It's a greater problem than just a difference in types of sensory input; it's how we perceive the sensory input once it's at our consciousness. What is it like to be another human? Let us pretend that you are cloned at birth, your clone grows up separately to you, but at no point suffers any harm to their sensory organs that you do not.
You meet one day, and go to a music concert. Your clone has been educated highly in musical knowledge, and is proficient in several instruments, whilst you, for this example, are not.
The orchestra, when tuning up, play two very close notes. You, when listening, cannot distinguish between them, but your clone can. You are both taking in the same sensory input. One of you however learns something different from hearing the two notes, whereas you do not. The key difference is how the brain responds to different sensory inputs; clearly there is something to be said for how the brain plays a part in interpretation sense data. Okay, you say. Fine, there's something to be said how you listen to something, but that's only because he's been trained in it and I haven't. If I went away and was trained as well, I would hear the same thing, cannot I simply be trained in various ways and thereby experience what it's like to be someone else?
This is where we come into identity topics again. If it is true that your brain does not contain elements of your identity or your soul (Dualism etc), then you are allowed to claim that you could experience what it is like to be in his brain without altering you. If it is not true, and your brain does contain who you are, it is seemingly impossible for you to remain you, whilst also experiencing what it is like to be him.
When you wish to experience what it is like to be a bat, how may you have the intelligence of a bat whilst also still being yourself? | This may be another reductive attempt to understand a subjective phenomenon, but it seems plausible to me that my red is the same (or similar) to most other humans perception of red simply because, give or take a few cone and rod cells, a human eye is a human eye.| A completely reasonable interpretation, and entirely what most people will accept so that they can carry on with life. As with a lot of these problems, it's not just the answer that matters, but how we get to the answer.
Colour is the same amongst all humans? Well that shows a clear sign that the world is physicalist; nothing that is not physical exists. If it isn't we suddenly have to explain what causes a difference in colour perceptions between humans.
The explanatory gap is huge because of how particles of energy give rise to such vivid experiences in our minds; we can't really seem to grasp why a packet of light particles suddenly makes us overcome with the experience of "Red". Also I know I've posted long criticisms on TheAdvancedApes twice now, but I do really like your work, that's why I'm happy to put the effort into providing another side!Since bats actually utilize a form of perception alien to a human, perhaps that explains why it is we can’t really know what it’s like to be a bat.
A very strong summary of dualism, I wouldn't have necessarily considered Greek thinkers as a forefront of dualism but instead started at Descartes, so it's an interesting perspective. Aristotle's Psuche was considered to have separate levels for humans and plants depending on their purposes, such as breathing, conscious thought and movement. Anyone reading Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) should remember that Psuche and Soul are pretty much analogous to some translators, even if our modern conception of the soul (Which is fairly bastardized), is very different.
You can even have Psuche for objects that aren't alive; the psuche of an axe for example would be 'to cut', or the psuche of the eye would be 'to see'. Aristotle comes to the same kind of conclusions than Descartes does in the separability of the soul from the animal though;
I do have a small problem in your argument with the following phrase, although this is not damaging to your argument, just a complaint to do with terminology:
Back to your argument. Regrettably I can't read any more of your Source 1 than the summary because I don't have PubMed access, I'll see if I can fish around for a copy later, but this is just from the summary.
So just as pupil and sight are the eye, so, in our case, soul and body are the animal. It is quite clear then that the soul is not separable from the body, or that some parts of it are not
(413a Aristotle's De Anima II.I)
He carries on to ask whether the soul is the sailor of the boat, and so parts are very much separable, or the actuality of the boat, and not separable in any way.Developing this concept further, he hypothesized that each of us has a life force running through our blood vessels (pneuma) that allows us everything from muscle contraction to sensory perception.
It's useful to link this to Vitalism, as the theory of a life force of some form didn't stop in Greek times but carried on in relative force until the early 1900's.With his view that mind and body are separate as well as separable
Note this is a contentious point of Descartes' philosophy. Sartre's Being and Nothingness claims this is the foundation of Descartes' downfall; he should have instead considered them as a singular and looked at where their union was effected; the imagination, not by attempting to rejoin them. (pp. 27 B&N)
Descartes' reason for separating them was that it was conceivable to separate them, and so it must be possible, at least by God.
If you're interested in a more modern conception of Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism that doesn’t separate them, check out EJ Lowe's Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and the Problem of Mental Causation: Erkenntnis (1975-) , Vol. 65, No. 1, Prospects for Dualism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2006), pp. 5-23
I found Erkenntnis a bit of a bastard to find, although it's on JSTOR if you have access to that.The problem was that if it truly isn’t your eyes that are seeing (but rather that the image that is reconstituted on your pineal gland so that your soul can perceive the image presented to it) then this automatically begs the question of who is seeing for your soul? Doesn’t your soul then need its own eyes and pineal gland inside of it?
What you’ve raised is known as the ‘homuncular fallacy’. Descartes replies to this directly;
“Now, when this picture [originating in the eyes] thus passes to the inside of our head, it still bears some resemblance to the objects from which it proceeds. As I have amply shown already, however, we must not think that it is by means of this resemblance that the picture causes our sensory perception of these objects—*as if there were yet other eyes within our brain with which we could perceive it*. Instead we must hold that it is the movements composing this picture which, acting directly upon our soul in so far as it is united to our body, are ordained by nature to make it have such sensations” (AT VI:130, CSM I:167).
So Descartes would probably disagree with you on the soul requiring eyes in order to see this composed object, unless this is what you meant in Descartes appears to make the soul entirely supernatural.
Assuming the homuncular argument does disprove Descartes’ argument, of which is one of the smaller problems of Descartes’ Mind-Body solution, it now must be shown that it is also applicable to modern neuroscience, which you appear to say it does by assuming it is analogous with Dualism. If it is not analogous with dualism, then the homuncular argument has no grounding what so ever, for there is no regress.
An activity is carried out in a person’s brain
Does not seem to immediately follow that a brain thinks for a distinct person, because ironically this IS begging the question, whilst mistakenly using the phrase ‘begging the question’ (See section below), that a brain and a person are separable entities; you’re using “for” to imply a separation. I feel that simply having an action carried out in my brain doesn’t necessitate that my brain also must have a brain thinking inside it; the brain appears to be the instrument by which the person thinks.
| Cognition and cogitation are functions of man, not of our brains|
This isn’t necessarily shown. Cognition is indeed a function of man, but I would argue that part of a man is his brain. Otherwise can I equally argue that picking up a rock is a function of man, not of our arms? You need stronger evidence to show a dualism between mind and man, I’m still very much convinced they are one and the same.This begs the same question that if a brain thinks for the person, who thinks for the brain?
I apologise, but unless I'm mistaken, do you not mean "invites the question"? Begging the question is a very specific form of circular reasoning which isn't present here. The other use in this article appears to be incorrect also. I am writing this out at 3AM, so I’m a little cautious about challenging it, but I figure I might as well.The Edinburgh survey revealed a predominance of dualistic attitudes emphasizing the separateness of mind and brain. In the Liège survey, younger participants, women, and those with religious beliefs were more likely to agree that the mind and brain are separate, that some spiritual part of us survives death, that each of us has a soul that is separate from the body, and to deny the physicality of mind.
Really, genuinely interesting. I wouldn't have thought dualism was that pervasive in medical attitudes, but I'm more convinced by the spiritual leanings of the summary than that people genuinely believe in the philosophical implications. This links back to my earlier concern over you jumping between the use of 'mind' and 'soul' with ease; whether someone would agree that a person has an immortal soul and whether they have a mind separable from their brain is not the same thing. You're welcome to, and I'd delight, in you challenging this. I’m really curious to see how you develop this in neodualism in neuroscience, so thank you very much for writing these articles!