...if you closed your eyes and blocked your ears, then you don't see, and you can't hear. Does it mean that you become a mindless when you closed your eyes and blocked your ears? — Corvus

Seeds for the crop were planted on the island. Shortly thereafter, the local volcano erupted, sending great spews of lava high into the air accompanied by boulders, rocks and volcanic ash. For months the atmosphere darkened the island, blotting out the sun. Villagers took to the caves with their animal skins and last season's stocks of grain and vegetables.

Eventually, mid-season for planting, strong ocean currents carried off the volcanic ash blighting the islands growing season. Turned up soil revealed dead seeds succumbed to the lack of the sun's regulation of soil temperature. Crops already growing prior to the eruption, unsupported for weeks in their photo-synthetic production of sugar by direct sunlight, withered and paled, providing but meager food. These were the minority of stalwart growths; most had died.

The high priests were busy with offerings to the sun gods accompanied by loud chantings and throbbing drum beats. Inspired by the efforts of the holy, farmers planted pale, withered seeds into the warming soil, looking skywards with hope.

Dahlbach, the village outcast, given to rantings about the unreliable gods and their wanton inclinations, launched into daily rants about the need to banish the gods and replace them with his solution to the problem of crops: farming inside of caves, where termperature control is easier. The villagers, sympathetic to the misfortunes caused by madness, made sure he ate his meager rations along with everyone else. Dahlbach, risen to his imaginary bully pulpit of woven palm fronds, his belly full of donated grain, bellyached in loud voice: "I banish your false gods! In this cave I will bring fertile soil and plant seed. With torches I'll keep the soil warm, because a seed can't sprout without the sun, and the torch will be the sun. You say the sun is not here in the cave? No, it's not. I shall pretend it is here in the cave with my torches. You say the sun is unapproachable. You remind me of the fate of Icarus, whose wax wings melted during his flight towards the sun, sending him to his death below. I shall approach the sun in the cave. No, I shall not find the sun. Who can find the sun without finding death first? Instead, I shall chase the sun with my torches, pretending to be the sun I can never find."

Here's Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewing David Chalmers on Closer To Truth. The Australian mathematician, physicist, philosopher runs through a list of materialisms examining why none of them work with respect to consciousness. If I'm not mistaken, he concludes with a theory of consciousness that sounds similar to what Penrose and Hameroff are working on: within each active neuron there's a moment when its QM waveform collapses; that's when subjectivity makes its appearance at the micro-scale within the human brain.

...I assumed that we had something in common, besides accepting the dependence of mental functions on material mechanisms. — Gnomon

Mental functions are dependent on material things because they too are material things, albeit absentially.

Idealism can only be defended with metaphors and rational arguments, but no appeals to the authority of empirical Science. That's because Ideas (per se) are materially Absent, and cannot be explained by any traditional physical mechanism. — Gnomon

Let me make a distinction between materially absent and materially absential. The difference is parallel to the difference between 2 - x versus 2i = 0 + 2i. In verbal grammar this is the difference between something simply distanced, as in the first example versus something
distanced-yet-complexly-connected, as in the second example.

Emergent functions from material processes cannot be observed empirically, but must be inferred theoretically. — Gnomon

This is true when the emergent functions are themselves material, albeit absentially.

I know you're not all in on Idealism, but you seem to be invested in the immaterial status of philosophical ideas, especially those considered metaphysical.

Our disagreement boils down to whether you can show how ideas, beyond occupying the thinking space of philosophers, have causal impact upon material things. There's no problem if you, like me, acknowledge ideas are, ultimately, connected to physical_material things via self-organizing dynamical systems. There's only a problem is you insist on understanding ideas in terms of:

Idealism can only be defended with metaphors and rational arguments, but no appeals to the authority of empirical Science. That's because Ideas (per se) are materially Absent, and cannot be explained by any traditional physical mechanism. — Gnomon

If you repeat your argument about energetic, potential enformaction en route to becoming enformation with the power of Wheeler's it from bit, I'll acknowledge that's your bridge from idea to material whereas I see it as physical_material across the entire spectrum.

So, the only important difference between us is that you see ideas are materially absent whereas I see that ideas are materially absential.

When you say "the mind", it must have a referent that "the mind" is referring to. — Corvus

You say the mind must have a referent it is referring to? And if it doesn't?

But if you say the stories that your hear, and the world you see is "the mind itself", it just doesn't make sense. Because when you closed your eyes or bloked your ears, you lose all your mind. You don't see or hear anything. You become a mindless. Do you? Really? — Corvus

You say when you are blocked off from the world you are mindless? You say when you are blocked off from the world and mindless you don't see or hear anything? When you do see and hear things, it's because you have a mind in contact with the world?

Someone light a Roman Candle! Make the black sky bright with light! Corvus is starting to get me.

Ok, let's suppose that is the case. How does it explain your mind and the body problems? — Corvus

"...the mind", it must have a referent that "the mind" is referring to. — Corvus

...when you closed your eyes or bloked your ears, you lose all your mind. You don't see or hear anything. You become a mindless. Do you? Really? — Corvus

You've already answered your question in your own words.

It seems to be your futile tactics to revert back to some poetic nonsense, when you have no idea what you were even asking about. — Corvus

What do they have anything to do with the knowledge of your mind? — Corvus

The boy returned to the old man. He was always sitting under the baobab tree. It was during the highest heat of the day when young Jabari would go to him, perplexed and angry with questions he couldn’t answer. “Why won’t old man Davu give me direct answers when I ask him questions?” he wondered, thoroughly vexed. Now, instead of going away puzzled and furious, he would confront him. “Why don’t you just tell me directly what I want to know?” Davu, calm and unperturbed by Jabari’s vehemence, took a long time to respond, saying finally, “It’s no good my talking to you directly. That is my mind. You have your own mind. When it sees the world directly, or sees the world through a story, you must learn to listen when you hear it talking to itself.”

So, if you are watching TV comedy show, then is the TV comedy show your mind? — Corvus

If it walks like a duck and squawks like a duck it must be a duck.

If you close your eyes, then you see nothing but darkness. Is the darkness your mind? — Corvus

The new born pup lost its bitch getting born, but the little girl took the dying whelp to her bed and her warm stomach. Next morning the pup squealed from under the covers vivid with life and a new, two-legged mother.

Are you claiming, then a blind man has no mind? — Corvus

The blind flower girl touched the little tramp’s face carefully, telling him his day would be a good one. She knew this she explained by telling him she could see his smile. Puzzled, he asked her, “How do you know I’m smiling? You’ve never seen a smile.” Smiling, she said, “Here at the flower stand I see smiles because I perceive with eyes forever closed.”

Are you claiming, then a blind man has no mind? — Corvus

You’re driving in your car. You suddenly stop at a green lit intersection where you see a blind man in dark glasses slowly making his way through the crosswalk. Do you conclude the blind man has no mind?

That sounds like your visual perception. Are you sure it is the existence of your mind itself? — Corvus

Apart from my mind, where is my… perception?

So, you are claiming that you can perceive the mind.
What is the shape and colour of your mind? — Corvus

When I awoke this morning, looking up through my concave skylight, I saw a palette of swirling, subtle grays hovering like thought-balloons with glowing, white cracks of lightning.

As I leaned over the side of the bed and looked down I saw my black leather slippers with roasted- cashew feet slipping into them.

Since mind is different substance from matter, you can say, you simply have no mental capacity to perceive the mind itself. — Corvus

You’re claiming the mind cannot perceive itself?

Must I conclude you’ve never examined your own thoughts?

If you counter by saying, “I’m talking about the mind that’s doing the perceiving, not the thoughts it perceives.” then you can’t make any claims about the mind being material, immaterial, etc.

So, if the mind can perceive its thoughts but not itself, then you also can’t make any claims about thoughts being material, immaterial, etc.

Alas, if you don’t know the nature of a cause, then you don’t know the nature of its effect.

If a mind can know neither itself nor its thoughts, how can you call it a mind?

This claim begs the question: Do abstract concepts exist independent of minds contemplating them? — ucarr

No. Why do you ask? Are you trying to determine if I am a Platonic Idealist, like Kastrup? He makes some good arguments for Idealism as prior to Real, but I'm not so sure. The term "to exist" has multiple meanings. — Gnomon

Since you agree concepts do not exist independent of the minds contemplating them, I now know we agree on something important to both of us. My use of “exist” simply means “dwell in a real state of being” public, measurable and repeatable.

The only thing we know for sure is our own ideas (solipsism paradox). But we can infer, and collectively agree as a convention, that there is a reality out there conforming to our individual imaginary concepts. — Gnomon

Perhaps I’m mis-reading your answer to my question up top. I thought you were agreeing that “out there” for concepts is the mind contemplating them. If you think your own ideas get their confirmation from inference and social convention, and if you think concepts are mental constructs only credible from suppositions they have independent referents outside the mind contemplating them, then I ask you to name the extra-mental, supposed loci for your concepts.

My concept of Causation applies only to Philosophy. I don't do Chemistry or Physics. — Gnomon

Chemistry and physics are a part of life in general. How does you philosophy have value without application to life in general?

Your questions indicate that you still don't understand what Enformationism is all about. It's a philosophical model of reality, not a scientific description of materiality. — Gnomon

Newton's Principia Mathematica refers to ideal abstractions, not to agents or material things. — Gnomon

The above quotes show the extreme difference between your work and Newton’s. Newton’s mathematical abstractions notwithstanding, his corpus of work in physics has many useful applications to the everyday world of life in general. Can you say the same about your work? I ask this question because philosophy, in order to be useful, guides applied science with grammatical precepts that inform the objectives and methodologies of applied science. For example, Cartesian substance dualism by circuitous route lead to the Turing test which, in turn, guided the computational approach to both solid state computing and neuro-science mapping of brain functions.

You continue to blockade and avoid the hard work of rigorous scientific scholarship and practice by artificially partitioning philosophy from the sciences. Legitimate philosophy doesn’t hold itself aloof from science.

I know you disagree with my assessment and believe your voluminous quotations from scientific ideas and concepts prove me wrong. I know you won’t change your method of procedure.

I’m writing these words as instruction to myself. Do my philosophical claims participate in the work of science? Do they show any promise as guides to scientific practice? Well, I know the interaction of two gravitational fields can be measured scientifically. I also know Penrose and Hammerof are exploring the collapse of the wave function within neuronal cells and surmising this collapse is the inflection point wherein subjectivity emerges. Does the graviton participate in the wave function and thus also in its collapse? Quantum gravity might have something instructive to say in response to this question. I, in distancing myself from your method of procedure, must not artificially partition my work from the work of scientists. I must not claim the status of metaphysical inquiries as cover to protect me from scientific facts that seem to contradict my claims.

…the notion of "Causality" or "Causation" is more of a general philosophical concept than a specific physical phenomenon, in that it implies both Agency (executive) and Efficacy (ability). — Gnomon

Do you think causation as a concept separable from interactions between physical and material things?

Do you make your claim of causation being primarily philosophical in application to: a) chemistry; b) elementary particle physics?

I consider the equation of "Information" (power to inform) and "Causation" (energy) to be more philosophically insightful. — Gnomon

I understand this sentence as a reference to Wheeler’s “It from bit.” Do you think information: a) an agent of material things; b) a material aspect of material things?

How do you think the Pythagorean Theorem was discovered/ confirmed if not by observation and measurement? — Janus

:up: :smile:

Do abstract concepts exist independent of minds contemplating them? — ucarr

I would turn the question around, and ask if 'the law of the excluded middle' or 'the Pythagorean theorem' came into existence when humans first grasped them. It seems to me the answer is 'obviously not', that they would be discovered by rational sentient beings in other worlds, were they to have evolved. Yet they are the kinds of primitive concepts which constitute the basic furniture of reason.

Albert Einstein said
I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man.

I think that is true, but that it's also true that while the theorem might exist independently of man, it can only be understood by humans. So it's mind-independent, on one hand, but only perceptible to a mind, on the other. — Wayfarer

Here’s how I turn the question around and then pair it with the first form of the question:

Do minds contemplating abstract concepts exist independent of their objects of contemplation?
AND
Do abstract concepts exist independent of minds contemplating them?

Now we have a real doozy of an obverse couplet. My answer to the question observed in both configurations is no. The two are never independent of each other. Deacon’s central theme is the spacetimatical connection linking consciousness with its subjects and vice versa.

Imagine the race of Numerians exist a billion years before advent of humans. The Numerians become aware of the Pythagorean Theorem and then eventually go extinct. Does the Pythagorean Theorem exist before the advent of the Numerians? Depends. If another, still more antecedent race pre-dating the Numerians exists, then yes. If not, meaning no minds in existence anywhere, then no. After extinction of the Numerians, does the Pythagorean Theorem exist? Depends. If another conscious race intermediary to the Numerians and human exists, then yes. If not, meaning no minds in existence anywhere, then no. I trust you see the logical pattern I’m expressing here. It’s the bi-conditional, logical operator.

A <> B, with A = Mind and B = Pythagorean Theorem. A if and only if B (and vice versa).

Abstract truth as language is an emergent property of conscious minds. It’s the grammar of the structure of existence for conscious minds. As a structural overview, it holds logical priority over material things, albeit a logical priority constrained by the existential fact of the existence of said material things.

Abstract truth and material things are co-eternal, temporally speaking.

Is Potential temporally prior to Actual, or is Potential timeless and Actual time-bound?* — Gnomon

However, philosophical principles are imaginary concepts, and not subject to the ravages of Time. — Gnomon

This claim begs the question: Do abstract concepts exist independent of minds contemplating them?

As I’ve suggestd already, I think metaphysics (as existential grammar) and nature are co-eternal. When a metaphysical description of a physical phenomenon frames it within a general structure, such as your claim energy has for its chief property causation, its an articulation of a conscious mind drawing upon what’s evidentially implied through the action of the phenomenon.

When science frames natural phenomena scientifically, viz. affords experimental statistics coupled with description of phenomena measurable, repeatable and public, it puts on a demonstration of abstractable principles co-temporal with the phenomena. Trying to claim abstract principles have independent existence from their grounding phenomena ignores the fact minds doing the abstracting are likewise grounded in brain phenomena.

I’m not charging you with making this erroneous claim of mental independence from brain because it’s not yet clear to me from your language whether you think that or not. Your staunch allegiance to shape-shifting between modes physical/non-physical, with the complication of in-betweenness distanced from both polarities, makes for a difficult stew of isms.

*Do you think time separable from phenomena?

Energy's primary property is Causation. — Gnomon

Can you elaborate further your insightful characterization of energy as causation?

Mass-energy changing form under conservation - definitely a physical phenomenon - expresses as a transformation dynamo. What can you tell us about the QM version of causation?

Sidebar - Perhaps a particular analysis of this characterization can empower us to use $e = mc^2$ as a guide for building instead of destroying. Visualizing blockchains of causal sequences as a waveform with probability attached and statistically analyzable reads like global economics.

…when I talk about a metaphysical Causal Principle (e.g. Energy) producing changes in Matter, I place it in a philosophical category more like metaphysical Essence (identity ; meaning). That's because Potential/Energy/Essence has no material properties : mass, hardness, plasticity. Energy's primary property is Causation. So, I'm making a philosophical distinction, not a scientific classification. — Gnomon

Does Deacon teach us that metaphysical principles are logically but not temporally prior to the natural world? Should we understand that spirit and nature are co-eternal?

Under Deacon’s influence I’ve learned to speculate temporal direction in application to the mind/body problem might be significant rather than trivial. You talk of metaphysical principles being causal. Might it be more correct to say metaphysical principles describe causation?

When an elementary particle decays into two of its constituent particles, physicists don’t typically characterize this event as being metaphysics in action. No, this transformation is unambiguous as a physical process. On the other hand, sound reasoning within philosophy of science may very well describe particle decay in terms of a general structure governing all forms of particle decay. That would be a description of a type of patterned particle decay. If philosophy of science thinkers, digging deeper, discover that patterned particle decay bespeaks the essential nature of science across all of its disciplines, then perhaps that would be a metaphysical description of foundational scientific truth. To say metaphysical statements, in of themselves, cause physical processes mischaracterizes metaphysics. It’s a blurry confusion of language and its meaning with physical processes.

That self-organizing processes working through nested tiers of upwardly evolving dynamics lead a trail of interconnection from it to bit seems to me, per the brilliant analysis of Deacon, foundational truth.

The revelation is that physical processes and their grammar of existence I.e., metaphysics, are all of one piece temporally speaking. The metaphysical description of physical processes has no causal force whatsoever. Instead, physical processes transpire, brains and minds emerge and, eventually, grammatical descriptions of the physical processes instantiate as language.

Metaphysical understandings of physical truths are logically prior to physical processes as interpretive overviews of types of physical processes and their interrelations.

I am more in the direction of a dualist. A dualist accepts both mind and matter as different substance, like from Descartes. Hence I acknowledge matter exists as material substance, and mind exists as mental substance. — Corvus

If I read you correctly, you say you’re in the direction of a Cartesian substance dualist; you say matter exists as material substance and mind exists as mental substance. Moreover, as I read your implication, you’re implying with your attacks upon absential materialism that, regarding material substance and mental substance, never the twain shall meet.

If I’m correctly reading the core of your counter to my thesis, you’re arguing that interweaving material substance with mental substance towards a non-local materialism that situates cognition and rational designs within material substance and yet with mental substance as an emergent, radically quasi-independent property is a stillborn thesis.

You have made an important declaration that establishes your stance in this conversation:

Please bear in mind that all meanings are mental, logical and conceptual, viz NON MATERIAL and NON PHYSICAL even if they are the product of the physical brain. — Corvus

Now I juxtapose your stance with your below declaration:

No I don't think I was going on sentiment at all. I was just letting the OP know why he was confused when he posts an addlepated questions like "
If your brain were removed from your cranium, would you be using your hands to type messages to me?
— ucarr
, when I have never denied the existence of brain for the precondition of mind. — Corvus

I assert the last part of your declaration (in bold) shows your substance dualism at the point where the rubber meets the road and complexity enters the situation. I further assert that with advent of this complexity, you make a close approach to acknowledgement of the truth of Deacon’s core belief that mind emerged from matter.

The core issue of this conversation is articulation of the structure of connection linking mind with matter in the mode of Deacon’s theme: that mind emerged from matter. This clause declares the interweave connecting matter and mind.

In your stance, you declare a hard boundary between material substance and mental substance. Your job now is to articulate with maximum precision of detail the structure wherein brain, albeit being a precondition of mind, nonetheless inhabits a structure featuring a hard partitioning of brain from mind. Per your stance as a hard-boundary dualist, you must explain a structure wherein the hard-partitioning (like parallellism) of brain/mind at the same time features brain as a precondition for mind.

Here he's expressing the idea that physics itself has undermined physicalism, insofar as this was conceived as being reliant on the existence of 'ultimate objects'. Instead, it suggests a process-oriented approach associated with "waves of probability" — Wayfarer

…how this can be described as materialism escapes me. — Wayfarer

You perceive kinship between spirit and probable particles neighboring about a cloud of positions? Does the nature of spirit insist it be not too hard of boundary nor too discrete in location?

Regarding how this can be materialism, you have an answer below with interacting dynamical processes that mutually constrain in the mode of a distributed waveform .

… anything that exists does so as a consequence of the adaption of bottom up processes to top-down constraints. — Terrence W. Deacon

The other subtle point is that constraints themselves, which are central to his model, are top-down by nature. Top-down constraints impose order and coherence within a system by providing a framework or set of rules that guide the behavior of its parts. They are essential for ensuring that the system functions in a coherent and organized manner. In his model, anything that exists does so as a consequence of the adaption of bottom up processes to top-down constraints. — Wayfarer

Does Deacon teach us that metaphysical principles are logically but not temporally prior to the natural world? Should we understand that spirit and nature are co-eternal?

I believe that only by working from the bottom up, tracing the ascent from thermodynamics to morphodynamics to teleodynamics and their recapitulation in the dynamics of brain function, will we be able to explain the place of our subjective experience (mind and its thoughts)* in this otherwise largely insentient universe. — Terrence W. Deacon

*Parenthetical clarification inserted by ucarr.

Deacon makes it clear beyond doubt he endorses bottom-up causation from the material to the absentially material i.e., towards mind and its intentions.

Reframing the concept of sentience in emergent dynamical terms will allow us to address questions that are not often considered to be subject to empirical neuroscientific analysis. Contrary to many of my neuroscience colleagues, I believe that these phenomena are entirely available to scientific investigation once we discover how they emerge from lower-level teleodynamic, morphodynamic, and thermodynamic processes. Even the so-called hard problem of consciousness will turn out to be reconceptualized in these terms. This is because what appeared to make it hard was our predisposition to frame it in mechanistic and computational terms, presuming that its intentional content must be embodied in some material or energetic substrate. As a result, the vast majority of descriptions of brain function tend to be framed in terms that not only fail to make the connection between the cellular-molecular processes at one extreme and the intentional features of mental experience at the other; they effectively pretend that making sense of this relationship is irrelevant to brain function. — Terrence W. Deacon

…I have never denied the existence of brain for the precondition of mind. — Corvus

As a favor to me, can you respond to this post by talking about the operations of mind as they relate to brain as a precondition of mind? Immediately below I’ve quoted Wayfarer in order to explain why I’m asking this favor of you.

The bottom-up account of such entities (minds and their thoughts) is that they are the product of lower-level processes, beginning at the level of physical and chemical interactions, which evolve in such a way as to give h. sapiens the ability to produce such ideas. This is the mainstream consensus.

Deacon is concerned with just this issue. How intentional acts can have physical consequences, even though intentionality itself is not accomodated by physicalist accounts. That is the explanatory gap he's wanting to bridge. — Wayfarer

Do thoughts exist outside of the minds thinking them?

Do minds exist outside of the brains substrating them? — ucarr

The bottom-up account of such entities is that they are the product of lower-level processes, beginning at the level of physical and chemical interactions…

Deacon is concerned with just this issue. How intentional acts can have physical consequences, even though intentionality itself is not accomodated by physicalist accounts. That is the explanatory gap he's wanting to bridge.

I'm more open to the platonist perspective on this question that Deacon says he is. — Wayfarer

I think you give an excellent summary of Deacon’s purpose in Incomplete Mind.

I disagree somewhat with your characterization of bottom-up, physicalist causation as a process that renders the mind and its thoughts as products. Deacon provides a detailed analysis of nested, self-organizing, dynamical processes that create upwardly evolving, strategic constraints towards mind and its end-directed intentions. As an emergent property of physical substrates, mind is something quite beyond an automatic product. It has materially grounded parameters that afford it an agency distinct from the automatic mechanization of the more strictly material dynamics supporting it. Cartesian freedom, albeit limited by physical parameters, holds place among real things.

Top-Down Causation

Is top-down causation from mind to brain a process that includes an inflection point where immaterial mind makes causal contact with material things?

We’re examining a question much deeper than personal preference between equivalent options. We’re looking at whether or not top-down causation from immaterial mind holds place among real things.

Established top-down causation from emergent mind is exampled by Deacon’s triumvirate of teleodynamics_morphodynamics_thermodynamics. This chain of dynamics, being bi-directional, also includes bottom-up causation going in the opposite direction.

Likewise, emergent mind can run top-down to brain, or the reverse, brain bottom-up to emergent mind.

In Wayfarer’sMind Created World, he argues for a mind-organized world. Since his scenario features raw data being processed, it’s obvious the data pre-dates this action of the mind and thus there is no mind-created world extant in this example.

Has it been established that formatting of raw data incoming through the senses is a top-down causation from mind to brain?

To the contrary, it’s established the brain organizes info processing autonomically, with various components and aspects of sensory data assigned to various parts of the brain. No one consciously decides which part of their brain will process which sub-component of the sensory data of the phenomenal world. Brain processing is autonomic with little or no control by conscious mind.

Moreover, the brain components, via bottom-up causation, assemble a perceptual composite that is a brain-created assemblage. As for the mind’s part in this process, wherein comprehension and learning, with ancillary features including interpolation, extrapolation, induction and deduction get utilized, it’s a case of bottom-up causation from brain to mind, not the reverse.

Likewise, machine processing of raw data is a material_physical, bottom-up dynamic of processing and assemblage into a coherent and logical composite.

A common example of bottom-up, material_physical organization of raw data into a coherent, logical whole is DOS running in the background organizing the Graphical User Interface seen and manipulated by the general public when they turn on and use their computers.

Emergent mind, as the current pinnacle of self-organizing, dynamical processing, appears to be an absentially material designer. As designer, mind holds power over the natural world.

Human mind and natural world co-exist within an ergonomical co-dependence.

Numbers, logical laws, principles, even scientific laws, are not existent as are chairs, tables, mountains, etc, but they are real as constituents of the meaning-world; perhaps they can be conceptualised as noumenal realities, as distinct from phenomenal existents. — Wayfarer

The main issue in this conversation is whether these ententionals have reality and meaning because they’re bound together with phenomenal existents as emergents.

Do thoughts exist outside of the minds thinking them?

Do minds exist outside of the brains substrating them?

Your confusion seems to be based on your misunderstanding that my stance is some sort of an idealist. I am not an idealist

I am more in the direction of a dualist. A dualist accepts both mind and matter as different substance… — Corvus

I’m confused?

But if they say, mind is not made of matter, then it is a pointless view. Because, of course it is not. In that case, they would be saying only matter is made up of matter, which is a tautology. — Corvus

You’ve hoisted yourself on your own petard.

I'm not an Immaterialist or Idealist --- in the sense of denying material reality. — Gnomon

You know I know this. You’ve told me repeatedly that you’re invested in the material, the physical, the in-between and the meta-physical. Am I mistaken in believing you think metaphysical principles immaterial yet causal, as in the case to “it from bit?” If I’m not mistaken about this, then you need to show how metaphysical principles “enform” matter with attributes only known in the abstract a priori.

It won’t due talking about potential energy as causal potential somehow manipulating matter. Such a description is too vague to be of use to anyone but you in salesman mode promoting your Enformaction Theory.

But the significance of what he calls abstentials is that while they have physical consequences, they're not physical in nature. — Wayfarer

I think this is a simplification. Constraints that create absences that, in turn, strategically constrain forward towards emergent properties, such as minds with brains, involves a complex of nested, mutual constraints and emergent properties. There are no abstentials acting as end-directed agents without physical constraints imposed by dynamical processes.

I seems to me this complex of physical_absential satisfies quite well your claim to desire a spiritualism sypatico with modern science.

…you misunderstand me… by confusing "void" (that's metaphysical, not just "physical") — 180 Proof

Let me read carefully what you’ve written: a) “…you misunderstand me…” So, I get your intended meaning wrong; b) “… by confusing ‘void…’” So, I blend together physical and meta-physical in my understanding of what you’re saying about “void.” c) “that is metaphysical, not just physical…” So, I equalize “void” with being both physical and meta-physical; In this instance, I don’t see any error of interpretation of what you’ve written because the verb “to be” and the adverb “just” directly identify “void as having both attributes .

I'm not "saying" the atomists' void is a "higher-order" anything (that somehow transcends the physical). — 180 Proof

You mis-read me when you ascribe to my intended communication that a physical thing i.e., “void,” in possessing a higher-order attribute (foundational), transcends the physical. Just as higher-order logic doesn’t transcend logic, higher-order ontic status doesn’t transcend the physical. Higher orders of a mode expand the range of domain within it; they don’t transcend it.

Mind causes matter to change, move and work. A simple evidence? I am typing this text with my hands caused by my mind. If my mind didn't cause the hands to type, then this text would have not been typed at all.

Mind is immaterial substance. Although I know it is in me, and works for me in being conscious and perceive, think, feel, intuit and imagine etc, I cannot see it, touch it, or measure it. The mind has no physical or material existence, but it works for all the actions of humans as they please or want their bodies to perform or act according to their wills. — Corvus

If your brain were removed from your cranium, would you be using your hands to type messages to me?

Without body, the mind evaporates. Where the mind goes to is still a mystery. But one thing clear is that, mind is not body itself, and mind is not material. — Corvus

Our conversation here is specifically concerned with the location, structure and functioning of mind in relation to body. If you think we’re wrong in our thesis that mind emerged from matter via upwardly evolving, dynamical processes, then you need to specifically address that claim by pointing out its flaws.

I am not familiar with the idea you tells, but I quickly scanned the internet search of the term. It sounds like teleodynamics of the ententional sounds like a type of evolutionary theory. I am not sure if evolutionary theory has strong grounds for its claims. It seems to have some interesting points but also many vague parts in the theory too. Anyhow, my standpoint for it is that matter alone, and evolution theory alone seem to have some problems in explaining fully on the mind / body problems. — Corvus

I think you should deepen your investigation beyond the level of quick scans on the internet. Doing so might empower you to more specifically address perceived flaws in the proffered explanations of the mind/body problem.

materialism, via absential materialism, offers an explanation how these supposed immaterial phenomena are really higher-order, emergent properties still grounded in lower-order, dynamical processes that are physical. — ucarr

Suppose I amend my claim: ententional things, such as computation, “reference to” and meaning emerge from and remain grounded in lower-order, dynamical processes that are physical.

I think this claim hues closely to Deacon’s central thesis. His subtitle is: “How Mind Emerged From Matter.”

Deacon is proposing a way of thinking about nature that is very different from previous forms of materialism - is it still materialism? — Wayfarer

My understanding of Deacon is that he’s not leaving entirely the naturalist, physical_material category. He’s an evolutionary biologist.

MORPHODYNAMIC WORK

Thermodynamic orthograde processes are vastly more likely to appear spontaneously in the universe than morphodynamic orthograde processes. Correspondingly, examples of spontaneously occurring morphodynamic work are rare in comparison to thermodynamic work, and are also easily missed because their form is unfamiliar. To help identify them, we can begin by defining our search criteria by considering some thermodynamic analogies and disanalogies.

Any change of state is ultimately a thermodynamic change, but some thermodynamic changes are more complex than others. In describing forms of work that are more complex than thermodynamic work, we are not implying the existence of some new source of energy or a form of physical change that is independent of thermodynamic change, and certainly not an ineffable influence. Higher-order forms of work inevitably also involve—and indeed require— thermodynamic work as well.

So, surprisingly, this view of self shows it to be as non-material as Descartes might have imagined, and yet as physical, extended, and relevant to the causal scheme of things as is the hole at the hub of a wheel. — Terrence W. Deacon

It’s clear to me Deacon rejects neither material absence nor material presence in his thesis about how mind emerged from matter.

I don't know if your interpretation of Deacon does justice to that element of his work. It seems to me you're intent on using it to defend the very kind of reductionism that he is seeking to ameliorate. — Wayfarer

You seem to misunderstand the definition of emergent property, as in the case of mind emergent from matter. Emergent properties have radically different agendas from their lower-order substrates, to which they remain bound and without which that could not exist. This, by definition, is not simplistic, material reductionism. It articulates a mutually constraining symbiosis. I think the mental constraints upon physical things is what you refer to when you credit such restraints with being examples of mental causation controlling empirical phenomena. Neither causal mind nor causal, material substrate is excluded.

I think you’re the one trying to bias Deacon towards immateriality. I don’t think he’s biased in either direction. He pays heed to immateriality, not because he prioritizes it over materiality, as you do. Instead, he pays it heed in order to bring it back into balance with materialistic science, which he eschews no more than he does immateriality.

Since, by now, it should be clear I embrace Deacon’s thesis, it should also be clear neither do I prioritize one over the other.

Energy works by Potential-to-Actual transformation, as in E=MC^2. For example, Invisible causal Photons (lightning) convert into mathematical Mass, which our senses experience as tangible Matter*1. — Gnomon

We don’t experience mass by seeing matter.

We experience mass as momentum, the tendency of material objects to either remain at rest or remain in motion.

*1. Energy Transfers and Transformations :
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred and transformed. There are a number of different ways energy can be changed, such as when potential energy becomes kinetic energy or when one object moves another object. — Gnomon

All of the above: energy, mass and matter are material_physical. Your job, as immaterialist, involves showing the structure of the immaterial making causal contact with the material.

Is the following narrative something you can accept?

Higher Teleodynamics of Mind - Incomplete Mind, Terrence W. Deacon

The locus of self-perspective is a circular dynamic, where ends and means, observing and observed, are incessantly transformed from one to the other. Individuation and agency are intrinsic features of the teleodynamics that brains have evolved to generate, because of the dynamical closure, constraint generation, and self-maintenance that defines teleodynamics. However, the neurologically mediated self exhibits a higher-order form of teleodynamics than is found at any other level of life. This is because the teleodynamics of brain functions that evolved to guide animals’ locomotion and their capacity to physically modify their environments inevitably must model itself. The self-referential convolution of teleodynamics is the source of a special emergent form of self that not only continually creates its self-similarity and continuity, but also does so with respect to its alternative virtual forms.

Thus autonomy and agency, and their implicit teleology, and even the locus of subjectivity, can be given a concrete account. Paradoxically, however, by filling in the physical dynamics of this account, we end up with a non-material conception of organism and neurological self, and by extension, of subjective self as well: a self that is embodied by dynamical constraints. But constraints are the present signature of what is absent. So, surprisingly, this view of self shows it to be as non-material as Descartes might have imagined, and yet as physical, extended, and relevant to the causal scheme of things as is the hole at the hub of a wheel.

Do you think mind holds causal force over material things? Is so, can you articulate the structure of the handshake linking immaterial to material? If not, can you justify your belief mind is immaterial?

If you say mind operates in domains clearly not material, such as: abstractions, generalizations of tokens to types and computation, then materialism, via absential materialism, offers an explanation how these supposed immaterial phenomena are really higher-order, emergent properties still grounded in lower-order, dynamical processes that are physical.

Can you counter this argument with one that debunks Deacon’s teleodynamics of the ententional, a category that includes: sentience, meaning and purpose.

You misunderstand me (re: Spinoza's substance / being) by confusing "void" (that's metaphysical, not just "physical") with what I wrote about "spacetime" (i.e. a physical structure analogous to "an infinite mode of the extension attribute ...") — 180 Proof

In saying void is both physical and meta-physical, are you saying it has a higher-order dimension lying beyond the scope of the physical in the form of the physicality of the physical, which is to say, an abstract, generalized attribute approached only a priori?

If so, consider that any common material thing populating everyday human experience possesses, like void, a higher-order, abstract and generalized attribute as, for example in the case of a hammer, utility, also presumably only approached a priori.

How is void, in its higher-order, meta-physical dimension, categorically distinct from hammer?

…if they say, mind is not made of matter, then it is a pointless view. Because, of course it is not. In that case, they would be saying only matter is made up of matter, which is a tautology.

If they say, even mind is made up of matter, then it is an incorrect view, because there are clear evidences that it is not.

Therefore it is either an incorrect view, or a tautology. — Corvus

…if they say, matter is not made of mind, then it is a pointless view. Because, of course it is not. In that case, they would be saying only mind is made up of mind, which is a tautology.

If they say, even matter is made up of mind, then it is an incorrect view, because there are clear evidences that it is not.

Therefore it is either an incorrect view, or a tautology. — ucarr

Does anyone think these dueling bookends, who end in stalemate, make a sound argument for the equal truth of each bookend? Goethe said something about the best arguments being those with both sides speaking truth.

Materialism has the easier task because it’s monist. It doesn’t have to address the cosmic transition point: the structural handshake transitioning immaterial into material, or the reverse.

Immaterialism, being dualist, carries the burden of illuminating the handshake whereby things immaterial have causal force upon things material.

What about the inflection point when non-life quantum leaps into life, a supposed, abiogenetic, spontaneous phenomenon? Might that be, albeit irrationally, the structure of the transition?

Isn’t the gist of immaterialism that spirit acts as the catalytic go-between linking the two cosmic states?

If so, then the gist of the immaterialism argument might be that non-life is immaterial as spirit until spirit transitions into material. That would be a proposition describing the structure of the inflection point.

However, conversely, spirit as non-life bespeaks noumenal materiality, not vital immateriality.

The Conflict: Immaterialism can’t accept reductive materialism as the mechanical catalyst into life and materialism can’t accept idealist immaterialism as the spiritual catalyst into life.

What’re we gonna do ‘bout this barnburner?”

“Hey! Somebody needs to articulate the structure of the cosmic inflection point transitioning non-life into life, for it might be a clue to resolution of the mind/body problem.”

If materialism is a belief that even mind is matter, then it is an addlepated belief. — Corvus

Okay, this is a start. What’s your next move?

Consider the aggregates of atoms in the material things populating the daily world of human experience. Are they also aspects of void?

Describe how immaterial energy connects with the material things it changes. For example, explain how, when lightning strikes a person and kills them, the lightning transforms into a material thing.

As I discern the difference, "void" is a speculative supposition of fundamental reality (analogous to Spinoza's substance (or being)) whereas "spacetime", according to various formulations of quantum gravity, mathematically describes only an emergent physical structure (again, analoguous to an infinite mode of the extension attribute of Spinoza's substance (or a being)). — 180 Proof

I understand you to be saying “void” is more fundamental than “spacetime.”

Since you say “void” is analogous to Spinoza’s Substance, I understand you to be implying “void” is physical_material and of infinite extension.

…brain-in-a-vat Platonism at the other. — ucarr

That expression conveys an incomprehension of Platonism in my view. — Wayfarer

As I said already, I think Deacon is one of those developing an extended form of naturalism, recognising the limitations of lumpen materialism ('atoms and the void'). — Wayfarer

But I don't know if I will continue with it (Incomplete Nature), or this thread. — Wayfarer

If you do sign off from this conversation, before you do, I hope you’ll elaborate some details of your judgment that “brain-in-a-vat Platonism” conveys an incomprehension of Platonism.

…philosophical idealism requires something like a perspectival shift, very like a gestalt shift, which cannot be explained or reduced to propositional terms. — Wayfarer

Do you mean comprehension of Plato’s Ideal Forms requires a systemic transformation of a person’s perceptions, thoughts and beliefs?

You say philosophical idealism cannot be explained or reduced to propositional terms. Are you saying it shares common ground with ineffable dimensions of spirituality?