
Where Is My Mind? The rise and fall of the claustrum - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/where-is-my-mind
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all2
I've had the idea for a while that the brain is a rx/tx device that allows a
"soul" (choice engine, memory access) to interface with this existence.

I don't know what the "signal" is, or where "souls" reside. And I'm using
quotes because I'm not sure that the words are sufficient to express what I
mean...

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ncmncm
That is an old idea, that begs the question. Why would we evolve a transceiver
for something that obviously was not needed for survival? What the hell was
all the soul stuff doing before apes evolved transceivers? And what good did
the transceiver do before it worked well enough to tune in souls?

It smacks of a desperate attempt to justify believing in a soul. If you want
to believe in a soul, just do. Dragging in nervous systems just muddies the
water. Gods, souls, Grace, are made out of pure belief. They don't need stuff.

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KKPMW
Yup, the brain as "receiver" is an old idea, like you said. But your attempt
at refuting it is quite narrow and has a lot of assumptions.

One such assumption is taking evolution as an unchangeable constant. To me it
seems like if the "receiving" of the soul theory is true then evolution no
longer plays any major role. It would simply be a story, or a lore. In a
similar way when playing an RPG has a back-story that cannot really be
experienced and never actually happened in the game.

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ncmncm
It is meaningless to talk about "refuting" it. It's a "just so" story. Whoever
wants to believe in it will, evidence or no. If you assume souls matter, and
evolution doesn't, you have achieved nothing, and cannot predict anything. You
are reduced to catalogging observations with no pattern, or just siiting and
drooling.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sen...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution)

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kace91
>Or, as Koch now startlingly suggests, it may be the case that the dualism
between mind and matter is the obstacle for locating consciousness in the
brain, and that matter already, somehow, experiences itself. Combining
vitalism and materialism, the idea of panpsychism—that fundamental matter has
conscious elements—is admittedly strange but, then again, so is consciousness.

What a weird ending for the article. Unless it was tongue in cheek, or I
missed something, it sounds anticlimactic to go through an exhaustive
description of scientific development to then finish mentioning such a hand
wavy / mystical theory under a "we've seen weirder things" platitude.

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ncmncm
Agreed, a sensible overview of the history of research, and then a launch into
cloud cuckoo land. It's as if the editor decided it needed to bring along the
loons (who, it must be said, have the majority).

I have long wondered why so many people have such a hard time thinking of
consciousness as an activity. "Where does the mind go when you die?" reads to
me like "where does the flow go when you turn the water off?" or "Where does
the signal go when you hang up the phone?", or even "where does the
conversation go when you stop talking?"

I am also disappointed they did not mention frontal lobes, at least to say why
not.

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Aqueous
it’s not really cloud cuckoo land at least in terms of the philosophy of mind.
dual-aspect monism and panpsychism are serious lines of thought in philosophy.

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ncmncm
Not with any falsifiable basis. It all amounts to religion with the serial
numbers filed off. If you want religion, go for honest religion. Dressing it
up in science clothes benefits nobody.

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fourseventy
Waaay out in the water see it swimming

