The brain is cells. It is tissue.
And a chair is made of wood. The wood is made of particles. Yet it also has function, but you wouldn't say, "A chair creates sitting-ness." You could, but why would you? And it has component parts that each serve a different purpose in the "creation" of "sitting-ness." The arm-rests serve one purpose; the seat another; the legs a third; etc.
Put all of those components--and their purposes--together and you get either a very comfortable support system or a torture device. But it's all "Chair" just as it's all "Brain."
What I'm talking about is something the brain is creating.
Thus it is ultimately all brain. And "generating" would be a far more apt term, since we see numerous correlations between brain activity--both optimal and sub, including catastrophic--and said generation.
I don't see why you are objecting to any of this. It is not just perfectly reasonable and in keeping with all we currently know, it is non-controversial.
The thing we use to discuss ideas with. The thing that experiences pain and sound.
I fear you are once again equivocating with the goal of arguing for a discrete construct. Think in terms of an animated film. Yes, it is made up of individual frames or (in olden times, cells)--i.e., "things"--but when projected it provides the illusion of continuity, which is another "thing" entirely and not in any way, shape or form the same kind of "thing" that are the individual frames (or, even more abstract in this digital age, the ones and zeroes). So it would be misleading to say something like, "A film is made up of things AND it is a thing." It's not a thing in the same way that a frame of film is a thing.
To reduce even further--as you did with the bit about brain being made up of tissue--and just say all things are made up of particles, except for the film thing is to really lose track for no useful reason.
Something that arises from some kind of activity. A product of some kind of brain activity.
Agreed. Hence, the "mind" is that which is generated by the brain. That still means it is a part of the brain, yes? In keeping with the faulty but I think useful film analogy, we can discuss a film without needing to also discuss the projector (or any of the component parts or exactly how it was made, etc), but what is the point to insist that the film--the "experience" of watching the movie being projected--is some sort of separate, discrete act in any other sense than trivial? Yes, the projector itself is not capable of "experiencing" that which it projects, but that is just one component of the entire process just as something like the amygdala is just one component of the entire structure we collectively refer to as "Brain."
If, however, you think of the brain as being comprised of component parts--because it is--where one section writes the movie; another acts in the movie; another edits the movie; another watches the movie in order to critique it and improve upon it in its next iteration--and all of this is done trillions of times per second in more-or-less real time--then you basically have exactly what we are; a walking, talking, breathing film production studio inside our skulls that is always in production mode, initially as a survival tactic and then repurposed over the millenia as day-to-day survival (hourly, even) turned into 100 year life-spans.
You’ve declared that before (while ignoring the many objections that arise from its ambiguity and presumed objectivity), yet, as you noted, “nobody knows what the mind is objectively.”
You can't read.
I am talking about "experience" not the mind.
Experience requires something that can have an experience AND the things it can experience.
And the "things it can experience" need not be physical constructs, nor separate, discrete units from the "thing" that can have an experience.
To ignore this is simply stupidity.
Careful. There is a LOT of what could be called "stupidity" being flung around here.
And that “the ‘mind’ is that thing that can experience.’”
Yes it is.
And since the brain generates mind, it is ultimately the brain that is "experiencing." And, again, an "experience" need not be something directly interacted with.
You don't think it is the liver?
Well, to use your logic, it would be the liver that creates "sobriety" and "sobriety" that experiences "non-drunkeness." Or some such irrelevancy.
“Experience” includes some thing that can experience, and the things it can experience.
The brain is that thing that can experience.
The brain is that thing that creates "red" for the mind to experience.
OR, the "mind" is that construct of the brain that edits together all of the associations of the EM stimuli and places the current stimulus into context.
OR, the neocortex is the component of the brain that "edits" together all of the associations of the EM stimuli, giving context to the current stimulus that in turn triggers the amygdala to provide additional "edits" or associations of emotion, giving additional context to the current stimulus that in turn triggers...etc., ALL of which collectively generate a temporary "movie" of the current and previous EM stimuli that some other component of the brain--perhaps the neocortex again--shapes into the "current EM stimulus plus associated context at time Y experience" as part of an ongoing, more-or-less real-time animated process that doesn't stop until damage or catastrophic failure and
it is that ongoing process that we call "consciousness" because that's what it "feels" like at any given time Y experience.
Iow, it is the process of projecting the film that makes it a "movie," but then that is the illusory part. Great so long as all of the component parts are in optimal working order, but not so great when any one of them fails.
If the brain was experiencing
Which part of the brain?
it would not need to transform EM stimuli into something else. It would just experience the stimuli.
The transformation of the information triggered by the EM stimuli is automatic and ongoing as part of the essential survival mechanisms of the body. We are immersed in a universe made of uncountable quadrillions of quadrillions of cascading/bombarding particles and our bodies are literally covered in trillions of tiny sensory input devices, from the cellular to the optical components that are constantly sending--through a complex electrochemically based information network--trillions of bits of "telemetry" about the external world, most of which gets "transformed" long before even reaching the various components that collectively make up our brain.
You are implying, however, that the brain "needs" to transform the information into something else, presumably because the "mind" requires that it performs that purpose, which is rather the cart before the horse. It's as if you are insisting that Pinocchio was a "real boy" all along and it was Geppetto that was made out of wood.
It transform the stimuli into presentations.
For a mind to experience.
OR, it is the experience of stimuli transforming into "presentations" that constitutes the construct we collectively refer to as "mind."
