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polymathwannabe comments on What are the thoughts of Less Wrong on property dualism? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Even if everything I perceive is a projection from my mind, it's not a random projection. Even if my senses are not transparent, their fabrications are not random. They make sense, follow logical rules, and are consistent with the assumption of an external world that matches those perceptions, and they're thus deserving of being taken seriously.
So you're saying, that in reality external to the mind, there is such a thing as a thumb?
It depends. Is there such a thing as sound?
In the external reality, there are quarks. My body is a particular set of (continually replaceable) quarks that more-or-less obeys my mind; besides, my mind has privileged access to the sensory inputs of this body, so it's justified to consider it as distinct from the rest of reality. A category like "thumb" is a shortcut entry that is very useful to refer to a subset of quarks that stay in a very specific, more-or-less constant configuration.
So, does my thumb exist? Yes, in the sense that a bird flock exists because some of them fly together.
Let's say we're talking about the source code of reality.
You and I seem to agree we could start somewhere like "var quarks = [...]".
My position is that there is no "flockofbirds" or "var polymathswannabe_thumb = "
Those a purely made by the mind.
Likewise, in reality, there is no "brain" or "brainstem" or "frontallobe", there is just "var quarks = []".
The brain is a product of a mind.
You have it backwards. Even though our image of the brain and all of the concepts associated with the semantic shortcut "brain" are mental fabrications, the mind itself is the product of a terribly complex arrangement of quarks which happen to exist within the physical boundaries that we conventionally call a brain.
That the mind exists within physical boundaries, (ie, quantitative material, temporal, or spatial relationships) has not been demonstrated.
The entire field of psychopharmacology rests on the assumption that the mind has a physical basis. Substances that alter the functioning of the brain will make your mind work differently. Also, brain lesions may severely limit what your mind can do. This very strongly suggests that the mind is not only experienced "through" the brain, but that it originates in the brain. Equally important evidence is the fact that nothing else affects the functioning of the mind; if you want to alter it, you need to tinker with the brain.
You make a pretty good point.
The mind originates from the brain, experimentation strongly suggests.
In my mind, overcoming that bias is the definition of rationalism (ie, empirical truths are not fundamental truths).
If you're not going to trust empirical evidence, what on Earth are you going to trust? How is dismissing empirical evidence the definition of rationalism?
Critical rationalism.
"Rationalists have such a high confidence in reason that proof and physical evidence are unnecessary to ascertain truth – in other words, "there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience".[4] Because of this belief, empiricism is one of rationalism's greatest rivals."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism
If you believe that you get truth from the senses, you are missing the part where the mind processes that sense experience in a conceptual framework.
The biases in the conceptual framework need to be analyzed through rational processes, as they are already apparent in the observations we make, and thus observation alone will not reveal them.