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Comment by mitchellgoffpc | Hacker News Reader

I would ask for evidence to support your claim, but I think Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword probably applies in this case.

Well, machine is a name for a stance of analysis, there are no machines in the real world (which is not to say that there no are mechanical linkages) only in our minds.

FWIW, consciousness has no properties and so cannot be studied scientifically.

However, consciousness can be explored experientially, i.e. two conscious beings can merge and experience self as one being. (See Charles Tart's experiment with mutual hypnosis.)

Yes, I used to hold that view too. But actually it turns out that the null hypothesis is that mind is at least partly immaterial, because all attempts to demonstrate the opposite philosophically are fraught with difficulty. I’ve found that the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas, when explained by modern philosophers, best explains to me why that’s the case.

> ... because all attempts to demonstrate the opposite philosophically are fraught with difficulty.

Can you give at least a rough sketch or gist of the argument you are referring to?

I’ll try because you asked me to, but i think I’ll do a bad job. You’ll get a much better understanding by reading on the topics of philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Here goes, though:

1. Purely immaterial things exist. Think of mathematics or the laws of logic or physics - these things exist as ideas or concepts, not arrangements of matter.

2. Some abstract concepts cannot be embodied in matter at all. For example, you can make a shoe, you can draw a shoe, but you can’t draw shoe-ness. You can understand and reason about what makes something a shoe in the abstract, but you can only make or draw an individual shoe.

3) the mind contains these purely immaterial things when we think about and reason about them.

4) If we can use the abstract concepts, but the abstract concepts can’t be embodied in matter, then the mind must be at least partly immaterial in order for the concepts to be in our mind.

I hope that helps a but please don’t rely on my exposition of the case - a real philosopher would do it justice.

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