[Jaywalker]

something impossible to conceive, such as the event of an insurmountable force encountering an immovable rock only serves to strengthen the argument for the immateriality of the mind. since mind is capable of recognizing such things as infinity, insurmountability, and immovability in spite of these properties being only logical negations of observable physical properties, then it means that the mind is not constrained by physical limits. this demonstrates the mind's ability to transcend physical cognitive limitations and arrive at ideas all its own without reference to the senses.

While one may understand what it means when you say “infinite” it’s only comprehensible through its definition. The human brain can’t form a full mental picture of the totality of such concepts. (Can you imagine the entirety of an object with infinite dimensions) –as you said the concept is just a negation of concepts that are already understood by the brain.
How would you imagine a fourth spatial dimension or a tenth for that matter?
We may be able to come up with such concepts through mathematics or by playing around with definitions of concepts we already understand but to try to fit them within our understanding of reality is impossible…
…impossible because they are in contradiction with how we view the world through our senses. We can’t view the entirety of an infinite object because our vision (and therefore the visual aspect of our imagination) is limited by our field of view and our sense of perspective.
We can’t form a mental picture of what a fourth spatial dimension would be like because our senses perceive the world in three dimensions. A two dimensional version of us wouldn’t have any idea what up or down is (or left and right) because it would only see things in two dimensions
What is conceivable is always limited to how we perceive the world through our senses. If we try to imagine how a dolphin forms a representation of a three dimensional object in its head through sonar, we’d probably substitute our own understanding of three dimensional imaging coupled with our own ideas on perspective and put the image inside the dolphin’s head or project it to its field of vision. But that is a very anthropocentric approach What if the image weren’t actually visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile in nature how would you imagine that?

the notion that the brain and the mind are two separate entities that merely interact with each other implies a separate creation for both entities. Since the mind wasn’t and isn’t being produced by the brain then it must’ve been produced through another process the brain merely supports its continuity. Since the assumption is that the materiality of the brain cannot give rise to the abstract nature of consciousness then the process that created consciousness in the first place should also be non material in nature…
pardon the expression but I think this explanation begs to be trimmed by occam’s razor

The interactions between the brain’s functions may not seem tangible on the surface but empirical proof is almost entirely on the position that the underlying processes that produce them are.
Empirical evidence strongly suggest that the mind is grounded in the materiality of the brain. If the brain gets damaged so does the mind. if the brain ceases to function the mind ceases to exist as well, if certain chemicals are introduced into the brain they can alter “nontangible” aspects of consciousness such as mood. MRI imaging show consistent patterns in brain activity depending on the task being performed. It’s pretty obvious that the mind can’t exist on its own

If the mind is indeed being produced through physical processes then that would make the argument that nonmaterial interactions occur within the brain, like between emotion and imagination for example, largely baseless since if the mind were produced through physical processes then the brain is the physical representation of consciousness and abstract concepts like the ones given above also have physical representations within the brain. –referring to Ischaramoochie’s example in post#3, material stimuli don’t spontaneously, immaterially give rise to the “spiritual” thing called fear rather, the biochemical web of interactions that collectively form a representation of the material object being perceived by the senses physically cause the biochemical interactions between material elements that collectively give the illusion of fear

I don’t see the validity of the argument that assumes because thoughts are not bound by physical laws/limits, they are non-physical in nature or origin
Thoughts can violate physical laws yes but so can the 3d mug. It can interact with other computer generated 3d objects, be subject to physical laws that are different and independent from those of the real world and be in a space that is illusorily larger than the physical confines of the material entity that produces it. Regarding the limits of conception, I think the fallacy here is comparing the entirety of the brain’s functions with our current technology. A computer program cannot go beyond what it was programmed to do because it obviously cannot modify its own programming. –obviously not the case with the brain

Individually brain cells don’t exhibit even partial signs of consciousness but through organization, a group of elements can transcend the mere sum of their qualities and produce properties that are alien to each of them
Wetness isn’t a “material” entity. It is a property that arises from the aggregation of material elements that may not be wet individually but are wet collectively. (would anyone say) that wetness is not grounded in the material world (spritual) because individually the molecules that constitute it don’t exhibit the same properties?

My preferred theory falls under physicalism. Interactions between material entities may not always be directly tangible but I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that they shouldn’t be explainable by physical laws
One common argument against the materialist’s/physicalist’s position is the continuity of the self) despite changes in the material composition of the brain.
There’s a condition called anasognosia which can make the sufferer’s sense of self fragmentate. They would not recognize their arm or leg as part of their selves. Even more strange is they’d think that those parts were of another person.
It is believed that the condition is caused by a dysfunction in the agency of the brain that processes all the different information it has to work with into a coherent “story”
So it may just be that the concept of a continuous self is an illusion created by the internal story your brain builds up based on experiential memories and memories implanted through other means. So even if nobody has actual memories of being a two year old, we’d recognize our pictures of us when we were at such an age because someone told us that that picture was of us; Even if we lose a couple of hours worth of memory after a beer drinking session we have actual memories of being ourselves before the session; Even if we were to make an exact copy of our consciousness the copy wouldn’t notice any change in perspective -as far as he’s concerned he’s still seeing things from the same first person perspective because he has memories of seeing his past self from the same perspective.

lastly, how are we to account for the apparently physical space where dreams take place? if we assume the first person in the dream to be our conscious selves, then where are our "selves?" should we say that the character which we believe to be us in our dreams is simply an illusion?

If the faculties that give rise to (or interact with) consciousness during waking are the same faculties that give rise to dreams during sleep, what would be the basis of saying that the self we have when we are asleep is different from the self when we are awake?

If the character we play in a dream is different from the character we are when we are awake then that’s just a difference in personality. Are we saying that a change in personality entails a change in the self? besides when we wake up we remember seeing that dream from a first person perspective

Originally Posted by gekokujo

for physicalists, mind does not arise from brain – in fact, mind does not exist at all, since everything a person does is but a deterministic response to what is sensed in the environment; therefore, for physicalists, it is not mind but rather behavior that arises from the brain, the organ of control.

Sorry I don’t understand this how does physicalism or determinism rule out the existence of the mind