“We even have reason to believe that thoughts can be infered from the physical state of the brain in a lawlike fashion but this surely doesn’t let us infer that thoughts are IDENTICAL to the operation of brains. Merely that they always go together in the actual world.”
Look at airplanes: they all have a bunch of common characteristics like an engine, wings, rudders, etc. If you argued that an airplane was not really “identical” to the pile of parts, but that they just “always went together”, people would look at you like you had three heads. Yet, when applied to brains, people think this argument makes sense. A brain is made up of the frontal cortex, visual cortex, auditory cortex, amygdala, pituitary gland, cerebellum, etc.; that’s just what it is.
“We even have reason to believe that thoughts can be infered from the physical state of the brain in a lawlike fashion but this surely doesn’t let us infer that thoughts are IDENTICAL to the operation of brains. Merely that they always go together in the actual world.”
Look at airplanes: they all have a bunch of common characteristics like an engine, wings, rudders, etc. If you argued that an airplane was not really “identical” to the pile of parts, but that they just “always went together”, people would look at you like you had three heads. Yet, when applied to brains, people think this argument makes sense. A brain is made up of the frontal cortex, visual cortex, auditory cortex, amygdala, pituitary gland, cerebellum, etc.; that’s just what it is.