Mind and Matter

The ‘One=The All’, with special emphasis to You, Wendy Darling. But the ‘You’, could be anyone, if, your idea has channels, such as the one I think, (therefore=exists).

Stop with your frustration already. I’ll send the steps to cross over, the work’s up to you. It’s like you’re afraid to commit to a romance while spouting poetry to the object of your desire. You must venture out of your comfort zone.

My definition of mind is that it is a function of the [ human ] brain

My definition of mind as brain is that zone, where they cannot be differentiated, where the function of the brain is the mind, qua consciousness, and conversely, the idea of mind is within it’s function, as unconsciousness.

No, the failure would only be if science or philosophy stopped questioning and exploring Mind and simply reduced it to whatever they felt it had to be.

The subject is Mind and Matter.
Can Mind be seen also as matter, in a sense, or simply ethereal - like the scent (mind) of the rose (matter).

Is it a failure of science, philosophy and religion that we do not know “actually” what God is? No.

Does that really “define” mind or is that just one facet of how we see it?

James,

Couldn’t that definition also speak of the body?

The Mind itself doesn’t always function in a coordinating harmonious way, now does it?
At least not from what I have seen of the “workings” of the mind, it doesn’t.

The definition is mine but is not everything defined by how we see it?

Can you give a single example of something not defined in this way?

How can we understand anything outside of our own perspective?

Yes, damage to the brain limits our ability to realize/perceive consciousness in another, but that damage/limitation of the physical body does not hinder the mind of the soul body in its remaining conscious, just its outlet, the physical body, of expression has been closed down.

Thanks for the good posts.
Here’s Nagel’s full title for his book–
“Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.”
His claim:
“Our own existence presents us with the fact that somehow the world generates conscious beings capable of recognizing reasons for action and belief, distinguishing some necessary truths, and evaluating the evidence for alternative hypotheses about the natural order. We don’t know how this happens, but it is hard not to believe that there is some explanation of a systematic kind–an expanded account of the order of the world.”

A third of the way through the book, I’m still getting Nagel’s opinion that neither Darwinism nor Intelligent Design can offer full explanation of how we came to be the sentient beings who can think, feel, aspire, etc.
I, personally, believe mind is what brains do, and that this doing incudes experiencing the scent of a rose and being able to communicate accurately the experience.

I’d like to think that evolution itself in its varied form following science can account for even a romance to be had even in unconscious unawareness. It would be just another feeling, and if assigned to what crawled out of the primordial soup to eventually evolve it’s long, painful way to human form over the ages and eons, it would have to, from the start, be as varied as us in base form. Meaning that the romance of life and existence that stirs the artists soul and heart is what assigns us the most and best thoughts, feelings, aspirations, etc. It is the romance of love at its purest in terms of not applying sex to it, which gives an understanding to lifelong relationships beyond the short-term sexual flings of others of our same species who seemingly don’t understand romance of that variety, though they are still very much romantics in their own way to other aspects of life, and love, for them might still exist during each of their sexual flings. And that is also apart of each artists soul and heart. Without Darwinism or intelligent design, this would not be true nor would it be known enough to communicate even inaccurately.

There are at least three ways of seeing evolution as history of a quale. One mentioned above and noted by Nagel, is that an entity at its base (Chemistry) contains the necessary ingredients of experience that appear complex in the latest example of the entity (living being). Another is that qualia are emergent properties that appear as the entity has progressed through certain stages. A third is that mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain. Was mind at the beginning of creation? Can mind be used to describe all we can experience of nature?

surreptitious57

Very often yes. But is this the best way to define a thing? simply as we “see” it?
That might give meaning but not necessarily reality.
For someone who has no idea of the iceberg, someone would define that as some flat kind of thing floating above water.

That might be a good question but perhaps a better one would be if you could give an example of an individual who does NOT define something in this way.

By going outside of our own perspective. We can do this by realizing that our perspective is not the only one and that others do see things differently and with a broader landscape and perhaps with more validity than what we see with.

Seeing something is not necessarily understanding it. That can just be the beginning of it. We have to go “under” what we see - that’s where mind comes in.

In examining how certain chemicals could become conscious organisms overtime Nagel embraces teleology but eschews intelligent design. I don’t see how the two can be separated.
Nagel claims his take on teleology is from Aristotle. Has anyone else here read about this in Aristotle’s works?

As for the notion of an isolate quale, I believe we can communicate, to a large extent, how we feel about what we experience.

My take on the Aristotelian/Nagel concept of teleology goes like this–An acorn contains all the necessary ingredients for becoming a tree. This becoming is influenced by the natural conditions of its environment. There is no force outside the acorn that is responsible for its precondition to become a tree. In this sense teleology represents an internal drive toward a goal or a specific outcome. Environment may be fortuitous for the entire growth and development of the acorn, but it has nothing to do with the acorn’s innate drive to become a tree.

I’ve finished Nagel’s short book and cannot find in it hard evidence that the Darwinian explanation of the development of consciousness in animals with brains is somehow false. As a believer intelligent design, I have no difficulty in describing genetic evolution as purposeful. I have no problem seeing mind as an extension of matter.

Seems true enough to me.

It is still difficult for me to image a teleology that does not include i.d. Nagel did denounce the ridicule Behe, et. al, have received from some in the scientific community; but the notion of religion as anti-science still persists in the modern scientific and philosophical arenas.

It is the inability of mind to define itself which enables it to pervade the universe