what the questions in the OP seek to do, is to ask what kind of 'thing' or object an 'immaterial mind' can be, presumably to argue that, as it can't be meaningfully defined, then it must be 'taken off the table'.

In my view, those questions cannot be answered, but that doesn't mean that mind is not real, nor that it's a product of matter or something that can be explained in materialist terms. However, if the question is posed in those terms, then that is the conclusion it seems to point inevitably towards. — Wayfarer

If you've got three ducks, it's nice to get them in a row.

And then you've still got three ducks but now you've got a row as well. Assume the ducks are material. — unenlightened

The mind is not independent of the body. — David Mo

In my opinion it is a problem related to emergence. Different levels of matter cannot be explained by the "lower" ones.

There are many other such conundrums suggested by your post, which I would sidestep or subvert by pointing out that the mind is never itself an object of perception (unlike the body and brain, which clearly are). The mind is not something which we can stand outside of, and therefore objectify. That's why eliminative materialists believe it must be eliminated. — Wayfarer

What are these 'hard questions'? — A Seagull

If the mind is immaterial:
— Relativist

.. it's not. — A Seagull

A guy, who's grades from chemistry are nearly perfect and who's enjoying studying this subject - can't afford higher education (such as college or even high school because his family lacks of money). That will leave him with a very small amount of jobs which he could be doing in the end. Instead of working in a lab (with the chance of discovering something) he'll be given a mop or a position for a cashier. My question is - is that something we should be taking care of? Or is it a problem so extended it's simply not worth dealing with? — Craiya

The immaterial aspect of the mind (the power to choose and attend, aka aware) has no specific "place;" however, experience tells us it generally attends to data processed by and encoded in the brain -- and we have a reasonable idea of how data gets there. — Dfpolis

It seems to me the only plausible explanation is that the physical processes cause immaterial mental states. — Relativist

They inform the mental states, but to inform is not to be an efficient cause. Plans may inform a process, but they do not cause the process. — Dfpolis

I agree that neural processes are physical. Whether or not mental states arise from them depends on whether or not we attend to them. The act of attending to them is an act of awareness (aka the agent intellect). — Dfpolis

at the fundamental level, physical-mental causation has to be taking place.
— Relativist

Why? — Dfpolis

Immaterial does not mean physically impotent. The laws of nature are not made of matter; nonetheless, they effect physical transformations. — Dfpolis

This implies there is a causal chain from the physical to the mental.
— Relativist

No, it shows that the agent intellect can transform physically encoded data to concepts (mental intentions). — Dfpolis

I do not assume that "electro-chemical signals produce the related mental states." — Dfpolis

I do not assume that "electro-chemical signals produce the related mental states." Following Aristotle, I see this as the work of the agent intellect, which acts in the intentional, not the physical, theater of operations. — Dfpolis

I do not assume the mind is immaterial. I deduce — Dfpolis

Yes, it does. How does this allow us to distinguish data on the sensor state from data on the sensed? — Dfpolis

One guy I read suggested simply that the laws of physics are most fundamental. — Gregory

how do I distinguish a signal indicating the existence of a condition causing pain from a signal that says only that a pain receptor is firing? Since they are one and the same signal, I do not see how I can. — Dfpolis

I am not arguing for solipsism. I take as a given that we are conscious of objects other than ourselves. Rather than questioning this datum, I am trying to understand the dynam­ics making it possible — Dfpolis

I agree, but how does this allow us to distinguish body states from external states? — Dfpolis

Communication (including: data, encoding, code, message, transmission, conveyance, reception, decoding, information) is a good analogy for the sensation process if a physical (as opposed to only semantic) type is acknowledged. — Galuchat

Physical" means now the reality it calls to mind now. Its meaning may change over time (and has), but the present paradigms are based on our conceptual space as it now exists. Changing paradigms involves redefining our conceptual space, and a consequent redefinition of terms such as "physical" and "natural." — Dfpolis

Like the problem of distinguishing self-data from object-data, this seems to intimate that we have a ca­pacity to grasp intelligibility that is not fully modeled in our present understanding. — Dfpolis

The threat I am referring to, is the inability for human beings to find activities that suitably pass the time. — Jhn4

when do we require new technology? When do we decide that the human race has reached stagnation and cannot collectively produce new 'content' to keep itself fresh?...
...I would argue that we are reaching that stage in history now, and that it poses a threat to our existence, and it is an emergency that needs tackling. — Jhn4

That’s right. The issue is this should be self-evident and the problem is people just don’t understand the words. — Zelebg

Again, your definition of what exists is too narrow. — Wayfarer

you could explain it through a simple mathematical formula (time= distance/speed). And as such, we are back to abstracts. Mathematical abstracts.

Are they real? (Where do they come from, a priori.) How is this phenomenon even possible? — 3017amen

Does it really make more sense to suggest the relations exist independently, and the states of affairs that exhibit them have some sort of ontic relation to those platonic objects?
— Relativist

I believe so. Don't overlook the fact that the current model of the so-called fundamental constituents of matter, the so-called 'particle zoo', is a mathematical model. — Wayfarer

what is the status of the definition? I would have thought that triangles would be discovered in all possible worlds, in other words, their reality is not dependent on our definition of it, but our definition of it must conform to the concept

, you're assuming a reality independent of any observing mind, but that assumption might be philosophically problematical, i.e. it might not be as self-evident as you're assuming it to be. — Wayfarer

I see. If I understood you correctly then there are such things as second-order abstract objects e.g. tesseract. However zero and infinity are first-order abstractions in my opinion; so they should have concrete instantiations. — TheMadFool

I agree it can't be completed and my intuition on the matter may be off the mark but consider this: I sometimes see only part of a person, say when that person is behind a tree or low wall but that doesn't mean the person doesn't exist does it? — TheMadFool

If you mean this article, then it doesn't say that, and it would be pretty incredible if it did, because the best established cosmological model to date implies an infinitely extended universe without the assumption of an infinite past. Note that the article spends considerable time talking about inflation, which is less well established than standard Big Bang cosmology, but inflation doesn't imply what you claim either. — SophistiCat

As for your first order/second order abstractions, that's something completely different. I won't go further than just to say that I am not buying your epistemological construction. — SophistiCat

I was talking about spatial extension. Simply put, if space is infinite, which seems plausible from what we know, and if the rest of it looks much like what we can see around us, which is very plausible, then there's your actual infinity (if by that you mean an infinite number of material objects). — SophistiCat

Smith does address the sort of argument that you are hinting at in his section VI:

the collection of events cannot add up to an infinite collection in a finite amount of time, but they do so add up in an infinite amount of time. And since it is coherent to suppose that in relation to any present an infinite amount of time has elapsed, it is also coherent to suppose that in relation to any present an infinite collection of past events has already been formed by successive addition.
— Smith, Infinity and the Past — SophistiCat

What I'm aware of is this: every abstract idea is basically mined from the concrete.Your numerical example is perfect for demonstrating that: an idea pulled out of sets/collections of concrete objects. If so then zero must be an abstraction of sets that contain no members. Infinity, being more of a concept than an actual number, is to me, simply an extension of finite concrete sets, understandable in terms of the never-ending process of adding elements, say adding 1 to the preceding element, to a preexisting set. — TheMadFool