[geye1234]

Is it your contention that a tiger may be the same thing as a brain state?

It would seem to me that any coherent philosophy of mind must accept their being different as a datum; or conversely, any that implied their not being different would have to be false.

EDIT: my position has been held -- even taken as axiomatic -- by the vast majority of philosophers, from the pre-Socratics onwards, and into the 20th century. So it's not some idiosyncratic minority position.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Clearly there is a thing in the world that is a tiger independently of any brain state anywhere.

But the thought of a tiger may in fact be identical to a brain state (or it might not; at this point we do not know).

[geye1234]

Given that a tiger is different from a brain state:

If I am thinking about a tiger, then what I am thinking about is not my brain state. So that which I am thinking about is different from (as in, cannot be identified with) my brain state.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> What I am thinking about is not my brain state

Obviously the thing you are thinking about is not the same as your thinking about it, nor the same as your brain state when thinking about it. Thinking about a thing is necessarily and definitionally distinct from the thing.

The question however is whether there is anything to "thinking about thing" other than the brain state you have when doing so. This is unknown at this time.

[geye1234]

Earlier upthread, I said

>> the thought "tiger" [is] not the same thing as the brain state that makes [it] up.

To which you said

> Asserted without evidence.

This was in the context of my saying

>> There is undoubtedly correlation between neurological state and thought content. But they are not the same thing.

Now you say

> the thing you are thinking about is not the same as your thinking about it, nor the same as your brain state when thinking about it.

Are we at least agreed that the content of the thought "tiger" is not the same thing as the brain state that makes it up?

> The question however is whether there is anything to "thinking about thing" other than the brain state you have when doing so. This is unknown at this time.

If a tiger is distinct from a brain state, which I think we agree on, and if our thoughts are about real things such as tigers, which I assume we agree on, then how can there not be more to thought than the associated brain state?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Are we at least agreed that the content of the thought "tiger" is not the same thing as the brain state that makes it up?

No. I don't agree that "the content of [a] thought" is something we can usefully talk about in this context.

Thoughts are subjective experiences, more or less identical to qualia. Thinking about a tiger is actually having the experience of thinking about a tiger, and this is purely subjective, like all qualia. The only question I can see worth asking about it is whether the experience of thinking about a tiger has some component to it that is not part of a fully described brain state.

> If a tiger is distinct from a brain state, which I think we agree on, and if our thoughts are about real things such as tigers,

We also have thoughts about unreal things. I don't see why such thoughts should be any different than the ones we have about real things.

[geye1234]

>> If a tiger is distinct from a brain state, which I think we agree on, and if our thoughts are about real things such as tigers, which I assume we agree on, then how can there not be more to thought than the associated brain state?

> We also have thoughts about unreal things. I don't see why such thoughts should be any different than the ones we have about real things.

Let me rephrase then:

If a tiger is distinct from a brain state, which I think we agree on, and if our thoughts can be about real things such as tigers, which I assume we agree on, then how can there not be more to thought than the associated brain state?

A brain state does not refer to a tiger.

[Workaccount2]

Does a picture of a tiger or a tiger (to follow your sleight of hand) on a hard drive then count as a thought?

[geye1234]

No. One is paint on canvas, and the other is part of a causal chain that makes LEDs light up in a certain way. Neither the painting nor the computer have thoughts about a tiger in the way we do. It is the human mind that makes the link between picture and real tiger (whether on canvas or on a screen).