Science of Self (Humans)

by David Turell , Monday, March 24, 2014, 21:10 (3895 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: it would also apply if we adopted the default position of "We don't know".-I have found the best answer to your discussion: see the bolded line:-"Of course, Plato wins every argument hands down, though his interlocutors generally fail to see that. For instance, in a well-aimed chapter on the pretensions of contemporary neuroscience, Plato volunteers as a subject in a brain-imaging experiment. The smug and overbearing Dr. Shoket treats Plato and philosophy with jocular contempt, all the while demonstrating his utter ignorance of that whereof he speaks. Plato has no trouble refuting his naïve reductionism, according to which there are no persons, intentions, beliefs or other psychological states but only synapses firing mechanically in the void. The neuroscientist is confusing the physical mechanisms that make mental phenomena possible with mental phenomena themselves. I recommend this chapter to all those zealots who think they are on the verge of replacing traditional philosophy with brain science."-http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303775504579395281102610124