Are most people here epiphenomenalists? Physicalists?

  • BountifulEggnog [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    14·
    2 months ago

    I don’t understand the problem, the mind is emergant from the physical. The physical little wires in my brain make the “mind”. So of course it can influence my body, and my body can influence my mind, because the mind is part of the body.

  • betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    My consciousness depends on the physical processes of my body and my environment. Physical processes are selected and changed in my body and my environment due to my consciousness.

  • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    The mind is the definition of a subjective experience. Since science is the study of observable phenomenon, and it cannot be observed in others, it’s beyond science to study. All the resy is just speculation.

    In other words, the world may never know. Count me agnostic

  • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    Insofar as we’ve proved anything objectively, or anything in regards to our shared reality, I’m a physicalist. The laws of physics seem to determine, quite conclusively, everything, including mental states.

    Insofar as my own subjective, singular, personal experience of being alive goes, I don’t know. I’m sure I’m as susceptible to physical influence as anyone, but currently I struggle to imagine how we could physically measure what I currently experience as ‘being alive’, though I certainly couldn’t assert it as impossible. I suspect that “don’t know” is the definitively correct answer, but I’m not certain on that yet.

  • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    I wouldn’t call myself a physicalist, but I wouldn’t say that what happens in the mind is totally separate from the physical realm either. I’m not a philosophy guy so I assume there’s jargon that I just don’t know that explains what I believe already, but it’s something like this:

    The self is an emergent phenomenon of many different things - your brain and its structures, your hormones and how they interact with it, your interactions with others and your perceived place in society, etc. Free will may or may not be part of the phenomenon of the self, but if it does exist then it forms a base-superstructure relationship with the things that created it - so your free will is constrained by, but also has the capacity to change, those aspects.

    edit: after skimming wikipedia’s article on mind-body-dualism, maybe I do lean towards physicalism actually, because I don’t think that the mind is some extra special metaphysical thing.

    edit2: oh here’s my word of the day: Emergentism

    edit3: okay I’ve seen a dozen variants of this graphic and I wanted to draw my own

    I hope this clarifies things.

    M1 is your starting mental state, M2 is your ending mental state. P1, PA, and PI are your starting physical states, and P2, PB, and PII are your ending physical states. All mental states are emergent from their parallel physical states, and are effected by previous mental and physical states. All physical states must follow from previous physical states, but are effected by previous mental states. The degree to which the mental effects the physical varies depending upon which physical process you’re talking about, with some processes being purely deterministic.