You really should listen to the podcast I posted. You have made false statements throughout. Patricia is a graduate level trained Neurologist. She studied with the best (Gazzaniga, Rand, and Sperry- they literally wrote the textbook of neurobiology). Philosophy was secondary for her. She is married to a neurologist herself.
COMMENT: Patricia Churchland is a philosopher--NOT A NEUROLOGIST. You are entirely misinformed. She has worked closely with the Salk Institute in San Diego, including with neuroscientists associated with the Salk Institute, but she herself is a philosopher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_ChurchlandNote also, I have read all of her books, and know her position intimately. The same goes for Sean Carroll. So, if you want to raise an issue, raise it, but don't try to educate me on the views of Churchland.
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She says in the podcast (again listening to it might be useful before erecting straw-men) that the brain is NOT like a computer. It is a false analogy (consistent with your own claims). However, there are emerging data suggestive of nuero-chemo-structural changes at the synaptic level which are quite interesting in looking at memory, inherited stimuli sensitivity, and creatitive behavior patterns.
COMMENT: She wrote a book, called "The Computational Brain" with biologist Terrence J. Sejnowski. When she says the brain is "not like a computer" she means a "digital" computer. What she thinks is that the brain is a neural network, which is a different kind of computational architecture, called connectionism. Connectionism is a representational view, so my criticisms of her apply. There are indeed many interesting and new structural issues at the synaptic level, but all of this is part of her general connectionist account.
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Again... you should listen.
COMMENT: Really, I don't have to. I know her views!
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BTW... I am a behavioral neurologist (think Skinner and Penfield). For me, consciousness is NOT a brain process, but rather a social construct, which evolved within a verbal community. We "report" our reasons for behaving in certain ways, and others say we are "conscious" or "aware" of the reasons for our actions. However, the report of our motivations may be completely in error because our verbal behavior is a function of variables in the verbal community which may have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual motivations for behaving.
COMMENT: Thanks for sharing your views. However, from this short paragraph, they do not make sense. If consciousness is a social construct, how does it manifest itself in individual human beings and behavior? How does it generate a "self?" How on earth does any social construct, which presumably is a product of a group of individuals, "create" individual consciousness? Just how does language tie into all of this?
Skinner, of course, was a behaviorist, and was not very interested in consciousness or the mind. For him it was all about environmental input and behavioral output. Everything about the mind was explained by behavior. So, that is not very helpful in understanding what goes on in the mind. As for Penfield, he was essentially a dualist. Here is a quote from this book, The Mystery of Mind:
"And so I come to my final reconsideration: I worked as a scientist trying to prove that the brain accounted for the mind and demonstrating as many brain-mechanisms as possible hoping to show *how* the brain did so. In presenting this monograph I do not being with a conclusion and I do not end by making a final and unalterable one. Instead, I reconsider the present-day neurophysicological evidence on the basis of two hypotheses: (a) that man's being consists of one fundamental element, and (b) that it consists of two. I take the position that the brain-mechanisms, which we (my colleagues and I all around the world), are working out, would, of course, have to be employed on the basis of either alternative. In the end I conclude that there is no good evidence, in spite of new methods; such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does. I conclude that it is easier to rationalize man's being on the basis of two elements than on the basis of one. But I believe that one should not pretend to draw a final scientific conclusion, in man's study of man, until the nature of the energy responsible for mind-action is discovered as, in my own opinion, it will be."
I essentially agree with Penfield. His views have nothing to do with whatever views you were trying to express above.
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I would like it if you didn't actually respond Bemis. Armchair cognitive philosophers often make embarrassingly inaccurate statements when conjecturing about free will and consciousness. Generally, however, they know nothing of the science. That leads to a good many assertions unsupported by data, facts, and reason. And leads to a good amount of violating Morgan's canon of parsimony. You may wish to put the ghost back into the machine, but such red herrings tend to move fields farther from discovering truth, and closer to Rube Golberg Device thinking.
COMMENT: Sorry, but you cannot spew out a bunch of unsupported BS, and then ask me to keep quiet. You do not want to be refuted, I get that, but your reference to Skinner and Penfield on their face shows you have no idea what you are talking about, regardless of what credentials you might have. Your theoretical views on these issues are ill-informed, and frankly ludicrous. Notwithstanding, as a "behavioral neurologist" (whatever that is) I am sure you are quite good at whatever clinical activities you are engaged in.
Now if you want a meaningful exchange, articulate your views in a way that can be understood. Give me some quotes, or whatever, so I can understand where you are coming from.