Colin McGinn - Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem?

What’s the relationship between our brains and our consciousness, between the physical stuff in our skulls and the mental experiences in our minds? Much rides on the answer. Are human beings purely physical? Evolved at random and destined to die, extinguished forever? Or are we something more? A spirit or a soul, with existence beyond?

Colin McGinn is a British philosopher who has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami.

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.

[kalewintermute]

Of all the guests on this channel I get more out of Colin McGinn than anyone else.

[attilaszekeres]

He hit the nail on the head with physicalism being indefinitely extensible. I have long been saying the very same thing. The Aharonov-Bohm effect or the concept of non-locality and teleportation of quantum information is as non-physical as it gets. The fact of the matter is that physicalism is a non-falsifiable theory because it fails to adequately define "matter". Some might say this doesn't mean that physicalism itself is unfalsifiable, but rather that our current physical theories are incomplete. What's the difference, really?

The hard problem of consciousness may very well be not a problem for consciousness, but a problem for physicalism. Physicalism is a philosophical stance that is indefensible and unfalisfyable. It's not a scientific theory but a metaphysical one.

This is not a critique of science! When you actually look at the progress of science, it does not support physicalism at all. In fact, it undermines it at every turn. The problem is that physicalism is taken as a given, as an axiom, rather than as a hypothesis that needs to be tested and potentially falsified. And this is a huge problem because it limits the scope of inquiry and the types of questions we are allowed to ask. Look for correlations where no physicalist would look, and watch the whole thing collapse in slow motion - slow enough to make a living and keep its name forever. At the end of the day, physical is what the human mind can perceive, and matter is what the human mind can manipulate.

[peweegangloku]

Presenting the physical as open-ended is the epitome of insincerity. It is a fear of being proved wrong.

[stellarwind]

A lot of wasted time talking about Descartes.

[ronhudson]

"What’s the relationship between our brains and our consciousness, between the physical stuff in our skulls and the mental experiences in our minds? Much rides on the answer". Like what? I feel I have a mind. My feeling allows me a sense of agency and to live a fully engaged life - illusion or not. This discussion has a very "angels on the head of a pin" vibe, to it.

[kierenmoore]

Materialism/Physicalism, at least until you have ANY evidence WHATSOEVER otherwise … … … Good luck.
All else is wishful thinking and navel-gazing …

[DouglasVoigt-tuxb]

As we get closer to truth (and we will) it won’t come down to interpretations of definitions. How indeed. Rejected because you can’t explain how? Other dimensions (one with consciousness) so implausible? So much more to discover to reject… not me.

[williamburts]

Consciousness belongs to the observer not to objects being observed therefore consciousness is something that is subjectively private and therefore not objectively viewed through some object like the brain.

[djtomoy]

my body has lots of problems, bits keep breaking down and not coming back.

[brothermine]

The obvious follow-up question to his non-answer about the vagueness and extensibility of "physicalism" is to substitute with well-defined terminology, in particular the Standard Model. In other words, can first-person subjective experiencing of qualia & thoughts be reduced in principle to brain activities that behave entirely according to the current Standard Model of physics?

[jimliu]

There never was a mind-body problem…
The mind comes from the brain……everything else is modern age woo-woo…

[andrewdyrda]

How much knowing has to be translated into words, which are then jumbled around, and he ordered to for some kind of explanation which pleases mind for a while. Most inefficient and so approximate.

[SuatUstel]

Our receptors insufficient to perceive the world the universe more than meets the eye..so our epistemology limited but if. There're other beings occupy higher dimensions by far superior than us

[jamesruscheinski]

matter extended in space; maybe mind unextended outside space develops in time?

[RoyBurnell-on]

Hernandez Patricia Wilson Robert Davis Sharon

[edwardtutman]

So the way "closer to truth" is to play word games with definitions? Not impressed.

[SRAVALM]

What is the prblem?
If man cannot objectify it, he cannot locate it, inquire it, contain it, test it, manipulate it, nor understand it. What man is trying to understand is not the principle of principles, but the modulations from. The great mistake in aquiring information opposed to seeking Wisdom.
Man has always had an inner battle, on the battlefield of the mind, between the spirit Self vs existential self i.e. Buddha vs mara, Christ vs satan. He who knows not this inner battle, his spirit is not charged or awakened. All universal texts prolaim this. It's blessing to fight this righteous battle.
Positing matter as principle is maya. It is reification. It is a modulation.

[sujok-acupuncture]

Blessed are those who never heard this talk.

[SandipChitale]

Collin seems to be making an implicit assumption that consciousness is a thing instead of a process. The orbit of the motion of a planet around the star can be talked about in terms of orbit, but orbit is the name of a process and not a thing. The physical things perform or participate in the process, but the process does not need to be physical itself. Similarly in a computer game there is the program that is saved on the disk, which then is loaded into the RAM and then executes and along with the perturbations from the user actions with the keyboard, mouse or joystick changes what happens on the screen, but that does not make the running program a physical thing. Consciousness is not a thing, but a name of a class of dynamics of physical things.

[richardg.lanzara]

Good discussion! Perhaps we need to understand how our sensory receptors evolved (I attempt this in my book (Origins of Life's Sensoria).