i'll qualify by restating "mental" to mean "mental activity" which is synonymous with the act of thinking. to the rest i urge you to consult a dictionary
Unfortunately dictionaries are next to useless when discussing the actual processes involved.
To quote from, say, dictionary.com:
dictionary.com said:
Mental
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to the mind: mental powers; mental suffering.
...
adj.
1. Of or relating to the mind; intellectual: mental powers.
2. Executed or performed by the mind; existing in the mind: mental images of happy times.
As you can see - they can not explain mental without the term "mind".
So then, what is meant by "mind":
dictionary.com said:
Mind
–noun
1. (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
2. Psychology. the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities.
...
13. psychic or spiritual being, as opposed to matter.
And as you can see - this says much without actually explaining anything satisfactorily from a philosophical point of view - raising many questions in return.
However, if the term "
the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc." is purely physical, where is the issue with the "mental" interacting with the physical - given that the "mental" is deemed a physical process?
Your usage of the term "mind", however, suggests you think of both it and "consciousness" as something non-physical - neither physical nor some pattern of the physical - i.e. the bolded option 13 above?
pardon
i was being charitable when i assumed you were an epiphenomenalist. what manner of a creature are you then?
I'm someone who thinks it is all physical - and that "mind" and "consciousness" are emergent properties of the physical interactions within the brain. But they are nonetheless physically derived.
They are not separate from the physical - they are part and parcel of the physical - and so there is no strict dualism of "mind / matter" with regard consciousness. (I do, however, see the brain/body as a kind of dualism - the brain being the processor, the body the input/output device - but that is a separate issue.)
I therefore see it as meaningless to argue that the consciousness can't affect the physical etc - given that the consciousness is just a pattern of the already interacting physical.
Hope that helps?
you said a "pattern of activity" being strongly related to consciousness. you really find that an adequate explanation? i mean,it is like explaining the motion of a car by merely asserting there is stuff going on in the engine. has anything really been explained? would one also neglect to mention the role a driver plays in this motion?
Ah - so you're someone who would see a aircraft in the air for the first time and cry "magic!!" rather than look for some other explaination? And "magic" would satisfy you?
If not, then what explaination do you have for consciousness?
And unfortunately the car is a false analogy in trying to understand consciousness, due to the a priori assumption of the need for a conscious driver that is not part of the car. Nice try, though
A better one would be a swarm of birds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfnhE9IX4Nw
One could argue that these swarms, and their motion, display characteristics that the individual bird does not and can not. i.e. an emergent property.
One could ask how each individual bird flies - but that would not explain the phenomena of the motion of these swarms.
according to the determinists, a physical system has been constructed in a manner that gives us an illusion of qualia and free will. why? to what purpose? would occam approve? perhaps you prefer those questions to remain unasked since they seem to offend your sensibilities?
Why? Purpose? Is this what drives you, rather than How?
I don't think there is a "why" or a purpose. We are here. We have consciousness. First let's see what this odd thing is, then perhaps we can see how it came about - and if not through the natural process of evolution then we can explore some alternative.
Would Occam approve? Of a purely physical explaination to consciousness, to free-will? Of course. Until the purely physical explaination is shown to be impossible, it will remain preferable to one that introduces something non-physical. Unless, of course, evidence for something non-physical becomes known... but then how can we evidence something non-physical, right? Ah - the irony.
Of course, we can always come up with "God did it" and smile with such a satisfactory conclusion to our endeavours?
And I'm not strictly a determinist either.