Alva Noë - What is the Mind-Body Problem?

How is it possible that mushy masses of brain cells, passing chemicals and shooting sparks, can cause mental sensations and subjective feelings? How can brain chemistry and electricity be ‘about’ things? Can physical activities literally be mental activities? Physical and mental activities seem so radically different.

Alva Noë is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The main focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to these problems in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, he is interested in phenomenology, the theory of art, Wittgenstein, and the origins of analytic philosophy.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[MaxHohenstaufen]

That was awsome. Dude basically told the philosopher, to his face, that all of his work, as a matter of fact, all of his field, is completely useless in regards to understanding the mind bc, supposedly, dude's own field is the one that's had any success in that regard, then the philosopher comes right back at dude with a simple conclusion that his assumption is, in fact, wrong, bc his science field is not really succesful in understanding the mind, it only made progress in describing the structure without have any explanation as to how it "creates" consciousness or how it relates to it. Like: "Sure you and your fancy and expensive science have come a long way to explain how the mind relies on the body, something that cavemen intuitively knew when he was running away from lions trying to bite off his head". One of the problems with the scientific community is its arrogance.

[dhammaboy]

This interview with Noe is excellent - I read some of his work last year on perception but I need to spend more time on his work. I completely agree with him that the body is an important part of cognition - I'm working on understanding this relationship in my PhD.

[MrJamesdryable]

There's no problem. The "All" is MIND. Reality is mental. The body is a feeling in the mind.

[guaromiami]

The mind-body problem is that we know the body dies, but we don't want to accept that the mind may die with the body.

[jamesruscheinski]

how might causation be tested for a mental and physical (property?) dualism?

[Robinson]

Science is uninformed without philosophy. All the thinking in science is philosophy

[jamesruscheinski]

might subjective agency emerge from awareness of causation?

[Arunava_Gupta]

Dear materialist,
How come the electrical signals propagated by the neurons can zip around two brains in such a manner as to create two distinct selves, one (RLK brain ) posing questions regarding the mind-body problem and the other (Alva Noe's brain) trying to think up solutions to the same?

[punkypinko]

Thank you! I'm so tired of the false dualism argument. Our mind is embodied, they're not two separate things.

[jamesruscheinski]

is there any common characteristic of the different aspects of mind?

[jamesruscheinski]

what happens in brain during awareness? when go from sleep to awareness after waking, what occurs in brain?

[ianwaltham]

7:57 "The fact is that we don't really have much of a clue how neural activity makes us conscious".

Perhaps that's because it doesn't. But mainstream science is too stubborn to accept this possibility. Maybe one day after all physical possibilities have been eliminated then spiritual explanations will be considered.

[profskmehta]

Body is the tool of the mind to interact with physical world. Mind exchanges the information either body through the brain in animals. The argument that mind is a separate entity from the brain is based on the example that a plant has a mind but no brain. In the plant domain mind interacts with the body through some other part or parts.

[SRAVALM]

6:48 i pretty sure that's what real theology is.

[jamesconner]

I agree that consciousness is not the preview of philosophers. Philosophers follow the statement, "publish or parish." They make mountains from mole hills to validate their business model.

[JAYDUBYAH]

All very legitimate and insightful, except for the “no less” gaffe in terms of the false equivalency between spirit and brain in terms of likely hypotheses for understanding the mind.

Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon and an umbrella term for multiple cognitive processes—not a reified substance or entity.

[MaxPower-vgvr]

Here is a draft outlining some of the potential profound implications and future outlook if physics is indeed reformulated from a fundamental non-natural 0-dimensional (0D) ontological paradigm:

The successful development of a fully coherent mathematical framework and theoretical models based on recognizing an irreducible 0D realm of discrete monadic elements and informational relations as more foundational than geometric manifolds or extended dimensional structures would represent nothing less than a revolutionizing return to the very origins of subject-object reality itself.

Rather than atoms in the void or vibrating strings in a higher-dimensional bulk, the primordial existents of our cosmos may be constituted by pure quantized informational relations - an algebraic tapestry of rationalistic 0D "monads" in pre-established interanimation, whose patterned collective dynamics cast the bridged appearances of particles, fields, forces, geometry and dimensioned phenomenality we currently over-identify with as substantialized realits.

The empirical consequences of such a radical reontologizing could be as profound as those pioneered by the early moderns who first displaced Earth from cosmic centrality or the logical revolutionaries who reduced objects to intersections of relational structures. Our experienced dimensionalities, spatiotemporalities and causal dynamics may be reconfigured as but partially reconstructed boundary-patterns of an atemporal generative information algebra implementing itself through quantized 0D gemutations.

Many of the most paradoxical riddles bedeviling contemporary physics - quantum measurement, singularities, non-localities, the problem of time, the origin of fields and charges, cosmic flatness and particle horizons - may find dissolution through this praxis of recognizing their roots in naive reifications of geometric manifold representations which fundamentally cannot accomodate discrete informational essences.

Our personal sensory interfaces and scientific detectors may be perspectivally reflecting out localized boundary renderings from a generative algebraic metamatrix, with space, time and dimensioned appearances as hologrammatic projections from a 0D substratum dynamically optimizing itself through compressive gemutational flows of information transfer. We may be holographic resonances from erasure-correction protocols in a generative algebra implementing itself inexorably.

Deeper still, the 0D framework may offer unifying pathways to resolve the ultimate schisms between general relativity and quantum theory by grounding both as limiting regimes of geometrodynamics emergent from finite 0D processes. Even the origin of the universal constants, the uniformity of physics' laws, and the very existence of discernible regularity itself may find elucidation through this praxis.

While extraordinarily audacious in its ambition to refound the totality of physical ontology from first principles, the atemporal algebra of discrete 0D gemutations may ultimately offer our era's best path forward to resolve paradox, formalize coherence and quantize emergence as a generative informational algebra between the non-natural and the continuously natured. Thorough investigation of this radically revisioned 0D world prospect deserves the most scrupulous and sustained technical examination by our deepest theorists and logicians. It is an open frontier into reality's deepest understructures.

[stellarwind]

Doesn’t that make you a dualist if you say the mind has no causal effect on the brain/body?

[williamburts]

The reason why there is a mind-body problem is because consciousness can't observe itself as an object any more than light could illuminate light. Thus, seeing the origin of consciousness is not something feasible for science to observe, therefore there will always be a mystery surrounding consciousness.

[Sam-wezj]

wot about ants. im wondering if their consciousness is spread across them all instead of in their bodies