Dualism/Materialism - does mind = brain?

[NotReady]

If neither dualism nor identity are considered correct I don't understand what the alternative theory can be. Can you explain further? I'm not interested enough to read highly technical books or links on the subject but would like to know if you can reduce it to layman's terms.

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It's all about the neurons... it's all just electrons.

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Do we live in a deterministic world then? If it's all just electrons, do we lose free will?

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Yes. Freewill is an illusion.

[Trantor]

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It's all about the neurons... it's all just electrons.

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Do we live in a deterministic world then? If it's all just electrons, do we lose free will?

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Non-deterministic world (quantum theory and all that).

No free will (i don't see there is a connection to determinism)

[benkahuna]

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If neither dualism nor identity are considered correct I don't understand what the alternative theory can be. Can you explain further? I'm not interested enough to read highly technical books or links on the subject but would like to know if you can reduce it to layman's terms.

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Look up Searle's biological naturalism.

[maurile]

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"Dualism is stupid"

Is there any reason why that is not equivalent to saying that computers can, at least in principle, be made conscious?

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Computers, at least in principle, can be made conscious. The human brain is a computer.

If you mean a silicon-based computer that just does data-storage and information-processing, I don't know. There may be more to consciousness than that. There seems to be more to a human brain than that, anyway. Brains don't just process information with logic circuits. They have neurotransmitters and hormones and stuff, and these seem to play a big role in affecting the experience of consciousness. So maybe an "artificial" computer would need similar stuff, not just computational information-processing.

[Rduke55]

I agree with Benkahuna.
Also, he mentioned differences in way brains process information. This should not be overlooked. Brains have wildly different ways of integrating information at every level, even down to parts of the synapse, when compared to computers, which expand the capability (for want of a better word) of brains way beyond just the sheer number of connections (which, even in an insect, dwarf the best computer out there).
While computers may be a useful model for understanding some aspects of brain function you must realize that's all it is - a model that superficially resembles and predicts some aspects of the brain. In this way the computer model of the brain is not that different form the telephone-switchboard idea of brain function that was popular decades ago.

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"Dualism is stupid"

Is there any reason why that is not equivalent to saying that computers can, at least in principle, be made conscious?

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Can we 'create' something that's conscious? In principle, yes; the fact that there exist things like us that are conscious shows this to be possible I take it. Can computers be conscious? My own view is one of skepticism here--I don't think a Turing test is a good test for whether or not a computer is conscious, and I think a computer is by its nature a non-sentient thing--it is a machine that carries out the formal manipulation of symbols. I think it is at least partly metaphorical to refer to our own cognitive abilities as just symbol manipulation, and I tend to agree with those who see consciousness as a fundamentally qualitatively different phenomenon than formal symbol manipulation.