I’ll bet it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
I guess that makes one of us. I don’t think it’s possible even in theory. I could try to convince you, but that would require a much longer response. I do hope, anyway, that even if a person does think such a thing is possible in theory, they are sensible enough to understand which kinds of options work best for which kinds of things. That also becomes an involved conversation though…
Would it be necessarily unethical to alter the brain of a hardened criminal if it led to her/his social adaptive skill ‘rehabilitation?’ Forgetting Phineas Gage for a minute (and there’s been a lot written that questions his so-called ‘behavior changes’ after his accident that put them in question), there are stroke victims who need a recovery period in order to find neural routes that differ from what they used before stroke. We do have redundancies in our brains.
We just don’t know enough about the brain, yet, or social science, to be able to pin point the areas that would need to be altered and we’d have to know just how much to laser away. Then the patient would have to go through a lot of repetitive re-training So, yeah, it could be possible, but perhaps not for a while–a long while.
Is all this possible to contemplate if you’re not a materialist–at least to a certain extent? There has to be some sort of dualism, such as you can’t have thought without a brain and the two are separate, mustn’t there?
Liz, I think you make a good and interesting point regarding how to effect a desired outcome through what I’d call external means (drugs are included under “external”) given plasticity. “Training”, as you’ve pointed out, would be a mandatory part of this process, if it were to work. And training is what I would call “internal”.
Well, it’s the physical processes which are taking place as we think, that are changing the brain, not the mental experience.
If we said hypothetically that the brain gives rise to the mental state, then it seems to me like saying, the mental experience is just like a movie which we watch, but have no influence on.
A relevant question is, if there’s a lapse between the two, then why is it the body appears to be able to react to our thoughts as quickly as it can react to being hit by a bat.
If there’s a gap, then all actions which constantly adjust to feedback, ie Hand/Eye coordination, would be ridiculous unless the time between was very short.
And yes, if there’s no lapse in time, then it wouldn’t seem as though one could cause the other.
It’s easy to see how the physical environment affects the mental environment. For example, physical damage to one’s ears or eyes, results in a distinct change of one’s experience of these senses. We can also see how based on the structure of the brain, the propensities an individual has.
It’s harder to see how the mental experience changes the physical environment beyond our perception of it.
I haven’t read any responses, so I don’t know if anybody has pointed this out to you, but this is equivocation. The two uses of the word ‘real’ are not synonymous. In the top paragraph, ‘real’ is meant as ‘genuine’ – not as in ‘reality’. To any realist, all of those things exist in reality without question, so the ‘reality’ domino hasn’t been affected at all. Only the question of genuine-ness has ‘tumbled’ – genuine compared to what? is the question you were asking.
Thought that was worth pointing out, in case no one else had.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a fundamental separation between mind and matter. Are you claiming that mental processes are illusory? Are you removing them from your account of how sentient life functions, i.e. they are like vestigial organs, except that there was never any function to mental processes in the first place?
To be clear, this last possibility is what I believe.
It’s harder logically? Or in a common sense way?
Hi FJ. It’s unclear to me where the equivocation is. My argument is exactly this - that there can be no meaningful concept ‘reality’ that isn’t based on first assuming or producing criteria that isn’t, in itself, necessary. Other paradigms are always possible. This can be argued, certainly. I argue with myself about it. But I don’t see how I’ve equivocated.
I explained it pretty clearly, but I’ll try again.
“Tofurkey is not real turkey” is not a statement about whether or not tofurkey exists in reality. It’s a statement about tofurkey’s genuineness. Real = genuine in that situation.
There is a DIFFERENT meaning of ‘real’ which means ‘exists in reality.’
Saying ‘tofurkey isn’t genuine turkey’ is obviously a competely different thing from saying ‘tofurkey doesn’t exist in reality’
In other words, there are two different meanings of the statement ‘tofurkey isn’t real’
but you’re treating the two meanings of real as the same in your OP.
That’s a mistake.
I understand your point. I did all along. MY point Is that there is no ‘in reality’ to be described that isn’t exactly as problematic - because it is the same in that sense - relative to criteria.
You could argue my point, instead of just alluding to some mysterious second definition that you presume I must believe in.
My point is like the one I made in the relative truth thread, where i said that truth is a form of belief, it’s not something completely different.
I’m not saying you ‘believe’ in some definition. I’m saying you wrote a paragraph using one definition, and then began the next paragraph acting as if you were talking about another definition.
There are 2 definitions of ‘real’ at play:
definition 1: genuine (as in ‘is tofurkey real turkey?’)
definition 2: exists in reality
You wrote a full paragraph completely and solely using definition 1, and then you started talking about ‘reality’ as if you thought you were using definition 2. You can’t make conclusions about definition 1 and then just off-handedly apply them to definition 2. That’s the epitome of equivocation. That’s what equivocation means. So when you write a full paragraph about real-as-in-genuine, and then act as if you were talking about real-as-in-reality, you’re equivocating. It’s fallacious.
You don’t seem to understand my point. My first paragraph contained simple examples of what I’m trying to get at. The conclusions can be applied to any conception of ‘reality’ that you subscribe to. Feel free to argue against that. But I’m not equivocating.
Or, Mr. Jesus, you could just look up realism and understand that that is what I’m arguing against. For example:
“Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.”
Now it’s obviously not as cut and dried as that - it’s not either-or. But I did talk a little about why I’m taking this approach here. Again, not as some kind of full argument. But it would be nice if you actually knew what I was saying.
That’s…never true. That statement is essentially the same as saying ‘equivocating is ok’.
If my definition of ‘reality’ is ‘the monkey on the roof’, then obviously different conclusions apply to a monkey on my roof than to the genuineness of tofurkey. You don’t understand what words are if this is what you think.
Speaking of which, I’m going to make a post clearly explaining my philosophy on words.
And I know that you’re arguing against realism. I’m arguing against equivocating. I’m not even defending realism, just fighting fallacies.
I think you should reread what I’ve written. But whatever, knock yourself out.
“For example: What is reality? Philosophers have treated it as a noun denoting something that has certain properties. For thousands of years, they have debated those properties. Ordinary language philosophy instead looks at how we use the word “reality” in everyday language. In some instances, people will say, “It may seem that X is the case, but in reality, Y is the case”. This expression is not used to mean that there is some special dimension of being where Y is true although X is true in our dimension. What it really means is, “X seemed right, but appearances were misleading in some way. Now I’m about to tell you the truth: Y”. That is, the meaning of “in reality” is a bit like “however”. And the phrase, “The reality of the matter is …” serves a similar function — to set the listener’s expectations. Further, when we talk about a “real gun”, we aren’t making a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality; we are merely opposing this gun to a toy gun, pretend gun, imaginary gun, etc.”
Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary … philosophy
Just in case this is more clear than my own explanation…
Or, from J.L. Austin (thanks Abstract):
“Like ‘real’, ‘free’ is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all of its recognized antitheses. As ‘truth’ is not a name for a characteristic of assertions, so ‘freedom’ is not a name for a chracteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed.”
One more thing I just found.
I just looked up “do particulars exist” on google and found this thread on another site: onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ … f=1&t=6789
My anti-realist claim is that the final post there…
…does nothing to resolve the issue.