[ExI] Let's play What If.

Ben Zaiboc bbenzai at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 12 12:56:32 UTC 2010


John K Clark wrote:

> mind is more important than brain; at least it
> is in this mind's opinion.

And Alan Grimes replied:

> Because I'm a strict monist, I can't imagine any way
> through which the two can be separated.

As I've already pointed out, this 'monism' of yours
seems to reject what other people have called
'property dualism', or the concept that objects have
properties.  This concept is not an opinion, it's an
established fact.  Nobody can rationally deny it.  

To acknowledge that material objects have non-material
(and non-mystical) properties is not really 'dualism'
at all, it's materialism, and the materialistic view
leads inexorably to the possibility of uploading, as
recognised by most transhumanists.

Your statement above implies that you can't see any
way that a dog and a bark can be separated.  I can
think of dozens of ways, and I'm sure you can too if
you try.

The point is that it's these non-material (and
non-mystical) properties that are important, not the
dumb matter that exhibits them.

The thing that mystifies me is why the argument that
two atoms of the same element are completely and
utterly indistinguishable and interchangeable, isn't
decisive in this discussion.  The fact that I've
survived endless changes of material proves
conslusively that I am not the matter that my body and
brain are made from.  Why is this so hard to
understand?

Ben Zaiboc


      



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