OK, wow…there is an outstanding burst of responses here.
Please forgive me as I try to go through all of them and respond.
I will try to do so as quickly as I can.
While I have the chance in this notice, I want to make something clear that maybe wasn’t; I am unsure.
My personal perspective of physicality does not negate the conceptual - “mind”, “thought”, etc…
Instead, my overall point is how the two are tied inherently and are irremovable from each other due to the dependencies.
Further, that the physical is not a dumbed and simplistic reduction of the grandiose, but instead is quite the opposite in as much as we can look out at the Earth itself and see it accomplished by physical constituents alone daily, yet as a whole, these tiny constituents - needing to go no smaller than simply sand in the example - collectively produce the most marvelous array of action and fluctuation recursively.
It is, to me, a powerful impact magnifying the effect that can be grasped in something as tangibly resident as the Aurora Borealis: youtube.com/watch?v=FcfWsj9OnsI
I want to make sure that everyone in here understands that spiritual presence of our existence is something in which I not only agree to, but cardinally assert is principle to our function in as much as the Aurora Borealis rely on color to exist in full as they do.
This riddle and play on the property of color in this statement is entirely intentional and exactly my primary point in all of this.
Again, I really appreciate the massive feedback and the diversity.
I will get to these as quickly as I can!
I really do wish to get to your quite beautifully put descriptions more deeply.
To do this, with the ambition in mind of meeting each other on the bridge of communication, I need to start with showing you a door that exists by first showing you a tiny crack of light that is coming out of it.
So I hope that I don’t sound like a pompous prospector looking to restrain the discourse into only my view, but I must continue hitting you hard with a challenge that is all together no easy task for anyone.
Once we have done this together, I would very much enjoy circling back around to the subjects again you are discussing in the way that you are, but with a couple set of new eyes that are looking at both sides of the bridge while both are standing in the middle.
Keep in mind, I do not assert that the conceptual does not exist, but instead that without the physical aspect, the conceptual would cease as the legs on which the conceptual stands are physical indeed.
To this end, I will start again with a difficult task as a request.
Very good, but how exactly does the underline take place physically?
We’re only interested in the hearing, so we are only wanting to follow the cochlear nerve.
Seen here on the left is the Cochlear nuclei. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray691.png
But let’s get a bit more into what just happened by going here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_nucleus
Here, we get this…well…detailed, yet rather messy edit (the author of this really is rather disjointed in their thought it would seem).
Alright…this is where we need to slow down a bit.
There’s allot going on here.
But rather than get bogged down in everything (as we’ll be off on our way much more simply in a moment after this), we can just take note that the frequency spectrum from the ear earlier (in this image: ifd.mavt.ethz.ch/research/gr … .gif?hires) are preserved in a relative, yet different medium of physical exchange by hair cells connecting to axons.
So there is our first clear representation that is similar to what took place in that logic model I used earlier whereby the red was the information, and the number was the shift in how the information was being represented within the system.
So, in a way, it works like a reed in water, with when blown on by wind leans over. During which, if it leans over enough, it will open a small pocket in the silt below and any air trapped below will come up, but mostly water will move through - even if there isn’t an air pocket. In so doing, this motion will cause a reaction to the silt under the reed, causing topological shift around the reed.
If this a power plant were to emulate this behavior, it would place a conductive circuit below the reed so that when it moved, it causes electrical triggering.
Similarly, this is the relationship of the hair to the axon.
So how does this axon fire off this now created charge from the hair moving?
Back at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon
We find:
So an electrical or electrochemical exchange takes place as a result of the analog behavior of the hair.
Therefore, the borrowed term, “digital”, from earlier starts to make sense.
Alright, now that we understand the basic concepts of how the Cochlear nucleus converts the analog push and pull into an electrochemical exchange, where are we headed?
Once again, we turn to here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_nucleus
And snatch out:
Alright, 3 major outputs from here.
Medulla - contralateral superior olivary complex
Dorsal Acoustic Stria
Intermediate Acoustic Stria
And we also know:
So ultimately, we’ll be there.
But first…the Medulla, to find the contralateral superior olivary complex
How does this traffic the electrochemically converted analog information through to the inferior colliculus?
Alright, so the axon’s that were agitated because of the ratio of interval (in time or volume), in some respect or another, largely hit here.
As to how they tick, how does this work exactly, well that breaks down into several more categories (keep in mind, we’re only in one of the three routes from above)…somewhere around seven or nine such divisions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_olivary_complex
Scroll to the bottom for the Periolivary Nuclei breakdown.
But for what we want to know, we can find in this section of the Primary Nuclei:
Medial superior olive (MSO)
Righto, so more axons, ultimately, is what that means.
Copy that gold leader, we can be on our way with a brief summary that the other two on that list work in like fashion reacting to other aspects of the sound.
Well, as we have seen…that’s a relatively light way of saying it, but yes, it does receive input from several peripheral brainstem nuclei in the auditory pathway.
This is fun because the thalamus not only acts as a multi-sense highway, but also regulates states of consciousness via the thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits (more stuff than needed atm), but basically explains how sound has access to states of consciousness.
Further, this is the pathway that allows for emotion to get tickled by the auditory reactions.
But, more importantly for the moment is that this thalamus fellow kicks over the reactions it has from the MGB to the Primary Auditory Cortex.
WOO!
We finally hit grey matter!
Now how does this part work?
Hey!
Looky here!
It’s another converter like the hair to axon earlier, but this time it’s axon to axon conversions.
So ultimately, we looking at that logic model again whereby the red keeps changing its numerical expression, but maintains being red.
Here, we have the same thing taking place.
And how does this trigger sound in our head?
We’re essentially “hearing” our cell’s dancing.
Now, admittedly, this is about where we are at our maximum dissection in current neurology.
The cortex is so complicated in the human brain that we can’t distinguish exactly what those cells that are getting jiggy with it are doing in such a description as we have taken to get this far.
That is where the boundary today currently lies.
Plopping at the cells in the cortex, dancing their little hearts out to Beethoven’s 5th and making all sorts of electrochemical exchanges in a massive unknown amount of fields in the cortex.
But it’s worth noting this final note on the little wiki blip, as it reminds us of something about the brain.
The brain is inescapably recursive.
You hear a note, your brain plays it internally for you, and can feed that back in as if it were the same note played again without the note having been played at all.
Ergo, schizophrenia and synesthesia, not to mention the ability to recall a sound needed to play back in some fashion of output…or if you just want to listen to your own personal radio in your head.
So.
Does it make a bit more sense on how audio physically gets into our brain and how the process of joy is thereby a consequence of frequencies which trigger our personal internal network of hair’s and neurons in such a manner as to hit the thalamus and cortex in the right medium to traffic to the amygdala reactions which release the chemical exchanges that we conceptually understand as joy?
Thank you very much! I have indeed been mistaken as I thought you were trying to explain the entire mind [and nearly did!] in the material.
I suppose that either way the individual probably does not exist, if mind is the only other aspect apart from the material and info is produced between them, then even if we have mind there remains no self. …because mind is the same thing for all once one unties the elements of the brain that make it subjective and centralised.
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you mean you dont think you will need to once you have explained it properly …my intuitive mind you see
I think I am with you to a degree there [as noted above], there is left only the question where {universal >} mind can produce info and qualia? …as opposed to these things only being a ‘one way street’ I.e. all emanate from the physical, such that the mind is completely passive and inert - if you will. For me this is critical as I can find no reason for consciousness other than where ‘mind’ may interact and take action within the material [via info presumably]. For example; to create a true artificial brain ~ that is conscious, it needs to be more than a zombie, it needs the critical element of mind being able to interact, to get in there and do stuff [as we experience it, or think we do]. If there is no interaction there is no consciousness [where consciousness is literally here defined as that interaction of mind with the material], there is simply no way for mind to take part [hence like with a rock mind is not ‘in there‘].
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that’s an awful lot of reading, so I skipped some of the mechanics of it, then went to this…
This is pretty much how I saw it before [having read quite a lot about the eye] but I have a very selective memory ~ and have trained it to be like that. I only take note of particulars, as if to make a map of it rather than drawing I all the details, I am a philosophical cartographer lols.
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Right so we know the locations and direction of travel on our map by nerve impulses, now we need to map what nerve impulses are and what they do. In the link below they are the element of ‘communication’ [which is a very critical term here!] between cells, nerves etc…
I know I have mentioned polarised electromagnetic flux in neurons before, albeit in a laymans perception and wording of it, I felt this was the critical aspect I needed to know [as I don’t want to be a neuroscientist lols]. This is why when people say the cells are communicating, all I am seeing is a mechanistic process, and from the above I cannot see why that assumption is wrong?
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Your quote;
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We can see the entire process but what do we mean by ‘digital data’?! you see why my contention is not with the science but such specifics where the critical aspect appears to be glided over. From here I revert back to my former arguments [on one of the threads anyways] where I coined this by renaming; ‘digital data’ to ‘electromagnetic matrix’. to me there is no information here so data is the wrong term! Just like there is no information in the data on your computer, ‘it does not become info until it is experienced in the mind’ ~ though I do think info is generated everywhere, but the point is that it in not interactive and is not literally in-the-data.
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Its not at all clear to me, I am not clear as to exactly what you mean by information here. …To a thinker like me who has spent his life thinking about thinking and without most of the science stuff, to me that looks like what I would call ‘expressions’. physical objects are changing shape with reference to one another, and in that there is an exchange of material = expressions, and not informations! At the very least this is not info as we experience it in the mind, to wit I observe that the latter ‘informations proper’ may be changed and if needed returned back into the world by the vehicle of the material. This is what happens when like now we communicate info with each other, and I truly don’t see how any of the brains functions can properly know what info is, given that info is not a property of the brain [or any material]. The brain responds to the message when we click ‘send’ - if I may use such an analogy, because only at that point are informations acting in a manner that it understands…
This like music seams to hinge on a harmonic aspect between >frequencies along with electrical impulses< and >information< [mental]. The sensations we get from music throughout the body even, are ‘felt’ [a mental experience] by the experiencer, indicating that the mental exists throughout the body and throughout the entire processes therein.
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I don’t see any ‘numerical expression’ [sorry], I see frequencies reacting/responding with other frequencies. One kind of neuron responds to low and another high frequencies originally from sound waves [more frequencies].
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I hear that! Sometimes I wish it would shut the bloody hell up . When it does make inner sounds - let us say, what we actually experience is not either a note from external sound-waves nor from the brains made up ones, it is a mental experience in the mind.
After all that I cannot help think that science wont be advancing much further, at least not without accepting that info and mental experience are not part of that.
Thanks for the education! i mean that sincerely.
I always wondered what that damn music in my brain was
First thing first.
We need to go over a terminology that is causing you problems.
Information.
Alright, there’s more than one kind of information in the world.
Physical exchange is indeed information.
It is not a state of knowing, but it is information.
Your way of thinking of information is to equate information to a state of knowing and then from that perspective you are looking at other statements which claim information on the physical as just insanity because there’s no chance that a rock falling down a hill has a state of knowing, or a neuron to neuron connection has a state of knowing.
You are absolutely correct.
But that itself is not exclusively information as the term is used in biology and physics.
The version you are referring to is the term for information found in a common dictionary, for the purposes of the conceptually understood daily life of a human being surrounded by, and interacting with, human life.
But it’s not the term as it applies to the study of the constituents of the physical universe; in any field.
So when I write, “information”, I am referring to the scientific use of the term and not the common term, which refers to a state of knowing.
The state of knowing is a conceptual realm that is even different from “knowing”.
A state of knowing is temporary and conceptual.
It rests on a physical state of the brain in a particular arrangement of flux, yes, as I’ve maintained, but the state itself is entirely conceptually enclosed.
So here is our first clarity that we will refer back to down below.
That information as you mean it will be referred to as a state of knowing, and information as science uses the term to refer to a physical exchange of transmitted consequences between two or more constituents.
Alright, onward.
And now you see my answer to the zombie argument.
You can claim a soul, a mind, a chakra, a wombly tombernackle jong tsu…but without the physical, whatever we think is of ourselves that is not physical, would immediately evaporate unless by some amazing occurrence, not yet observed, whereby the physical necessities of these conceptual states were migrated into another physical dependency which maintained the exact requirements needed to sustain these conceptual states without interruption or alteration.
So far as I’ve seen. Considering how friggen complicated our own biology is, I’m not seeing a high possibility of arranging a physical recipient (even if only air or a dimension) of an already existing conceptual human state from one human being.
Take for instance this.
I see a wave in water on Earth.
I’m going to recreate that exact wave, exactly as that wave happened specifically in every nuance of motion.
I’ll fail every time.
Even nature does not recreate the exact wave twice; just a wave similar, but uniquely different.
Now, the idea of a conceptual state being carried over to another medium of existence thereafter beyond the human form is, to me, akin to someone saying that they are going to recreate that wave exactly as it was, but this time, they are going to do it on Jupiter.
My reaction recoils in amazement.
Really? How?
I’ll get back to this at the bottom.
Communication, of the caliber of Information; not a state of knowing relaying to a state of knowing.
You aren’t wrong.
I stopped and made special attention to that if you recall:
It’s called, “digital” not because it includes binary information.
It’s called “digital” because once you hit the neuron to neuron section and leave behind, in this case, the nerve cell hair section; the kinetic contact reactions are finished.
There is no kinetic contact from this point forward, and the kinetic is referred to as analog.
It is a terminology borrowed from electronics whereby, say, your mouse is an “analog” device because it constitutes a physical plane of translation: your hand moving the mouse.
Similarly, the vibration moving the hair on the cell.
They then refer to axon to axon contact as “digital” (note that it was done so with quotes, meaning that the term is a borrowing and not a literal term) because the contact is purely electrical to electrical, or electrical to electrochemical, or electrochemical to electrochemical, or electrochemical to electrical.
It means that there are no physical push and pulls taking place. We’re not looking at air compression, cell wall vibrations, cell hair reactions, cell membrane attraction to cell membrane, or anything of the kind.
We’re now talking pure electrical circuitry.
Ergo, they borrow the term, “digital”.
Which loops us to:
I think this may now be a bit more clear hopefully, after having discussed information at the beginning of this post.
The similarity being drawn was this.
0 2 → 3 4
On the left, we’ll let 0 represent the sound, and we’ll let 2 represent the cell hairs.
3 and 4 will represent the first set of axon’s where information (keep in mind the terminology) switches from physical push/pull to electrochemical exchanges.
This states, that when the Sound (0) pulls the Hair (2) that it will be converted (converted in the way that pulling on a string tied to a bell converts the tension into a note) into an electrochemical agitation in axons (4) (and a reaction back to the ear, 3).
Specifically, we are interested in following, in that logic model, the travel of red.
Which means we would follow the axon numbered 4 in the model and watch what it does next.
Ergo, this is what I meant.
Which brings us to being able to clarify this:
It is the next step of translation where axon’s in one part of the system make contact to another part of the system.
The information (remember the terminology) from one axon to another is not going to be the same in both; but it will be representative and relative to the same impulse.
For instance, electricity in a power outlet on the wall is not the same as the electricity in the light bulb socket, yet with a power cord, you can convert the electrical power into the arrangement needed for the light bulb socket (plugging in a lamp).
Similarly, this is represented in the previous model.
4 1 → 5 8
We followed the axon 4 hitting an awaiting axon 1, and so doing, this causes axon 4 to switch states (because it’s done relaying the current) to axon 5, and axon 1 (now with the current received) becomes axon 8.
(lol, I found a flaw in that logic model…woops. That red should have followed the 8, not the 5…bah, oh well!)
Light on, light off (but not that simple in the actual axon to axon contact as it is pretty complicated in there; this is just a brevity of concept).
The numbers in the model only represent a change of state and nothing more.
They were not there to show an item for a state of knowing traveling in some kind of packet.
I could have just as easily used !@#$%^&*() as my symbols rather than numbers.
Numbers were just easier to cognitively follow than abstract symbols.
Here’s where I loop back the above part I said I would get to later.
It’s not a one-way street.
See, because the conceptual state can “push” (we’ll call it) back onto the axon’s in the cortex (the last stop before the conceptual layer), it can send a signal of “digital” (keep in mind the terminology) back down the network into hitting the nerve cells that have hairs, and cause those to move, which will cause the related axon to receive as if a note just entered physically (though it seems that this process takes place inferior in amplitude to true external stimuli in most brains [unless you have a diagnoses of schizophrenia or the like] because all regions of the network are not impulsed from such an impulse from the cortex, unlike the vibrational rebounding of incoming sound.
Thereby, you can, through thought (a conceptual layer) literally play physical music in your brain.
And that is just sound.
This same behavior is observed throughout all aspects of the brain.
The conceptual layer is able to send impulse signals down to the physical layers to trigger reactions that replicate an external physical stimulus.
Because of this, the external physical world can be introduced to the internal conceptual state of knowing and the conceptual state of knowing can cause a replication back into the physical layer of the brain and body in a manner needed to accomplish an action physically from the body in accordance to the conceptual state of knowing’s desire.
Ergo, you can hear a command to raise your hand and decide to follow the command and physically raise your hand.
It also means that the argument of determinism from the physicalist group is unfounded as your freedom of will resides in your state of knowing, the conceptual layer, in similar manner to your freedom to drive on a road.
There are limitations to driving that restrict absolute freedom. For instance, you cannot drive to Pluto.
But commonly, the rules are to stick to one side and observe traffic laws.
In the physical layer of the body, similar natural restrictions take place.
So you “drive” (figuratively speaking) through pathways of your choice and in so doing over time, you tell the brain which highways to maintain and keep open.
Those which you do not use are shut down, torn up, and recycled for other uses so that we conserve our precious energy.
(sometimes, this process - for unknown reasons currently - gets carried away and more highway than is needed to be torn down is torn down at reckless abandon - like multiple sclerosis)
As such, when you choose something, what you are doing is reacting to a determined path of information (remember the terminology) that you (as your state of knowing, the conceptual layer) have chosen to use repeatedly in the past, and from that process making a cognitive decision of response from the conceptual layer, that will then in turn travel back down a physical layer in which you choose to use frequently for the desired output.
Ergo, physical practice really does literally help carve out a better and faster response.
The sacrifice of doing this is the freedom of all options other than this one manner.
So when you watch a baby bumbling around in attempt to figure out how to catch a ball, what you are looking at is a brain that has more freedom of will than you do regarding how exactly to catch a ball, because their brain has not yet isolated a specific physical path that it would like to use repeatedly for such a task. They are retarded (literal sense) in the action because they are so busy in the brain firing off driving in every open direction possible at once; true freedom.
So, in short, a lesson from this is this:
The highest level of freedom of will looks like retardation due to ignorance of how to respond and attempting every possible option.
Get involved into reading the latest neurology.
They aren’t ignorant of that fact, and they are quite readily starting to break open that layer.
Like I said before, we had to start somewhere and cleave off everything else.
The alien poem is starting to make more sense in neurology because we’re starting to understand how its prose work.
The step to understanding the metaphors in the alien poem are already on the brink as a result.
Bingo.
That is what I’ve been trying to get across; the how of that happening.
Yes. That is exactly why I used the white blood cell as a simple cell example of memory.
No. Just because my little white blood cell has resonant memory does not mean it receives it’s resonant memory from cosmic fish of knowledge in the Abell galaxy.
However:
Yes, if, he did not mean that memory comes from such, but that the resonation is present in all the nature of the universe and that due to acting in accordance with the reaction of resonance, that in a biological infrastructure, there rises memory systems.
If that was the point, then yes, I agree.
Sure, but useless. Too vague and too unrelated to actually be useful to a human actively. It sounds pretty but it’s ultimately useless.
The only thing somewhat useful in cosmological equivalence of matter is in knowing the propensity of motion within given relative forms of matter.
Oh boy.
Great.
Step 1: Statement of dichotomic separation
Step 2: Impossible parameter established
Step 3: Ambiguous terminology forcing assumption by the recipient, and leaving room to lack definition error
Step 4: First challenge to the status quo, yet lacks backing, as we haven’t lived long enough to successfully test the enfolding cycle of time and space (though there are many attempts, currently none have been successful).
Step 5: Unmerited conclusion. Recursion is not a lack of causality. Enfolding time and space is a processes befitting recursion; not negation of causality.
Step 6: After removing the status quo through an unmerited conclusion; produce your own stance that cannot be tested, confirmed, nor denied empirically, using terminology that is ambiguous and largely undefined by most fields of thought and study.
Step 7: Relate the unfounded and poorly defined ambiguous principles just established for all existence transiently into a completely specific and tangible construct to draw an unmerited conclusion.
Essentially, this is about as worth paying attention to as Ancient Aliens shows on the History channel with their “Experts”.
And even without all of this breakdown of how terrible of a statement is being made, even if we just take step 7’s assertion and toss the rest:
And?
So what?
It’s not enough to just say what there is.
You have to also determine how we interact with it.
That said, the last thing I expect from a quantum physics neuropsychologist is a methodology of interaction.
I would more expect a comment about how impossible everything is, nothing is really anything, anything is ultimately everything, everything is actually nothing, that all we can hope for is to approximate the probability of something possibly having the propensity for containing the probability of taking place, and that we should all just rather be impressed that we’re even alive at all and go have some tea and not think about it.
Now, back to what really counts.
It’s no secret that self and consciousness cannot be quantified by empirical standards.
Here’s the simplest proof of that. We cannot extract a dream image itself.
That’s all science ever claims, if you really look at the raw science.
For instance, gravity doesn’t claim everything possible about gravity. It claims what we measure and can reproduce, and from this makes some predictions about the parts we can’t interact with based on the behaviors of what we can interact with.
It’s not perfect, oh hell no, but it’s the only tool for exacting an imaginative understanding of how something may be working.
Once we see a reproduction of something enough in many perspectives and property exchanges, then we can fairly safely rest on this thing remaining consistent in that behavior.
I can drop an apple seven hundred thousand times from seven hundred thousand different locations on Earth and it won’t once fly into orbit.
Ergo, I can credit to gravity one behavior which appears to be reliable: attraction to a larger mass.
Which? Any random empirical theory?
Hardly.
There are a number of aspects within science that are openly full of holes.
And that’s without even leaving our planet.
We can find holes right before we even step into complex organisms; there are a great many holes in our scientific understanding of how the Earth’s ground actually works.
We have no idea on exactly how our current tectonic shape arose. We have some competing theories, but that’s it. And that’s because we don’t really understand how tectonic’s work, or if in fact they are the primary function that drives the formation at all, or just a part of the whole.
It may seem unassailable because we’re commonly instructed on a few specific ideas in academic basic’s, but of course we are. We have to rest on something as the basic level of information that we pass along. If someone wants to pursue advanced learning in academia or casually on their own; they will readily find these holes and will, if in academia, be instructed on the holes that exist in competing theories.
This all matters little, however.
There is no denying two things:
we are physical
we contain that within us that cannot be observed by anything physical outside of ourself
Ergo, 2 rests on 1.
Strip 1 away and 2 flickers out.
Strip 2 away (which we can do) and 1 still remains (just far less interesting).
the stumps, sorry i havent replied yet, got a virus so i cant think straight. your reply looks interesting so i look forwards to getting to it.
just one thing; is data a kind of information, i suppose what i mean is, can information exist outside of the mind. for example the holographic theory suggests that the universe is a hologram projected from background information? i am just wondering if data/info is more than something we merely experience, it is a medium by which the mind can change things?
Data, is just a term.
And it can be exchanged to mean a number of things.
It could mean that guy on Star Trek, OK, sorry, bad joke.
Alright, more seriously, it could refer to binary information, as it does in computing.
It could refer to a collection of information within a given network, using the scientific term of “information” (network referring to one collection of things that interact with each other and thereby exchange “information”).
It can refer to the action of information exchange (again using the scientific term of “information”).
Now, again, I will never be found to acknowledge the holographic universe theory, but I will address the last part of your question.
And see if your conceptual layer of your brain, what you might call the “mind”, has any ability to compel your physical state.
The human “spirit” has its roots deeply in the conceptual state of knowing. Deeply is the key word there.
It is as to say the spirit of a wave has its roots deeply in the undertow of the wave.
Where does the force come from that is that wave?
Is it the current alone? Is it the water’s body alone? Is it both together?
Or, is it also the force’s beginning far long before you see the wave, and far deeper than we are usually standing when we see the wave?
What is the start of that wave? Another wave, which itself moves the currents to support the wave moving up on top of the currents through the body of the water, where the currents will enliven the force of the wave anew and up to another level of currents across more of the body of the water until eventually either the wave is seen on the surface as the tip and after effect that we see and call a “wave” in daily term, or fades and runs out of force to compel the current with enough energy to move the wave further - and we see no evidence of the energy that took place below the surface.
Hi stumps, I’ll get back to your earlier post later, but for now I’d like to bring the argument into the realm of mind science - if I may…
‘Data’ is a person as much as we are y’know
Firstly ‘Huston we have a problem‘; I understand and agree that we should make distinction between ‘scientific information’ and information proper [as I call it], and I am fine going along with that for the time being ~ so as to work this problem out properly. I don’t however think that scientific information is lit. information, a different term should be used for ‘mechanistic matrixes’, physical flux and interactions. I feel that science has kinda stolen from philosophy for a long time, it seams to bring anything of the mind and spirit - if you will, into its own sphere and then refuses to discuss those things in any other terms, even ridiculing anything that doesn’t fit its ‘religion’ - again, if I may. For example, Dennett’s arguments show qualia don’t actually exist, but so did my far simpler argument of, opening up the brain looking in and not expecting to see a little image of the world literally in there. To science that now means there is no such thing as qualia, to me that means quale remain in the mental realm and cannot be explained by the physical.
It is as if we ask the question; what is it that we see? Then science describes the entire physical process, and we can now again ask the question; what is it that we see?
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We have to answer this question in a wider context, now that we have determined that information is a purely mental thing [information as the physical thing is a different kind of information], we can now ask if it is actually a load of meaningless babble going on in the mind, or if it actually means something. Then we also need to ask; is information effectual? Do the things we think of in terms of information make effect in the world.
Some critical arguments to consider; [that I made up lols]
The supplementary argument.
Let us first remove ‘the supplementary argument‘; firstly this is where something or maybe anything we think we do in the mental realm, can be duplicated in the physical brain. Well if the mind is to be effectual as the first party, then it must be able to make effect in the second party [the brain], therefore the second party must be able to perform such duties. Now we can take a third party that also in a ‘remote manner’ can make effect upon the second party, and it in effect duplicates what the mind [first party] can do.
From this is it not reasonable that we could show a means by which something could supplement the workings of the mind upon the material. More importantly that because you can show a third party device making such effect, that only means it is replicating what the mind could be doing [lets say at this point we don’t even know if a mind exists] and does not refute that a mind could after all be doing a very similar thing to that of the device?
The creation duality argument
Consider that there is a ‘conceptual layer’ ~ an informational combined with an ideas layer. None of us would dispute this as it is one of our primary observations of the world.
Something makes it, its is a created thing, its source is either;
a, the brain/body, that it is a manifestation of the material. {Indeed we could assume information is created anywhere under the correct given conditions, and that may or may not be in the brain or subject}.
b, or the source of its creation is in something we loosely define as ‘mind’, and that this reflects events in the material.
In both cases we now have a situation where the conceptual layer is something, it is produced or reactive to occurrences in the brain. So we now have something else other than the material which is either created by the material or reactionary to it. Hence we now have the beginnings of what we may term ‘mind’!
So let us start adding ingredients we observe, in each case we will assume for now that such things can derive as above from either the material or not.
We are ‘beings‘, that in our observations we notice we are being yet this is not merely a mental experience or an idea but something without noticeable base, cause and effect.
Next, that we ‘know‘ The act of bringing sensory based informations [or what assumes to be] together and memorising some or all of it, may be the act necessary to form the basis of a knowledgeable item, yet knowledge is a mental object. By that I mean it is not a physical object.
We could keep adding with things like perception and observation etc, but I’ll stop for now, naturally in all questions of mind we have to ask specifically; how does the material do that?
Is it not as simple as, you ask me a question, then I answer it [even if in an insane or incorrect manner] and I have compelled my physical state and changed the material, merely with informational thought?
The universal question!
If I got the info you gave earlier correctly then all nerve cells and indeed all cells ~ that’s all life [!] has similar electrical and chemical properties and potentials. From these we assume that in the brain the conceptual layer/mind is created, so can we not assume that occurs generally? Does it need the configuration of a brain in humans, and a few bundles of nerve cells in a jellyfish, to produce consciousness ~ or informational thinking?
Essentially, let me put it this way.
Does the travel of a person on a wooded direction of their choice affect the physical capacity of the woods to allow the person to more easily travel in the woods over time?
Another related illustration.
Is the motion of the pistons, which are in a car that is traveling 40kph, moving faster than the car?
Is it possible then, that a physically intangible concept may have physical impact that is then recursive back into the same system which houses the physically intangible concept?
My answer to this has always been, yes, due to the above illustrations of such existing. More such examples are all around us.
There is no reason, then, to assume that our conceptual layer of mind, the state of knowing, is in any manner different than other such examples of intangible concepts around us.
In short, A & B are both together.
Put A on one side.
Put B on the opposite side.
Draw an arrow from A to B.
Draw an arrow from B to A.
That’s recursion, and that’s what we have.
Let me draw from the previous illustrations to answer this.
Is the path carved out in the woods from people walking at your local woods the same as the path carved out at Mt. Everest?
Why not?
Since the motion of the pistons in a car contains the same process of combustion principles, regardless of which vehicle type we look at in piston built cars, what stops a minivan from being an Indy 500 car?
A path made through a woods would allow for easier travel the next time yes. Not sure what that has to do with this. edit; ah see near the bottom of the page…
Yes the pistons are travelling faster than the car.
By showing that there are seemingly intangible mechanisms within the greater mechanism, is not reason enough to assume that non physical things are too within the mechanistic realm.
You have taken me on an interesting journey through the mechanistic side of things, yet at no point have we discovered anything bar that. There has not been a single instance of experiental, qualaic nor informational thought.
It seams to me that we can indeed show that none of these things exist within the physical, e.g. Dennett’s arguments showed that qualia do not exist ~ that the mechanistic line can be followed through without them being found [and yet we still see colour!]. What we are doing is confining everything within the physical because it explains everything in its own terms, however that is not enough, we have to look outside the box - so to say, in order to know the world it lies within.
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recursion
▸ noun: (mathematics) an expression such that each term is generated by repeating a particular mathematical operation
The operation is the same but there are two sources, in the case in hand one source for informational thought is derived from the brain [the mechanistic side of the equation], then the other source is derived from the mind. There is an important distinction not only in the derivatives, but also in that no matter which source we assume there yields a similar or the same result, namely that the conceptual layer is arrived at. Point being that once we arrive at that, then we have already gone outside the box, ~ we have added something >the conceptual layer [thought]< that is not part of its creator [even if initially caused by it. So either way we have something that is informational thought.
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There are simply different values to each case, woods are different to mountains, Indy cars are far more powerful than minivans [usually]. I presume you mean that a nerve cell or a collection of them outside of the brain, doesn’t have the same conditions which form a matrix when in the configuration of a brain. I agree of course, so we have to find out what it is about such configurations [in the brain] that give rise to informational thought [if we deal with this first we can then move onto other areas of mind if we need too.
I am of the opinion that information is key here, and that there are two main dominions thereof;
a. information is generally created by events. There is no reader nor changer of that info.
b. information is generally created by events. There is a reader and changer of that info.
So what we have is a world that generates information, then when certain conditions are arrived at [like in a brain] there is something that reads the info and changes it, thus has causal interaction with the world. At this point I will name that something as ‘mind’, strictly upon the above foundation.
On a side note I would jump the gun here and state that once such conditions for a ‘free will agent’ are met, then ‘mind’ will interact with the world. Even that the universe is designed for life ~ evolution ~ consciousness ~ intelligence, such that mind can interact with world.
We are all living in a ‘thought sphere’. Your thoughts are not your own; they belong to everybody. There are only thoughts, but you create a counter-thought, the thinker, with which you read every thought. The effort to understand has created a secondary movement of thought within you, which you call the ‘mind’.
Can you look at that thing you call ‘mind’? It is very elusive. Look at it now, feel it, touch it, and tell me. How do you look at it? And what is the thing that is looking at what you call ‘mind’? This is the crux of the whole problem: the one that is looking at what you call ‘mind’ is the ‘mind’. It is creating an illusory division and through this division it is continuing. This is the nature that is operating in you, in your consciousness. Continuity of its existence is all that interests it. As long as you want to understand that ’mind’ or to change that it into something, that ’mind’ will continue. If you do not want to do anything about it, it is not there, it’s gone.
Indeed, we could say that as well as the human body being a vehicle of the mind, there are also an environmental and evolutionary vehicles.
I don’t see mind as a ‘movement’, to me it is continually there and transient things occur within it.
The act of looking at the mind creates a secondary observational perspective, in a manner of speaking; ‘the eye cannot see itself’ [inner eye that is].
You could be right that without stimulus the mind would cease to exist, though I would go more with the idea that the self rather than the mind ceases to exist. My reasoning is that, when information occurs in a way that is interactive e.g. informational thought, there is something already there [that we call ‘mind‘], which is the actual thing that has the ability to read and change informations. If not then we need to show how information can know itself and change itself which seams absurd to me, especially when we already have an observable phenomena we call mind. We can call it what ever you like, but we still have the same factors to deal with.
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Agreed. It would be the self or an identity there that would cease to exist. In this case, the mind would be all the thoughts, knowledge and experiences that have been preserved and maintained down the generational line (accumulated information). So, my definition of mind is a realm of (existing) knowledge that is acquired or taken in by the individual and thereby evolving into a self which identifies with whatever knowledge or info is contained in the realm. For example, biblical scripture says, ’Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ.,” (meaning put off the old man you were before and be renewed by deliberately choosing to live in accordance with gospel ways of thinking and acting) … or, simply … ’I changed my mind when I chose to go with the other way of thinking.’ So, the brain, (and its functioning) is going about its business, much as described by Stumps, while the self or the ’I’ (the identity there in some vague place inside the brain?) is shifting by means of making choices to satisfy some directive guided by the predilections , wants, desires and the such. When there is nothing wanted at any instance, thought (or more precisely, the use of thought) declutches and ‘self’ briefly dissipates. Notice I imply that there is something there which uses thought. Again the ‘self’ entity is involved in this using process. Actually, the self comes into existence at the very moment thought (movement of knowledge, info) is called upon for use.
Yet, like you said, the mind is always present and does not cease to exist, as it is a realm that is ever available for all to derive knowledge or information from. I do not tend to define mind as the functioning that is happening in the brain which allows for the detection of qualia and other inexplicable phenomenon. I refer to that as a natural occurring extraordinary intelligence. An intelligence that cannot in any way be matched by any derivation that can be acquired by the intellect. To me, the intellect draws upon the existing realm of knowledge that all other people are drawing knowledge from … and all occurrences of knowledge, thoughts or other mentations are limited in scope. But the intelligence of the biological-physical-chemical-neurological – and all the other extraordinary operations that are going on in the life of the organism – combine to produce the myriad expressions we find in the world of the living.
Well I don’t see the mind as the collection of knowledge etc, as such transient things appear to flow through it and disappear. If not for the memory yielding a constant referral to past knowledge, the intellect would be fleeting indeed.
The only conclusion I can come to, is that mind is something fundamental like energy, and both only exist under certain conditions. Essentially the most fundamental ‘thing’ is surely statelessness, everything existent are then states I.e. after the fact. Perhaps we can say that even mind only occurs locally or in some manner of universal ~ as you say; as the collection of all knowledge sets of all life.
That everything is somehow inherent/innate in that nothingness of statelessness is life’s great mystery.
On mental break, lol.
I’ve got some stuff going on in religion section that I’m focusing on, and time also has been tight lately.
I will return, surely.
…my intuitive mind you see 
