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?

PS___ Your characterization of ↪Wayfarer & Gnomon as "immaterialists" may provide a clue as to where your strategy is coming from. — Gnomon

Are you suggesting my language characterizing you and Wayfarer is actually a more apt description of me?

No. I was not talking about storage of invisible energy in tangible chemistry, but about Potential as a Principle, as Aristotle defined it. The Map is not the Terrain ; the Potential is not the Chemical. :smile:

Principle in philosophy and mathematics means a fundamental law or assumption. The word "principle" is derived from Latin "principium" (beginning)

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Principle — Gnomon

I know that an abstract principle may have truth content and some level of application to the phenomenal world. How may it have realizable potential? Does such realizable potential evolve over an interval of time of positive value? If so, how is this time interval pertaining to an abstract principle measured?

PS___ I asked ↪ucarr for a graphic representation of Interacting Gravity Fields to help me understand his analogy to Absential Materialism. — Gnomon

Your arcane language is over my head, so I was hoping you could provide a graphic representation of your overlapping field concept : a picture is worth a thousand words ___Henrik Ibsen :smile: — Gnomon

Picture the moon in earth’s skyline, with the ocean at high tide. This is an interaction of two celestial bodies with gravitational fields: earth holds the moon in its orbit and the moon raises the ocean tides.

Intersecting gravitational fields are therefore the physical model of consciousness. — ucarr

:shade: :shade: — “Lionino

Consciousness is an aggregate of nested sub-routines of reflection. We start with the thing-in-itself noumenal state; next, we have reflection: Aha! There’s something out there! We don’t know this; it is sensed, sub-consciously; next, we have reflection upon reflection: “Now I, the self, make my appearance. I will have the future state of things be such and so, I declare!” Next, we have philosophy: I think that you’re thinking about your thinking is fatally flawed.”

I feel, in some as yet vague way, the recursion of machine learning is the heart and soul of socializing and society. Consciousness is inherently social. Brains in vats are merely consciousness potential.

For this reason, the earth with its orbiting moon is a good example of consciousness. These orbiting, celestial bodies aptly model the entangled selves and selfhoods of conscious individuals.

As for action at a distance, after our conversation, I carry off some of you with me into the next room.

My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). — Gnomon

For that matter, just what is 'materialism'? Let's see some definitions:

Brittanica: Materialism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them. — Wayfarer

Are you claiming the fundamental cosmic constraints exemplify immaterial causation? — ucarr

I think Deacon's notion of absentials and constraints challenge those forms of reductive materialism. — Wayfarer

Herein, I will attempt to profile Gnomon and Wayfarer philosophically: You’re trying to plot a course midway between reductive materialism at one extreme and brain-in-a-vat Platonism at the other. In so doing, you must affect a dalliance with materialist science without becoming infected by it. You’re both involved in the game of double-agentry. I’m surmising dancing with science-nuanced-cum-philosophy presents as one of the major strategies of today’s savvy immaterialists.

This absent-self idea comes from Heidegger but Sartre insisted on bringing back the Cartesian subject and freely willing consciousness as the basis of the self. — Joshs

Thanks for weighing in, Joshs; I’ve been missing your input.

What a knot of complexity here! The absential self, on which Cartesian freedom depends, effects its intention_design control of what-will-be, apparently in absentia, and thus the mind/body-problem puzzle of apparent duality.

I’m at pains here in this conversation to argue and persuade correspondents about the innate physical materiality of in absentia design.

How do Democritus, Epicurus and you define void? — ucarr

I'm confident they would say existence (i.e. being); however, I prefer to think of "void" as the real (i.e. the ineluctable exceeding, or encompassing horizon, of both (human) effability and rationality). Another way of putting it: there are 'dynamics' in every sense, we say, only because void fundamentally affords 'changes, combinatorials, contingencies, chance' – or, in contemporary terms, universal computability (re: D. Deutsch, S. Lloyd, S. Wolfram, M. Tegmark ... Spinoza ...) — 180 Proof

How is your above definition of void ontically different from spacetime (and its virtual particles)?

My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). In other words, Aristotelian Potential is unreal & immaterial & meta-physical, and not measurable in terms of thermo-dynamics. Potential is knowable only in hindsight by reasoning, or by mathematical calculation of statistical Probability for a future event. — Gnomon

I think your use of “potential,” a stored-energy, material phenomenon, connects Absence/Void to other material things. Think of a battery.

The human individual is the exemplar of absential materialism:what is not yet but will be. — ucarr

But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in it? — Wayfarer

Ententional: A generic adjective coined in this book for describing all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achieve something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value. — Terrence W. Deacon

Absential materialism is merely my wording for Deacon’s “Ententional.” I’m not proposing anything different from what from he expounds in Incomplete Nature.

The nine items listed above as examples of ententional things are, in my own words, distinguished by their action-at-a-distance causality. This means they cause resultants distributed away from them across space and time. When America’s federal reserve bank raises the cost of money, they are an agent seeking to achieve something non-intrinsic to their location: reduction of inflation via reduction of spending. Intentional reduction of inflation, a cerebral-material action, nonetheless distributes across spacetime, a material medium, This cerebral-material action, although absent via distribution from the federal reserve bank, absentially constrains spending by agents unknown personally.

In the context of evolutionary biology, a phenomenon that features mind’s emergence from matter, let’s look at two examples of absential materialism in action.

Through nested dynamical metabolic contraints on cell generation with genetic variations included, the favoring of a big brain over a strong, hairy body occurs. One of the resultants, distributed across spacetime, primes intelligent humans for reduction of hunting and gathering of food in favor of developing agriculture. Another resultant of the same dynamical metabolic constraint primes humans to cover their naked flesh, first with animal pelts and then with woven plant fibers and onward further towards development of the fashion industry.

Absential materialism utilizes the long reach of spacetime, a material cord binding together material things in accordance with planning.