[TPF Essay] Cognitive Experiences are a Part of Material Reality

I am surprised that this well written essay has not received attention.

It's now clear to me that going forward from here, it will be impossible to continue my argument without stepping into the bog of the “Material Vs Non-Material Debate.

Back to the essay, while I don't subscribe to materialism generally, I think that the essay is written so well that I do find the argument within it to be strongly supported and worth reflecting upon.

When I say that mental impressions of the material world are themselves material, I'm trying to say that mental impressions are a material link in a chain of material terms connecting them with the material world. At the beginning of the material chain, we have the material world. Next comes the five senses that translate material reality into neural circuits of charged particles that code for material reality within the brain. The following link is cognition, which is internalization of the material world within the brain as an analog simulation of said material world. After this comes reason, which forms judgments by a process of logic. Reason is the hard link to unpack. It’s the time element that turns the mind into a puzzle. Internalization of the material world into ideas of the mind involves a manipulation of time most curious.

What might pure thought devoid of input from the five senses consist of?

So I'd turn the OP title upside down - material reality is actually an aspect of cognitive experience. Whatever we think or know is real occurs to us within experience.

What might pure thought devoid of input from the five senses consist of?
— Author

Pure mathematics would come close, wouldn't it?

Aside from that, there are states known to contemplatives that are devoid of sensory content - known as 'contentless consciousness' in some lexicons.

Conclusions
The presence or absence of content-less state of consciousness has important implications for theories of consciousness (Metzinger, 2019). Many current conceptions of consciousness do not consider a content-less state of consciousness as a possibility and would need to be significantly altered if such a state is possible. We need novel paradigms to study and theorize about such states of consciousness without content or minimal phenomenal experience. A thorough understanding of the phenomenal properties of consciousness and its links to functional or neurophysiological aspects would enable us build a comprehensive theory of consciousness (Josipovic and Miskovic, 2020; Metzinger, 2020). The current paper suggests that focusing on the continuity of conscious experience may necessitate proposing consciousness without content a theoretical necessity. Such states of consciousness have been reported for a long time among practitioners in various contemplative traditions and there is a need to take them seriously to eventually understand consciousness. It also seems to be the case that realizing such an experiential state seem to change one’s life in a significant manner. Hence there is also a need to measure the impact of having experienced such a state in day to day life of those practitioners.

That is something I have never experienced and can't really imagine. I would think to be conscious entails awareness of self and surroundings. Therefore, there are contents.

How would you know if there was no content to remember?

the mind is navigating via conceptual acts that I don't believe are reducible to material or physical states.

As to whether you 'enjoy the sun and breeze', I should hope so, and good for you, but the OP has raised a philosophical question and that's what I responded to.

After this comes reason, which forms judgments by a process of logic. Reason is the hard link to unpack.

Given this reality, it’s natural for us to conclude “an idea about all roses” is non-material. We conclude it’s a non-material concept that inhabits the mind only.

How can something so unanalogous to its source be no less material than its source?

Intent is a function of the designing mind that thinks strategically about “that which is not yet but will be.”

This is a more complex expression of time “manipulation” towards abstract generalization. It is cognitive-time- dilation of present action towards a strategically determined future material outcome.

Critical to absential materialism is the bi-conditional relationship between the supervenient emergent property: abstract thought, and the subvenience of the ground for the emergent property; the brain. They are a matched pair and there is one IFF there is also the other.

What might pure thought devoid of input from the five senses consist of? — Moliere
Pure mathematics would come close, wouldn't it?

How would a mind be able to think mathematical thoughts?

While I agree we’re not born able to do mathematics, we’re born with the capacity to learn to do mathematics (

The fact that almost everything we do, insofar as it is mediated by technology, as this conversation is, is dependent on the effectiveness of mathematics.

Of course computer hardware is physical,

In fact the computer chip manufacturing process echoes Aristotle's form-matter dualism.

But as to whether the software itself is physical or symbolic, I think that question is, at the very least, moot.

Surely one of the astounding, if often taken-for-granted, aspects of the human imagination is to peer into the realm of the possible-but-not.-yet-existent and bring things back from it.

Bring things back from the future?

And where, precisely, does 'the possible but not actual' exist, if not in the mind?

Not from the future - from the possible, from the realm of possibility. Today's techno-industrial culture is able to 'peer into the realm of the possible' and bring back things, like LLMs, that could scarcely have been conceived of until we actually started to use them. And where, precisely, does 'the possible but not actual' exist, if not in the mind?

What value do you place on the potential versus the actual?

Excellent question. To digress, as I so often do, there's an article I refer to , Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities, which echoes an idea spelled out by Werner Heisenberg - that quantum states exist as unrealized potentialities, 'res potentia', one of which is actualized by the measurement process. It's the idea that the unmanifested or potential reality is actualized through measurement.

I do not think this process however is confined to human measurement and instrumentation but that these interactions (collapses, potential to actual) are occurring all the time between events and processes thus the more seemingly concrete macro world we largely live in and observe.

//although I will mention the title of the Whitehead article I mentioned yesterday, which I believe is a quote from the man himself - ‘ Apart from the Experiences of Subjects There Is Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Bare Nothingness’,//

but whereas Whitehead’s approach is ontological (concerned with the constituents of being), the approach I’m exploring is epistemological (concerned with the conditions of knowing). That’s why I align more closely with a Kantian perspective.

While both philosophers are deeply engaged with the relationship between mind and world, Kant approaches it by asking how the mind structures experience and knowledge, whereas Whitehead approaches it by proposing that the world itself is composed of proto-subjective events or ‘prehensions’ at every level of reality.

Kant I do not think would entertain panpsychism in any form as an explanation of human mind whereas Whitehead sees primitive experience as a fundamental feature of all of reality and process.

each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.

Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself (i.e. the world as it is independently of perception), but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.

Emergent properties are known to be partially independent from their grounds because they have attributes and functions not present in their grounds. Chief among these distinct attributes and functions is intent. Intent is a function of the designing mind that thinks strategically about “that which is not yet but will be.”

I’m also making the point that this suggests that the domain of possibility exceeds and is different to the domain of actuality - again, something which recent history abundantly illustrates.

Do you think that within the domain of possibility, there is a social reality such that P1 (possibility one) holds a conversation with P2 (possibility two)?

You seem to acknowledge mind cannot be uncoupled from brain.

The textbook example I referred to is the role of observation in quantum physics and the fact that the act of observation or registration precipitates a particular outcome from an indeterminate range of possibilities.

There are no discrete domains in that sense.

In a more general sense, we are able to consider possibilities and find ways to realise them - make them real, in other words.

And you seem always determined to argue that 'the physical is fundamental.'

...your equation for material reality, reminds me of Kant. Actually your schema generally reminds me of Kant...

Only you do go a step further and equate basically everything with material reality, even the supervening mental correlates.

And once naturalized you end back in the antinomies of freedom/causation, for instance -- the noumenal took care of the "beyond" in his system. How would you account for such an antinomy using your equation?

Physics without thought has no order; thought without physics has no meaning.

Two hundred years from now our sciences may no longer need the concepts of physics or the physical object, but they will still be about phenomenal objects.

The "what," ultimately, is axiomatic. There it is before you. No analysis can justify it being there before you. Logic might justify how it came to be there before you, but the fact of its presence before you lies beyond the reach of continuity. So, Heisenberg and Gödel alert us to the incompleteness of continuity.

The "how" is a narrative that distributes the "what." Herein lies meaningful continuity. When we seek answers, we seek a story that supplies those answers. The greatness of a story lies within the "how," not within the "what

The "what," ultimately, is axiomatic. There it is before you. No analysis can justify it being there before you. Logic might justify how it came to be there before you, but the fact of its presence before you lies beyond the reach of continuity. So, Heisenberg and Gödel alert us to the incompleteness of continuity.

The "how" is a narrative that distributes the "what." Herein lies meaningful continuity. When we seek answers, we seek a story that supplies those answers. The greatness of a story lies within the "how," not within the "what." A great story about mediocre things is more momentous than a mediocre story about great things.

I think this distinction between the what and the how is very important. It is what allows us to see that meaning is finite. It is not just that, as Gödel asserted, each axiomatic system grounds itself within a more encompassing system ad infinitum, but that the changes over time in the stories and narratives we use to interpret experience aren’t logically derivable from each other. They dont fit one within the other in an infinite regress, but follow one another as a change of subject.

What is the "you" in this explanation, and what is the relation of "stands before it" - spatial, temporal, etc.?

If you are describing a view doesn't that mean realism is the case?

If solipsism is the case, then it would not be proper to call it a view, but reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself.

Continuity would be complete if solipsism is the case.

If solipsism is the case, then why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't?

It appears that way axiomatically. I respond to the "what" instinctively in a way that treats it as an external world. The instincts become part of the "what". The instinctive analysis and logic (integrating the "what" with another part of the "what" (memories (retained "whats")) (why do similar "whats" axiomatically integrate with similar memories) is part of the "what" as well.

...it would not be proper to call it a view, but reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself. Continuity would be complete if solipsism is the case.

...why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't?

I respond to the "what" instinctively in a way that treats it as an external world. The instincts become part of the "what". The instinctive analysis and logic (integrating the "what" with another part of the "what" (memories (retained "whats")) (why do similar "whats" axiomatically integrate with similar memories) is part of the "what" as well.

...why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't?

How can one say that there is an incompleteness of continuity when one can predict which direction the causal continuity will go within one's own mind (perceiving, reasoning, etc. reasons precede and support conclusions) by using logic that can be applied to there being continuity beyond the mind that produces predictable "whats" in the same way that using logic to explain only the continuity of the mind will produce predictable results - conclusions will always follow reasons, etc.?

... by using logic that can be applied to there being continuity beyond the mind...

Physics without thought has no order...

How can one say that there is an incompleteness of continuity when one can predict which direction the causal continuity will go within one's own mind (perceiving, reasoning, etc. reasons precede and support conclusions)...

It is not just that, as Gödel asserted, each axiomatic system grounds itself within a more encompassing system ad infinitum, but that the changes over time in the stories and narratives we use to interpret experience aren’t logically derivable from each other. They dont fit one within the other in an infinite regress, but follow one another as a change of subject.

If I fail to apply logic to only the continuity of the goings on within the "what" then I fail to achieve predictable results within the "what" itself.

I think this distinction between the what and the how is very important. It is what allows us to see that meaning is finite. It is not just that, as Gödel asserted, each axiomatic system grounds itself within a more encompassing system ad infinitum, but that the changes over time in the stories and narratives we use to interpret experience aren’t logically derivable from each other. They dont fit one within the other in an infinite regress, but follow one another as a change of subject.

I think the more important distinction that needs to cleared up is the "you" and the "what stands before it".

The "you" is a sentient being with an enduring point of view evolving as a personal history and a capacity for abstract thought preserved in memory.

The “you” and the “what” both occupy spacetime in a relationship allowing the “you” to have an empirical experience perceiving the “what.”

By "realism" I understand you to refer to an aspect of empirical experience that I define thus: If you know what a thing is (you know the measurements of its dimensions) and where it is (you know where a thing is positioned by measuring the relationship of its spatial dimensions to the spatial dimensions of things around it), then you know the reality of the thing.

Since solipsism assumes sentience, and therefore self-awareness and its attendant self-objectification, then the sentient maintains a view of itself. I think your, "...reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself." excludes sentience and therefore precludes solipsism. This state of reality reads like Kant's noumenal realm, a realm that strikes me as the set of axiomatically real things, i.e., brute existential facts.

Firstly, I respond by repeating my argument directly above. Secondly, I respond by invoking Russell's Paradox. The upshot of this paradox is seeing that for set theory, the scope of comprehension cannot logically support itself without restriction. There is no set that contains everything. There can be no unification of everything into oneness. Perhaps you say the universe is not a set. Well, I too say it's not a set. I justify my claim by saying existence is incomplete. Moreover, I say existence, by its nature, preserves its incompleteness strategically. For these reasons, I claim there is no complete continuity. Were that possible, there could be unification of everything into oneness.

That's the heart of strategic incompletion. The world is a story always approaching The Now but never arriving, and that's a good thing.

But isn't all this a "how" of the "what"?

The issue is in the instinctive, axiomatic nature of explaining the "what" in the first place.

By realism, I mean the idea that there is a mind-independent world - a "how" to the "what". In other words, "the what stands before the you" is a statement made only after one has provided a type of "how" to the "what". The "you" would also be a "how" in trying to make sense of the "what". Another type of "how" would be solipsism. If solipsism were the case, there would be no you with a what standing before it. You and the what would be one and the same if solipsism were the case.

Whether the "what" is a mind (solipsism) or a world (realism) is all laid out by the "how". So talking about awareness and sentience already assumes that the "what" is a mind.

reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself

Everything is all things and would be illogical to include everything as part of itself.

By saying this you imply everything is not part of itself and thus you imply everything is not everything; this is a replication of Russell's Paradox.

Everything is all things and would be illogical to include everything as part of itself.

By saying this you imply everything is not part of itself and thus you imply everything is not everything; this is a replication of Russell's Paradox.

This is not what I'm implying when I use those words, and I don't know anyone that does imply that when using the term, "everything". It is only a misuse of language that allows one to create the paradox.

Your sentence in bold makes a declaration about a phenomenon pertaining to language usage: paradox. This usage happens, it's real, it exists. This fact gives us reason to believe paradoxical language exists and therefore should be included in a collection of everything.

QM has a high rate of verification in nature, so the question of paradoxical physics is unresolved.

Logicians saw nothing wrong with unrestricted comprehension for set theory until Russell's Paradox. To me this indicates pre-Russell logicians believing a set containing itself permissible in nature at the level of abstract thought.

Our general question here pertains to how a thing is related to itself. This relationship is a fundamental part of consciousness because it's rooted in self-awareness. In my being aware of myself, am I not wholly aware of my whole self? If my whole self is not a part of myself, my thinking to the contrary seems to example Ryle's category error: I'm walking around on the university campus looking for the university which, wholly speaking, is not a part of the campus. I'm duped by my own fallacy of putting the university into the wrong category, itself. Let's see now, there's a physics building that's part of the university; to that I can add the biology building, and then the English department; when does the growing aggregate of parts reach the point where the calculus segregates the parts from the whole of the university? If my whole self is not part of itself, then that's a non-local distribution of the whole self beyond itself, and thus necessarily the self cannot be complete and self-contained, and thus we're back to the superposition of one thing two places at once. QM tantalizes us with the moot possibility of the reality of self-contradiction and thus identity fundamentally non-local.

Regarding the possibility of mind-independence, picture yourself placing a phone call to a close friend. You hope the friend will answer, thus making a conversation you deem important immediately possible. If solipsism is real, and thus no mind-independence, then why doesn't your mind know whether or not your friend will answer at a given moment in time? If the phone conversation is but a product of your mind, shouldn't your mind know when to call for an answer? Beyond that, why doesn't your mind, all-powerful in creating what you perceive as real, create everything exactly as it wishes? Why should your mind ever tolerate any degree of uncertainty?

If, by these arguments, we lean towards belief in mind-independent reality, then how does the mind of the observer of the what undermine the brute fact and independence of the what?

On the flip side, if the self of the mind is one with its context of reality, and no subject/object separation is possible, how is consciousness possible?

Suppose I argue that you know the what you perceive exists beyond your perception because you question whether or not it might exist in independence? Isn't your ability to question the what's independence contingent upon your general uncertainty about many things? If your mind projects all of reality, how could it ever want for anything it has capacity to conceive of?

Reality is Communal

The abhorrent thought of conducting an experiment of such total isolation as described above upon a newborn invokes the condemnation appropriate for a heartless act that equals a crime against humanity.
Nothing existing (and no one) is totally alone.

Your sentence in bold makes a declaration about a phenomenon pertaining to language usage: paradox. This usage happens, it's real, it exists. This fact gives us reason to believe paradoxical language exists and therefore should be included in a collection of everything.

Here you seem to be making a distinction between what "everything" refers to and what "paradox" refers to. Yes, paradoxes exist. Paradoxes are a misuse of language. Misuses of language are real events. They are part of everything, but everything is not part of everything.

QM reveals paradoxes in our descriptions and understanding of the universe, and is not representative of a fundamental nature of reality, but is representative of our ignorance. QM does not fit into our everyday experience of the world. The paradox just means that we haven't been able to reconcile classical physics with QM...

Just because you followed the rules of some language does not necessarily mean you have actually said anything about the world. Just ask lawyers and computer programmers. They understand that words mean things and is why they try to be exact (non-paradoxical) in their use of language. Logic is only useful when it can be applied to the world and not merely a focus on the relationship between some scribbles.

Your whole self is not part of your self. It IS your self - that is what "whole" means. Your whole self is not part of itself. It is part of a society and species.

What is a university if not the aggregation of buildings, professors and students?

...our understanding of the world is not the same as the world as it is.

It wouldn't be. This is why solipsism ultimately resolves down to there being no mind - only a reality where "reasons" that lead to "conclusions" would be the only type of cause and effect. There would be no external causes that lead to the effect of the mind and the mind would not be a cause of changes in the external world.

Physical cannot be the cause of its own change...the mind is needed for change. So, the mind cannot be a byproduct of physical.

So, you deny mind emergent from brain?

There's a mind somewhere making hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water?

You say paradox = misuse of language. If I understand misuse in our context here as some type of violation, then I can ask, "What is being violated by language that expresses paradox?" For example, "Does paradoxical language violate the rules of inference?" If so, how so?

It is said that the qubits of quantum computing possess categorically higher computing capacity vis-à-vis the bits of classical computing. The basic explanation for the quantum leap upward in computing power is the superposition of one qubit in two positions simultaneously. These qubits are physical entities, not abstractions resulting from twisting verbiage into language games resulting in paradoxes. How do you reconcile your denial of the reality of quantum physics with quantum computers?

There exists a Mind that is omnipresent in space and time, responsible for change in matter everywhere.

Do you think the principle of non-contradiction is the security checkpoint blocking the entry of paradoxes into the realm of mind-independent reality?

Above you describe some details of the part/whole relationship. I take from it your belief the whole self is a gestalt emergence from its parts and, as such, it’s partially distinct from the parts and thus not completely local to said parts. This, again, is a non-local but attached whole that is a part and yet not entirely a part of itself. Note how you say, “Your whole self is not part of itself.” in a context wherein the reader notices the repetition of “self.” If my whole self is not part of itself, how is it a self?

As you add up the parts of the university towards a sum of the whole of the university, is there a discrete boundary line marking a division between the region housing an accumulating sum to a whole and the region where the whole resides?

If we suppose there's no such boundary line, must we admit there's no verifiably whole university, but instead only a forever-accumulating collection of parts?

Have you seen the world "as it is" in distinction from having seen the world?

I think you internalize external world within isolated mind in order to give it the power of reasoning to conclusions. How could such internalization occur if world and mind have no connection? Also, you seem to be assuming both mind and external world, with both independent. Isn't this how you've been defining mind-independent reality?

This seems to be part of the same problem. If minds are needed to change matter, what got the first mind going? It's a infinite regress of minds, just as we have an infinite regress of decoherence.

You say paradox = misuse of language. If I understand misuse in our context here as some type of violation, then I can ask, "What is being violated by language that expresses paradox?" For example, "Does paradoxical language violate the rules of inference?" If so, how so?

It appears to violate the rules of semantics - what in the world is the paradox about? Using your example of inference, what observable evidence proves the paradox points to any real aspect of reality?...Where do we observe the paradox in nature independent of the relationship between some scribbles on a computer screen or sheet of paper? You've mentioned QM...

The basic explanation for the quantum leap upward in computing power is the superposition of one qubit in two positions simultaneously.

I don't deny that we have descriptions of nature that work. In what state is the quantum computer when not looking at it?

...how did the first decoherence event happen?

We tend to perceive the world in discrete states, even black and white sometimes, when the world is a process, and it is the relative frequency of change of the external world processes relative to the processing speed of our sensory-brain system that seems to have an effect on which processes we perceive as discrete, stable, solid objects as opposed to other processes with no discrete boundaries.

To say that something is neither this or that seems to mean that it is something else, which is logically possible and empirically provable.

As you add up the parts of the university towards a sum of the whole of the university, is there a discrete boundary line marking a division between the region housing an accumulating sum to a whole and the region where the whole resides?

If we suppose there's no such boundary line, must we admit there's no verifiably whole university, but instead only a forever-accumulating collection of parts?

Sure, call a surveyor and they will tell you what the boundary is. There seems to be a distinction between artificial/arbitrary boundaries defined by human beings as opposed to natural boundaries where they seem more vague.

My mind is part of the world. I experience it as it is. I am a realist (not a direct or indirect realist, as I see them as a false dichotomy) so I believe that my mind informs me of the way the world is via causation. Effects inform us of the causes and allow use to make accurate predictions of future effects.

I am talking about the Mind, not God. There is a beginning for time. Either the stuff (the physical, for example) existed at the beginning of time and evolved to form life, or there was a God who created what was necessary. What was necessary is the subject of discussion. I have an argument about "Physical cannot be the cause of its own change" (which can be found here), so the first case is discarded; therefore, there is a God.

Speculation: Math paradox the result of calculations points toward a higher dimensional object that resolves the paradox with an additional existential extension, i.e., with another dimension. Looking in the reverse direction, the paradox is the higher dimension in collapsed state. Example: If the statement, "If the set of all sets not containing themselves doesn't contain itself and thus does contain itself and thus..." oscillates between two contradictory states made equivalent, then this undecidable state of the system is hunting for a higher dimensional matrix in which to unfold itself.

The pertinent question pertains to the existence of mitigation strategies for quantum error correction. Yes, (QECC) is employed with quantum computing; also, quantum processors are kept in vacuum chambers and shielded from electromagnetic interference.

Nothing exists in pure solitude—reality resists isolation. It is a web, not a wall (shield).

There has been no first decoherence event because QM laws underlie the natural world. QM systems and Newtonian systems aren't isolated from each other. A quantum system loses its quantum phase relations (decoherence) through entanglement with it's surrounding environment. Isolation of a quantum system enables quantum coherence. Although quantum system phase relations have always been possible, only recently has humanity been able to perceive and then detect QM systems in isolation through math and super-colliders.

So, the particle/wave duality is more effect of the processing limitations of human cognition than ontic state of physical systems? And yet, nevertheless, discrete objects are more at realism than at solipsism?

Since you seem unable to locate the whole university beyond the vaguely axiomatic language you've been using, you attack the messenger instead of the message by implying math is a human invention containing fabrications and distortions?

Should there be ambiguity of causation, would you understand it as another instance of contrived uncertainty rooted in the misuse of language?

I thought you were talking about the Mind, not God. What is the difference anyway?

What is the nature of God, or Mind, if not physical themselves?

How does something non-physical interact with the physical?

n other words, it is only a paradox from a certain constrained view of ignorance.

How does information get out if it is shielded? How are the states of the processors known if not by some interaction? What about:

Nothing exists in pure solitude

In other words, an environment (space-time) has to exist for decoherence to occur. One might say it is the medium in which decoherence occurs.

The fact that we are even able to get information about sub-atomic particles being in a state of superposition means that information went in and came out in some way, and that superposition is simply one kind of state and "off" and "on" are other states.

Are we confusing the map with the territory?

So you don't agree that there is a distinction between the clear boundaries invented by humans and their language as opposed to "boundaries" that preceded human's and their languages existence?

What are you referring to when using scribbles - more scribbles (a solipsist answer) or something in the world that is not more scribbles, and might not even be visible from your perspective - hence the use of language to inform others of things that they were not already aware of (mind-independent) (a realist answer)?

The Mind is a substance with the ability to experience and cause the stuff.

It may be that to some extent, but we're looking at realist physics-and-matter-compliant phenomena exampling non-locality; the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics went to three researchers with something to say about the universe not being locally real. I understand this means, at least in part, that the reality immediately before us is not discretely mind-independent. That it appears to be, as explained by some researchers, stands due to the fact the environment, which includes sentients, measures material systems, thus cancelling their quantum effects. From this viewpoint, I can say that discrete mind-independence results “from a certain constrained view of ignorance.”

Yes, the third state affords an exponential increase in info processing. Regarding improbabilities, earth being friendly to carbon-based life forms might be an example of an extreme statistical bias towards emergence of consciousness.

I think the radicalism of QM is rooted in its intentional focus upon the strategic and useful confusion of the map with the territory. Were this confusion not useful, the memory lobes of your brain would not keep you connected to your childhood.

Before sentience, there were no boundaries. Dimensional extension defining the physics and materiality of things is rooted in cognition. Absent brain_mind, matter and its physics are a jumbled outpouring of potential states possibilities. Have you ever seen a computer monitor try to display the graphics of a program that requires a higher info-processing video card than the one installed in the computer? The screen shows a technicolor morass of jumbled, overlapping distortions unintelligible. This is my conjecture about the physics of the world independent of the organizing principles of cognition.

Yes, my perception of the world is an approximation of same. The tricky thing that QM has taught us, is that the interpreting_approximating is bi-directional. The supposedly mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states, just as my ability to perceive and understand mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states. There is a dance between observed and observer. The adventure of living lies in the fact that while there are constraints upon what the dance steps can be, how they are attacked supports many, perhaps infinite variations. An example paralleling this is the keyboard of a piano. The number of notes provided by the keyboard are limited, but that number nonetheless supports many variations. We don't know exactly what the pianist will play.

What's the relationship between substance, stuff and matter?

Are substance, stuff and matter all made of atoms and molecules?

What about mind? What’s it made of?

If it's not locally real (what does "real" mean in this sense?)

What was the world like before sentients existed?

If there was a creator, it seems to me that it would require much less space than we have, and it is the mind-numbing expanse of space and time that is evidence that we are outcomes of purposeless processes, not a purposeful one.

I don't see how confusion could be useful, other than informing you that you don't have something quite right about your interpretation of reality, and to keep trying.

The question is how much of the digital object is a mental construct and how much is a representation of the signal before being digitized.

What defined the boundaries between sentient minds? What makes your mind "other" than mine?

Well, the pianist is just another part. If we know the history of the pianist and what they know how to play and what they like to play, and what they have played most often, you don't really need to count the keys on the piano, do you?

The minds are not made of anything else

Mind, substance and stuff are made of strings?

Strings are the foundation of all material things, right?