“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, November 4, 2012

Of Question Begging

Assertions that thoughts are totally reducible to the squeezings of a brain are the question begging ones. For they are palpably self-refuting. There is no basis for the assertion otherwise than said brain, and truth collapses.

But keep on partying like it's 1889 eliminitavists...knock yourselves out.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand. Are saying it's *not possible* that evolution stranded us with a bunch of cognitive kluges?

G-Pack said...

I've often wondered what would happen if you took a brain scan of a neuroscientist taking a brain scan of a subject while claiming that all of said subject's subjectivity is really what shows up on the brain-scan monitor.

Callan S. said...

There's no basis for the claim except to state "there's a brain"?

Essentially that's true. Not sure how it's self refuting though, unless you already take it as true that the thoughts saying "there's a brain" are outside the squeezings of a brain.