Talk:Mind–body problem/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Mind-body interaction and mental causation

The section formerly called simply Causality now is rewritten with the header Mind-body interaction and mental causation. It contains extensive quotations that retain the quoted authors' sources as in (e.g., Davidson 1963; Mele 1992) and (cf. Horgan 2007) and (in Anscombe and Geach 1954, pp. 274-5). These sources should be made into proper WP footnotes using cite book. The reader should not be forced to look up the original works that are quoted and search for their bibliographies just to find their sources. Brews ohare (talk) 13:55, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Wrong, they're not our references. (There's a link to each source cited: bibliographies are found at the end).—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 02:07, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

For reasons unclear to me, the stress in this section is on the as yet unresolved issues of the mind-body interaction, and the accomplishments of neuroscience in this area and the figure accompanying their description has been removed. All that remains is the comment by Kandel about optimism that neuroscience will eventually explain consciousness, which is embedded in skeptical counter-opinions. It is obvious that much conscious activity is very much affected by goings-on in the brain, as evidenced by addiction and long-term depression (among many others). The mind-body interaction depends on things like dopamine. A fair assessment is that neurological observations indicate that brain activity has a very strong influence upon consciousness and mental life, and although there are not neurological explanations for every aspect of consciousness, there is no doubt that the significant role of some brain activity is well documented, and not at all unresolved.

Some areas of the human brain implicated in mental disorders that seem to connect mind and body. Area 25 refers to Brodmann's area 25, related to long-term depression.

Although it may be difficult for some to accept that not every topic is clear cut, it does no good from the NPOV to stress one view unduly over others. Brews ohare (talk) 14:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

If you read my edit summary, you know perfectly well why I deleted your irrelevant personal artwork (for the second time) and the shameless WP:OR you had attached to it. Quit spamming the talk page.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 02:16, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: It has become difficult to see you as a serious contributor to Mind-body problem. Your referral to your in-line edit summaries rm user's art-work again and WP:OR: and irrelevant WP:OR: are not, as you seem to think, more detailed justification of your actions, but are simply using WP:OR as if your personal assertion of its correct use is a given, needing no additional amplification. In your "explanation" just above, once again you engage in useless rhetoric speaking of "shameless WP:OR" and "irrelevant personal artwork" without a scrap of example of WP:OR, nor anything to justify why this picture of regions of the brain involved in mental states is "irrelevant" to the mind-body problem that is exactly the subject of these connections. You might read López-Muñoz on the regions of the brain and their connection to depression. You will find that as in Comer's discussion of brain regions and their relation to mental states, much artwork is considered so proprietary that it is not even displayed: that is why I drew this picture of my own based upon the Kandel presentations on Charlie Rose called the Charlie Rose Brain Series.

MachineElf, it is time to get to specific reasons for your actions and get past your present methodology of unsupported flag-waving of WP policies. Brews ohare (talk) 15:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC).

I'll indulge your personal commentary in this case, it's been clear from the beginning that your primary interest is promoting your views on the physics of Free will to match your articles on "CZ".

You didn't create that image in order to address this subject matter. The challenge to your text makes it makes it WP:OR until such time as you prove otherwise by providing the relevant sources. Spamming the talk page with an ad homenim doesn't help, there's nothing to discuss: once again, the WP:BURDEN is yours. No doubt you're well aware of that given your dramatic history of conflict and tendentious editing.

Regarding your genuine lack of WP:COMPETENCE, the mind-body problem is not a question of what parts of the brain are implicated in mental states like depression. The problem is the seeming impossibility that any part ever could be, and vice versa. But feel free to add a link to the 'see also' section, (perhaps to your WP:COATRACK at free will#The mind-body problem).—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 23:55, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Relevance of brain image

MachineElf has proposed that the brain image above is not pertinent to this topic, and also constitutes WP:OR. He/she has removed this image from Mind-body problem twice without more specific objections, and now has responded on this Talk page with this commentary, including the suggestion that "the mind-body problem is not a question of what parts of the brain are implicated in mental states".

Below I will outline some authors that do not appear to take that view, but to the contrary have expressed the understanding that the brain and particular regions of the brain are part of the mind-body interaction and of the mind-body problem.

• Definition of the mind-body problem

"The mind-body problem is the philosophical problem of understanding the relationship between the mind and the physical matter that constitutes the human body", according to the leading sentence of Mind-body problem. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not restrict the matter to philosophy, and states "The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?"

• Pertinence of parts of the brain to the mind-body problem

In his discussion of the mind-body problem, Descartes felt it was pertinent to describe the mechanism of the interaction between mind and body as taking place through a specific region of he brain, the pineal gland. See the article Descartes and the Pineal Gland. In other words, Descartes viewed a particular region of hte brain as being part of the the discussion of the mind-body problem.

The book The Biological Basis for Mind Body Interactions obviously describes mind-body interactions, the subject of the mind-body problem and describes at length various regions of the brain such as the amygdala and their connection to mental states like emotion, depression and the like. "This volume is divided into two parts. In the first part we examine the physiological basis for the bi-directional interactions between mind/brain and the body."

A more philosophical work combining essays from various areas of learning is The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness. It takes the view that the mind-body interaction involves a "global neuronal workspace".

In his book In Search of Memory: the emergence of a new science of mind Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel describes many details of events in the brain related to memory and learning, and expresses the view quoted in Mind-body problem "...consciousness is a biological process that will eventually be explained in terms of molecular signaling pathways used by interacting populations of nerve cells..." It would seem that his view (correct or not) is that mind-body interaction will ultimately show the mind to be just a facet of the brain's activity.

It is an everyday occurrence in neurology to refer to the various Brodmann areas of the brain in connection with mental disorders like long-term depression, addiction, and mental activities like memory and so forth that are part of what subjectively is experienced as mind.

It would seem , MachineElf, that your view of the topic Mind-body problem is more restrictive than that of many published authors. Inclusion of this diagram and a brief discussion is quite within the purview of this article. Brews ohare (talk) 15:23, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The pineal gland makes my point.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 17:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

And here's the rest of the WP:OR you've neglected to mention: "The figure shows some areas of the brain implicated in mental disorders that are at least partly conscious, such as addiction and long-term depression. It is recognized that it is not just particular areas of the brain that affect conscious states, but their dynamic overall electrochemical interactions."—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 20:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the OR is in the sentence "The figure shows some areas of the brain implicated in mental disorders that are at least partly conscious, such as addiction and long-term depression. It is recognized that it is not just particular areas of the brain that affect conscious states, but their dynamic overall electrochemical interactions." The connection of the labeled brain areas to mental disorders is described in the WP links and in the sources mentioned just above. The fact that the overall dynamic interactions of various sections of the brain are involved, and not just localized areas is noted by Kandel. An example is the damage of a brain area leading to its compensation by the taking over of that function by other portions of the brain. See for example Cerebral Reorganization of Function after Brain Damage. Care to be more explicit about what you would like to see sourced in more detail?

In any event, MachineElf, you have not addressed the issue that these matters belong in the article, as evidenced by the appearance of this subject matter in innumerable published discussions, of which a few have been pointed out. Brews ohare (talk) 21:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:IDHT, see also ignoratio elenchi, also known as irrelevant conclusion, irrelevant thesis or fallacy of distraction. The "connection of the labeled brain areas to mental disorders" is not the issue here, but neither do your plethora of links to the front covers of various books constitute citations for that irrelevant thesis. Presumably, you're not claiming these brain areas "are at least partly conscious", (which would be apropos to Descartes' infinite regress concerning the pineal gland), but rather that addiction and long-term depression are mental disorders that are "at least partly" self-evident to those who suffer from them. While I'm not inclined to take your word for it that these disorders are allegedly self-evident and that they're purportedly correlated in some unspecified way with one or more of these "particular areas of the brain", I'll point out that, again without citation, you yourself have included the claim: "It is recognized that it is not just particular areas of the brain that affect conscious states..." which voids any supposed relevance, however peripheral, of the foregoing text (and your diagram as a whole) to the problem at hand. Your desire to include your own art-work, in combination with the fact that you did not create the diagram for use in this article, (but presumably for one on depression), explains your otherwise contradictory inclusion of these parts and the undue weight which you've given to them (as opposed to the pineal gland, which you've omitted). Finally, it's merely one point of view that discards the problem on account of the dynamic nature of the brain's overall activity somehow giving rise to consciousness as a brute fact.

Care to drop it? LOL, you imply the so-called "subject matter" of your diagram appears in "innumerable published discussions" of the mind-body problem, but that would be a lie.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 01:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Major revision of lead

I have just made a pretty substantial edit to the lead. My main goal was to make it more readable, but I also added some material and corrected a couple of errors (for example an incorrect definition of dualism). Much of the material I added is taken from a section of consciousness, which is mainly my work. I left the last paragraph untouched for now, but really it seems to me that it does not belong in the lead and probably ought to be removed -- there are weightier things to add to the lead.

Let me add that I hate fighting, and if this edit is reverted, chances are I will simply take this article off my watchlist and ignore it. I have no objection at all to edits of what I added, even major ones, but I won't get allow myself to be sucked into lengthy back-and-forth arguments -- it wastes too much time. Looie496 (talk) 17:01, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Looie: Yes the lead was a mess, and the last paragraph needs work. Besides the monism-dualism thing there is the question of causation that should be introduced. For the dualist it is a question of how mind might cause brain activity and/or vice versa. For the monist, there is the question of what aspect of the brain causes consciousness: is it a collective action of neurons like termite mounds are a collective action of termites? Got some thoughts about putting that in the lead? Brews ohare (talk) 23:29, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the lead should deal with that issue. My own best shot at it is the last two paragraphs of Consciousness#How does it relate to the physical world?. Do you think there is anything useful there? Looie496 (talk) 02:12, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

These paragraphs of yours contain some sources I'll have to look at. I like the second from the end the best. I also would like to separate consciousness from causality. Of course, purpose and intention are conscious, but I'm sure you will agree that consciousnesses is a bigger subject. One would like to discuss how purpose and intention arise and mechanisms for how they might change the course of events, which is what is discussed a bit in Mind-body problem. Brews ohare (talk) 04:30, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for a way to move forward

This article currently seems to be bogged down in unproductive disputes -- let me make a suggestion that might reduce the conflict. It seems to me that the mind-body problem is primarily a philosophical problem, but some philosophical stances make it into a scientific problem as well (physicalism, most obviously). It looks like MachineElf is mainly interested in the philosophical problem, while Brews is mainly interested in the scientific problem, and tends to make errors when writing about the philosophical aspects. How about if we split off sections for scientific approaches toward substance dualism and physicalism, so the Brews can work there without interference? (The other main stances -- property dualism, idealism, and neutral monism -- don't give any role to science, as far as I can see; I'm not sure about neutral monism.) Looie496 (talk) 15:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Looie: I'd have no objection to a separate section on the engineering and neuroscience of the mind-body problem. For example, the entire discussion of mind as an aspect of brain that results from "circular causality" may be viewed as preliminary steps toward a better model for complex nonlinear feedback systems, if you like, the further development of artificial intelligence and self-programming robots. Brews ohare (talk) 16:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Looie, that's unacceptable. We don't allow editors free reign in their own sections. There's already a quantum mind-body problem article, BTW.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 17:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not talking about free rein. I'm talking about getting a chance to work things out without being instantly reverted. If material can be developed in isolation from the rest of the article, it can relatively easily be removed en mass, or otherwise modified, if the final result is unencyclopedic. That's much harder to do when material is interwoven. Looie496 (talk) 18:24, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

But he's not trying to "work things out", he's edit warring to insert his WP:OR, the substance of which does not change, regardless of feedback... which he dismisses out of hand. All he needs to do is provide sources, but he can't do that, so he spams the talk page ad nauseum. He has had ample time to source his material, or modify it to comply with sources, or create a page in his user space, if he were interested in developing material "in isolation", but that's hardly the issue here. After all, it has been relatively easy to remove his problematic material... I'm not sure how what you're saying supports an artificial distinction between science editors and philosophy editors, but the implication is that Brews ohare is being scientific and I'm not, which couldn't be farther from the truth.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 19:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf doesn't sound conciliatory, eh? Looie, he/she wishes to cast your suggestion as an aspersion, suggesting you are knighting myself as more "scientific" than he/she. Where do your words imply that exactly...? Brews ohare (talk) 21:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Please stop insulting one another, would you two? To be honest, I can't make any judgement about what Brews is adding, because I can't parse it out from the tangle of reverts and cross-arguments. My hope is that if I could see it in isolation, I would be able to understand it better. Looie496 (talk) 21:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

So far Looie, I have added the section Historical background, which previously mentioned only Plato alone. This section could be greatly improved upon, but it is only a very brief guide for the reader to further explore these men. I have also added a good deal of the section Mind-body interaction and mental causation originally contributed by myself in this form and materially altered by back-and-forth with MachineElf. Aside from the issue of including Bohr's views and the recent brouhaha over the inclusion of more neuroscience there really isn't much going on here. Brews ohare (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Brews ohare, you've exhasted WP:AGF long ago. While I wouldn't generally appreciate being portrayed as philosophical (to the exclusion of scientific), and far less either way in juxtaposition to Brews ohare... I neither suggested that Looie was casting aspersions nor "knighting" you (whatever that's supposed to mean). LOL, where do my words imply that exactly! As Looie's user page indicates an interest in neuroscience, it's no surprise you're mischaracterizing your tendentious reverts of your art-work and WP:OR as a "brouhaha over the inclusion of more neuroscience".

Note that the link to your pristine contribution, (prior to being "materially altered", aka collaboration), demonstrates your first attempt (marked as minor) at giving yourself credit in article space for your contributions to the Citizendum wiki: its Mind-body problem article being your own creation, and its Free will article being a product of the last 500 edits, which were yours. (Notice any familiar artwork on those pages? How about Free will#The mind-body problem?)—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 02:50, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: My objective in trying to get more neuroscience into mind-body problem is to provide the reader of this article with an intro to the many advances of the last few years in understanding how the brain works and its documented effects upon mental life. For example, long-term depression is clearly a disorder that colors one's mental state and that recently has been related to Brodmann area 25, and addiction is clearly a situation where one's conscious will to escape the problem is overcome by the changes in dopamine production in the brain brought about by substance abuse. I don't see any reason to object to alerting the reader to this material in Mind-body problem: it is an aspect of the mind-body interaction, and as time goes on, probably more will be added.

As for the art work, it simply points out roughly where some of the key areas of the brain implicated in the mind-body interaction are located. It is not important that this figure is used in some other articles as well, and it is not important that I drew it. You can compare it with the figure used by the panelists in Charlie Rose Brain Series 2; it shows up at time 32:54.

There is nothing personal about any of this; it doesn't matter that you are irritated with me, or that Looie has an interest in this topic. Personal quirks are irrelevant. Brews ohare (talk) 13:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Stop reinserting your artwork, who says it's personal? In regard to your WP:TENDENTIOUS and wildly WP:UNDUE public service message... see WP:NOT.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:42, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Neuroscience subsection

I've introduced a very brief subsection on Neurological aspects of the mind-body problem. It could be expanded to include many more known interactions, but this is a start. Brews ohare (talk) 14:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:DISRUPT: Your WP:COATRACK has been reverted for the patently obvious reasons given above.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: You take no interest in explaining why this addition to Mind-body problem dealing with neuroscientific aspects is unacceptable to you, nor what might be done to meet your (unstated) expectations. Your inline edit accompanying your revert is the only clue to your reasoning:

rv WP:COATRACK / this is a philosophy article about the mind-body problem, not a "neuroscience" article about addiction and depression, regardless of how relevant you'd like to portray them as being, this was wildly WP:UNDUE & WP:TENDENTIOUS."

According to WP, "A coatrack article is a Wikipedia article that ostensibly discusses the nominal subject, but in reality is a cover for a tangentially related biased subject."

Now, there is no reason to call the neuroscience of the mind-body problem biased, and likewise it is not tangential unless you interpret the mind-body problem as strictly a philosophical issue to the exclusion of neuroscience, suggesting by implication that we need another article, say Mind-body problem (neuroscience) Many authors on the subject do not separate the two discussions, and the two aspects benefit one another, but of course, that doesn't mean it cannot be done that way. Is that your recommendation? Brews ohare (talk) 04:24, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Stop putting lies in my mouth. You WP:DISRUPTIVELY spammed the article with irrelevant material on depression, when you knew perfectly well I would object, and moreover, you took that as an opportunity to reinsert your artwork... (how many times is that now? in how many articles?) Don't be ridiculous, you missed the "the neuroscience of the mind-body problem" by a mile and instead of acknowledging your own behavior in any way, you make up another pack of obnoxious lies about me. "Is that [my] recommendation?" No, that's another sad testament to your intellectual suicide. Here's what I said:[1] "I'd suggest a summary of topics in relevant articles such as the neural correlates of consciousness and neurophilosophy..."—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 09:19, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

New sections on neuroscience

MachineElf: I see that with these edits [2], [3] and [4] that you made following my inquiry about a separate article, you created an entire new subsection Neural correlates divided into two sub-subsections adding approximately 5200 words and two figures to the article Mind-body problem.

You are to be congratulated.

It seems you have changed your opinion about inclusion of such material being WP:COATRACK, eh?

It is unfortunate that you use these improvements in the article as an occasion for wholly imaginary personal attacks, taking the view that in the course of proposing such a section myself I have engaged to "make up another pack of obnoxious lies" about you. What is that about? Brews ohare (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow, you're saying I changed my mind and restored your WP:COATRACK, eh? Congratulations Bruiser! you sure showed me, eh?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 17:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It appears that some of this new material originated in Neural correlates of consciousness and brought over a referencing format that differs from that used in Mind-body problem. The sources cited in this material have to be changed to fit the new context. Brews ohare (talk) 16:06, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Brews ohare's commentary on edit summaries

MachineElf: It is not necessary to justify your modest changes to Mind-body problem subsection with inflammatory in-line comments that do little to convey what your edits actually mean.

I refer, for example, to "yuck, better to have replaced the author's parentheticals w/ellipses; rv year [of the actual source I quoted] back to 2009; it was directly quoting a subquote, w/o square brackets, don't just substitute a source you like better for the author's" referring to your change in how the quote from Elizabeth of Bohemia is attributed. I think you could make this change without the polemics, eh?

Another example is "the ham-handed polemic on the back cover may appeal to your science wars era POV, but it does the author a disservice... she's much too sophisticated for such absurd posturing about philosophers enemical to a scientific revolution in brain research", which drags in stuff like "your science wars era POV" without pertinence to the edit (or anything else for that matter), but apparently the result of an irresistible urge.

And another example is "you omit the part in which even a superficial relevance to the topic of this article is apparent", again directed at me instead of the content of your edit, which adds 800+ more words to the quotation I supplied.

Can you pause for a second and try to understand why you are impelled to put extraneous pejorative comments directed at me in your edit summaries, instead of describing the actual content of your edits? Brews ohare (talk) 12:57, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Can you stop edit warring and spamming the talk page?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 13:15, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: Your in-line comments may be your emotional reaction to what you see as edit warring, but that is an excuse, not a vindication. And edit warring actually hasn't happened - the article has expanded and improved as a result of our interaction, despite annoyances. Brews ohare (talk) 16:28, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should all pick "meaningless" topics and go badger the hell out of them, eh?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 17:54, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Removal of links to sources

In this edit MachineElf removed information about sources cited in a quotation with the in-line comment "rm otiose clutter from direct quotes", suggesting that superscripts for footnotes constitute "clutter". Removal of these footnotes forces the reader to access the original source and search its bibliography for these citations. That is a disservice to the WP reader, and I have restored this information, including Google links not provided in the original bibliography. Brews ohare (talk) 17:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Why? Because you get off on forcing me to remove them again? How many new talk sections does that usually take?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:24, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: I see that true to your comment immediately above you have removed all bibliographic information from the quote, forcing the reader to consult the bibliography in the original source. As your in-line editorial justification you list the reason WP:TENDENTIOUS WP:WHYCITE WP:MOSQUOTE WP:NOT & admittedly WP:V, a typical concatenation of WP policies and guidelines suggesting you think they are applicable, but who can guess why.

Ease of use for the reader is not a consideration, apparently. Why is that? Brews ohare (talk) 19:05, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Surprise, surprise, your typical WP:IDHT... "but who can guess why" I might think WP policies and guidelines are applicable to you? LOL, you got me there! I wouldn't hazard a guess why no one's filed an AE with the way you've been shamelessly going around pushing howlers like "...any observation necessitates an interference with the course of the phenomena, which is of such a nature that it deprives us of the foundation underlying the causal mode of description."; and it's a WikiProject Physics article no less... Tisk, tisk—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 22:36, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Quoting Niels Bohr as creating "howlers" in his discussion of mental control of atomic events in the brain is not what I'd call a responsible response. That is a ploy commonly called misdirection, avoiding the issue here. That issue is why have you removed links to bibliographic information within the quotation, thereby forcing the reader to consult the bibliography in the original source? Ease of use for the reader is not a consideration, apparently. Why is that?

Your use of rhetorical devices to divert attention indicates there is no answer. Brews ohare (talk) 03:23, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Woows: you're lying about my quote somehow "creating" your latest WP:DISRUPT... not what I'd call a "responsible response" either...

transgressing the boundaries eh? Shall we deconstruct, so to speak, the transformitive hermeneutics you've inserted into the lead of Causality:

"...There is also a significant body of literature on this subject in the sciences, including the influential work of Bohr who noted that causality was incompatible with the alteration of what is observed by the act of observation itself, certainly for descriptions at the atomic and sub-atomic level,[3] and possibly in other arenas as well.[4]"

WP:GAME Lying to readers may be easier, but see WP:Quote#General guidelines: "Never quote a false statement without immediately saying the statement is false... There is no difference between quoting a falsehood without saying it's false and inserting falsehoods into articles." Bohr typically refers to classical mechanics as causality, and he stipulates a fundamental necessity that "observations", (the results of scientific experiment), must be described in classical terms (the terms of complimentary pairs require different experimental arrangements). It's well know that his fundamentalist epistemology lacked merit, and although Bohr was under no pressure to demonstrate the merits of complimentarity, had it genuinely been a new means of scientific description, it could have been generalized to the other sciences... to which Bohr vaguely alluded, but never sufficiently elaborated.

It is, of course, you, who has failed to address the substance of my rejection; and it is you who has stepped up from petty lies and WP:IDHT to the "use of rhetorical devices"... as you seem to have learnt from my edit summary: "Are you still beating your wife? Why is that?"...

WP:CB I wouldn't want to insult the intelligence of your audience by explaining the absurd; but as you're attempting to exploit the opportunity: please be advised that cheep WP:BATTLEGROUND tactics will be met with extreme ambivalence: WP:RATSASS—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: You have changed the subject, from your removal of WP source links footnoted in the quotation of O'Connor, to a discussion of the merits of Bohr's philosophy. While I welcome a coherent discussion of Bohr's contributions as a new thread; a novel approach compared to your prior interjections of LOL, howler, and lists of WP policies; the discussion of Bohr's work is not the topic here, in this thread. Brews ohare (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

You're lying, they weren't links to WP's source.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 03:02, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry you misunderstood. The links you removed were links in the WP article to sources provided by O'Connor, and your removal forces the reader to go back to O'Connor's original work to find exactly what these sources are. That is an inconvenience to the WP reader. Brews ohare (talk) 05:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

strong support #8:

1. That's not what you've been repeating ad nauseum.
2. You know perfectly well I did not misunderstand.
3. They are not O'Connor's Robb's! They're apparently whatever came to hand on Google Books... and assuming good faith, but despite my protests and contrary to guidelines, you've been compelled to edit war, as you cannot abide denying readers the benefit of faux citations that neither point to our source nor to O'Connor's Robb's. If you hold a gun to the reader's head, and "force" them, as you invariably say, to check the genuine source, they will find the author's unmolested citations for their own genuine sources, exactly where the reader expects to find them.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 04:56, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:EL?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 06:24, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: Unsupportable and pure baloney, as a cursory glance at the footnotes you removed indicates. Brews ohare (talk) 22:18, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Oscar! I get the pure baloney from you Brews... by assuming good faith and competence: that's not the relevant diff where you substituted O'Conner and Robb 2003, pp. 7-8 for Anscombe and Geach 1954, pp. 274-5 (as well as attempting to change the year of the genuine source from which I took the direct quote, Robb 2009). Furthermore, I've fixed my unintentional omission of the text between the two closing parentheses. My apologies for not checking my attempt to repair your remaining WP:DISRUPTIVE edits against my original edit. I assure you, extending the opportunity to self-revert any portion of such edits, is not a mistake I'll make again.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 23:58, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: Glad you fixed your omission of the quote pertinent to O'Connor's reference [Sehon 2005], which was grouped incorrectly in your earlier quote along with [Davidson 1963; Mele 1992]. However, that still does not fix your use of these abbreviated references employed by O'Connor to refer to his bibliography, which I made explicit for the WP article and you removed. Your changing of the the subject does not change the outcome of your editing, which is to force the reader to go back to O'Connor's original bibliography and then perform their own searches for these citations - work that I did for the reader, including Google links for the reader, and all of which you have erased. Brews ohare (talk) 20:08, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

ROTFLMAO again... it's Robb, not O'Connor (and that's still not the relevant diff). The subject is the mind-body problem, eh?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 23:13, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

You're right, the quote is not from O'Connor here, but Robb & Heil. However, the subject is your removal of footnotes providing information about sources in abbreviated form like [Davidson 1963; Mele 1992], forcing readers to go back to the original article and search its bibliography. Brews ohare (talk) 10:43, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

No one's going to bite "baloney" like that Brews... you're embarrassing yourself, enough is enough.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 11:49, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: So far, in all your commentary upon your removal of explicit bibliographic information for WP readers, you have said nothing at all about this disservice to readers. All you have to offer are invective and red herrings. You seem impressed with your self-congratulatory turns of phrase, but what is very clear: you aren't sympathetic to fixing the problems you've created. Brews ohare (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

♫ ...and if you ask me why I'll say, 'cause Brews ohare has a way with b o l o g n a. ♫ I've spelled it out for you: I removed the irrelevant Google Books cite and bibliographic "info" for the SEP's mental causation article, not our article. You've also ignored my alternative suggestions for the latter, (as if you'd honestly read them and found them relevant, what a joke). Glad it's clear I'm not "sympathetic" to your WP:DISRUPTIVE edits.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:22, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: I find your explanation of what you think you did confusing, namely, "I removed the irrelevant Google Books cite and bibliographic "info" for the SEP's mental causation article, not our article. I guess that you mean you removed the Google books cite and all other bibliographic info from the quotation from Robb & Heil, leaving only the references as formatted by those authors, for example, [Davidson 1963; Mele 1992]. If that is your meaning, it agrees exactly with what I've been saying to you. The question is: Why did you do that? For example, instead of [Davidson 1963] i put in:

Davidson, D. (1963). "Actions, Reasons, and Causes". Journal of Philosophy. 60 (23): 685–700. Reprinted in Davidson, D (2001). "Chapter 1: Actions, Reasons, and Causes". Essays on Actions and Events (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 3–19. ISBN 0199246270.

I believe (i) this is indeed the reference referred to by Robb & Heil as described in their bibliography, (ii) this does allow the reader to locate this reference very easily, far more easily than going back to the SEP article and searching its bibliography, and (iii) this actually provides a second source for this material readily available to the WP reader.

Now please explain in this particular instance why you object to having this material provided??? Brews ohare (talk) 04:57, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Why lie? That's not what you "put in". There's nothing new about this "particular instance": I've already explained "why" plagiarizing the SEP article's bibliography is a bad idea... your facile pedantry flies in the face of fair use and in no way whatsoever do poached references provide "a second source" you've never read.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 13:56, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: Whatever else may be on your mind, what I am interested in is the inclusion of bibliographic information to help readers of WP locate the sources indicated by Robb & Heil in your quotation from their work. That is not "plagiarism" in any definition of this word. The sources are not "poached": they are the ones suggested by Robb & Heil, used exactly as they do, at the same insertion point in their text. Providing an additional location where the same material is replicated but may be more easily found also is an aid to the reader. Perhaps you can explain your objections in a more intelligible manner? Or, perhaps we should make a request for comment to engage some other opinions? Brews ohare (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: I've requested some advice on this matter from the Help Desk. Brews ohare (talk) 17:01, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

The help desk having offered no commentary on the matter, I've made a proposal to the Village Pump. Brews ohare (talk) 17:06, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Handling of sources

The approach of WP:CITEinQUOTE should be applied to the Robb-Heil quote. Here is a possible implementation:

As stated by David Robb and John Heil:

"Mind-body interaction has a central place in our pretheoretic conception of agency... Indeed, mental causation often figures explicitly in formulations of the mind-body problem... Some philosophers (e.g., Davidson 1963; Mele 1992) insist that the very notion of psychological explanation turns on the intelligibility of mental causation. If your mind and its states, such as your beliefs and desires, were causally isolated from your bodily behavior, then what goes on in your mind could not explain what you do. (For contrary views, see Ginet 1990; Sehon 2005...)"

"If psychological explanation goes, so do the closely related notions of agency and moral responsibility (cf. Horgan 2007)... Clearly, a good deal rides on a satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation [and] there is more than one way in which puzzles about the mind's “causal relevance” to behavior (and to the physical world more generally) can arise."

"Descartes (1642/1996) set the agenda for subsequent discussions of the mind-body relation. According to Descartes, minds and bodies are distinct kinds of substance. Bodies, he held, are spatially extended substances, incapable of feeling or thought; minds, in contrast, are unextended, thinking, feeling substances, souls."

"If minds and bodies are radically different kinds of substance, however, it is not easy to see how they could causally interact... Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia puts it forcefully to him in a 1643 letter...

how the human soul can determine the movement of the animal spirits in the body so as to perform voluntary acts—being as it is merely a conscious substance. For the determination of movement seems always to come about from the moving body's being propelled—to depend on the kind of impulse it gets from what sets it in motion, or again, on the nature and shape of this latter thing's surface. Now the first two conditions involve contact, and the third involves that the impelling thing has extension; but you utterly exclude extension from your notion of soul, and contact seems to me incompatible with a thing's being immaterial (in Anscombe and Geach 1954, pp. 274-5)...

Elizabeth is expressing the prevailing mechanistic view as to how causation of bodies works... Causal relations countenanced by contemporary physics can take several forms, not all of which are of the push-pull variety."

     — David Robb and John Heil: "Mental Causation" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  Notes

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Brews ohare (talk • contribs) 19:23, 8 November 2012

---

"WP:CITEinQUOTE" was a redirect you optimistically created which briefly pointed to your failed attempt to amend the citation guideline by edit warring.[5][6][7][8][9] Your so-called implementation bears little resemblance to that proposal, which you've newly "refactored" into a non-starter... par for the course. We are not going to accommodate your footnoting by breaking a direct quote into contiguous quoted blocks... per WP:MOS, obviously. As I've said, you're welcome to use brackets, ellipses, etc. and needless to say, paraphrasing would be the normal option, if you so desired.

In any event, we ought to be using less material from the SEP article, not more... but if you're so desperate to bilk it for bibliographic entries, stop screwing around and do so after the quotation. It would be easiest to simply append new lines to the end of actual citation, but no doubt you'd prefer a new footnote grouping, as you proposed... knock yourself out.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 23:55, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: Can I remind you that (i) it was you who introduced this very long quotation from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and (ii) it is you who has left unexplained in this quotation the (author year) designations of items in its bibliography, despite all efforts to introduce detail about what these references are? Your commentary suggests you would like to fix the problem, but don't like the proposal.

The quotation is not "broken up" into segments in the identification of sources proposed above: the quotation as you formed it, despite its formatting as though it were a block, actually is already a concatenation of isolated segments that are not contiguous in the original.

What would you suggest be done? Brews ohare (talk) 17:47, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

"What would [I] suggest be done?" LOL... WP:IDHT. For your information, I'd have replaced some it with Dennett, if you weren't so tendentiously fixated upon it.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 21:18, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I have simply removed the citations from the quote and replaced them with a note that they have been omitted. I see you have accepted this approach. It is not the best way to handle these sources, which are exemplary additions to the discussion of free will and its related topics. However, perhaps some interested readers will find this guidance to this literature. Brews ohare (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

MachineElf: I believe you will find the present version of Wikipedia:Quoted citations more to your line of thinking. Discussion of this article has raised a number of suggestions from others, and writing it caused me to search many sources for guidance. As a result, this article contains four approaches to such references: (i) omit them with (citations omitted) appended or added as a footnote, (ii) leave them exactly as in the original source and let the reader fend for themselves (the approach you first used) (iii) paraphrase the material and provide links or updated sources clearly identified as separating from the original, and finally (iv) provide links or updated sources clearly identified as separating from the original as footnotes at the end of the quotation, outside the quotation marks.

The last approach is my preference, as proposed above, but that is only one of the four. The way the quotation is now handled in Mind-body problem, by using an unaccompanied ellipsis to indicate missing references, is not a procedure suggested by anyone, and counter-indicated by some sources. I regret that our discussion on this Talk page has led to an inappropriate treatment. Brews ohare (talk) 14:54, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

LOL, screw WP:ELLIPSES? Transparently disingenuous, as ever... ellipses are "unaccompanied" by such egregious pedantry, except in legal documents.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:54, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Buddhism and nihilism

I have removed a quaint and unsourced statement from the lead:

A third approach, not very popular among western philosophers but held in some eastern religions such as some post-orthodox Buddhist sects, is nihilism, the belief that both mind and matter are illusions.

This cuts right across central tenets in Buddhism, which make it clear that nihilism is an extreme view to be avoided. The matter is set out in the Heart Sutra, perhaps the core sutra in Buddhism. The Buddhist position is both that there is no mind and no matter and that it is not the case that there is no mind and no matter. The reality, whatever that is, lies somewhere in between, and both extremes are to be avoided. As for "post-orthodox" sects, what is that meant to mean? Sects that are not Buddhist? --Epipelagic (talk) 21:07, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I wrote that line, except for the post-orthodox part, which I also have no idea about. It was added by an IP editor who has not made any other edits using the same address, with edit summary "I edited the part of the document incorrectly stating that Buddhism is a form of Nihilism. It is true that there are some later formed sects of Buddhism that veer in that directions but those ideas are not contained in original texts and philosophy." It seems to me that there is some variability among Buddhist sects, with Zen veering toward the nihilistic, but I'll freely admit to not being an expert. Maybe the important point, which ought to be expressed somehow, is that Buddhists generally are neither monists nor dualists. Looie496 (talk) 03:50, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, saying that Buddhists generally are neither monists nor dualists would be reasonable as a first pass. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:48, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

coterminous with the brain

Hi User:Brews ohare, nice to see you. What do you think about Russell's Internalism? "I maintain an opinion which all other philosophers find shocking: namely, that people's thoughts are in their heads."—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 02:27, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

MachineElf: I'll take a look at this. Do you think it bears upon cultural psychology? Brews ohare (talk) 22:37, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

No more than Schrodinger, which cotermini were those again?—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:46, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

MachineElf: The quote from Schrödinger is from one of his philosophical works on the subject. He is a profound thinker, obviously, and his ideas bear attention. Apparently you think this quotation is not pertinent, but you haven't said why, and in my opinion, probably will not. Brews ohare (talk) 15:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Cultural psychology

The viewpoint of cultural psychology so far has been omitted from this article.

According to some, the 'mind' is not coterminous with the brain. As Schrödinger has suggested,

"Every man's world picture is and always remains a construct of the mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence, yet the conscious mind itself remains a stranger within that construct, it has no living space in it, you can spot it nowhere in space...We have entirely taken to thinking of the personality of a human being...as located in the interior of its body. To learn that it cannot really be found there is so amazing that it meets with doubt and hesitation, we are very loath to admit it." And later (p. 123):

"It is very difficult for us to take stock of the fact that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic, just an aid for practical use."

Aspects of cognitive science and cultural psychology suggest that indeed the mind is not coterminous with the brain, because the mind is a product of interaction between individuals and their culture, which resides outside any single brain, to say the least: "Culture produces the mind; brain circuitry does not." Ratner continues: "The mind-body problem of how the physical body/brain produces mental, subjective qualia, is the wrong way to frame the origin of consciousness."

In his foreward to a book by Andy Clark, David Chalmers says:

"Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already."

Comments

• Comment: The suggestion that this viewpoint be added to this article has been rejected without talk-page discussion by MachineElf and Snowded. Some rationale seems appropriate. Brews ohare (talk) 22:29, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
• OMG here we go again : The subject is an important one, but cultural psychology is a very partial approach and your sources partial and distinctly unrepresentative. The modern distinction between Cartesian and post-Cartesian approaches is an important one with philosophers like Andy Clark involved and Theile has a good summary. Its been a when I have a day or so free project for some time as its one of the areas I am working with from both an applied as a theoretical aspect. What will not work is a few quotes grabbed at random. We have just had weeks of this at the Free Will article, following weeks at many other articles of thousands of talk page words being expanded but have zero impact on you Brews. You are also back into your normal patter of ignoring WP:BRD until you are reverted a second or more time, then finally moving to the talk page. When you end up there you again refuse to listen to anyone who does not agree with you. ----Snowded ^TALK 06:15, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: No doubt a more complete addition than these few sentences with two sources and a link can be constructed. But your view seems to be that it's better to wait until you get around to doing something more extensive yourself than to have this 'heads up' for the reader. Snowded, so far as I can see, it will be a very, very long time we'll be waiting for you. Until then, half a loaf is better than no bread. Brews ohare (talk) 05:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Some of us have jobs Brews band demanding ones at that. I have a lot of wikipedia work I want to do when I retire. When I do partial or incomplete summaries based on google searches will not feature in my approach. I dare say that by that time someone else may well have done this which is fine. In the meantime any changes need to be encyclopaedic, not just notes on the way to an entry. ----Snowded ^TALK 07:33, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: I hope your retirement lives up to expectations and you then can find time to make useful contributions to WP. In the meantime, you are exercising unsupported deletion of accurate and sourced material based apparently upon your idealistic views of what you might get around to doing in some future life. Brews ohare (talk) 12:32, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Bo Brews, I am editing in accordance with policy and making a useful contribution as a result. You on the other hand have had zero support from other editors or policy discussion groups for your interpretations of policy. The lesson there is really simple and you don't want to learn it, or even pay attention. I suspect a ration of "words by Brews on talk page" to "words accepted as edits on articles by Brews" would be a little asymmetric in nature. ----Snowded ^TALK 15:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I have added a citation to a book by Andy Clark. Brews ohare (talk) 13:41, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment - Unfortunately I do not currently have time to study the subject in depth and to get involved in long theoretical exchanges. But I am very interested in the field in general and in the specific subject in particular. I am wary of all the additions this editor Ohare does occasionally on the field, and I am glad MachineElf and Snowded have popped here too to control this editor a bit, since it looks to me that given free rein he can do damage. warshy ^(¥¥) 16:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Warshy: I am disappointed that you support Snowded in refusing a sourced, accurate contribution on a missing subtopic not on its merits, or any other content issue, but by introducing a slanderous and unevidenced personal attack upon myself as "one who can do damage". Shame on you for contributing to a hostile editing environment in which scurrilous personal innuendo replaces addressing content. Brews ohare (talk) 12:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I became acquainted with your pattern of operation in the general philosophy area when you toiled for months to add a bunch of "meta" articles, such as "metametaphysics," etc. It was all just most a big annoyance for someone trying to follow it seriously, with a lot of arguments to read about some really not very important, in my view, area of philosophical studies. As far as I know, as I stopped following these long arguments closely a long time ago, the latest on that "siginificant" addition to Wikipedia is that is currently being proposed for merger back into metaphisics. But I really don't give much attention to it one way or the other. Here, however, is an area that is in my view very central to any philosophical inquiry. As I said, and don't have the time and/or the disposition currently to start following your long and convoluted arguments in trying to add to WP some non-mainstream views. As I have seen all over the place in the philosophy area, wherever you pop up trying to add some new fangled innovation, other editors in the area invariably come to try and pare it back to the essential core that should be there. In this case here, I just wanted to signal to the parties involved that there is one more pair of eyes that views the suggested additions very warily. Maybe this can shorten the cycle of long and convoluted arguments on non-essential points and matters a little bit? warshy ^(¥¥) 16:48, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you warshy, though must admit I really don't have Snowded's patience and I settle too easily for a wretched compromise. BTW, metametaphysics isn't entirely Brew's fault, due to his topic ban, it's quite possibly the only (non-literary?) article with the word "physics" right there in the title that he's free to edit.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:01, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: It is fine to argue the importance of Ratner and Clark, but that is not happening here. All we have is a bunch of excuses for doing nothing at all but blocking this addition. And why? Because you all are "too busy" to think about it? So why let any change take place, eh what? Not that it is wrong. Not that it is unsourced. But because you all want to wait for 'one sunny day' when you will have the energy to address the matter. Brews ohare (talk) 14:52, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The mind-body problem has community aspects, and the mind is not contiguous with the brain. That point is not a minor addition to this article. Schrödinger's work goes back about 60 years and his is not the first to mention the cultural aspects of mind are as important as the gray matter that processes it. Dehaene and Dennett suggests the cultural aspects will eventually push the hard problem of consciousness into limbo (recasting the mind-body problem), and Kuhn has pointed out that science is strongly influenced by the community beliefs of scientists that select which theories will be accepted and pursued including, of course, neuroscience and psychology that are intimately involved in the mind-body problem.

The suggestion that the delocalized, cultural aspects of mind are a 'new fangled innovation' is misinformed, and it is fuddy-duddy to suggest this aspect of the mind-body problem is somehow of minor importance. Brews ohare (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me. Who else around here other than you gives a crap about this so-called "cultural psychology?" I certainly don't, and I don't think WP readers in the field of philosophy will be missing anything if there is not even a mention of the area in this article. I think WP can certainly do without another one of these "substantial" additions based on new trends that have not yet had sufficient reliable academic development and discussion of them. And I, as I said, certainly do not have the time and/or disposition to go reading about them just because you think they are notable. I am done here. warshy ^(¥¥) 15:35, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Well warshy, I am glad to have it clear that what goes into WP should be based, not upon WP policies, but upon your personal intuition of whether anyone "gives a crap". That intuition having been enunciated, and no further illumination from you in the works, I understand indeed why you are 'done here'. Brews ohare (talk) 15:41, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

metacomment

Guys, we have established over multiple articles that Brews cannot work with other editors. Even when Pfhorest spent days trying to create an acceptable post from his material he rejected anything other than the full monty. We have had this over many articles and personally I think the only response is explain things once, deal with new information but otherwise simply refer to a previous response. Otherwise you sucked into pages and pages of conversation which gets no where. ----Snowded ^TALK 19:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: Please direct your attention to critique of content and not your personal vendetta against myself. So far you have said that the subject is one you'd like to contribute to but don't have the time. You have also suggested that the removed text is too brief, but that is not a reason to remove it. Brews ohare (talk) 04:54, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Q.E.D. ----Snowded ^TALK 06:49, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: You might try (i) adding to the proposed contribution, or (ii) suggesting in what respect it is in need of fixing, or (iii) saying why this proposed addition is worse than no mention of the topic. But just being a smart alec is just that. Brews ohare (talk) 03:10, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Too much time on two many articles explaining things to you Brews, it doesn't have any impact its a waste of time ----Snowded ^TALK 06:30, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

WP:BEANS.[10]—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 18:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Explain things? When was that? Now complain, that's common. Brews ohare (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

So far

To this point there has been no comment upon the proposed addition of some subsection on the cultural aspects of mind that discuss the notion that 'mind' is formed in part via communication between individuals and resides in part in community and its culture, and is not coterminous with the individual brain. Instead of discussion of sources presenting this aspect, what we have is jeering from the sidelines. When will sources become part of the discussion, as they are already in the proposed addition? Brews ohare (talk) 02:09, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Brews, wikipedia is not a competition to see who can use a keyword search in goggle scholar to produce the largest list of quotations and references. It is an encyclopaedia and people have responded to you accordingly ----Snowded ^TALK 05:11, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: It's an obvious point, but you have forgotten it: It is not how a source is found that is important; it is how it is put to use in fashioning a WP contribution. To date, we are yet to see you present any sourced material, never mind how you might have come upon it. How about doing that? Brews ohare (talk) 05:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Brews, just check out how much effort Pfhorest spent with you on Free Will and consider the way you ignored him/her. He is the latest in a long line of editors who have tried ----Snowded ^TALK 05:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Snowded: Pfhorrest and I have had extended discussions over content. I appreciate his efforts at clarification, and so far we have come to some compromise over content. You are a completely different example of an editor who never discusses sources or content. You avoid that by suggesting behavior is at issue, not what sources say and how to present it.

I don't know why you do that. Sometimes it seems you could be of help with sources, but you prefer to name-drop. Brews ohare (talk) 15:39, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Pfhorrest spent a long time trying to educate you (a better description that discussing content) and finally proposed one small change, working with your material. You rejected/ignored that as you were not prepared to compromise. You haven't come to any compromise over content as witnessed by the lack of change. Until you get your mind around the basic facts of what is going on and reduce the insults you are going to make no headway. After months of this I would have thought you would have learnt this, but it seems not. Now just to spell this out again, we are not about collections of sourced quotations we are writing an encyclopaedia. Your ideas are been rejected not because people are unwilling to discuss content but because (i) you don't listen and (ii) you keep trying to assembly quotations. That means that behaviour is the issue, something confirmed by your various insulting remarks and dismissal of disagree as 'waffle' to you a recent example ----Snowded ^TALK 17:05, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Please clarify which war (paragraph 4)

In paragraph 4 we refer to "post-war" French philosophy. ..."and is a position that generally characterized post-war French philosophy.[6]" I would assume we mean WWI, but I am not certain enough to make an edit. Please make this more clear for readers by making a specific reference. For example: ... post WWI French philosophy. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.125.83.224 (talk) 20:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

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Wittgenstein purged?

I'm sure Wittgenstein's analysis of this "problem" used to feature in the lede. It now appears nowhere. Could anyone shed any light? I would like to reinstate the position he detailed. The deleted text must be in the archive of this page somewhere but I know of no way to search for it (efficiently and economically). I also won't waste time editing if some edit war or fiefdom is the cause for the change. LookingGlass (talk) 15:10, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

If it ever did, it was a long time ago. A search through the page history using Wikipedia:WikiBlame finds no appearance of Wittgenstein anywhere in the article text at least as far back as 2009. Note that reference 17 of the current version is a book about Wittgenstein. Looie496 (talk) 18:11, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe don’t even drag Kant into it?

I cannot approve of the summary of Kant’s views, here. I quote from the article:

'For Kant (1724–1804) beyond mind and matter there exists a world of a priori forms, which are seen as necessary preconditions for understanding. Some of these forms, space and time being examples, today seem to be pre-programmed in the brain.'

This strikes me as being, at best, very loosely stated, as a summary of anything in Kant. I’m a Kantian, but like anybody else, I expect, I wonder what on earth is 'a world of a priori forms’? What is this 'world’ that is 'beyond’ mind and matter? It sounds like a place very far away. I’m picturing it as being out there beyond the moon, beyond the stars. Also, 'beyond’ mind! I’m mocking this, as gobbledygook, which is more obvious than the point that we’re not getting this gobbledygook from Kant at all.

More from the article:

'…whatever it is that impinges on us from the mind-independent world does not come located in a spatial or a temporal matrix,…The mind has two pure forms of intuition built into it to allow it to… organize this 'manifold of raw intuition’.[45]

— Andrew Brook, *Kant’s view of the mind and consciousness of self: Transcendental aesthetic*'

I note that a reference is given, to a file in the archives of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I also note that again, this is gobbledygook. It’s not a Kant quote, first of all, and secondly, who can make heads or tails of this? What is 'a spatial or a temporal matrix’? Kant didn’t literally state in so many words, that '(T)he mind has two pure forms of intuition built into it’, and I’m glad that he didn’t, because what is a pure form of intuition anyways? This is only in the vaguest sense a Kantian-sounding jargon. Kant throws words like 'intuition’ around, he says 'a priori’, but among all the things that he says, we can’t find anything to actually simply quote verbatim. I don’t think, in this case, that these paraphrases are even coherent English. I see the quotes around 'manifold of raw intuition’, and I think maybe that’s supposed to be a Kant quote, but it’s not. The Kantian 'manifold of raw intuition’ is not how Kant talks, it’s how college students talk. As an analogy, I could offer that with Kant, subjects come into being through aesthetic judgments. Let’s offer some bogus quotation marks as we add that with Kant, subjects literally 'pressed themselves out’ from the 'manifold of raw intuitions’. I am quoting not Kant, here, but Ronald Judy – here is an example of his work – 'Kant and the Negro’:

https://pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/vol1/judy.html

I think I’m belaboring a point, here, that there is much rather tenebrous and outrageous Kant exposition to be had, out here in the wild. I just want to be clear. Let’s go back to the article:

'Kant views the mind–body interaction as taking place through forces that may be of different kinds for mind and body’.

Now, a reference for this is given as well, but I am again unhappy. The distinction apparently wasn’t drawn between Kant’s most famous later work, for which he is known as a great philosopher, and earlier much more conventional stuff that he published. I’m just saying, I would feel misled by this information about Kant, which makes him sound like he’s doing medieval Aristotelian metaphysics. There are plenty of people doing that – even *today*. But Kant simply does not view the mind-body interaction as taking place through forces that may be of different kinds for mind and body.

What *does* Kant say, then? Well, Kant is kind of a difficult philosopher. At the level of this article, I’m thinking that maybe you don’t want to drag Kant into it at all. It’s not because Kant isn’t interesting. I think it’s just too far into the weeds. I’ll make my own attempt at characterizing Kant’s views here, though. As the article conveys, we know that typically humans are characterized as having both a mind (nonphysical) and body/brain (physical). This is known as dualism. Dualism is the view that the mind and body both exist as separate entities. The mind is about mental processes, thought and consciousness. The body is about the physical aspects of the brain-neurons and how the brain is structured. The mind-body problem is about how these two interact. And Kant comes into this how? Really, I don’t even like to get into it. Kant himself held that his view of the mind and consciousness were inessential to his main purpose. Maybe we have to mention Kant, if some of his ideas came to have an enormous influence on his successors, which is true. But no, I just can’t approve of trying to get into this. Kant has interesting remarks about consciousness of and knowledge of self, but I’m gonna vote that Kant is irrelevant to the article. Makes things simple!

If you don’t want to make things simple, then I will offer a Kant quote to illustrate how complicated things get. I was asking 'what is a pure form of intuition anyways?' Well, I will now admit that the phrase can be found in Kant. I don’t mean to quibble, so I want to be clear that this particular phrase is from Kant, I admit. But I’ll give the whole section so you can see how little it probably means, off the cuff. This is from the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant, and from the last section of Analytic of Concepts, from Transcendental Logic, from the Norman Kemp Smith translation. This is '§18 The Objective Unity of Self-Consciousness’:

'The transcendental unity of apperception is that unity through which all the manifold given in an intuition is united in a concept of the object. It is therefore entitled objective, and must be distinguished from the subjective unity of consciousness, which is a determination of inner sense – through which the manifold of intuition for such [objective] combination is empirically given. Whether I can become empirically conscious of the manifold as simultaneous or as successive depends on circumstances or empirical conditions. Therefore the empirical unity of consciousness, through association of representations, itself concerns an appearance, and is wholly contingent. But the pure form of intuition in time, merely as intuition in general, which contains a given manifold, is subject to the original unity of consciousness, simply through the necessary relation of the manifold of the intuition to the one 'I think’, and so through the pure synthesis of understanding which is the a priori underlying ground of the empirical synthesis. Only the original unity is objectively valid; the empirical unity of apperception, upon which we are not here dwelling, and which besides is merely derived from the former under given conditions in concreto, has only subjective validity. To one man, for instance, a certain word suggests one thing, to another some other thing; the unity of consciousness in that which is empirical is not, as regards what is given, necessarily and universally valid.'

So there you go, and let me just emphasize the part that mentions 'pure form of intuition’:

'..the pure form of intuition in time, merely as intuition in general, which contains a given manifold, is subject to the original unity of consciousness, simply through the necessary relation of the manifold of the intuition to the one 'I think’, and so through the pure synthesis of understanding which is the a priori underlying ground of the empirical synthesis.'

My point here is not anything like as if I brought it up. I’m saying maybe just don’t get into it.DanLanglois (talk) 10:02, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

my swipe at a Kant section

I think the Kant section is perhaps a nonstarter. Not productive, not effective, is it necessary at all? I’m back to suggest something different:

– In the decades before the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason (that is, the days of Kant‘s pre-1770 philosophy), Kant was a metaphysical dualist who offered a positive account of mind/body interaction, and responded to the mind-body problem by applying a theory of 'physical influx’. However, ultimately, Kant became disillusioned with any dualist solution to Descartes‘ problem, and denied that the mind is a substance, or a thinking thing. In this regard, he is like Hume, who objected that supposing that the mind is a thinking thing is not warranted. It’s pretty confusing to encounter Kant’s frequent appeal to a distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, and his incessant use of terms referring to a complex array of mental faculties. But, in short, transcendental idealism can be understood as overcoming dualism entirely. Here is a quote where Kant explicitly discusses the question of whether it makes sense to locate the 'soul’ (and its mental capacities) in a particular part of the body:

'The body, the alterations of which are my alterations – this body is my body; and the place of that body is at the same time my place. If one pursued the question further and asked: Where then is your place (that of the soul) in this body? then I should suspect there was a catch in the question. For it is easy to see that the question already presupposes something with which we are not acquainted through experience, though it may perhaps be based on imaginary inferences. The question presupposes, namely, that my thinking 'I’ is in a place which is distinct from the places of the other parts of that body which belongs to my self. But no one is immediately conscious of [occupying] a particular place in his body; one is only immediately conscious of the space which one occupies relatively to the world around. I would therefore rely on ordinary experience and say, for the time being: Where I feel, it is there that I am. I am as immediately in my finger-tip as I am in my head. It is I myself whose heel hurts, and whose heart beats with emotion …. No experience teaches me to regard some parts of my sensation of myself as remote from me. Nor does any experience teach me to imprison my indivisible 'I’ in a microscopically tiny region of the brain, either so as to operate from there the levers governing my body-machine, or so as myself to be affected in that region by the workings of that machinery.' (Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766)).

Kant also speaks here of how he found it necessary to give up his formerly naive reliance on 'the butterfly-wings of metaphysics’, and remain 'on the humble ground of experience and common sense’, where we 'devote ourselves to what is useful’.

Something to consider, here, then, is whether mentalistic terms do actually necessarily have meaning by virtue of referring to occult phenomena, as is often assumed.' –

Note that also, I see the question here on the 'talk’ page about Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein takes a similar view, I think, to Kant and Hume, as exemplified in his Blue Book:

'It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a “mental activity.” We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks. If then you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention to the fact that you are using a metaphor.'DanLanglois (talk) 06:28, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Just added Thomas Aquinas

I just added the section on Thomas Aquinas. Very strange... why wasn't this here before? 204.136.186.135 (talk) 23:56, 7 November 2018 (UTC)