If I’m a Materialist, then I would seek a material explanation of the world and all the things in it, right? So what then is a material explanation of knowledge and ideas. Are ideas merely a specific pattern of neuronal activity? If so, if we were to replicate that patter in another brain would it reproduce the same idea? If not, how would/could we do this? It would seem that the brain would have to have the same kind of background as mine has to reproduce the same idea i.e. knowledge and memory, how then are these things stored materially??
i find it safer, simpler and wiser to believe that knowlede and ideas can be reduced to patterns of brain activity. I’m not sure exactly what your asking, Bluff, but yes, i think ideas are fundamentally just neurons firing and chemicals reacting in a certain way.
probably each brain is unique in some way, like every fingerprint, so each idea or bit of knowledge will be processed in a slightly different way, making it harder to replicate activity from brain to brain - but ideas as patterns probably reproduce themselves by similar activity occuring between similar parts of similar brains, which is why we can anatomically locate centers for different activities like speech, repetitive motion, etc . . .
Showing similarities in two different brains is best done by reference to the functional mechanisms of the two brains. Google functionalism. Also Google role/realizer. Sorry so short I’m typing on a phone in a parking lot.
I read the Functionalism page on Wikipedia and have to admit that much of it didn’t sink in. What would a functional mechanism be?
Think in terms of a human brain. Stimulus → brain → response. In that order, the brain would be the functional mechanism. It’s defined in terms of its inputs and outputs.
Ok, thanks. But what does that say about my OP? If I’m seeking an explanation of how ideas and mental states are reduced to brain states, how does functionalism explain this? Also, couldn’t the brain as a functional mechanism work both for a monist account and a dualist account?
Bluff, your avatar is interesting. Not that you necessarily intended it this way, but would you see it as an analogy for anything relative to this subject?
If you can draw the identity between the two states by way of function rather than having to argue the the neural states themselves are identical the you can reduce mind to body with more certainty and avoid the problem of no two neural states never being exactly the same. Even over time the function is the same.
I’d say this works best for monists because you create a durable identity between brain states and mental states, or behavior however loose it may be.
Unfortunately I don’t have a sufficient enough grasp of this subject yet to post an adequate response. Nonetheless ( 
), what is this “identity” you speak of? Functionalism? A functional mechanism? The expected outcome of an input?
I’ve had this avatar since I arrived, my original idea was that beliefs could shape or form reality, but maybe it is related to this too, I don’t know, like I said to Smears - I simply do not understand this subject i.e. I don’t know what I’m talking about 
.
To reduce something, like mental states to something else, like physical states of the brain, you have to show that they are identical in some way.
Since each brain, as far as neural states are concerned is in a constant state of flux, this can be hard to do.
So instead of looking just for identity between the neural states you say that they are identical in function. That gets rid of the flux problem because the functions are not always changing. Now you have a broad enough way to say “all brains are the same” so you can account for all kinds of mental states notwithstanding the variances in locations or neurotransmitters from one moment to the next.
Someone might say, "mind and brain are distinct because two people may have different brain states but express the same emotions.’
Then you say, “no, functionally the brains are the same, there just may be multiple realizations when it comes to neural states that correlate with one particular expression of emotion or so-called mental states”.
Lewis did another paper called “an argument for identity theory” in which he articulated this part much better than I do here.
So, is Functionalism concerned with the reductivist goal i.e. reducing mental states to a physical state? Because from what I’m gathering this doesn’t matter to Functionalism.
Also, is functionalism concerned with what happens in-between the stimulas - response phase i.e. the functional mechanism or is it content to just say that there is a functional mechanism there - and that’s all that needs to be said? and that it’s the neuroscientist’s job to explain the mechanics of that mechanism?
I don’t think there’s right and wrong answers to these kinds of questions. I think we can model things in a variety of ways, all of which can prove helpful in any given context. From that perspective, I think it’s best to remain fluid relative to ontology. Provisionally committing to a materialistic ontology will yield powerful results of a certain kind. Provisionally committing to a dualistic ontology will yield powerful results of a certain kind. In that sense, perhaps there is no one given reality that we seek to discover the nature of. The assumptions we make shape what we conceive of as “reality”. Or, given the reasonable (though not necessarily correct) assertion that there is “one reality”, the nature of that reality would likely be nothing at all like we actually conceive it to be.
I believe that materialism, in any form, suggests that some “material basis” is always more primary in at least some sense than some nonmaterial phenomenon. This is an interesting and problematic idea. Does “basis” imply that it existed previous to the mental state it gave rise to? Is there a gap between the two aspects of this clearly dualistic presentation? Yet if the mental state and the physical state are the same thing, then why do we recognize a problem that needs solving in the first place? Surely my mental fantasies are not the same thing as a pattern of neurons. As SEP’s article on Identity Theory states right up front, “Idiomatically we do use ‘She has a good mind’ and ‘She has a good brain’ interchangeably but we would hardly say ‘Her mind weighs fifty ounces’”.
Manipulating this material “basis” in an external way can never ease our basic existential suffering. We can push neurons here and pull them there, rearrange them, do whatever we want with them, but we will never really get anywhere until we work on them “from the inside”.
It is the rigidity of any belief that I see as a problem, rather than it’s contextual and provisional value as a working assumption.
I like your avatar. Sometimes pictures work better than words.
I don’t accept that there is no right or wrong answer. And I’m not looking for a “helpful” (religious?) model of the world I’m looking for an accurate one. Solipsism sounds cool in a guru kind of way but reality tends to bite you in the arse - a heavy smoker may live under the assumption they are doing no damage to their body but lung cancer says otherwise.
Likewise we don’t say one’s health weighs X amount of ounces. I think the first thing that requires resolving is simply figuring out what is being talked about and where one’s own confusion lies within the issue, what assumptions one is making and what are the implications of such assumptions etc. etc. I think the problem that requires solving is how are we to explain our mental faculties in accordance with science, which I guess would require one to accept that science provides the greater clarity of explanation.
“From the inside” is one of those vague ambiguities that requires clarification first before we can even use it coherently in dialogue. A possible chance of “talking past” one another. Coincidently I also read this article earlier.
M.C. Escher if you didn’t already know. 
I don’t understand where the “religious” and “solipsism” comments are coming from. Science itself utilizes a variety of models in order to deepen our understanding of reality.
Science always provides greater clarity of explanation? Are you sure about that?
I meant, for example, that the most accurate and powerful brain surgery can only be performed on one’s own brain, through the power of training the mind. You may not agree, and I may not be able to prove it, but that is exactly my assertion, so that we are clear. Glanced at the article, maybe I’ll read it fully tomorrow.
Yes, I knew. Thank you though. 
I haven’t yet said “always.” But science and religion, for example, both offer a kind of explanation and until it’s understood why different explanations are more attractive and whatnot people will continue to talk past one another.
It’d be pedantic to argue about which method is more “accurate and powerful,” but the “power of training the mind” just sounds so faddish! “Mind over matter” and all that crap. I can just see the slogan hanging over all the self-help books - I can’t take it seriously, sorry 
. Which doesn’t disprove it of course.
I’m pretty sure that when you go to school and learn how to read, you are training the mind to know how to read. If you want to call your grammar books “self help” books, who am I to argue? 
Perhaps, though, there will be some sort of drug or surgery available in the future that will magically transform the illiterate into readers and writers? Is it overly cynical of me to insist that this is an utter impossibility?
No doubt, however, the process of learning to read and write is one that can be fruitfully investigated from a physicalist perspective (i.e. what goes on, neurologically, when we learn to read and write?)
Ok, you mentioned the “power of training the mind” in the same breath as brain surgery so I assumed you were referring to some kind of “healing” process rather than “learning”.
The reading pill eh? Cynicism can be excused because it sounds like something out of Brave New World. Or maybe that is why one would be cynical… 
(a different topic for a different day).
I have no problem looking at this from a “healing” perspective, rather than a “learning” perspective. Either way, I’m not suggesting anything magical. For instance, I’m not suggesting that actual brain surgery can be performed by thinking about it really hard.
What exactly is information?
I don’t think information is physical, though I expect where it is not imaginary it is ‘informed’ by the physical. There are mechanistic informations and pure info ~ as we think of it in the brain and transfer it by paper etc. a computer has no information of the latter kind as it is just a load of binary changes, pretty much a load of switches. However once it is thought of in the mind it then becomes ‘pure info’ or info proper.
I don’t know the science to well but my guess is that any explanation would leave a gap, much like light-waves and chemicals don’t denote colour, I’d expect it to be so that any other kind of electromagnetic wave or field would be equally uninformative about what info is.
Feel free to prove me wrong, but in doing so you will need to state exactly what information is.