This isn't what those terms mean, but nice try :). A better argument could be built around malleability of the brain.

> Isn't your brain just software too then? Isn't it all software running on software?

Yes and no. "Hardware" and "software" aren't fundamental. Think about ASICs vs. FPGAs vs. emulation. Which parts are "hard" and which are "soft" and which are something in between, is a matter of convenience/economics. Fundamentally, it's all compute though.

Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.

> "It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?"

Could you please explain where, in my previous comment, I wasn't being respectful?

I was simply observing that the way people often talk about these ideas, including in this thread, resembles spirituality and religion. Which is true.

> "Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise."

This subthread started with you saying "This is why I think all the 'meatbags' and 'hardware running on software;' analogies are actually really primitive and silly."

So, in your own words, "if people like to think [that,] what's it to you? Why go on the internet..." blah blah blah.

You can dish it but not take it, apparently? You're making a much stronger attempt at policing than anything I said. Perhaps you're projecting something onto me?

In any case, you seem to be having a problem with a false dichotomy. It's not as though any of us are saying our bodies don't exist, or that there's no interaction between our bodies and minds. There's lots of well-established science on that. See the last line of the comment by TeMPOraL that I originally replied to.

Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.

You wrote that? I’m asking what is the value in it? Who cares if you think people are being spiritual , that is my point , what value does that add?

Spirituality and religion have bought us many good things, so why do people feel the need to have their “spirituality radars go off off” when you yourself wrote.

It's not as though any of us are saying our bodies don't exist, or that there's no interaction between our bodies and minds. There's lots of well-established science on that. See the last line of the comment by TeMPOraL that I originally replied to.

What’s funny is I don’t even see people being really spiritual , really just spitting facts, so I think you guys injected that into it.

Personally I think there are much much much more advanced ways of seeing the world, experience and life, and they should be ok to explore without stigma or judgement.

I see the sentiment quite a bit. Kind of, if it’s not good old cold hard rational science backed by statistics and a model, your wasting your time attitude.

But it's a different case where you have a whole thread of comments that reject out of hand the obvious framework of thinking that yields good results and good predictions, to replace it with a more fuzzy framework of thinking that goes against observable evidence, and recounting stories of "getting it" after meditation or doing yoga for 5 years or such. It's one thing to enjoy and recommend different kinds of experiences of self, and we know the mind is quite malleable in that regard. But the brain/body split isn't just an experience, it's an actual model that's useful in dealing with objective reality. If someone is trying to replace that with some embodied wholesome "me is my body" or "me is universe" view, then that is pushing spiritual mumbo jumbo into scientific and pragmatic areas of life, where it doesn't belong.

And if someone bashes people for having that more mechanistic/objective model inform their perception of self, then... well... when did it become bad to look at the world with clear eyes instead of having your head in the clouds? Or is it the dreaded, bad, no-good "Western philosophy" again?

Here's a related observation that tipped me a bit away from thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain: cutting off a hand doesn't cut off the experience or sensation of having a hand. (E.g. people with missing limbs have phantom pain.)

Lots of emotions are at least partly "embodied". People feel love in the chest. Fear in the stomach.

Not sure about anybody else, but I feel frustration in my elbows. I strongly suspect that if my arms were removed, I would still feel frustration in my elbows. I don't think removing my physical arms would remove all the ways "having arms" is baked into my experience. Even if an external physicalist account accurately places those phenomena "in the brain" and not "in the arms", that's not really all that relevant to an internal account of someone actually having the experience.

As I see it, a human's brain-from-the-inside (mind? soul?) is "body-shaped" in a lot of ways. When I hear warnings against "reducing ourselves to a bunch of 'computers", I read them as prompts to recognize this. As warnings against recognizing and engaging with *only* the parts of one's experience that can fit into an "abstract reasoner" model.