Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Mind and Brain are They the Same?

The NYorker article, "Two Heads" presents Pat Churchhill's ideas on neuroscience as fairly easy to understand;
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/12/070212fa_fact_macfarquhar

Basically, the mind is a biological entity, not a computer program. All those ideas about emotions and feelings just neurons firing?

However, going directly to the web page of Pat Churchhill serves up a big batch of "Huh?" http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/pschurchland/index_hires.html Plus the navigation is a bit awkward - needs work.

Result - most of us still need high level language skills to grasp the ideas of neuroscience. Read the New Yorker article/abstract.

And to confuse ideas/sciences - how does this all fit together with physics and the theory of everything vs. string theory? After all, how do various types/branches of science plow along with their pet theories without regard to the others?