What is "Mind?"

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Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Oct 20, 2015 - 03:27pm PT

The hitch with "answering" the What is Mind? question is that while the subjective realm is qualitatively different than all other things in reality - all else being objects - we naturally use our standard means of appraisal (measuring etc.) to answer the mind question. Of course knowing how a phenomenon works will not always tell us what that phenomenon IS. If fact the IS issue is almost if not entirely a trick question. And this is possibly so even in the objective or so-called material realm.

I have argued here that if you want to use reductionism, that's all well and fine but you cannot stop at minute macro level, but have to reduce even further, and when you keep reducing, all forms (some say) eventually dissolve into numerical constructs or points and so forth. There is no irreducible stuff. Our sense organs tell us that we are surrounded by real things, but in most regards there are no fixed objects, only properties. Again, there is no such object as a photon that HAS the property of luminosity. There is only luminosity. Likewise, there is no emotion that contains sadness. There is only sadness.

I suspect mind is much the same. That there is no such "thing" as mind, that it does not - in and of itself - exist as an object, so the standard means of accessing an object will tell us about objective functioning, but fall far short of (and is not even addressing) what mind IS.

JL

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 20, 2015 - 05:47pm PT

Maybe you can come up with a mathematical formula for what mind or experience is or a wonderful discursive explanation of it. Now that you have it what will you do with it?

Build a better mind.

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Oct 20, 2015 - 08:38pm PT

Maybe you can come up with a mathematical formula for what mind or experience is

JL was making some headway with Hilbert spaces, but he flamed out when it came to inner product. The Car-Pool Prodigies were not much help.

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Oct 20, 2015 - 08:50pm PT

"build a better mind' sounds good but I am suspicious.

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Oct 20, 2015 - 11:07pm PT

...while the subjective realm is qualitatively different than all other things in reality...

There's a level of inherent [metaphysical] mythologizing going on that's hard to escape in the perspective you've now thoroughly drilled home. Mostly around your reductio ad absurdum attempt to use physics to rationalize the statement above. Maybe skip the physics part and stick with the metaphysical, however less satisfying it seems to be to you.

Also, I don't find it to be 'qualitatively different than all other things in reality'; but I find it more mundanely just 'what life does', each species to its capability.

Likewise, there is no emotion that contains sadness.

I suspect mind is much the same. That there is no such "thing" as mind, that it does not - in and of itself - exist as an object, so the standard means of accessing an object will tell us about objective functioning, but fall far short of (and is not even addressing) what mind IS.

I think you overly abstract the whole affair beyond what's necessary. The light bulb analogy quite succinctly covers what's going on relative to the mind being an emergent property of the brain.

I guess in the end I personally find attempts to liberate the mind from the brain and elevate it to universality to be positively victorian (in a Monty Pythonish sort of way):

"Egads man, how dare you suggest our beautiful minds [souls] have even the slightest association with that slimy and frankly quite ugly organ!!! I mean, after all, the damn thing sports a brain stem that is subject to all kinds of tawdry desires and unseemly bodily impulses. Good lord, you've taken leave of your senses! Why my aesthetic would never lower itself to associate with such earthly vagaries. Come now, let's say no more about it even if it's been momentarily amusing you'd even suggest such claptrap. And I say old boy, just what kind of unsavory company have you been keeping of late. Tsk, tsk, I mean, not really OUR kind of people then, are they?"

Again - mind / brain :|: ying / yang - it's about the complementary, not the opposition, not the difference, not the separation of one from the other.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 21, 2015 - 08:02am PT

"build a better mind' sounds good but I am suspicious.

It would be up to you the builder to decide what is better.

If you think that Shakespeare was a better writer than Henry K. Gayle maybe you could build a better writer. If Einstein had better intuition about physics than the guy who mounted a rocket booster on his car top, could you build a better physicist? If Desmond Tutu is a better person than Adolph Hitler was, maybe you could build a better humanitarian.

This is like an ant dreaming of building a skyscraper but if we can imagine ants dreaming we can imagine a lot of other things, too.

What you imagine is up to you.

I imagine that a mathematical theory of mind would be beautiful even if it had no utility.

WBraun

climber

Oct 21, 2015 - 09:10am PT

we can imagine a lot of other things,

There you have it.

The gross materialists just imagine, just guess, just theorize everything.

This why they remain so clueless all while masquerading as learned .....

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Oct 21, 2015 - 10:23am PT

Healyje, here, IMO, is where you are getting lost in the discussion, clinging to old ideas that have long been dismissed by people jiggy with the material.

For starters, chucking the findings of physics is ludicrous, as is ascribing to me the idea that matter reduces to no-thing.

Where you are turned around is in not recognizing the fundamental difference between subjective/experiential and objective/objects. This quite naturally leads to howlers such as, "sentience is what the brain does," a statement with no verity or value whatsoever. Note that in no other scientific inquiry would such a gloss -over be accepted as serious thought. It's a dodge, plain and simple.

If you insist the experiential realm is just like all other objects or aspects of reality, try and list one object or thing, and contrast it with subjectivity. This, FYI, is the thought experiment that put an end to the belief that subjectivity was not unique. In fact there is nothing like it in reality so far as we know. Whatever example you can try and contrast with subjectivity will invariably be an object, and the only way to defend such a contrast is to hold fast on the untenable position that the objective and subjective are selfsame - that your uncle is in fact your aunt (is one of the examples used to to illustrate the absurdity of this view).

Given the brute fact of these observations, we go to Healyje's mistaken example of "emergent function" using a light bulb and light, that is, light is an emergent function of the light bulb. The error here is obvious: both a light bulb and light are objective "things" that can be measured. There is no extra phenomenon beyond the objective luminosity, and we can measure that charge.

With the brain and subjectivity, we first acknowledge that these phenomenon are NOT selfsame. Subjective experience, in and of itself, is NOT an object by any rational definition. Every schoolboy knows as much from direct inference. Note that in any other example of emergence, what emerges is some thing that in and of itself is an object that can be measured. There is no phenomenon beyond the objective. With brain and mind, the subjective is NOT an object and, in and of itself, subjectivity is not even of the same order as the object known as the brain, no matter how close the relationship. Any measurement is not subjectivity in and of itself, but the brain from which you believe subjectivity has been entirely sourced.

Trying to get around this simple fact leads people to conflate the objective and subjective in a daft attempt to maintain a strictly objective universe. Or even more ludicrous, to start arguing that unless the subjective is reducible to the objective, it must exist in some strange metaphysical realm that defies description. Then we T-bone into God and all the rest.

JL

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Oct 21, 2015 - 12:20pm PT

""build a better mind' sounds good but I am suspicious."

The reason why I am suspicious relates to dualism. If "I" is trying to build a better mind then this "better mind" will by default be better according to "I". If "I" is delusional then this "better mind" will be delusional.

In a way you may be getting at what Zen does to (so called) "build a better mind" . In zen to "build a better mind" (remember I am very suspicious of that statement and premise) you deconstruct the mind until there is "no mind". Suzuki Roshi (sf zen center) called this mind "beginner's mind" SM Seung sahn called it "don't know mind" . The idea behind "beginners mind " is it is an open mind capable of seeing things as they are. It is mind not attached to concepts and or before concepts. The main issue that prevents one from experiencing "beginners mind" is feeling we are separate from everything else. It all comes back to dualism.

Jinul called numinous mind http://luminousemptiness.blogspot.com/2008/05/pointing-to-your-original-mind.html

"Chinul: You said that sound and discriminations do not obtain at that place. But since they do not obtain, isn't the hearing-nature just empty space at such a time?

Student: Originally it is not empty. It is always bright and never obscured."

Chinul asks whether because no-thing can be found, whether there is nothing at all. The abyss of nihilism as I believe Nagarjuna called it. The student clearly sees that this emptiness is full, and describes the luminosity of mind. Though no-thing can be found, experience is vivid and clear, blazing in clarity, full in its magical display. Awareness shines, whether the clouds of our ignorance and thoughts obscure it or not. Wakefulness is always present - how could it be otherwise? How could it be possible for our mind to grow quiet and experience this expansive knowingness were it not eternally awake?

"Chinul: What is this essence which is not empty?

Student: As it has no form or shape, words cannot describe it."

Asked to describe this luminosity, the student refuses to go where words cannot (unlike myself!!!!) and merely states that nothing definite can be said of that which illuminates the void. (the void - horrible term, but fitting here). Though emptiness is not nothingness, that which is other than nothingness is not a thing, nothing that can be pointed to with words.

How clear this experience that is describes from centuries ago, between two beings I've never met!

How crazy these idle ramblings, trying to put the horns on a rabbit, trying to describe the indescribable!

There is some fodder; have fun and fire away.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 21, 2015 - 12:54pm PT

Subjective experience, in and of itself, is NOT an object by any rational definition.

Open on three ships sailing out of Palos de la Frontera

A fishing boat approaches

"Hey Chris! Where ya goin'?"

"Asia."

"Ya can't get there going that way! Going west can't get you to the East!"

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 21, 2015 - 12:59pm PT

The reason why I am suspicious relates to dualism. If "I" is trying to build a better mind then this "better mind" will by default be better according to "I". If "I" is delusional then this "better mind" will be delusional.

Remember that by your proposal the "I" is being directed according to a sound theory of how the mind works. If "you" are the only person who believes the theory, you could certainly be delusional. One test of the theory would be to implement a mind using it.

Do you perhaps not see Shakespeare as better at writing than Henry K. Gayle?

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Oct 21, 2015 - 04:15pm PT

The "better mind" idea is interesting . In a way it is what is done in zen and other meditative buddhist traditions you perceive how the mind works ; you perceive your attachments that obscure the luminous beginner mind and eventually you let go of your attachments and experience the unfettered mind.

So now that we "know" that. How is it working for you has it solved any of our problems?

No because the above concept whether correct or not is dead. You need to attain it in experience for it to have any real effect on your life.

sh#t is hitting the fan for me today ; my dad had a small stroke and he is in the 5th year of struggling with what Blitzo had and he is 90. he was a very healthy 85 when he was diagnosed but but he is wearing down. Need to hop on a plane.

WBraun

climber

Oct 21, 2015 - 04:19pm PT

Stoopid people you can't build minds.

It's already there.

You can only clean it or fill it.

The gross materialist fill it with garbage until it overflows and never clean it .....

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Oct 21, 2015 - 06:02pm PT

Hard times, PSP. Sorry to hear.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Oct 21, 2015 - 06:20pm PT

Dingus, if you spent half as much energy trying to understand the ideas here rather than seeing where people are "wrong" by your estimation, you might find some clarity. If I ever mentioned the idea that "Mind is what the brain does" it was to ridicule the idea, not promote it.

As mentioned, using the argument that X is what Y does as a "scientific" explanation is not something that will find much traction with sober folks. Also, ascribing any of this to me, or calling these "my" ideas is too kind, especially when you suggest I am using physics to support "my beliefs." Honestly, I have introduced nothing new here and have only put forth ideas that are part of the standard discussions per the death of staunch materialism.

The gist of my last post is that mind is unlike any other phenomenon in reality, and that any other example of an emergent function will always refer to an object like light as opposed to subjectivity. This makes the relationship of mind to brain unique. Staunch materialists, struggling to defend their position, can only dig in their heels and announce that "mind is what the brain does," which is another iteration of the daft notion that the objects and experience are selfsame.

We must wonder why people insist on clinging to this belief - what does it get them?

JL

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Oct 21, 2015 - 06:31pm PT

Oh please, you are so OCD on this. You sound just like Jimmy Swaggart. On and on and on.

Still to this day, I can remember years ago you railing against me in a number of posts about going on and on regarding Abrahamic narrative. In hindsight ain't that a joke? with your number of posts putting whatever numbers those were to shame double shame? lol

" it was to ridicule the idea" "sober folks" "the death of staunch materialism" "We must wonder why people insist on clinging to this belief - what does it get them?" etc...

It's only the standard model of the whole of neuroscience you're arguing against here - as opposed to any individual staunch mechanist or materialist. That there is a lot of "haughtie" (Lynn Hill) or hauteur, don't you think?

"mind is unlike any other phenomenon in reality"

So too the brain, Swaggart. Unlike any other phenomenon in reality. lol

To anyone who's actually had several years of neuroscience - hello, that's me and not jgill or mikel I don't think - your posts on this subject are an embarrassment and they rob opportunity of any real substantive discussion. But it's clear you do have your staunch followers so...

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 21, 2015 - 07:39pm PT

The gist of my last post is that mind is unlike any other phenomenon in reality

Sez your mind.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Oct 21, 2015 - 07:45pm PT

Cheers to you, PSP also PP. Being with your Dad is the thing to do. Making it to 85 in good health is a great life and the last 5 years don't change that even though the present becomes hard.

I greatly value your voice here and the time you give us.