Monday, January 3, 2011

Noë: From the epistemological to the metaphysical

The epistemological:
We are a very long way off from knowing how to answer these questions.
2. We see that the practical questions trail off into questions of principle. But the matters of principle ramify. Consider this: When we speak of establishing baselines and “training up the detector,” what we are acknowledging is that neural states and processes only have meaning or significance in context. This is very important. It shows not that absent information about context, we can’t make sense of what the brain is telling us. It shows that in the absence of context, the brain isn’t telling us anything at all.
The metaphysical:
Mental phenomena are not neural phenomena.

You get the drift ...  Read the whole of Noë's NPR post here.

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