Not sure how you can claim the mind is rejected by reductionism; that seems like claiming computer programs don’t exist because it’s all just circuits. Purposes/telos only make sense in reference to a given mind; the purpose of a hammer is to pound nails, etc.
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Replying to @CurlOfGradient
"The mind is nothing but the brain, it's not a real thing on its own, just a useful abstraction we use to talk about the real material thing which is the brain"
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Replying to @ReferentOfSelf
If you are trying to change someone’s thoughts through brain surgery, this is the useful viewpoint to take. For most other purposes, treating the mind as an object in and of itself is the useful viewpoint. Regardless, the mind arises entirely from atoms.
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Replying to @CurlOfGradient
A mind that lives on the substrate of organic molecules can be the same mind as one that lives on a substrate of silicon or a mind that lives in a universe with different physics. The atoms are not an essential property of the mind.
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Replying to @ReferentOfSelf @CurlOfGradient
Just as how the chairness of a chair has nothing to do with the specific particular materials that chair is made of, only general requirements for the materials.
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Replying to @ReferentOfSelf
And yet, the atoms of the chair come together to be a chair, merely by following their own laws. Multiple systems can give rise to the same mind; this does not imply that those systems are doing anything than following their usual laws.
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Replying to @CurlOfGradient
The chairness is not in the atoms, but in the form and function of the thing that they compose, and the reality of its form and function cannot be reduced to the atoms. Knowing only about the atoms doesn't let you point to chairs or talk a out how to use them.
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Replying to @ReferentOfSelf @CurlOfGradient
To respond to the brain surgery, you would say that this brain surgery has the possibility of *damaging* their mind, not merely changing it. Their mind is then improperly expressed through the matter is subsists on.
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Replying to @ReferentOfSelf
When I say the brain surgery could damage their mind, I am comparing an idealized version of my model of their future mind with my model of their mind after the surgery goes wrong. The shouldness exists only in my mind; it is not an property of their mind independent of my model.
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Replying to @CurlOfGradient
Then there is no objectivity in judgments of illness whatsoever. Only the independent impressions and opinions of various people.
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I would agree with this statement. The vast majority of people agree on whether bodily state is an illness or not; this is because we agree on what the state of the body/mind "should" be, not because there is an actual correct state written into the fabric of the universe.
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