Also, McKeever’s view that a materialist theory of the mind is rational, while all spiritualist theories of the mind are irrational strikes me as assuming too much. Both types of theories might be rational or irrational (or a mixture of both), depending on how they are constructed from initial assertions. Of course there can be disagreement about what initial assertions are true, and what evidence is valid for proving or disproving them.

Peace.

It is possible. If humans are a product of the Earth for example, and humans depend on the Earth for sustenance, can humans own the Earth? Of course they can and do in part anyway.

If a child is the product of a mother, and a child depends on the mother for sustenance, can a child own a mother? I think most mothers often feel “owned” by their child…

In the movie the Matrix, humans created intelligent machines which then in turn came to “own” the humans and also depend upon them.

Ownership is not a matter of “what created what” but simply of “what owns what”…

“Saying that the brain is the creator (owner) of the mind implies that a dead mans brain is the owner of his dead body.”

Not so. The mind dies with the brain (or the parasite dies with the host) therefore ownership becomes moot. If the mind continued after the destruction of the body, then that would imply ownership continues.

It’s really by *your* logic that the dead body is still owned after death because by your admission the mind continues on. That if someone fails to create a last will and testament, their property should go into a perpetual trust because they might show up one day to resume their life…

But ownership is abstract. It is a legal concept used in a social context. Applying it to an individual is a semantic bait-and-switch. But if ownership means to control or dispose of at *will*… The mind then controls the body at will, thus the mind “owns” the body in this sense. The fact that the body “produced” the mind is incidental to the fact that the mind controls the body yet still depends on it. Mind and body are two separate but co-dependent things.

You say that by damaging the radio, it changes the tuner… but to what? You have an incongruent argument. What you’re saying then is that when one uses drugs or suffers brain injury that somehow their brain is tuned into some other mind… like entering a new url. But that doesn’t fit with experience. What we see is that when the mind is damaged it retains vestiges of itself and not some other self. That suggests the same mind only damaged… and that suggests the mind inhabits the brain.

Ok… a radio. Suppose the radio is damaged and the signal garbled. If what you say were true, the signal would still be the same but might be noisy. Same channel, same program, but maybe not so good reception… Implying the same person but impaired function.

But that’s not what happens with brain injury or drug use. It would be as if the radio drops and not only change the channel but starts broadcasting in Morse code… It’s no longer the same radio. Implying changed person… and implying that the broadcast originated from inside the radio.

That’s not the argument I made. I said it was impossible for something of your own creation to own you. I think you are the one who is deliberately misreading what I’m writing.

How about a radio? A radio receives and process a radio signal from a radio station. Destroying the radio does not destroy the radio station broadcasting the signal.

Brain is essentially a radio receiving a radio signal of consciousness.

“I never said the data on the server was living or needed to be alive…”

Then I don’t understand the notebook analogy. Do you have another?