You'd have to show how this could be possible. That's the problem. And it's far from trivial — Manuel

You are absolutely right. Admittedly, I'm still at the stage of working out hypotheses.
A problem, I suspect, is that we have become so sophisticated in our accumulation and methods, that if the Hypothesis were simply--mind consists of signifiers operating autonomously by an evolved law and dynamic, it would involve many disciplines over many decades to prove/disprove, with the likely conclusion that it is inconclusive.

You're points have been guiding. Many of which; I need to revisit.

I think we just don't know enough about the nature of matter in general to say conclusively if there is a difference in kind between our ideas and physics or not. — Manuel

Interesting. An admirable open pov, but if I needed that hurdle resolved to proceed, I'd say matter is matter, mind is Mind, and never the twain shall meet.

If your body has lost all the contents of your memory let us suppose, but it still functions biologically. Would you be able to know then, your body is you? — Corvus

That is exactly my point; there is no real "you" and "your" body is not "yours". The question dualists need to consider is why a human body wouldn't be itself without the constructions and projections we classify as a separate entity and call mind. Why is a lizard still a lizard without thought and language, but only humans have a soul? Sure, we claim that God prefers us and gave us a soul. But I think we've grown up enough to stop clinging to that.

I'd say that "concrete things", things that can be touched with our hands, are almost absent in the universe, especially if you consider how many things exists which we cannot touch, which is almost everything. — Manuel

You're definitely challenging my, beyond complacent, settlements, which is good.

But OK, please let me know what you think of this baby step. Even if so called concrete things turn out to be other than as they appear, perhaps also evasive, etc. Are they not yet, all of them together, bodies, trees, oceans, and rocks, something physics explores differently than it does the ideas which appear to shape our experiences and are not constructed out of matter. I get that we have dreamed that they might be, but if we are being fair, a thought might require matter to generate it, but once projected and gone, it is gone. Because it never really was.

Isn't body the precondition for being conscious? — Corvus

This I agree with. It's just that I go further than what is implied. I think Body is the only condition for being conscious. Mind are the projections which emerged/evolved and now operate out of that Consciousness, displacing the organic system of, more or less stimulus and response, with stimuli which have been so over produced (maybe kickstarted/driven by language), that an autonomous process takes place which we take to be our experience; assuming an agent/experienced, and from there, concluding a real and separate being (even those who insist they aren't dualistic yet speak of mind as if it has a reality distinct from the body's--forgive the non-technical language).

the very fact that it even points to something is already an activity the mind has — Manuel

Because there is no language accessible to precisely express the point, these metaphors might be helpful, although also tricky.

In my metaphor Mind doesn't point, it's the finger (body) which points. Mind isn't even the thing it is pointing to. Mind is the direction in which it is pointing. That is how mind is empty. And in that sense is the body 'more' real. The finger is more real than the direction in which it is pointing.

I suppose the question to ask would be, what are you attempting to prove or what would be advanced or made clearer by supposing that body and mind are so different? — Manuel

To answer that question, because the others require more focused attention, I'm trying to get at the fallacy we have trapped ourselves in because mind emerged, with 'unique' structures etc., which is, that it is the 'seat' of our being/reality/truth, at the expense of what is already a prima facie given. Not I think therefore I am, but rather it thinks therefore it exists...but what is it? Whereas body lives, therefore it is. The latter can at least be shared with the rest of the universe. It is this oddity, Mind, that only humans seem to have, and that has 'fooled' us 'narcissistically, into wanting it to be special, more real, the being within the being etc

Could it be because body is temporal? As we all know, bodies get old, die and becomes dust. Bodies don't last too long. — Corvus

I'd say, it is because of the structure of our "thinking" that we even "desire" eternity/immortality. Of course our bodies are "temporal" in their lived forms. That, to me, doesn't prohibit them from being our only "reality"

Bodies get old and die through time. Minds die too. But souls supposed to survive after death to be identified for what the being had done — Corvus

The first, I agree without reason to disagree; the second, I agree, with the qualifier that I go a step further and doubt that Mind ever lived in the first place; the third I have no reason to believe.

Why is the body not enough. I don't approach these things religiously (as in conventional religions), but even if I did, God created the natural universe, we created the spiritual to answer questions which from God's perspective we have no business asking. For so called Abrahamic religions, these questions are humans eating knowledge not life. For so called Vedic-Buddhist religions these questions are us consumed by the fruits of our works, rather than just doing our works because it is within our natures to do.

That sounds like souls / spirits are illusions. — Corvus

In my opinion, not just illusions (that's ultimately what I would call the spin which human mind superimposes onto reality) but 'soul/spirit' are misunderstandings: illusions within the illusion, about what the illusion might be.

What should be done is to say which are properties unique to bodies and how these properties cannot be mental in any way. Then you could have an argument. — Manuel

That is excellent. Granted that the mental (for humans) 'uses' matter/energy (whatever it's called, currently) to 'generate'. But, simply put, that which is generated--Signifiers--is not matter/energy. To classify it objectively is the challenge, given it is really classifying itself. But the mental is more like the direction in which a finger is pointing (rather than the finger, or what it is pointing to (unless it happens to be pointing to another direction--which is often the case)); so as opposed to the body (including the nervous system, synapses etc.; including mood, sensation, drives--all presumably material processes) the mental is empty, a 'thing' totally other, yet not real in the way we prima facie receive the material, I.e., the body, as real.

I realize that my loose terminology may need tightening. I can see you've been doing that. Hopefully, you can read my question for what it is really asking, rather than what it might accidentally appear to be asking, given terms (mis)used.

Or you can make the terminological choice of putting things this way, which is fine. — Manuel

Isn't that inescapably the case? Some adopted by convention for various reasons, including, as you say, proof; some fringe applications of the terminology, and not adopted. That is a mammoth question, I know. My point brings me back to what is the body? Not a thing to best access with knowledge, but rather the thing we are [isolated from knowledge].

But when we go on to speak of non-linguistic thought, here we are really lost and have been for thousands of years. — Manuel

Perhaps it is our own definitions creating obstacles to further "discovery." Take non linguistic thought. I might argue that even the seemingly nonlinguistic, is linguistics, if the latter has as its common feature a Signifier/Signified, ie. 'meaning-construction' function. What nonlinguistic thought is not yet, primarily about meaning?

But souls? How do you prove souls exist? — Corvus

I don't think souls/spirit are real distinct beings. We apply those terms to the nonphysical, 'mental' processes which ultimately cause/include the illusion of being, although they are actually fleeting and empty processes.

Ok. And applying the rules of this game (not meant to be disparaging, Im a participant), your points are likely, in the end (I still haven't considered them, looked at the authors you suggested. Narrowing the scope of respective and mutual understanding, with the hope of aligning the two will allow for a more 'accurate' review, anyway), convincing.

But, in case from your p.o.v., I'm not being clear. It is likely my understanding and my expression are misaligned. I will resort to metaphorical illustrations which I acknowledge are not valid arguments (I don't view my exercise as an attempt to promote an argument so much as to broaden my understanding of a hypothesis).

Think of the human on that hypothetical day before we first developed a mind that would start inquiring into the matters here. What did she think she was? Either, nothing, she didn't think (my preference); or, the body allegedly thinking. I think our inquiries--that is, our desire to know, and the corresponding illusions that we can know, and that there is something to know, outside of our constructing it--are only there because they are part of the constructing that started take place the day after that hypothetical human thought nothing of her being; just was her being.

Unless you are suggesting that the same organism, prehistorically, was born with those queries 'genetically' built in. But, that is what I am skeptical of. We weren't born into a reality with questions or answers. We, uniquely, make them, and they are other than the reality we were born into.

From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, — Corvus

I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating.

we don't know what a body is — Manuel

Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing.

But I still need to give due consideration to your specific counter points.

Mind is playing the same music while it keeps us on hold.

I really like your points, and they deserve deeper consideration. But, I think your (?) earlier question applies: where does body stop and mind begin?

(Kindly allow for extreme looseness in use of terms)

The stuff you rightfully point out, as it relates to mind and my allegations about fiction, is describing the real infrastructure. Sophisticated animals like birds and humans have imaging 'organs' which function on representation. That is still a reality in the real world.

At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings.

Anyway, that was an impatient reply. Your points are deserving of a few reads and more thought. Thanks

Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body. — Manuel

In fairness, it is more complicated than can be explained by someone with my skill level with language. This is necessarily over simplified and one-dimensional. And yet, I'll deliver it complicated.

I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body.

I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body. — Manuel

On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.

I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc

asking am I my body is problematic. — Manuel

Not if this "mind" you assume to be distinct, is distinct, and does exist, but not in the real world. Rather, it exists as fleeting images which have developed over millenia into such complexity, and which has such an effect on reality through its 'host' bodies, that it has (been) included (itself) into this category, "reality" which paradoxically, it makes.

"I" am not my body; because "I", like reality, is a constructed mechanism in that autonomous process of the imagination.

But [my] body, alone, is real; my mind is a Fictional layer occupying the space where my body's natural aware-ing "is".

1. Are mental and soul different? How are they different?
2. What do you mean by "we think of as real"? What is real? — Corvus

From my pespective:
1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body.

2. If there is such a category as Real, then, I'm referring to ultimate, unqualified, unconditioned "reality." Without getting into science or religion, if I were born into this world, with the concept of ultimately real, it is prima facie apparent that the physical universe is real. I cannot go into further reductions, like cells or atoms, space, time, or gravity, for e.g., because these bring me outside that prima facie Reality, and into conditions which are ultimately just made up and believed.

The reason for our pursuit for Reality beyond the prim facie stems from the seduction of such make-believe, the world which has displaced the prima facie, only for humans, with its imagined constructions and projections.

I'm suggesting in response to Merleau-Ponty and the OP (an open wondering, more accurately) that both can be 'factual.'
1. there is no mind body dualism, there is only the body including the so called mental, and
2. That

I am my mind and my body is intrinsically different from me. — Kurt Keefner

. Because #2 is an illusion. The make-believe constructed and projected over/as history, moves on its own, with its own laws and mechanics. It has displaced our organic and [really] Real consciousness so that experience (our day to day "reality") has replaced nature, but ultimately it is empty projections of the imagination and not "what we think of as" ultimately Real.

Even when you look at the naked face of Mona Lisa with your very own eyes — punos

Yes, the very subject of my analogy. We cannot know the external universe through our minds. We can only be the so called external universe as our bodies.

I'm not done sculpting — punos

I would consider myself fortunate if I happen to be there to see it; but I note, magnificent as I'm sure tge sculpture will be, it will be a sculpture.

It's quite easy in most cases to determine the substance of an emergent layer of reality. For example, the substance of a cell is the molecule. — punos

Yes, I understand; but you are DaVinci having convinced me regarding the face of Mona Lisa. Still, I cannot access the real her by your art; you can paint the substance of her face, and give me even the best I can possibly get in our world of painting pictures of reality. But only seeing Mona Lisa's naked face with my naked eyes will have given me any access go her face which is real. Pardon the presentation by analogy; on the other hand, the argument is that, in some sense, all of our knowledge is by 'analogy.'

As far as scientific or philosophical explanations of a cell or the universe go, I have no disagreement with what you say. Philosophically, maybe an intelligence can 'understand' the universe; as long as if by 'understand' we mean paint a perfect picture. In understanding, a picture is inevitably as far as we can get.

place your bet. — punos

I bet that everything you said, I can easily agree with, but constructed, or constructed then deconstructed then reconstructed, you and I are not getting at the substance of the universe, just playing with ideas about it; if one is skillful, the ideas function and we believe them to be reality; but they were structured by ideas, and remain ideas.

in principle, the whole of the universe can be understood to an almost god-like degree. Mankind, now in its present stage of evolution, is not yet capable of this feat. — punos

Have you considered that all of understanding is actually constructing, and that there is no end to make-beleve? I'm not denying the functional success, what we'd point to as accuracy, even empirical certainty in some of our more daring constructions. But at the end of the day there is no understanding the universe. We are only constructing a [model of the] universe.

Though not inspired by him, I think I'm Blake was on to something, in spite of whatever might have been his intentions. The only way to access infinity is all at once, as if by holding it in the palm of your hands. You cannot do that by the slow and arduous process of building a comprehensive understanding. You can only do that by being that organic particular of the whole universe, like each cell carries the genome.

or would it go after its own interest — Carlo Roosen

I respectfully submit that without organic feelings or some other unimaginable authentic reward system, it will not evolve its own interests, but will always carry out its presumably programmed function. The risk I think is less in AI pursuing self interest (the self even over rated in humans, a whole other topic) than flawed programming or unchecked evolution (both of which bring us book to square one, which is that AI might be ineludibly always and only an extension of Mind, a cultural artifacts, and never a real Other.

my idea is to let computers develop their own "language" or "representation code". — Carlo Roosen

I agree that doing so is the only way for the 'end product' to stand any chance of being anything but an extension of human Mind.

will not having this animal brain make an AI naturally friendly or not? — Carlo Roosen

Unless 'we' / 'it' evolves a 'way' to feel; tge way we do organically; it will not be authentically friendly. It will only act in ways which function best for purpose. Friendliness may be conditioned for, say, an AI functioning as a house mate, but it would lack the organic bond humans presumably feel

What is innocence, and why is it very important to society and law? — Shawn

I would say the word is being doubly applied, albeit the differences are arguably subtle.

Legal innocence, even irrespective of poetic arguments to tge contrary, just means one is not guilty, in the same sense as tge verdict. That is, innocence means entitled to due process before a verdict can be concluded.

A Child's Innocence (the legal implications are incidental. There are implications across the spectrum of 'knowledge'), in my opinion, is intuitive by many adults because it 'uncovers' a truth (maybe the truth). A child is innocent because they remain closer to the organic truth of a human animal. There haven't been enough Signifiers, and their associated structures, laws and dynamics, to fully displace organic sensation, mood and imagination, with perception, emotions, and make-believe. Thus the child is the real deal in our pursuit of truth and being.

To tie that in with the legal innocence of a child as victim, not accused; the fact that a child is a real human animal who is in the ineluctable process of being 'tainted' with make-belief is 'bad' enough (vis a vis our longing for truth and reality; for our survival, we have derived many benefits from our constructions and projections, hence human Mind is perpetuated); but to add insult to injury by inputting the worst of our worst in make-believe; a violent, selfish, oppressive set of Signifiers, we see that as a gross violation of their natural 'innocence ' I.e., of their, our true natures.

While we're at it, I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit. — Kurt Keefner

It's complex, but I'll be as simple as I can.
I agree, except that, if the soul part--call it, also, the 'mental'--is not real, but only perceived (for several reasons) to be real; if the mental is 'actually' a system of codes to which the body responds with feelings and action (and only the latter is real, albeit not in a form we are familiar with, i.e., not narrative, and so, necessarilyoverlookedby the narrative); if the narrative form of that code, the part to which we desperately attach, is not real, then it can be acknowledged as 'other' than the body, to exist, and still, it can be eliminated from that category we think of as 'real.'

It is in that sense that I agree with and understand MP's Hypothesis. In fact, I think his side notes on the mental unwittingly cling to what his Hypothesis rightly resists. I mean he doesn't go far enough in dismissing the mental as, though effective, ultimately nothing.

We are not dealing with a doubtful situation in which one path is smooth and another one is rugged. — MoK

Fair enough. Will re-think. I appreciated your thoughts.

We don't know how doubt emerges from biochemical processes in the brain. We also don't know about the emergence of thought, qualia, and intentionality. — MoK

Maybe because of our approach.

All of these items you listed are mechanisms in an autonomously moving deterministic process which is transmitted by socialization generationally.

As you suggest, at the level of reality whatever the heck doubt is, is not what we're assessing here. A prehistoric human, like other animals lacked this 'artificial' autonomous process. When it faced a divergence in a path, it either used its senses and responded in accordance with its conditioning to follow the 'right' path, or it just moved forward indifferently. It did not have the pronoun to attach either congratulations for a right choice nor doubt with respect thereto.

We are assessing a thing we have over eons constructed and reconstructed, and transmitted from generation to generation, such that whatever real doubt is, has been displaced by it. The 'doubt' we are assessing is not that biochemistry, but the deterministic movement of images constructed and projected into this world of moving images--not world of natural conditioning where the chemistry is at play. And I realize they function together on a feedback loop, but we're really talking about the surface, the world of images, where d-o-u-b-t abides, with all of its triggering powers. I'm confident we're not going to find
d-o-u-b-t in any chemicals.

I'm saying (oversimplified for space and time) those images move deterministically. For humans born into history, confronted by a divergence in a path, if one path appears rugged and dangerous, the other smooth, and these are the only factors, reason, moving images of a specific variety, autonomously gets to work, and the easy path is selected. If a given person happens to defy reason, they did not. Their 'reason,' just as autonomously applied as conventional reason, the rugged so-called choice was triggered by moving images of xyz autonomously moving them to take the rugged path. Finally if one cannot choose, and 'reads' into experience, moving images called doubt, that too, is pushed upon the body at that moment, e.g., a balance of xyz's or conflicting structures, just as autonomously playing on the next step/no step as reason or defiance did.

In none of those cases is an agent 'choosing.' Its just stimulus and conditioned response. But built into the deterministic movements, is, because of the attachment of the image(s) to the pronoun, the Subject, giving the illusion of an agent/choice in what's really a deterministic process. So that in neither prehistory nor history is it valid for an animal to congratulate themselves for a choice or to curse bad choices or indecisions. It is all stimulus and (conditioned) response. It's just for human animals there is an illusion of a chooser and choice.

How could your decision be based on history when you have doubt? — MoK

How then does doubt emerge, if not by the push of history? Is doubt arising, out of the blue?

The decision is called free when you don't have a reason to choose one option over another. Therefore, there cannot be any preceding cause for a free decision. — MoK

Apologies, I may be looking at a different page altogether. My final input. But if there is no reason, free decision, ok, lets say I agree on the face of it. But where there is reason, you agree we are compelled by reason? But what if you "choose" to go against reason, why is it we accept reason triggered your choice, but going against reason was free? Something triggered that foolish choice. And if there is uncertainty, no reason, then though the triggers are less patent, there are triggers there too. You go through a balancing, and choose, having been triggered by something already input into your history, and used to trigger a choice. It's not PRE-determined; but the choice was the temporary settlement in an incessantly moving deterministic system where history reconstructs itself in the most functional way to meet new "circumstances". Should I stay or should I go? The choice is determined by history. There is no self soul or will in the process.

decision is either based on a reason or not, — MoK

Another way to express what I'm angling toward, is that "reason" is defined to restrictively above (or, I assume). A decision is always based on a preceding trigger, whether such a trigger can be defined as a "reason" or not. Nothing happens absolutely independently. Even the most randomly seeming "choice" can be traced back to its triggers, right up to the immediately pre ending domino that pushed the domino with choice printed on it.

My questions are posed as exploratory, not argumentative. In case they seem otherwise.

What do you mean by self? Soul? — MoK

I'm not convinced there is a real self nor soul, if by those, we mean a separate entity with a will.
So...:

Mind is an indeterministic entity. It receives input from the brain. — MoK

If the brain is deterministic (I believe you are suggesting so) and it feeds the indeterministic mind, where, if anywhere, does will fit in? Which one of these is confronted with the duality of belief v doubt? And how does that entity settle upon either? If the mind is indeterministic, and, accordingly, the entity of "choice" (presumably willful choice), there are still presumably a series of causes (including the so called input from the brain) prior to that final "moment" where, what? suddenly there is a gap in causes, and mind leaps, on its own, independently of any last cause, thus choosing willfully (even, perhaps, freely) to either believe or doubt? What mechanism does/causes that (free) choice?

I personally have difficulty jumping into this idea of a self soul will to explain that gap. It makes more sense for me to believe (I recognize the seeming internal challenge of "I believe") that the final step too, belief/doubt is also "deterministic." Not pre-determined; not inevitable, but still, the final "choice," believe/doubt was triggered by that immediately preceding it; not by an agent willing it.

We don't choose to doubt. We face doubt. — MoK

Agreed. We don't choose doubt, nor do we choose belief. We are cornered by the factors at play into settlement with respect to each. Deterministic, in both instances.

ENOAH
Matter including the brain as I discussed is deterministic entity so it cannot freely decide when we have doubt. — MoK

Agreed again.

The mind is conscious. It is not unconscious. — MoK

Right again.

an entity with ability to freely decide — MoK

And, by that do you mean, the so called self? Or is Mind a [deterministic] entity which decides autonomously, without input from a central authority or agent?

Isn't the subconscious process deterministic? Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic system — MoK

Can't doubt be a mechanism developed into, and operating within, a deterministic system; the "sense" that there is an agent doubting being, not a challenge posed by doubt so much as by the illusion of the agent "choosing" to doubt (the so called self/subject/ego)? Further, isn't it bad enough we superimpose a false duality by speaking of mind as a separate being from matter? Do we really need to make mind itself consist of dualities--conscious/unconscious? Isn't the entire process we conventionally think of as mind, deterministic: choice, belief, and doubt? If the chain of signifiers constructed by mind align one way, functionally, belief is triggered and the body responds accordingly; if another way, from dysfunctionally to just not functionally enough, doubt is triggered and the body responds accordingly.

conceptually, why would people think that our mind happens to have the right tools to understand the universe? — Skalidris

I agree. All we do with our so called scientific knowledge is fit bits and pieces of the universe into a format of "our" (actually, its) own construction. We prize empericism, but it pretends to conclude truths for Mind when they are confirmed by nature; when really, they are constructing so called truths about nature and accepting the ones that fit within the structures of mind. It's one thing to say water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but what does nature think about atoms, let alone hydrogen? We have no way of knowing because both thinking and knowing are things within the limitations of mind, and nature is way out of its league. So I agree. Not only what you said, but it's almost "embarrassing" that we think we're actually discovering as opposed to making and believing. Hopefully no one else is watching.

But I do think all of that shouldn't diminish science. That we can make nature fit within our structures and serve functions is not embarrassing. We should just admire science for what it is.

the tools we can create with it — Skalidris

Are they not just an extension of mind, and therefore, within its limitations? If the AI communicates in anything other than a human language, then I think, we can start talking beyond the limitations of human mind.

And I don't mean invents a new mathematics or a new language with its own alphabet and grammar. We too can do that. It's within the limits of human mind.