Okay, don't take me too seriously.

I case you are wondering where I'm going with this... I want you two to either make good or do a complete 180 U turn or you will never hear the end of it...Happy Thanksgiving guys.

Hey you guys, Enrique and Gnomon, off the top of my head a neuron is something like 10 to the 12th power greater in scale that the atomic level so what mechanism are you talking about other than a vague reference to nanotubes. And why not just the normal functioning of neurons in the classical sense?

I'm looking at my little finger and it's a little bigger than a centimeter across. If you multiply a centimeter by 10 to the 12 power you get a distance of 40 times the earth to moon distance. At these increased scales it's very reasonable to assume that any quantum effects would be completely washed out unless you know of a specific mechanism.

You are right to question the immaterial and immaterial events. On their own they are non-existent and can not experience events.
But as they exist they are part of brain state and can experience events.

I hold the view that our brains have the ability to hold and put parameters on things that don't exist, are immaterial, are physical impossibilities or just nonsense. These things must be totally supported by a functioning brain. So a mind event is always a brain event and the immaterial component should be acknowledged and considered.

I don't see the conservation of energy as all that relevant. What is more interesting is the small amount of energy used in our brains can have a multiplier effect and direct great amounts of energy.

We shouldn't let Bartricks claim immaterial events in our minds consume no energy. They do use some fraction of our calorie intake.

I was thinking abstract concepts can only exist in our brains but not externally. For example information is sometimes defined as an abstract concept and there is a common belief that information exists outside of our brains. There is a tendency to bestow "information" to physical objects when it really only exists in our brains/minds. A book has information, the internet has information, information desk, information booth, 411, information packets...we have externalized information in our language. But really what we are doing is encoding and decoding physical matter for brain to brain communication.

I spoke too soon. Emergent materialism has no theory of information so is deficient in that area.
If you added a definition of information being brain state and brain state only it might be alright.
Any philosophy dealing with abstract concepts would be a red flag.

I looked around Wikipedia and sort of agree with emergent materialism. Starting with physical matter as the fundamental seems reasonable but there is a need to explain mind also.

I generally run through question sets to see if this or that is a good position to take...or post things here to see what the response is. Often you get criticism from others you wouldn't think of yourself.

Thanks, I've followed some of this. Seems like Batbrains mangled the OP so badly that it's become a free for all.

Your thumbs upping and vague referencing doesn't always register unless I go deep into the comments...so what are you? A Hindu monist? None of us agree with Bartricks.

If the mind is immaterial then it is not physical and in fact non existent.

So the problem is how do minds exist, right? If you define minds as physical matter ( brains ) that have the capability to contain immaterial objects you explain how minds can physically exist and why we can deal in the immaterial.

Bartricks isn't out of line suggesting these immaterials can be affected by and affect physical matter.

If you understand the problem from a brain, mental content perspective, all the physical states should work out. But if you separate the mind from the physical brain you will have endless problems.

There is something to work out as far as the specific mechanics of materialism producing mental content such as ideas, thought and the components of consciousness. I brought up the subject of ideas because they exist as brain state that should be identified as the physical brain and the emergent mental content. I get into trouble if I call it a contained non-physical but that is a loose discription of the problem. There might be something non-physical involved in consciousness. The work around is to call the contained non-physical...mental content.

The point relating to consciousness is that mental content emerging from the physical brain is a component of consciousness and should be included in any model.

How does your model handle the transfer of ideas? Something as simple as a short text seems to do the job and uses conventional, well understood means.

There might be a type of dualism involved, as no brain matter is transfered yet two brains can hold the same idea. Certainly ideas are not physical in the sense they are confined to a single brain.

Psychologically I think of time as most people do. Past, present, future, clock time and calendars.

We can't escape our mental models of time even when we try to do physics only time... it's still a mental model.

Anyway, I agree it's been a good discussion.
I would agree we should think in two categories, psychological and physical. Also the importance of consciousness and memory as you mentioned last week.

I'm guessing you went to public school. Am I right?

I grew up not believing in time so that's my bias. I sometimes change my view but have to be convinced.

My mindset is that it's always the physical present and that physical matter changes.

What if instead of calling it time in our math we switched to calling it physical change units? The math would work out exactly the same and we would relieve ourselves of the false perception of time.

I tend to scold people here on their use of the word " information " without much result. Could you explain ( your basis for and physically how ) energy and matter hold information.

To me, the best way to understand time psychologically is to define information as brain state existing as the physical brain with mental content. No Tinkerbelling please. Energy should be just energy and matter should be just matter.

Response to Metaphysician Undercover,

Progression of physical matter.
Clocks are physical matter that can delivery a number.

The idea of duration of time can exist in your mind and it's very useful but duration ( time initial to time final ) can't exist in the physical present. All we are doing with the idea of time is piggybacking on the progression of physical matter.

Good points on preconceived theories. I was thinking more of a model for understanding and troubleshooting.

And generally, good models of how our brains work, and can fail, could make us more resistant to some of these psychological illnesses.

Stress by external events are a big part of it but some could also be how brains take in, process, store and manipulate information.

My view is information exists only in deep brain functions so our senses just pass signals not information.

I don't follow why you mention external causes.

As for psychology, there can be endless models of time and there are. So what is time physically? I see continuity of physical matter. Continuity of time could be just a psychological add on. In physics time is what the clock says.

I might have muddled that because the computer models I know ( not my thing ) are off the shelf for things like viruses on computer networks, the output being networks and nodes that spread computer viruses.

The analogy is to psychosis symptoms such as conspiracy theories. The specific reason I think this should be considered is an understanding that mental content is something emergent from physical brains but not the same thing.

This is likely not the only cause but should be considered especially in the young, healthy and sudden onset group. Drug use/abuse could make this more likely or unusual events or just bad luck.

The physical stuff has been looked at and looked at so no, not a physical virus or it could be detected. Often these patients volunteer descriptions of specific mental content that concerns them.

I think most people know cuckoo when they see it and we mostly would like to avoid being affected by the condition

The psychiatric profession would suggest a biological failure.

My alternative view is that the brain holds information in networks and under normal conditions most of the information is true or non problematic and we function normally. However, it's possible to have rapid outbreaks of false information on this network that can't self correct in real time. For a person experiencing this rapid onset, there would be a sense that his biology is acting normally but at extreme activity levels (in an attempt to self correct) but information seems to be scrambled and erratic, unpredictable compared to normal. And when he arrives for professional psychiatric treatment he will be told his biology is failing and requires medication.

To get a mental image of this, imagine a virus on a computer network. Agent Based Models are a way to computer model this and simple models can show progression of a virus moving from node to node on networks with some nodes affected and other nodes unaffected. In biological brains the biology can be functioning normally but the corrupted networks of mental content are the cause of the abnormal condition.

If this is the case then forced medication would be taken as a breach of trust by the patient and could exacerbated his condition.

Any physical unit that cannot exist in the physical present is problematic ( because it cannot exist ).
A mass of a given unit measure can exist in the physical present. A temperature of a given unit can exist in the physical present. Length exists in the physical present. Also voltage, moles, and luminous intensity.
A duration of time cannot exist in the physical present and is a derived unit by referencing to other matter. Brains exist only in the physical present. However brains perceive past, present and future. Past and future, of course, do not physically exist in the physical present.
So what I'm seeing is that our brains deal with more than actually does physically exist. And our brains hold ideas of time, some of which could be in error.

I am just pointing out a human tendency to bestow "information" on physical objects.

Ok, you have wand, you aim at things, magic sparklers fly out and your name is Tinker Bell from my perspective.

You might be referring to what physicists term physical information and you should not mix definitions. Physical information has gotten into general usage as something unintended by physicists. It's not a property of the physical matter itself but associated with the matter in the mind of the observer. This might not be your fault at all since many physics articles are written by non physicists who don't understand the issue.

Physical matter exists in a perpetual physical present so for matter alone time might not be a fundamental component.

Perception of time requires consciousness and understanding information first is required. Information exists as brain state and brain state is the physical brain AND its mental content. Mental content, being emergent from the physical brain, is where time perception exists, as you were explaining.

Has any one heard of psychosis showing up in advanced artificial intelligence? If that is the case it would be evidence that psychosis is algorithm based and not biology based.

And aluminum foil hats are okay but copper foil is better if you can get it.

Red Rider, Lunatic Fringe is another one of my favorites and don't claim to be Jesus. Michael the Arc Angel is way better.

I just had to look up the lyrics to the Dire Straits song Industrial Disease. They seem to fit the discussion.

Interesting.
I see people in general as feeling oppressed and not knowing why, but to me it seems the world's central banks have a lot to do with it and they always become weaponized to fight wars along with covert programs to bring in war resources. The result is it's hard to capture the value of your own efforts because of this smoke and mirrors economy. So that's a short version of geopolitics as it exists and the people running things haven't been great at solving the problems.

Psychiatry itself has been weaponized to serve the interests of these same governments.

I here you complaining about the fundamental irrational nature of human activity and somewhat agree so what is your take on that and why does it exist? No doubt it brings in some business for psychiatry.

A two minute search will show that dopamine levels in psychosis patients will be elevated...and dopamine levels during and after normal test taking will be elevated. This is evidence for what? Active brains have higher dopamine levels.

Do you see why the competence of psychiatry should be questioned?

You are too easy on psychiatry. This profession has no one to blame but themselves for their bad reputation especially in the areas of psychosis and schizophrenia. For decades they have been predicting breakthroughs and proof of biological origin and consistently fail to produce it. More drugs? That's predictable as the research is drug company funded.

What they should be looking into are anomolies involving mental content and basic theory of information specific to human brain function.
I'm much more critical of this profession at the university and research levels as these are the ones responsible for the basic science and education of the practicing psychiatrists.

The Dan Markingson suicide case at the University of Minnesota is a prime example of how badly psychiatric research has failed. It's become a landmark case in medical research ethics if you are not familiar with the case. Most all of his symptoms were common mental content driven such as pattern recognition, code, perceived contact with unknown entities and so on. All well documented.

I shouldn't point at anyone but you can raise your hand if it's you.

Wikipedia defines information as an abstract concept so that is a good indicator of common usage and mathematics is the same way.

The problem is abstract concepts exist as brain states in individuals and that part is left out of the definitions.

For a person experiencing psychosis, song lyrics can take on overwhelming personal significance and is often present with other symptoms. This should be an easy one to troubleshoot. It involves information internalization and is basic information mechanics.

Information internalization is used in education purposely because personalized information is easier to learn, because some of the content is already in place.

It would be helpful if the philosophy of mathematics was ungraded to address the problem of abstract concepts. Information does not, can not, exist as an abstract concept. Information always exists as brain state.
Mathematics is mental content and cannot exist except in individual brains that physically exist in the physical present. It seems some hold a magical view of how mathematics is physically done. Yes, lots of good work over the millennia to build on.