The Logical Atheist

I just saw this quote from Patricia Churchland, a professor of neurophilosophy: "To understand the mind, we must understand the brain." Now this leads one's thoughts in perhaps unintended directions, although Churchland might not disagree with anything I'm about to say. It seems to be equally valid that to understand the brain, we must understand the mind. We must understand, in other words, what it means to understand, which is a mental, but not a brain, activity, as well as a state of being.  I don't see how it can make sense to try to understand what it means to understand if all we talk about is the brain. That sounds like a category mistake: how could neuroscience explain what understanding -- that is, comprehension -- is? Neuroscientists can talk from now till the end of time about what goes on in the brain when we engage in mental activities, but that is nothing like explaining what those activities are in themselves. I am not aware of my brain activity, bu...

From Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained :  I will explain the various phenomena that compose what we call consciousness, showing how they are all physical  effects of the brain's activities, how these activities evolved, and how they give rise to illusions about their own powers and properties. It is very hard to imagine how your mind could be your brain -- but not impossible. [Emphasis added.] Well, actually it is impossible. The brain is not what we mean when we speak of the mental activities we attribute (metaphorically) to the mind. (Remember, mind  is a verb, not a noun.) Seeing cannot be reduced to anything physical. I see  a thing, dammit! What am I to make of a philosopher or neuroscientist or physicist who has the gall to tell me I'm not really seeing it, but rather my brain is up to such and such, say, sorting out "sense data"? Dennett commits what philosopher Gilbert Ryle -- Dennett's teacher! -- called a "category mistake." Any norm...