Re: The Nature of Reality
I would like you to back up your point number 2 with an independent source.
What, exactly, do you want? I've already told you how to see for yourself--and it's absurdly easy to do. If you do what I've suggested--that is, just go take a look at slides from an fMRI--you'll be able to make the observation for yourself. That said, see also:
William R. Uttal,
Mind and Brain: A Critical Appraisal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Massachusetts: MIT University Press, 2011 (especially the introduction, but the entire book brings up the kinds of issues I've raised..and quite a few that I haven't, like conspicuous lack of replicability even in the same lab by the same group of researchers of widely celebrated findings, etc.)
and
Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld,
Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, New York: Basic Books, 2013 (this one is probably more accessible than the first, but gives a basic layout of the same issues. Just take a look at how many studies find correlations in the .5-.8 range, for example).
Finally, for a genealogy of how the belief in 1:1 correlation arose, see:
Emily Clark Kelly, "F.W.H. Myers and the Empirical Study of the Mind-Body Problem," in
Irreducible Mind, edited by Edward F. Kelly and Emily Clark Kelly, New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007, pp 47-116. (Hint: it didn't arise from any empirical evidence for such a perfect correlation).
Let me be clear about what I'm claiming, because I phrased it the way I did for a reason: right now, there's just no reason to believe in a 1:1 correspondence. That is, there is no evidence that such is the case. It seems to be an article of faith among materialists, because their models of mind basically require it to be the case. That there are brain events/states that lead to no mental event or state should be common knowledge to anyone with a modicum of understanding of neuroscience. The brain is in constant communication with other organs, like the liver, and nothing appears in your mind to the effect of "I'm currently regulating the albumin pathways in the liver." As to the other claim, that there are thoughts with no apparent or measurable brain state or event, again, just go get some slides of fMRIs. There are literally thousands floating around on the internet. Familiarize yourself with the location of the visual cortex, and take a look at how many of them show the visual cortex "lit up." Most don't. Was the person temporarily blind? Perhaps their eyes were closed in some cases, but obviously not all. Then just go look at the plethora of correlation studies published every year. Most show a correlation rate around .75--which means 25 percent of thoughts of a certain type show none of the correlation trumpeted by the authors.
Now, what does this imply? Just what I've said: there's no evidential basis on which to claim a perfect correlation between brain states and mental states. That claim of correlation only falls out of certain kinds of models of the mind, and strangely, belief in those models seems to be at least partly predicated on belief in the perfect correlation between brains states/events and mental states/events. At first glance, the notion that there are thoughts with no measurable brain event or state seems to be the claim that should worry materialists more (and if we can eliminate measurement problems as an explanation, that wouldn't quite sink materialism, but it'd be pretty close). But actually, I think the other claim, that there are brain events/states with no apparent mental event/state is more worrisome given the current state of evidence. We've known since the work of Vernon Mountcastle in the late 1950's that the brain exhibits no organizational differences from one part of the cortex to another. So if the brain is responsible for the mind, it's awfully odd that some brain events generate mental events or states, and others just don't.
The snarking and baiting needs to stop. Stick to commenting towards the topic of the thread and leave each other out of it.