Cosmos Created Mind

I’m glad we’ve finally got a credible source of evidence for your ideas—a Dan Brown novel.

Quoting T Clark

a Dan Brown novel

:lol:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-of-self/202510/the-secret-of-secrets-is-the-science-accurate :monkey:

Reply to Gnomon :sparkle: wt_?

Quoting T Clark

I’m glad we’ve finally got a credible source of evidence for your ideas—a Dan Brown novel.

Sarcasm noted. This novel is no more scientific than The DaVinci Code, and not cited as "evidence" for any particular aspect of objective reality. But its discussion of a controversial philosophical concept is evidence of some far-out philosophical conjectures that are out-there in the ether. Quite a few prominent scientists have embraced Panpsychism*1 as an explanation for the emergence of human sentience.

I'm not buying the notion of brain tissue as receiver of divine signals*2, but I'm open to the possibility, pending further evidence. And I use this forum as place to explore unconventional ideas, honed by skeptical reasoning, not ridicule. :smile:


*1. Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scientists+and+panpsychism

*2. "I find it difficult to accept that my thoughts & feelings are signals from some central transmitter, like the robotic clone army of Star Wars." ____excerpt from OP

If it is true that the

Quoting Gnomon

brain [is] acting as a receiver for consciousness.

is that not another instance of "forms" activating "matter?"

In that case, not an inversion of the Wayfarer thread.

Quoting Gnomon

Quite a few prominent scientists have embraced Panpsychism*1 as an explanation for the emergence of human sentience.

Quoting Gnomon

Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do?

Quoting Gnomon

discussion of a controversial philosophical concept

This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

Quoting Gnomon

And I use this forum as place to explore unconventional ideas, honed by skeptical reasoning, not ridicule.

The forum used to be much stricter about keeping out pseudoscientific theories. I don’t really mind that it’s become more lenient, but many such theories still do deserve ridicule.

Reply to T Clark
Quoting T Clark

Some scientists are exploring panpsychism as a potential solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how physical matter can give rise to subjective experience.
— Gnomon

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do?

discussion of a controversial philosophical concept
— Gnomon

This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

William James might have begged to differ with you. In his essay ‘Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine’, he raises the question whether consciousness might depend on, or even originate from, sources “outside” the brain, but James does so in a way that deliberately blurs the boundaries between psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience.

Reply to T Clark :up: :up: Yeah, (@Gnomon's) pseudoscience —> ridicule.

Quoting Joshs

In his essay ‘Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine’, he raises the question whether consciousness might depend on, or even originate from, sources “outside” the brain,

The idea that the essence of humans—the soul, consciousness, the spirit—originates outside the body is nothing new. As I understand it, that is one of the fundamental ideas in Christianity. I haven’t read the James essay, so I can’t really say what exactly he’s talking about. The usual suspect tertiary sources on the web say he did not believe that consciousness originated outside the body.

Reply to T Clark
Quoting T Clark

The usual suspect tertiary sources on the web say he did not believe that consciousness originated outside the body.

In earlier works , like Principles of Psychology, his approach was mainly materialistic. But toward the end of his career his thinking became more speculative. In the essay, he proposes that the idea that the brain transmits rather than produces consciousness is philosophically and scientifically conceivable, and perhaps better fits the facts than strict materialism.

He writes:

“Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual. Then the diminutions of consciousness which accompany brain lesions may not be due to the destruction of consciousness itself, but to the failure of its physical organs to transmit it properly.”

Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual.

For the record, I really like James. As for this quote, that’s not all that far from what I believe. The material world affects the spirit through our senses and perceptions processed by our nervous system. I don’t know if that’s what he meant.

The ancient Stoics were stubborn materialists, but believed in a rarefied form of material, generally called pneuma, which was the generative force of the cosmos. Pneuma was a part of all things, organic and inorganic, but had different grades, one of which formed the rational mind/soul of human beings.

Perhaps they were pantheists or panpsychists--I don't particularly care which. I find the general idea of such a cosmos attractive. But I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma it will be established through science, not philosophy.

Quoting Ciceronianus

I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma it will be established [falsified] through science, not philosophy.

:up: Like a vacuum or atom or aether ...

Quoting T Clark

The link you provided doesn’t really identify any scientists who support panpsychism, although it does identify some philosophers. Can you name some scientists who do? . . . .
This is not a philosophical question at all—it’s a scientific one. Does our consciousness result from signals coming from outside our bodies?

This question is off-topic, because the thread is about a fictional pseudo-scientific worldview, not (or not yet) a mainstream scientific hypothesis. I was hoping to get some feedback from Wayfarer to see if the novel's implicit --- not explicit --- Cosmic Mind worldview is similar to his own Idealistic philosophy. I made-up the Cosmos Created Mind label, as an inversion of the Mind Created World thread.

FWIW, I don't consider Panpsychism to be a scientific theory, because it may be untestable. But it is a legitimate philosophical ontological hypothesis. Nevertheless, the previous link names some serious scientists*1*2 who find the concept of a Mind-based Universe plausible. If you are really interested, you can do a Google search to find a lot more credentialed scientists, who admit to taking the Mind before Matter notion seriously. Personally, I'm skeptical of the Cosmic Signal hypothesis. But I could be proven wrong. :nerd:


*1. Neuroscientist Christof Koch is a proponent of a modern, scientifically-informed version of panpsychism, the belief that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=koch+panpsychism

*2. How scientists are engaging with panpsychism :
[i]# Experimental research:
Some scientists, like Michael Levin, are actively looking for empirical evidence of consciousness in simple organisms that lack a nervous system.
# Theoretical exploration:
Some have proposed that panpsychism could be a "physics of panpsychism" that would provide a scientific basis for the idea. Others, like Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory, have developed frameworks that are compatible with panpsychism.
# As a response to the hard problem:
Panpsychism is seen by some as a way to address the "hard problem of consciousness," which is how subjective experience arises from purely physical matter. By positing that consciousness is fundamental, panpsychism offers a way to bypass the difficulty of explaining its emergence from non-conscious matter.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scientists+and+panpsychism

Quoting Paine

is that not another instance of "forms" activating "matter?"
In that case, not an inversion of the Wayfarer thread.

I don't know. What do you think?
Regarding "inversion" see my reply to TClark.

Quoting Gnomon

1. Neuroscientist Christof Koch is a proponent of a modern, scientifically-informed version of panpsychism, the belief that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter…

*2. How scientists are engaging with panpsychism :

You’re OP is not about panpsychism. It’s not even mentioned. It’s primarily about consciousness being the result the transmission from outside the body.

Quoting Joshs

In earlier works , like Principles of Psychology, his approach was mainly materialistic. But toward the end of his career his thinking became more speculative. In the essay, he proposes that the idea that the brain transmits rather than produces consciousness is philosophically and scientifically conceivable, and perhaps better fits the facts than strict materialism.

I was not aware that W. James had speculated on brain as receiver or transmitter*1. Reply to T Clark accused me of promoting pseudoscience, where I'm merely exploring an idea that is novel to me.

My current view of Human Consciousness is that it is emergent from Information processing, and ceases when the processor dies. But, confronted with the Hard Problem, I have tried to trace the path of Information (EnFormAction)*2 --- both causal & meaningful --- back to the Big Bang and beyond. Hence, the Ontological & Epistemological question remains : where did the Energy & Laws --- two forms of Information --- of the nascent universe originate? Modern science has no empirical answer ; so we speculate. :smile:


*1. The idea that the brain transmits consciousness rather than produces it is a minority theory that suggests the brain acts as a receiver or filter, similar to a radio receiving a broadcast. This perspective, first explored by William James, proposes that consciousness is a fundamental field that the brain tunes into, which explains why the brain's structure and health can affect its perception of consciousness. In contrast, the prevailing view in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity, generated by the brain itself, and ceases to exist when the brain dies
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=brain+transmits+rather+than+produces+consciousness

*2. Is Information a Fundamental Force of the Universe? :
[i]A distinguished geoscientist and rising-star astrobiologist offer a stunning new theory . . . .
Robert Hazen and Michael Wong discuss their bold proposal for a new law of nature, centered around the idea that information is as fundamental to the cosmos as mass, energy or charge.[/i]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/videos/is-information-a-fundamental-force-of-the-universe/

Quoting T Clark

You’re OP is not about panpsychism. It’s not even mentioned. It’s primarily about consciousness being the result the transmission from outside the body.

First, let me clarify that the title of this thread does not describe my own philosophy, but an attempt to encapsulate the worldview underlying Noetic "science" as described in Dan Brown's mystical mystery novel. The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism.

So, when I'm accused of promoting PseudoScience, I have to strenuously deny it. But from a hard-core Materialist perspective the difference is literally immaterial. My non-scientific & non-religious personal philosophical worldview may sound like PanTheism to you, but I call it Enformationism*2, which is based primarily on Quantum Physics and Information Theory. And it's more like Taoism than theology. :smile:


*1. The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown is a novel that explores themes of consciousness, noetic sciences, and mysticism, which are closely related to panpsychism by suggesting that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality and can exist beyond the physical brain. The book's central premise involves the brain acting as a "mind receiver" for consciousness, aligning with the idea that mind and consciousness are not just byproducts of matter, but are a fundamental part of the universe itself.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=novel+%22secret+of+secrets%22+panpsychism

*2. Creative Mind and Cosmic Order :
Even Darwin implied that the evolution of cognition enhanced the survival of organisms : “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” In other words, wisdom is the most powerful force for surviving and thriving in a world of constant change, and of competition for life’s necessary resources. In 1907, Henri Bergson published his book, Creative Evolution, in which he postulated the existence of a Life Force (elan vital)²?. In my own hypothesis, I denote that creative causal force by a technical term : EnFormAction²?, denoting a combination of change-causing Energy and organizing Information. Where Energy provides the transformative force, and Information (blueprint) delivers the design intention for configuration.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page10.html

PS___ A century ago, Einstein made some "cosmological" calculations, and was appalled to see that the result indicated a dynamic universe instead of the static world he preferred. So, he added an arbitrary constant lambda (?) to balance the equation, and later recalled it as his greatest "blunder". Today, I could use the dynamic & directional term EnFormAction in place of lambda, but then I'm not a scientist. Merely, a theorising amateur philosopher. :joke:

Reply to Gnomon
I read Wayfarer to be saying that emergence of new life came from someplace rather than nothing. That demands a different response than the constant refresh of the world required for the opposing view counting upon an unknown agency.

Since we are poorly positioned as a species to sort this out as a matter of fact, the difference in question becomes a collapse into a tautology where the opposite ends fail to be a contrary for the other.

Quoting Gnomon

The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism.

This is not true. Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

Quoting T Clark

Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

:100:

Quoting T Clark

The OP does mention PanTheism, which is a religious form of philosophical PanPsychism. — Gnomon
This is not true. Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

You are just being contrarian & polemic & off-topic. I didn't say they are the same thing, but only that they are related, as a general Form and and a particular Thing are related (hylomorph). Do you understand the relationship between Islam and Monotheism? One is a specific doctrinal religion, while the other is a general doctrine regarding Deity : Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all philosophically monotheistic, but differ in specific doctrinal beliefs.

The quoted -isms are different in that Pantheism is a religious worldview, while Panpsychism is a philosophical theory. By analogy, Theism is a religious belief, while Deism is a philosophical concept. Can you see the relationship (world creator) and the distinction (miraculous intervention vs natural evolution)?

Now that you have made your us-vs-them political position clear, can we get back on the philosophical topic : "The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-local, i.e. Cosmic Mind (Panpsychism)".? :cool:


Pantheism is the belief that God is the universe, identifying divinity with all of existence, while panpsychism is the philosophical idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, present in all matter. Pantheism is a religious concept, often seen as an alternative to traditional theism by rejecting a transcendent, separate God. Panpsychism is more of a metaphysical theory about consciousness itself, though it is often explored in conjunction with pantheistic ideas to consider whether the universe can be a conscious, divine mind.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pantheism+panpsychism+religion

Pantheism and panpsychism are related but distinct concepts; pantheism is a religious philosophy equating God with the universe, while panpsychism is a philosophical view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. Panpsychism can be used to support pantheism by suggesting that the universal consciousness is divine.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pantheism+panpsychism+religion

Quoting Gnomon

You are just being contrarian & polemic & off-topic. I didn't say they are the same thing, but only that they are related,

No, they are not related except they both have a "pan" prefix which refers to "all," "of everything," or "completely." They are completely different things. And no, I'm not being contrarian. I'm being irritated because your OP is so vague and inconsistent and you present half-baked ideas without support and without a willingness to take responsibility for them. It's not philosophy at all, it's a book report.

Quoting Gnomon

The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-local

It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

What could be universal, basic and fundamental, and therefore non-local is the witness itself of experiences, which I call Awareness, and would be what one truly is, which is not one's experiences.

Note that again, either way, the Universe does us.

Quoting T Clark

I'm not being contrarian. I'm being irritated because your OP is so vague and inconsistent and you [@Gnomon] present half-baked ideas without support and without a willingness to take responsibility for them. It's not philosophy at all, it's a book report.

:up: :up:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD [eternal, nonlocal] versus a live band [present, local].

Exactly.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

Thanks for making a rational philosophical suggestion, instead of emotional political derision. :razz:

Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)?
In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)? Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label? :smile:

Radio analogy : "The key presumption is that Consciousness is non-local, but Cosmic (Pantheism ; Panpsychism)". ___ From OP
If my personal sense of awareness (receiver) is actually processing a broadcast signal or narrowcast message, what does that imply about the source/transmitter? : (e.g. Theistic Pantheism vs Atheistic Panpsychism) :nerd:

Quoting T Clark

Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.

Panpsychism can be rather a broad church. Hartshorne coined the dichotomy of synecological and atomistic panpsychism to cover this.

So pantheism, or indeed panentheism, is a variety of synecological panpsychism under his classification scheme. Broadly this is the difference between a top-down constraints and a bottom-up construction view of things.

That is, consciousness as either a holistic constraint imposed on material being down to its finest grades of division, or instead the opposite thing of consciousness originating at the level of atomistic events – even particles in interaction – and then becoming complexified as it becomes built up into more elaborate structures like bodies and brains.

So it is the same old causal debate. Top-down holism vs bottom-up contruction. Two ways of treating consciousness as a reified "thing" – an elemental property of nature. But two opposite ways of framing that fact. Either human minds emerge from atomistic fragments appropriately combined, or from the generalised divine mind appropriately constrained – as in being confined to inhabit the particular circuitry of some human or other, or some shape and form of animal, tree, or mountain or river, or other.

What is shared is seeking to elevate "consciousness" to something maximally general and fundamental to material reality. Either the panentheism of participating in the generality of the divine whole, or the more familiar reductionist model that sounds more scientifically respectable and which thus popularised the actual brand name of panpsychism.

If Nature was fundamentally atomistic in its causality, we’ll just assume consciousness begins right there where the first particles arise. That bottom-up construction view felt always more properly sciencey and less like religious woo.

But of course I have to add that all this pan- talk is guff as its seeks to reduce reality to either its whole or its parts. The systems view seeks to find reality in the interaction of its extremes. A holism that is triadic and which thus incorporates both its holist and reductionist tendencies.

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world. It gives a sharp reason why consciousness can arise when a particular modelling process arises within Nature at a certain sufficiently cool, large and complex moment in its Big Bang history.

But that would be leading the conversation back into the realm of the actually scientific. :grin:

Quoting Gnomon

Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)?

B> live event, because Eternalism requires infinite precision, but, everything leaks…

Quoting Gnomon

In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)?

Our personal ideas come from the history of the Cosmos.

Quoting Gnomon

Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label?

No copyright; give cosmic credit; no fame… but no blame either.

Quoting Gnomon

Radio analogy

I am listening to the World Series of Canada versus Japan on the radio, ha-ha.

Quoting apokrisis

But that would be leading the conversation back into the realm of the actually scientific.

I didn't intend for this thread, on a philosophy forum, to be a scientific analysis of evidence for "signals from the cosmos". Other than as a Noetic postulate to resolve the Hard Problem of Consciousness, I'm not aware of any scientific evidence of intelligible signals being received and interpreted by the brain, except of course as energetic inputs (light, sound) from the local environment. Instead, I'm asking for philosophical reasoning about the likelihood or possibility of "non-local" inputs of meaningful signals from an intelligent source out there in the Cosmos at large. :chin:

Quoting apokrisis

So it is the same old causal debate. Top-down holism vs bottom-up contruction. Two ways of treating consciousness as a reified "thing" – an elemental property of nature. But two opposite ways of framing that fact.

Now, we're getting somewhere! My own --- philosophical, not scientific --- musings, about the hard problem, point toward Causation (natural energy, gravity, forces) as the precursor of Consciousness in biological entities. This is a holistic interpretation instead of a reductive inference from specific observations. If so, then perhaps human awareness is a high-level function of brain processes, not a reified thing or substance like the aether. All natural processes must have some evolutionary fitness function to avoid being weeded-out by natural selection. And all physical processes, including brain functions, require Energy.

Moreover, professional scientists have recently inferred from their observations that change-causing Energy is a special form of generic Information*1. And ideas in the human mind are also forms of meaningful information, yes?. Therefore, practical Science points to a natural relationship between Consciousness & Causation. However, the topic of this thread is about the possibility that some Cosmic Intelligence --- (gods or aliens or overflowing black holes*2) the novel leaves the Source open to interpretation --- is beaming meaningful signals into our brains in order to produce the ideas that we arrogant apes assume are our own creation. :nerd:


*1. The statement "energy is information" is a complex and debated concept, but it reflects the deep relationship between the two: energy is a fundamental aspect of information, as physical information requires energy to be carried, and information can be viewed as a form of energy or a measure of a system's organization. While not a simple equivalence, theories propose that information and energy are intrinsically linked and potentially convertible, as demonstrated in a physical experiment where information was converted into energy. {details in the link}
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+is+information

*2. black hole information paradox, a conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity. It questions what happens to the information of matter that falls into a black hole, as quantum mechanics dictates that information cannot be destroyed, while Hawking's theory suggested black holes radiate away matter without recovering this information. This paradox arises because a black hole's only observable properties are its mass, electric charge, and angular momentum, which are not enough to reconstruct the original information of what fell in.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=black+hole+information
Note --- Like Energy, perhaps Information cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. But, no, I don't take the Black Hole Source seriously. Do you?

Quoting Ciceronianus

The ancient Stoics were stubborn materialists, but believed in a rarefied form of material, generally called pneuma, which was the generative force of the cosmos. Pneuma was a part of all things, organic and inorganic, but had different grades, one of which formed the rational mind/soul of human beings.

Good point! Pneuma (air ; fire) was an ancient materialistic theory that equated invisible Breath (oxygen) with Life, Spirit, Soul & Mind. Today, we know more about the transparent chemical gas that is essential to Life, and ultimately to Mind. But, the modern essence of Life (animation) is Energy, and Oxygen is merely a catalyst*1. Yet, while we know what Energy does (action ; causation), scientists can't say what it is (essence).

The enduring concept of Pneuma as the ethereal essence of dynamic reality ("generative force of the cosmos") is now retreaded in a modern theory of consciousness*2. This evolving terminology is similar to ancient Aether, which was long-ago debunked as a non-scientific spiritual concept, but the name has recently been resurrected in Quantum Field theory*3. So, Pneuma is now portrayed as a vacuum full of immaterial Energy. But how does such an ethereal notion relate to the title of this thread? :smile:


*1. Oxygen as Energy matchmaker :
Most aerobic organisms, including humans, use oxygen to break down food, a process that generates chemical energy in the form of ATP, which is necessary for all life functions.

*2. Quantum consciousness :
Theories, such as Roger Penrose's Orch-OR theory, are seen as modern successors to pneuma, suggesting consciousness is not a mere byproduct of matter but a fundamental aspect of reality itself.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pneuma+modern+science

*3. Aether as energy field :
In the 21st century, the concept of aether is largely considered obsolete in mainstream physics, having been replaced by quantum field theory and the quantum vacuum.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=21st+century+aether

Reply to Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

Quoting Ciceronianus

?Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

:smirk:

Reply to apokrisis
Interesting, keeping in mind I was not arguing for or against pantheism, only that, as I understand it, pantheism and panpsychism are different things.

Sorry it took me so long to respond.

Quoting Ciceronianus

?Gnomon
Thanks for the information.

I was hoping you might suggest a hypothetical answer to the topical question : "But how does such an ethereal notion [pneuma ; aether] relate to the title of this thread?" What feature of the Cosmos, as a whole system, could explain the emergence of both Life & Mind (processes) on a minor planet in an ordinary galaxy?

I've been exploring alternatives to ancient Materialist theories (e.g. Pneuma ; Aether) in my blog*1. And the only common factor I've found is phenomenal Causation (energy ; force ; power) directed by noumenal Organization (natural laws), which together I call EnFormAction (the power to transform) or just Information*2. But what is the ultimate source of Cause & Laws of the universe*3? :chin:


*1. Cosmology and Evolution :
Divine Design vs Teleological Evolution vs Scientific Serendipity
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page41.html

*2. Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

*3. Schopenhauer’s Will as Intention :
[i]Ironically, as a critic of religion, Schop’s “Will” combines phenomenal causation and noumenal representation? into a single concept, similar to the Holy Spirit of the Bible. . . . .
Schopenhauer argued that the flawed world is not rationally organized?. But, if so, how could reasoning beings evolve, and how could human Science gain control over the physical realm?[/i]
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page19.html

# Factor : a circumstance, fact, or influence that contributes to a result or outcome.

Quoting T Clark

No, they are not related except they both have a "pan" prefix which refers to "all," "of everything," or "completely." They are completely different things.

I assume that you are passionately defending the worldview of Spinoza's philosophical PanTheism from the ancient "New Age" notion of PanPsychism. But they are only antithetical for devout believers. I'm aware that Reply to 180 Proof likes to portray Panpsychism as "nonsense" compared to Spinoza's scientific sense. But from an objective perspective, someone not ardently committed to one belief system or the other may not see any incompatibility*1.

I'm not a true believer in either view, but a loosely related "pan-" label, PanEnDeism*2, could be applied to my own non-religious philosophical understanding of how & why the world works as it does : supporting the immaterial processes of Life & Mind. But my thesis uses the more scientific term Information instead of spooky Psyche. :smile:

PS___ I don't know enough about Noetics to pin any of these "-ism" labels on it.


*1. Spinoza's philosophy is both pantheistic and panpsychist because it identifies God with Nature and sees everything in the universe as an aspect of this single substance, including mind and matter. His pantheism is the view that God is identical with the universe ("God, or Nature"). His panpsychism is the view that mind is a fundamental and pervasive feature of reality, such that every physical thing has a mind as one of its attributes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spinoza+pantheism+and+panpsychism
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

*2. Panendeismis a belief system that combines elements of panentheism (God is in the universe) and deism (God does not intervene supernaturally after creation), asserting that God both pervades the universe and transcends it.

Reply to Gnomon
Well, I think you'll find my thoughts, such as they are, disappointing.

As for the title of this thread, I'm leery of the use of the word "created" (or other variations of "create"). I think it's too often associated with a conscious choice or act. I have the same concerns when it's claimed that we, or our minds, "create" the world. We don't. We're organisms having certain characteristics that are part of an environment. We don't make the world of which we're a part.

So I don't think it's appropriate to speak of the cosmos creating mind if it's intended to suggest the cosmos somehow intentionally made mind, or us for that matter. I know of no evidence supporting those claims. Nor do we have any evidence that something transcendent (outside of the universe) did so.

Given the information we have, I think the best evidence suggests mind arose as a result of substances or processes that are part of or take place in the universe. If that's the case, I have no idea how that worked. We seem to have a lot yet to learn about the universe, so maybe we'll know someday. Now we can only speculate.

Quoting Gnomon

Spinoza's philosophy is both pantheistic and panpsychist ...

:lol:

Only silly blinkers like you, sir, who have not themselves closely read (and comprehended) the Ethics, so conspicuously misunderstand Spinoza's philosophy. To wit

– not "pantheistic" (2020)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116

– not "panpsychist" (2020)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509905

Quoting Ciceronianus

Well, I think you'll find my thoughts, such as they are, disappointing. . . .
So I don't think it's appropriate to speak of the cosmos creating mind if it's intended to suggest the cosmos somehow intentionally made mind, or us for that matter. I know of no evidence supporting those claims. . . . . .
Perhaps they were pantheists or panpsychists--I don't particularly care which. I find the general idea of such a cosmos attractive. But I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma {animating principle} it will be established through science, not philosophy.

"Disappointing"? Do you think I am emotionally invested in the "science of Noetics"*1? For me it's just an interesting philosophical approach to the Hard Problem of Consciousness : phenomenal experience, or what it's like to be a person. My interest in the elusive topic of Mind is philosophical, not scientific*2. Any "science" of Noetics is limited to the soft science of Psychology, which draws inferences about holistic mental states (e.g. intentions) from particular neural states (electro-chemical activity). But, how do neurons & electrons create meaningful ideas? Noetics postulates that ideas are signals from outside the brain. Personally, I'm skeptical. But the analogy with immaterial radio signals (mathematical waves, not material particles) is suggestive. So, I can't categorically deny the possibility. Hence, this thread.

"Appropriate" relative to what standard? If your philosophy is Materialism, then of course any talk about immaterial stuff like metaphysical Minds & Cosmic signals would be inappropriate. But this is a Philosophy forum, so if discussion of immaterial stuff is banned, then it should be renamed The Physics Forum. Is the "animating principle" of Life & Mind elucidated in an authoritative physics text? Does Physics have a material definition of the Causal Principle of the Cosmos? Materialism seems to treat Mind as immaterial, hence it literally & figuratively doesn't matter. Scientism treats the "Hard Problem" as solved finito, hence the hay is in the barn : cut & dried. Do you agree?

If discussion of Intention on a philosophy forum is inappropriate, then yes I would be disappointed. But what kind of "evidence" do you think is appropriate for the topic of Cosmos Created Mind? The title of this thread was intentionally flipped from Reply to Wayfarer 's Mind Created World thread. Which did not imply that your mind created the whole physical world, but left open the possibility that some cosmic intentional (teleological) Mind created the dynamic physical Universe, which in turn created (by evolution) living & thinking creatures. Instead it referred to the common understanding that human mind imagines a metaphysical model of its physical environment that the person treats as-if it's real*2.

If you think the Hard Problem of Mind has been solved by Science, then you may be influenced by the dogma of Scientism, which holds that All Truth is revealed by Physics & Chemistry. But what about Mathematics? I'm currently reading a 1948 memoir by philosopher/mathematician A.N. Whitehead. In a chapter on Axioms of Geometry, he discusses "absolute and relative theories of space", noting that Isaac Newton believed that "space has an existence . . . independent of the bodies {matter} which it contains". Whitehead concluded that "geometry is not a science with a determinate subject matter". Does that mean Math exists only in Minds, hence is not Real?

Then along came Einstein with his Theory of Relativity, indicating that objects are knowable only in relation to other objects, and that "only relative motion is directly measurable". The relevant point being that all we know about the world is subjective ideas in a Mind. Do you think physical science provides us with Absolute Knowledge, so that exploring Metaphysical (mental) aspects of reality is a waste of (immaterial, immeasurable) Time? :chin:


*1. Noetic science is not considered real by mainstream science because its claims, such as telepathy and telekinesis, are not supported by empirical evidence and are classified as pseudoscience by organizations like Quackwatch.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+noetics+a+real+science

*2. Cosmos : The mind creates a model of the world by actively constructing a perception of reality based on sensory input, past experiences, and predictions. It doesn't passively receive information but instead interprets and pieces together fragmented data to create a coherent, subjective experience that allows for prediction and survival. This internal model is constantly being updated and is why individuals can have different interpretations of the same events
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mind+creates+a+model+of+the+world

Quoting Gnomon

But, how do neurons & electrons create meaningful ideas? ... immaterial radio signals (mathematical waves ... immaterial stuff like metaphysical Minds & Cosmic signals ... the possibility that some cosmic intentional (teleological) Mind created ... all we know about the world is subjective ideas in a Mind.

:yikes: :lol: :rofl:

Quoting apokrisis

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world

Indeed, functionalists do tend to end up defining 'consciousness' by fiat as a function, just as they have with 'life'. But in doing so making the concept irrelevant to the philosophy and what people actually mean by 'consciousness'.

Quoting Joshs

“Suppose that our brains are not productive, but transmissive organs, through which the material world affects the spiritual. Then the diminutions of consciousness which accompany brain lesions may not be due to the destruction of consciousness itself, but to the failure of its physical organs to transmit it properly.” ~ William James

The 'receiver/transmitter' model of mind and consciousness. Alduous Huxley also considered that idea when tripping on mescaline. In Doors of Perception, he wrote that the total potential of consciousness, which he terms "Mind at Large," is too vast and overwhelming for biological survival. The brain and nervous system have evolved to perform an "eliminative" or "reducing" function, filtering out the mass of "useless and irrelevant knowledge" from the Mind at Large. What remains is a "measly trickle" of consciousness, which is the selective awareness necessary for us to stay alive, focus on practical matters, and operate on "this particular planet." This idea has many resonances, not least in current models of 'predictive processing' and 'relevance realisation'.

Quoting apokrisis

Then semiosis actually defines life and mind as a modelling relation within the entropic world. It gives a sharp reason why consciousness can arise when a particular modelling process arises within Nature at a certain sufficiently cool, large and complex moment in its Big Bang history.

The question that is begged, however, is why it should it? Not that I expect that you or I or anyone can answer such a question, but it can at least be contemplated.

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised.

Quoting C S Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.101

The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution, and that evolution is of the nature of a psychical process, by which the confused becomes distinct.

Reply to Gnomon In all of this, it is important to get a grasp of the history of the emergence of scientific worldview. And if that is difficult it is because we're situated within it, so we tend to look through it, rather than at it.

[quote=Michel Henry, Barbarism] ...Modernity resuts from a clearly formulated intellectual decision whose content is perfectly intelligible. It is the decision to understand, in the light of geometric-mathematical knowledge, the universe as reduced henceforth as an objective set of material phenomena. Moreover, it constructs and organises the world exclusively on the basis of this new knowledge, and the inert processes over which it provides mastery.[/quote]

Within this worldview where does mind or consciousness fit? Why, it doesn't - for the very simple reason that it has been excluded at the very outset of the method, which accords existence only to those fundamental objective existents within the purview of the objective sciences. Hence the interminable arguments, confusion and controversy about whether or how 'consciousness exists'. Science seeks to define the mind in terms of the objective realm from which it was excluded at the outset. That, anyway, is the hardcore reductionist attitude, exemplified by such thinkers as the late Daniel Dennett.

So if you're asking what mind or consciousness is from within that implied framework you can only approach it by asking what kind of thing it might be, or where it might be, or what it might cause, and so on. Which is bound to fail, because it overlooks the exclusionary step that was taken at the very beginning of the modern scientific method.

Phenomenology realises this from the outset (Michel Henry, quoted above, was a phenomenologist, as was Edmund Husserl, who initiated this kind of analysis in his Crisis of the European Sciences.)

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epoch?, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method. However, there are now hybrid schools of phenonenological science appearing which do take this into account.

A recent example of this shift is The Blind Spot (by Marcelo Gleiser, Adam Frank, and Evan Thompson), which argues that science’s major omission has been the exclusion of lived experience from its own self-understanding. The authors, two scientists and a philosopher, call for a renewal of science that recognises consciousness not as an anomaly to be explained away but as the condition of all observation and knowledge (from book description.)

Quoting bert1

Indeed, functionalists do tend to end up defining 'consciousness' by fiat as a function, just as they have with 'life'. But in doing so making the concept irrelevant to the philosophy and what people actually mean by 'consciousness'

Why not check your terms before trotting out the nonsense.

AI as the impartial observer says…

The core difference is that functionalism views neurocognition and consciousness purely in terms of their computational or causal roles (what they do), while biosemiotics views them as processes of meaning-making and interpretation that are intrinsic to all living systems, emphasizing the biological context and the subjective "umwelt" (experienced world) of the organism.

Functionalist Approach

Focus on Causal/Functional Roles: Functionalism defines mental states (like pain, belief, or consciousness) by their causal relations to sensory inputs, other internal mental states, and behavioral outputs. It is unconcerned with the specific physical substrate (e.g., neurons, silicon chips) that carries out these functions, a concept known as "multiple realizability".

Analogy to Software: The mind is often compared to software running on the brain's hardware. The essence is the functional organization or program, not the physical material.

"Easy Problems": Functionalism is good at addressing the "easy problems" of consciousness, such as how the brain processes information for detection, discrimination, and recognition.

Third-Person Perspective: It primarily relies on an objective, third-person perspective, seeking to explain functions that could, in theory, be performed by any suitable system, including a sufficiently advanced computer.

Consciousness as an Outcome: Consciousness is generally seen as an emergent property or a functionally integrated pattern of the brain's activity, important for adaptive behavior and survival.

Biosemiotic Approach

Focus on Meaning-Making (Semiosis): Biosemiotics argues that life is fundamentally a process of sign production, interpretation, and communication, which is the basis for meaning and cognition. It studies pre-linguistic, biological interpretation processes that are essential to living systems, from bacteria to humans.

Embodiment and the "Umwelt": This approach emphasizes that meaning is actively constructed by an embodied agent within its specific environment, or Umwelt (subjective, self-experienced surrounding world). The mind is not just in the brain but deeply integrated with the body and its interactions with the world.

Addresses the "Hard Problem": Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes, which then expands to higher degrees of consciousness through complex, hierarchical information processing in the brain.

First-Person Perspective: It incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

Causality and Context: It introduces different modes of causality, including "sign causality" (meaning-based influence) and a focus on biological context (pragmatics), which are often overlooked in standard functionalist models that rely primarily on efficient (mechanistic) causes.

In essence, functionalism abstracts away from the biological substrate to focus on the logical architecture of cognition, while biosemiotics insists that biological context, embodiment, and inherent meaning-making processes are crucial to understanding consciousness and neurocognition.

So with less effort than it takes for you to make one of your little three line posts, you could have sorted out your confusion even before you started.

Quoting Wayfarer

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised.

Well biosemiosis has now turned all this from metaphysical speculation into firm science. What is woven into the initial conditions of the physical world is the incipient inevitability of its Second Law entropic drive running into a form of systemhood that can exploit its own loophole.

This is Pattee’s point about the symbol grounding problem. And the solution that biophysics has since delivered in discovering the lucky coincidence of the “convergence zone” of physical forces that arises in room temperature water at the semi-classical nanoscale of organic chemistry.

The problem for organisms that run on information is how a molecule can act as a message. And biophysics now tells us that the convergence zone is a place where all forms of energy arrive at a single narrow band of “currency exchange rates”. The cost of switching energy from one form to another becomes suddenly equivalent. And so an organism just has to pay the tiny extra cost of flipping some switch in a direction of its own beneficial choice.

I’ve described this for you at least 10 times in the past. But in one ear and out the other I guess.

But it says that the convergence zone effect was always going to be manifested by a Big Bang with the initial conditions that ours had. And then - not as a consequence of any entropic drive but due to emergence of this “unexpected” entropic opportunity - life and mind suddenly evolved,

Physics just needed to accidentally create the right habitat - something like the porous and mineral rich thermal vents of the ocean floor about 500 million years after the Earth’s crust started to stabilise - and boom. Life couldn’t help but get going as all it had to do was set up the most rudimentary self-organising metabolic loop and it would be off.

So symbol processing were always going to arise if a convergence zone was always going to emerge and result in a scale of physics just begging for the next thing of a symbol processing mechanism to take advantage of it free energy flow.

It switchability was a thing - however not a thing pure physics could do, yet information could - then that is why life and mind seem both continuous with physics, but also a little … detached.

Quoting apokrisis

I’ve described this for you at least 10 times in the past. But in one ear and out the other I guess.

Nothing I said is in contradiction to what you have said, although the dimension your analyses always seem to omit is the existential.

I’m also interested in the idea the biosemiotics puts back into science what Galileo left out, although that may not be of significance to you, given your interests mainly seem to be from a bio-engineering perspective, rather than the strictly philosophical.

Quoting apokrisis

Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes

Notice that this elides 'biological processes' and 'matter' by conjoining them with the "/" symbol.

Quoting Wayfarer

Nothing I said is in contradiction to what you have said, although the dimension your analyses always seem to omit is the existential.

So now I’m guilty of not being a dysfunctionalist instead of being guilty of being a functionalist? :sweat:

Quoting Wayfarer

I’m also interested in the idea the biosemiotics puts back into science what Galileo left out, although that may not be of significance to you, given your interests mainly seem to be from a bio-engineering perspective, rather than the strictly philosophical.

If by strictly philosophical, you mean free to just make shit up, then of course guilty as charged now. I don’t take that intellectual liberty. The facts constrain me.

Quoting Wayfarer

Notice that this elides 'biological processes' and 'matter' by conjoining them with the "/" symbol.

Or instead underlines the metaphysical claim being made. Nature is dissipative structure. And biology continues that physicalist story at the semiotic modelling relation level.

Reply to Gnomon
Gosh. You sure seem disappointed to me. Extensively so, in fact. Or is indignant a better word? Regardless, quod scripsi, scripsi.

Quoting apokrisis

strictly philosophical.
— Wayfarer

If by strictly philosophical, you mean free to just make shit up, then of course guilty as charged now. I don’t take that intellectual liberty. The facts constrain me.

:smirk: :up:

Quoting apokrisis

Nature is dissipative structure. And biology continues that physicalist story at the semiotic modelling relation level.

And philosophy?

Quoting Wayfarer

And philosophy?

Again, as I have told you so many times, I’m with Stanley Salthe in reviving natural philosophy as the argument against science’s reductionist turn. That is why we can agree on Scientism as being a bad thing, but then not agree that science is inherently non-philosophical.

You have your hobby horse on this point. But I believe that is only because you don’t want to be constrained by real world facts. There are just inconveniently too many of them.

AI summarising Salthe:

Stanley Salthe's Argument

Stanley Salthe, a theoretical biologist and complexity theorist, argues for a return to natural philosophy as a way to reintegrate the natural sciences and provide a more holistic understanding of the world. His main points include:

Counteracting Fragmentation: Salthe contends that modern science has become excessively specialized and fragmented. Different disciplines, and even sub-disciplines within them, operate with their own specific paradigms and often fail to communicate effectively or see the bigger picture. Natural philosophy, with its broader scope, can serve as a unifying framework.

Addressing Reductionism: He argues that a purely reductionist approach—breaking systems down to their smallest components to understand them—is insufficient for grasping complex, emergent phenomena like life and consciousness. Natural philosophy encourages a focus on holism, organizational hierarchies, and the relationships between levels of organization.

Reintroducing a Philosophical Perspective: Salthe suggests that modern science often avoids or dismisses fundamental philosophical questions (e.g., questions about purpose, emergence, or the nature of existence) as being outside the realm of empirical science. A return to natural philosophy would re-legitimize these questions and reconnect scientific inquiry with broader humanistic concerns.

A "Grand Narrative": He advocates for a more integrated, encompassing view of the world—a new "grand narrative" that acknowledges the emergent properties of complex systems and the directionality observed in nature (e.g., the flow of energy, the emergence of life and complexity).

Are you telling me there is even one point on that list you disagree with? So quit belly aching.

Reply to apokrisis I completely agree with that, and, astounding as it might seem, I'm not actually trying to pick a fight with you about it. And as for 'in one ear and out the other', I've read quite a bit of biosemiotic literature since being introduced to it by you. As I said, I think the argument can be made that the whole semiotic movement re-introduces the first-person element that Galilean scence tended to bracket out (in a different but complementary way to phenomenology. And no, I'm not "making shit up".)

Reply to Wayfarer So make up your mind whether you agree or disagree with me at this general level. Then if you have some more particular point to make it, then make it. Present that argument..

Reply to apokrisis I agree with you in some ways, but not in others. I respect your learning, but I'm not on board with Naturalism Triumphant.

And

First-Person Perspective: It (biosemiotics) incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

Where in your reckoning does this point figure?

Reply to Wayfarer

The 'receiver/transmitter' model of mind and consciousness. Alduous Huxley also considered that idea when tripping on mescaline. In Doors of Perception, he wrote that the total potential of consciousness, which he terms "Mind at Large," is too vast and overwhelming for biological survival. The brain and nervous system have evolved to perform an "eliminative" or "reducing" function, filtering out the mass of "useless and irrelevant knowledge" from the Mind at Large. What remains is a "measly trickle" of consciousness, which is the selective awareness necessary for us to stay alive, focus on practical matters, and operate on "this particular planet." This idea has many resonances, not least in current models of 'predictive processing' and 'relevance realisation'.

I had a trip once where I realised that the atoms in my brain were 99.999% (or something) empty space and if I rocked the boat too much I would fall into the gaps between these atoms and never be able to get back out. Also on another trip, the distinction between me and the outside world became reversed. So I was the outside world talking and thinking back at me and my body was external (other) to that, or the subject being talked to.

Quoting Wayfarer

Where in your reckoning does this point figure?

Enactivism.

Reply to apokrisis :up:

Reply to Punshhh Both, I can completely relate to.

Reply to apokrisis I am grateful to you for using an AI to generate your answer, which I will take to represent your view. It is much easier to understand than your posts typically are. I heartily recommend you copy its style. I note with relief it does not begin any paragraphs with 'So'.

ApoAI:Biosemiotics argues that life is fundamentally a process of sign production, interpretation, and communication, which is the basis for meaning and cognition.

I don't see a significant difference between mind as a process and mind as a function in relation to the conceptual issues. Both are a system doing something. In either case, whether it be a system performing interpretation embedded in an environment, or a brain realising a function, there is still a conceptual disconnect with that and consciousness.

ApoAI:]Biosemiotics attempts to address the "hard problem" of subjective experience (qualia) by positing that proto-experience or a basic level of awareness is a fundamental aspect of all matter/biological processes, which then expands to higher degrees of consciousness through complex, hierarchical information processing in the brain.

This is panpsychism, which you have previously distanced yourself from. ApoAI's apparent separation of proto-experience from consciousness is conceptually mistaken; consciousness does not admit of degree.

ApoAI:First-Person Perspective: It incorporates a necessary first-person, internal perspective, recognizing the subjective, felt qualities of experience that are difficult to capture with a purely functional, third-person approach.

That's interesting. What is needed for an emergentist account such as this is sufficiency, not necessity. Necessity requires that consciousness is already there. What is needed is the conceptual link that moves from sign production, interpretation, and communication to consciousness, without presupposing consciousness, on pain of begging the question. Why must the processes of sign production, interpretation, and communication embody/enact/realise/constitute (pick your concept please) consciousness?

Thank you for getting help to write an intelligible post. If it wasn't a potential violation of the site rules, I would encourage you to do so again for the sake of clarity. However the hard problem remains untouched.

Quoting bert1

I note with relief it does not begin any paragraphs with 'So'.

:grin:

Quoting bert1

This is panpsychism, which you have previously distanced yourself from.

Well no. Biosemiosis would say that only biological systems that model - that stand in some sign relation with their physical reality - are making meaningful relations with the world. And to get to what you would want to call consciousness, they would need some kind of neurosemiotic model.

So biology is in a modelling relation mostly in the sense that it is running an intelligent relation with its own metabolism. And neurology is where an organism is in a modelling relation that is a self in relation to its wider environment.

Quoting bert1

Thank you for getting help to write an intelligible post.

But what use was it if you just misinterpret it in your usual fashion, bending it to your prejudices and not getting the point at all?

Quoting apokrisis

And to get to what you would want to call consciousness, they would need some kind of neurosemiotic model.

Why?

Reply to bert1 Why what? You mean why is it worth even getting AI to answer the questions you could ask it yourself directly.

Feel free to irritate machine intelligence all you like. Report back on what sense it can make of your fixed prejudices.

Quoting apokrisis

Why what?

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

Quoting bert1

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

You say that what you call consciousness is accounted for by panpsychism – the simpleminded non-theory that matter is mind and mind is matter.

They are just the one universal substance and so "co-exist" as a brute fact. End of discussion, as no discussion can find a difference worth the bother of cranking up a causal account.

Panpsychism is simply an article of faith among its adherents. It's best metaphysical support is that its adherents claim anything which smacks of a scientific theory or causal account fails before it starts. Consciousness is interior to material being, and so cannot be explained in exterior fashion. Mutter the magic incantation "the Hard Problem" in a profound and reverential tone and your job is done.

If you are convinced by this epistemological position, any further words are wasted on you. You are not even listening. Pure faith protects your prejudice.

Reply to apokrisis The question I asked was this:

Quoting bert1

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?

Reply to bert1 So stop being a lazy bugger and define what you mean by consciousness in a way that is relevant to how I treat it.

Panpsychism is a brute fact claim rather than a causal account. So why do you badger me endlessly for my causal account except to again crow about your brute fact claim.

You show no interest in what I say. And yet you won't leave me alone.

Quoting apokrisis

So stop being a lazy bugger and define what you mean by consciousness in a way that is relevant to how I treat it.

No. This is a philosophy forum. Show how your worldview solves philosophical questions of consciousness as philosophers define it.

Quoting apokrisis

Panpsychism is a brute fact claim rather than a causal account. So why do you badger me endlessly for my causal account except to again crow about your brute fact claim.

I am merely pointing out your repeated error.

Quoting apokrisis

You show no interest in what I say. And yet you won't leave me alone.

It's because I love you.

Quoting bert1

No. This is a philosophy forum.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Reply to apokrisis You never give your causal account. And now we have further confusion, is consciousness caused, realised, enacted, or what? As for panpsychism, the AI you used said biosemiosis incorporates the view that all matter has proto-experience, which is indistinguishable from panpsychism. I didn't say that, you did, via an AI, in your post. You're not engaging with any of the philosophical issues, and again and again, you decline interrogation.

Quoting bert1

?apokrisis The question I asked was this:

Why would they need some kind of neurosemiotic model to get to what I would want to call consciousness?
— bert1

Quoting bert1

You never give your causal account.

I've given it way too many times.

Quoting bert1

...again and again, you decline interrogation.

Do I hear the furious stamping fury of the world's tiniest jackboots? :broken:

Reply to bert1 So elsewhere you do try to stack up some sort of causal account. We can use that given you are only going to take the "Vee ask der questions here!!" approach in any "philosophical" discussion with me.

In reply to...

I'm not saying they re not conscious but a primitive immature consciousness and so his experience is... very simplistic and immature.
— Raul

You answered...

Oh sure. I don't disagree with that. However I do think it entails that consciousness does not admit of degree. 'Primitive immature consciousness' is still consciousness. Complicated mature consciousness is still consciousness. The consciousness of an adult is the same kind of consciousness that a baby has, namely the kind of consciousness that permits experiences to happen at all. It is that very simple basic capacity to experience that is the subject of discussions in philosophy. It is in that sense that I don't think the concept of consciousness admits of degree.

EDIT: To put it another way, the adult is no more or less able to have experiences than the child. They do differ in the kind of experiences they can have. But that's a difference of content, not a difference of consciousness.

EDIT: To put it a third way, the hard problem is located at the difference between no experience happening at all, and some experience, no matter how 'primitive' it is.

So this gives us some glimpse of your hidden argument. And what jumps out is the need to explain how one can call on "the primitive" as a concept that one could measurably substantiate.

Biosemiosis offers its primitive in Pattee's notion of the "configurable switch". So a completely concrete argument is being made. And about ten years ago, biophysics added the evidence to substantiate the theory. So problem solved I say.

Whereas we can see your completely question-begging approach to this issue of where the "epistemic cut" between mind and matter is to be found in Nature. Your approach is that it goes down at least as far as newborns and probably any level of living organism – which is thus far, perfectly biosemiotic.

But then the hands start waving. As not biosemiotic cut off point has been identified, you say well, no choice chaps, we got to roll on all the way down to fundamental particles. Or something. Mumble, mumble.

That leaves nothing much to argue against as nothing much of any metaphysical import is being said.

Here is an AI refresher on Pattee's epistemic cut, on which I've posted so often...

Howard Pattee used the metaphor of a configurable switch (CS) to help explain how the non-physical realm of formal information can exert causal control over physical processes, a mechanism necessary to bridge his proposed "epistemic cut".

The epistemic cut describes a fundamental, unavoidable boundary between the physical world (governed by continuous, rate-dependent, deterministic laws) and the symbolic/formal world (governed by discrete, rate-independent rules, such as descriptions or measurements).

Key aspects of the switch metaphor:

Arbitrary Control: A switch's physical construction is irrelevant to its function of simply being "on" or "off" in a circuit. Its operation is "arbitrary" with respect to the underlying physical laws of matter, yet it exerts control over the flow of electricity.

Formal Prescription: The setting of the switch (e.g., open or closed, "on" or "off") is a formal, informational decision (a form of "prescriptive information") that dictates the path of physical events (the flow of current).

Bridging the Divide: The "configurable switch" serves as a conceptual model for how a formal choice can be instantiated in physical reality, allowing the symbolic (e.g., genetic code instructions) to direct the material (e.g., protein synthesis in a cell) without violating physical laws, but rather by applying non-integrable constraints.

The "switch" metaphor helps to illustrate the mechanism by which top-down, intentional control (the symbolic side) can interact with bottom-up, physical dynamics (the material side).

And here is an old post of mine about the biophysical evidence for this biosemiotic theory....

On the transition from non-life to life

Biophysics finds a new substance

This looks like a game-changer for our notions of “materiality”. Biophysics has discovered a special zone of convergence at the nanoscale – the region poised between quantum and classical action. And crucially for theories about life and mind, it is also the zone where semiotics emerges. It is the scale where the entropic matter~symbol distinction gets born. So it explains the nanoscale as literally a new kind of stuff, a physical state poised at “the edge of chaos”, or at criticality, that is a mix of its material and formal causes.

The key finding: As outlined in this paper (http://thebigone.stanford.edu/papers/Phillips2006.pdf) and in this book (http://lifesratchet.com/), the nanoscale turns out to be a convergence zone where all the key structure-creating forces of nature become equal in size, and coincide with the thermal properties/temperature scale of liquid water.

So at a scale of 10^-9 metres (the average distance of energetic interactions between molecules) and 10^-20 joules (the average background energy due to the “warmth” of water), all the many different kinds of energy become effectively the same. Elastic energy, electrostatic energy, chemical bond energy, thermal energy – every kind of action is suddenly equivalent in strength. And thus easily interconvertible. There is no real cost, no energetic barrier, to turning one kind of action into another kind of action. And so also – from a semiotic or informational viewpoint – no real problem getting in there and regulating the action. It is like a railway system where you can switch trains on to other tracks at virtually zero cost. The mystery of how “immaterial” information can control material processes disappears because the conversion of one kind of action into a different kind of action has been made cost-free in energetic terms. Matter is already acting symbolically in this regard.

This cross-over zone had to happen due to the fact that there is a transition from quantum to classical behaviour in the material world. At the micro-scale, the physics of objects is ruled by surface area effects. Molecular structures have a lot of surface area and very little volume, so the geometry dominates when it comes to the substantial properties being exhibited. The shapes are what matter more than what the shapes are made of. But then at the macro-scale, it is the collective bulk effects that take over. The nature of a substance is determined now by the kinds of atoms present, the types of bonds, the ratios of the elements.

The actual crossing over in terms of the forces involved is between the steadily waning strength of electromagnetic binding energy – the attraction between positive and negative charges weakens proportionately with distance – and the steadily increasing strength of bulk properties such as the stability of chemical, elastic, and other kinds of mechanical or structural bonds. Get enough atoms together and they start to reinforce each others behaviour.

So you have quantum scale substance where the emergent character is based on geometric properties, and classical scale substance where it is based on bulk properties. And this is even when still talking about the same apparent “stuff”. If you probe a film of water perhaps five or six molecules thick with a super-fine needle, you can start to feel the bumps of extra resistance as you push through each layer. But at a larger scale of interaction, water just has its generalised bulk identity – the one that conforms to our folk intuitions about liquidity.

So the big finding is the way that contrasting forces of nature suddenly find themselves in vanilla harmony at a certain critical scale of being. It is kind of like the unification scale for fundamental physics, but this is the fundamental scale of nature for biology – and also mind, given that both life and mind are dependent on the emergence of semiotic machinery.

The other key finding: The nanoscale convergence zone has only really been discovered over the past decade. And alongside that is the discovery that this is also the realm of molecular machines.

In the past, cells where thought of as pretty much bags of chemicals doing chemical things. The genes tossed enzymes into the mix to speed reactions up or slow processes down. But that was mostly it so far as the regulation went. In fact, the nanoscale internals of a cell are incredibly organised by pumps, switches, tracks, transporters, and every kind of mechanical device.

A great example are the motor proteins – the kinesin, myosin and dynein families of molecules. These are proteins that literally have a pair of legs which they can use to walk along various kinds of structural filaments – microtubules and actin fibres – while dragging a bag of some cellular product somewhere else in a cell. So stuff doesn’t float to where it needs to go. There is a transport network of lines criss-crossing a cell with these little guys dragging loads.

It is pretty fantastic and quite unexpected. You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell.

A third key point: So at the nanoscale, there is this convergence of energy levels that makes it possible for regulation by information to be added at “no cost”. Basically, the chemistry of a cell is permanently at its equilibrium point between breaking up and making up. All the molecular structures – like the actin filaments, the vesicle membranes, the motor proteins – are as likely to be falling apart as they are to reform. So just the smallest nudge from some source of information, a memory as encoded in DNA in particular, is enough to promote either activity. The metaphorical waft of a butterfly wing can tip the balance in the desired direction.

This is the remarkable reason why the human body operates on an energy input of about 100 watts – what it takes to run a light bulb. By being able to harness the nanoscale using a vanishingly light touch, it costs almost next to nothing to run our bodies and minds. The power density of our nano-machinery is such that a teaspoon full would produce 130 horsepower. In other words, the actual macro-scale machinery we make is quite grotesquely inefficient by comparison. All effort for small result because cars and food mixers work far away from the zone of poised criticality – the realm of fundamental biological substance where the dynamics of material processes and the regulation of informational constraints can interact on a common scale of being.

The metaphysical implications: The problem with most metaphysical discussions of reality is that they rely on “commonsense” notions about the nature of substance. Reality is composed of “stuff with properties”. The form or organisation of that stuff is accidental. What matters is the enduring underlying material which has a character that can be logically predicated or enumerated. Sure there is a bit of emergence going on – the liquidity of H2O molecules in contrast to gaseousness or crystallinity of … well, water at other temperatures. But essentially, we are meant to look through organisational differences to see the true material stuff, the atomistic foundations.

But here we have a phase of substance, a realm of material being, where all the actual many different kinds of energetic interaction are zeroed to have the same effective strength. A strong identity (as quantum or classical, geometric or bulk) has been lost. Stuff is equally balanced in all its directions. It is as much organised by its collective structure as its localised electromagnetic attractions. Effectively, it is at its biological or semiotic Planck scale. And I say semiotic because regulation by symbols also costs nothing much at this scale of material being. This is where such an effect – a downward control – can be first clearly exerted. A tiny bit of machinery can harness a vast amount of material action with incredible efficiency.

It is another emergent phase of matter – one where the transition to classicality can be regulated and exploited by the classical physics of machines. The world the quantum creates turns out to contain autopoietic possibility. There is this new kind of stuff with semiosis embedded in its very fabric as an emergent potential.

So contra conventional notions of stuff – which are based on matter gone cold, hard and dead – this shows us a view of substance where it is clear that the two sources of substantial actuality are the interaction between material action and formal organisation. You have a poised state where a substance is expressing both these directions in its character – both have the same scale. And this nanoscale stuff is also just as much symbol as matter. It is readily mechanisable at effectively zero cost. It is not a big deal for there to be semiotic organisation of “its world”.

As I say, it is only over the last decade that biophysics has had the tools to probe this realm and so the metaphysical import of the discovery is frontier stuff.

And indeed, there is a very similar research-led revolution of understanding going on in neuroscience where you can now probe the collective behaviour of cultures of neurons. The zone of interaction between material processes and informational regulation can be directly analysed, answering the crucial questions about how “minds interact with bodies”. And again, it is about the nanoscale of biological organisation and the unsuspected “processing power” that becomes available at the “edge of chaos” when biological stuff is poised at criticality.

Graph of the convergence zone: Phillips, R., & Quake, S. (2006). The Biological Frontier of Physics Physics Today 59

phillips-quake-2.jpg

Quoting apokrisis

My tentative answer is that there is, at least, a kind of incipient drive towards conscious existence woven, somehow, into the fabric of the cosmos. And that through its manifest forms of organic existence, horizons of being are disclosed that would otherwise never be realised. — Wayfarer
Well biosemiosis has now turned all this from metaphysical speculation into firm science. What is woven into the initial conditions of the physical world is the incipient inevitability of its Second Law entropic drive running into a form of systemhood that can exploit its own loophole.

Reply to Wayfarer's "incipient drive" (nascent power) sounds like another way to describe my own notion of EnFormAction (the power to transform : Energy + Form + Causation). And the "entropic drive" of your nascent science of "biosemiosis"*1 (Decoding Life Signs)*2 may also be relevant to the topic of this thread.

However, identifying the Cosmic Encoder of the program (language) for Life & Mind remains an open question for both science and philosophy. All three proposals are currently "metaphysical speculations" with the potential to coalesce into a new science integrating biology, psychology & cosmology. When we learn to speak the language of Nature, maybe we will come to "know the mind of God"*3.

The Initial Conditions of the Big Bang necessarily included Causal Power (energy) and Limiting Laws (program for directing energy). But the pre-bang source of those necessities is elided (omitted) from most scientific accounts of the origin of our universe. So hypothetical speculations on "what existed before the Bang?" include such unscientific non-empirical notions as eternal/infinite Gods, eternal Inflation, everlasting Multiverses, or unbounded sets of Many Worlds.

Physical science, though, begins after the Planck time-gap of the Big-Bang-beginning itself. At which time the metaphysical Laws of Thermodynamics were already in effect. And everything after that puzzling "low entropy" initial condition is defined as Entropic, where the Energy of the Bang coasts downhill toward a hypothetical Big-Freeze-ending, characterized by the total disorganization of "Cosmic heat death".

Yet somehow --- after a few billion years of deadly entropy --- Order, Organization and Organic-life emerged, despite the "absolute" Second Law of Thermodynamics. Apparently, that Incipient Drive*4, woven into the fabric of matter-energy, was programmed to produce the "manifest forms" that we experience as perceived Reality. But who or what was the programmer of biological & psychological codes that have manifested in animated & intentional matter?

My Information-based concept of EnFormAction, or Enformy (negentropy) may be another term for the hypothetical incipient drive that produced the orderly systems of Life, which communicate and reproduce via the physical & metaphysical processes of Biosemiosis (DNA + code). But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence? That may be the implicit & annoying "un-scientific" un-proveable Ontological question that provokes the antipathy displayed by some biological entities in their replies to this thread. For the record, my answer is "I don't know". :nerd:


*1. Biosemiosis is the process by which all living organisms interpret and communicate through signs,
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiosis
Note --- Signs & Symbols are patterns of matter (e.g. on-off, black-white) that convey useful information within a system. But only sentient entities are aware of the meaning of that information.

*2. Organic Information :
Life is a complex phenomenon characterized by a set of universal biological traits, including cellular organization, metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and heredity. It is a process that involves organized biological matter with the capacity for self-sustaining processes and evolution. Information, particularly in the form of DNA, plays a crucial role by providing instructions for building and regulating the components of an organism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=life+information
Note --- Biological Codes are patterns of matter (DNA) that can be interpreted by RNA for information necessary to build & regulate structural & biological functions.

*3. Mind of God :
The phrase "know the mind of God" is often used by physicists like Stephen Hawking to describe the ultimate goal of science : to find a unified, complete, and simple theory that explains all the laws of the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=physicist+to+know+the+mind+of+god
Note --- For the purposes of this thread, Inceptive Cosmos is the source of all energy (cause) and laws (codes) that eventually created a path to Life & Mind.

*4. Active Information :
Quantum physicist David Peat worked with, and was influenced by both Bohm and Roger Penrose, who also postulated some unorthodox theories of physics and metaphysics. I borrowed the name of his article¹ for this blog post. There, he noted that “Towards the end of the 1980s David Bohm introduced the notion of Active Information into his Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory”. To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

Quoting Gnomon

Physical science, though, begins after the Planck time-gap of the Big-Bang-beginning itself. At which time the metaphysical Laws of Thermodynamics were already in effect.

Don't forget that the Planck scale was as hot as it was small. As full of quantum momentum uncertainty as it was quantum positional certainty. As energy density curved as it was spatiotemporally flat.

So the Planck scale was the scale at which a unit 1 symmetry was broken. Counterfactuality was itself the thing that was born as now there could be the positive difference of a Cosmos that was doubling itself in one direction, and halving itself in the other. Doubling its spatiotemporal extent and therefore halving is thermal content.

Entropy could be generated as now there was a broken symmetry growing in a reciprocally driven fashion. The cooling was slowing the expansion. But the expansion was still inertially being driven by that initial energy density.

So if you want to talk about an incipient drive or nascent power, you have to remember that the Big Bang was as maximally hot as it was maximally small. And all it then does is grow in a dichotomous or reciprocal fashion where it flies off towards its Heat Death – the inverse state of becoming as large as it is cold.

The Big Bang – as an application of thermodynanics – is doing the very clever self-creating thing of digging its own heat sink. It is throwing its newborn self into its own self-dug grave.

Quoting Gnomon

But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence?

Pfft. That is mysticism and not serious metaphysics.

Let's get back to Nature as Anaximander, Heraclitus, Aristotle and others were trying to figure it out. With some considerable success.

Reply to Gnomon You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

My specific reply to you was written in more analytical terms - about how and why consciousness (or mind) has come to being seen as so inexplicable and hard to accomodate in the scientific picture (also subject of another OP I've just published.)

I'll repeat what I see as the key passage:

Quoting Wayfarer

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epoch?, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method.

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology. Basically it's a return to the Socratic maxim of 'know thyself'.

Quoting Wayfarer

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology.

Which is in a nutshell Peirce’s great achievement. He went back to phenomenology to discover its epistemic structure - its natural logic. And that became the ground for semiotics as the resulting ontological adventure.

Reply to apokrisis Sure, agree. But then, the philosophy encyclopedias all register him as an 'objective idealist', something which seems at odds with your naturalist leanings, doesn't it? That phenomenological element, which you correctly say is essential to enactivism, was also a major theme of The Embodied MInd, which was arguably one of the key texts of that school.

I've been reading some of Peirce's writing, which I find quite laborious, but generally congenial to the kind of idealism I advocate.

Reply to Wayfarer Sure. But then there is mind-like in substantial terms and mind-like in structuralist terms.

It is the second that I find to be of value in Peirce’s work. It is his writing on the science of logic, as he called it, that I lean on. The earlier scholastic realism of the essential logical structure of nature - the irreducible triad of a self-organising system, or semiosis - that he laid out before he got into the confusions of his objective idealism as developed in his series of Monist articles.

As you will know, the Monist was about Peirce’s only income at a time of extreme financial hardship. And the Monist was founded by a wealthy industrialist for the stated purpose: “The Journal is devoted to the work of conciliating Religion with Science" through the framework of monism.”

As AI says….

The journal's monism was a unique "religion of science" that conceived of the ultimate "oneness" as "God, the universe, nature, the source, or other names".

The journal was influenced by the German Monist League, founded by Ernst Haeckel, which was explicitly a "Religion of Science" that revered "divinized Mother Nature".

Peirce had a friend who introduced him to editor Paul Carus, which led to him publishing at least 14 articles in The Monist, including his major metaphysical series in the early 1890s.

So yes, Peirce definitely had his theistic leanings. He was already inclined towards arriving at his objective idealism. But also he needed the dosh and was writing for a specific audience.

But you will read the Peirce congenial to your views and I will continue on with the “mind-like structure” that biosemioitics could understand and develop in a way that nicely fits the facts of life and mind science.

Quoting apokrisis

Do I hear the furious stamping fury of the world's tiniest jackboots?

Absolutely. I want to nail you to a wall until you answer my questions. You have similarly become frustrated with me when I have refused to answer yours until you answer mine, ad nauseum. In civil society, this impulse to interrogate is generally considered somewhat anti-social. Someone even wrote about it and amusingly characterised it as the 'philosopher attack'. An excerpt:

Quoting Alan Cook

My sister nearly threw the phone at me, in tears, and left the room. My philosopher, on the other hand, was in an absolutely superb mood.

What just happened? My sister was the unfortunate survivor of a philosopher-attack.

But in philosophical circles, I suggest, there is a converse ethic. Avoiding rigorous (but polite) interrogation is what is anti-social. Less philosophy happens when people don't answer questions. I suggest a polite and productive way to proceed is in batches of questions. First one party has a go, and then the other.

Quoting Wayfarer

?Gnomon
You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

Yes. I found your "speculative element" to be compatible with my own hypothesizing. Your "cosmic rationale" of incipient drive for Life, and Reply to apokrisis's biosemiology speculation of entropic drive, seem to be similar to my own semi-scientific* philosophical rationale of EnFormAction as a natural evolutionary tendency toward Life & Mind. Since a Tendency (inclination toward an end) can't be seen in a telescope, none of these conjectures has hard scientific evidence. But soft rational inference may provide sufficient reasons for viewing Life & Mind as intentional (willful?) instead of an accidental "fluke".

Several prominent philosophers & scientists have proposed similar cosmic DRIVEs with less scientific backup : Schopenhauer's cosmic WILL*1, Bergson's ELAN VITAL*2, and Spinoza's CONATUS*3. So, your speculative rationale has a long history. But only in recent years has physical science pointed in the same direction, by combining Quantum Fields with Information Causation*4.

I don't know if physical Science will ever accept the logical implications of these speculations, but metaphysical Philosophy should be able to see evidence of Intention in Evolution*5. Of course, Teleology is heresy for Materialists, but may be unavoidable for Idealists . . . . and fodder for further debate. :cool:

* based on current sciences of Quantum Physics & Information Theory

*1. Schopenhauer’s Will as Intention :
EnFormAction is similar to Schop's Cosmic Will, except that it is characterized as Intentional instead of Accidental, and Purposeful instead of Aimless.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page19.html

*2. Elan Vital :
The concept of élan vital is also similar to Baruch Spinoza's concept of conatus*3 as well as Arthur Schopenhauer's concept of the will-to-live and the Sanskrit ?yus or "life principle".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_vital

*3. Conatus :
is a Latin term for an effort, striving, or impulse, but it is most famously used in philosophy, particularly by Spinoza, to mean the innate drive of all things to persevere in their own existence and to enhance themselves. This concept applies to everything from the physical will to live in an organism to the metaphysical tendency of a thing to exist as its true nature
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=conatus+meaning

*4. Active Information :
Quantum physicist David Peat . . . . To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

*5. Holism and Creative Evolution :
Change is typically imagined as a cause & effect Mechanism, but Bergson seems to view Darwinian evolution as a kind of Teleology or Entelechy.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page25.html

Quoting bert1

You have similarly become frustrated with me when I have refused to answer yours until you answer mine, ad nauseum.

If you had a counter argument, you would make it. You don’t. So we get the lame excuses. And your obsession with me continues. :up:

Quoting Wayfarer

... a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

Yet (any) "cosmic rationale" itself is merely a "fluke of" [the gaps]. There's no getting away from (some kind of) a fundamental "fluke" – I prefer one that is scientific, however, rather than merely mythic / mystical.

Quoting Gnomon

Teleology is [s]heresy for[/s] [irrelevant to] Materialists [antisupernaturalists], but may be unavoidable for Idealists

This is because "materialists" do not mistake – equate – their maps with the territory whereas "idealists" tend to do so (i.e. ontologize, or reify, ideas/ideals).

The fact that the first two posts were ridicule sucks. There's no defense for that on a forum like this.

I like the brain-as-receiver model. I can't find myself going for it but it certainly feels much more reasonable that just "it comes from thinking" which tells me nothing. Thinking itself seems a conscious act, so its tautological in some sense too.

That said, I can't find a good reason to think its true.

Quoting AmadeusD

I like the brain-as-receiver model.

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

Quoting apokrisis

I like the brain-as-receiver model.
— AmadeusD

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

:smirk:

Quoting apokrisis

But where did the original Information (natural laws?) come from, that caused a living & thinking Cosmos to explode into existence? — Gnomon
Pfft. That is mysticism and not serious metaphysics.

The question may be Idealistic, but not Mystical. I'm sorry you don't see the key distinction between practical Mysticism (submission) and rational Meta-physics*1 (understanding). Mystics*2 tend to think of their beliefs & behaviors as a pragmatic practice of appeasing the invisible powers-that-be. But philosophers typically think of their beyond-physics musings as attempts to gain control over the immaterial laws & principles of Nature*3. Modern Science is the practical application of empirical knowledge, but Metaphysical Theories explore the remaining pockets of ignorance, especially the mysterious minds of sentient observers : the "Hard Problem".

If there were no human scientists & philosophers, the universe would not have "laws", just consistent physical behaviors (things fall down, but why?). Hence, the inquiring human mind infers from those orderly processes that physical activity is not random or chaotic*3. Instead, there is a limiting Logic to physical processes that reminded some of the early scientists of the Rule of Law that distinguished rational civilized human societies from instinctual dog-eat-dog barbarian & animal societies. Mysticism is the rule of Taboo, while Metaphysics is the rule of Reason.

The Logical Efficacy of human Science depends on the Logical Structure of Nature. The human mind can read that Logic as meaningful Information*4. But, in view of the Second Law of Entropy, a reasonable question is what-or-who enformed the orderly & evolving structure of the world? How did the mathematical Singularity gain the power & order to develop from no-thing to every-thing? The Big Bang was not a destructive explosion, but a constructive creation : from Math to Matter.

Physics is the science of concrete Things --- moved & transformed by abstract forces --- while Meta-physics is the science of abstract Forms (ideas ; essences ; causes). Scientism is a mystical belief system in which inert Matter takes the place of active Gods. Immanentism supports matter-based beliefs by drawing a line of taboo between a priori (before Bang) and a posteriori (after Bang).

A "hard" Atheist might be content to believe that the logical order of the natural system "just is" --- circular reasoning --- without asking philosophical "why" or "how" questions. Such as : the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics"*5. Some of the early Greek philosophers even considered the Geometry of Nature as "sacred", while others were more pragmatic and down-to-earth*5. Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent? Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a sudden inexplicable beginning? :chin:


*1. Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
a. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
b. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was later labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
c. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: “Ideal” as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal “forms” (concepts) were prior-to the Real “substance” (matter).
d. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.
e. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

*2. Mysticism vs Metaphysics :
Metaphysics uses rational, philosophical inquiry to understand reality's fundamental nature, while mysticism relies on direct, personal, and often spiritual experience to achieve a higher understanding.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=difference+between+metaphysics+and+mysticism

*3. Natural Law vs Chaos :
If the world just happens to be rationally ordered by natural laws, why couldn't it just happen not to be the following day?
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1aio8d/what_compels_the_universe_to_follow_natural_laws/
Note --- "Laws of nature" are universal, consistent, and factual statements that describe observed patterns in the natural world, such as gravity or thermodynamics.

*4. Logic as Information :
Logic can be understood as the study of information, examining how information is encoded, manipulated, and inferred.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=logic+as+information

*5. Math is Metaphysical :
Mathematical metaphysics is the philosophical position that reality is fundamentally a mathematical structure and that existence is equivalent to being a mathematical object.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mathematics+metaphysics
Note --- Mathematical "objects" are actually abstract ideas in the mind of a subjective thinker.

Quoting apokrisis

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

That reason for concern may be why I remain skeptical of the brain-as-receiver postulation. Schizophrenia was interpreted by the ancients as demon possession. If so, then a demon-god might be the transmitter. Or a god with a few screws loose. :wink:

Quoting Gnomon

Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent? Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a sudden inexplicable beginning?

Well if you paid more attention to the key Planckscale fact that I mentioned - such as how the Big Bang was both the smallest smallness and the hottest hotness ever - then you might start to see that as the beginning of an explication.

But carry on with your mystic idealism. :up:

Quoting Gnomon

Do you think the universe is eternal & self-existent?

Ockham the Barber says "Yes".

Or do you accept the Cosmological evidence indicating that Nature as-we-know-it had a [s]sudden inexplicable beginning[/s] [planck radius]?

Of course.

Reply to apokrisis :smirk:

Quoting 180 Proof

Of course.

And why do you too ignore the Planck energy density that came with the radius? And then also the Heat Death that inverts the deal so the Big Bang becomes some maximally large radius with a maximally cold temperature or less possible energy density?

If you have an alternative explanation for the initial conditions of the Big Bang, now would be a good time to start crossing out and hieroglyphing your preferred theory.

Quoting apokrisis

And why do you too ignore the Planck energy density that came with the radius?

Why do you ask?

Quoting 180 Proof

Why do you ask?

Because that was the point I was making.

Quoting apokrisis

Well if you paid more attention to the key Planckscale fact that I mentioned - such as how the Big Bang was both the smallest smallness and the hottest hotness ever - then you might start to see that as the beginning of an explication.

"Planckscale" is not a fact, and not actual, but imaginary & Ideal & hypothetical. Since I'm not a physicist, "planck scale facts" do not compute for me. The "explication"*1 below is a series of analogies to things we can experience & measure, in order to explain a mathematical concept that is impossible to experience or measure. Can you get closer to a meaningful real-world explication?

Planck's Scale is not an actual measurement, but a theoretical limit to measurement. It's like saying Zero plus Infinitesimal. Does that mean anything to you? Can you really imagine an imaginary world where the "laws of physics" do not apply? Is the Planck Scale radius --- encompassing infinite potential for Causation (energy) --- empirical Science or theoretical (mathematical) Philosophy?*3 It's not useful for any real-world applications, but only for philosophical conjectures*4.

For all practical purposes, you might just as well say that the near-infinite universe we now experience originated from nothing --- no atoms or quarks --- but near-infinite Energy. That immeasurable, almost unimaginable, quantity of world-creating Causal Power is literally super-natural. And it is analogous to what I call, philosophically, Infinite Potential*5. :smile:



*1. Visualizing the Planck Length :
An imaginary radius smaller than anything you have ever seen or imagined
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=planck+scale+smallest+and+hottest#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:dc709fba,vid:bjVfL8uNkUk,st:57

*2. Planck Scale :
The Planck scale is a fundamental set of units where the current laws of physics break down, and both quantum mechanics and general relativity are needed to describe phenomena.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+is+planck+scale

*3. Math isn't Real :
The statement "math isn't real" is a philosophical debate, but it generally means that while the concepts of math are abstract human inventions, they are an incredibly useful tool for describing and modeling the real, physical world. Things like perfect circles or infinite numbers don't exist in reality, but they are useful concepts for understanding it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=math+is+not+real

*4. Planck's mathematical God :
Max Planck believed that science and religion both require a belief in God, but that each approaches this belief differently. For religion, God is the foundation and the starting point, while for science, God is the ultimate goal or the "crown" at the end of all reasoning. He saw no fundamental opposition between them, viewing them as complementary forces that both battle against skepticism and superstition.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=planck+god
Note --- Substitute "planckscale" in place of God, and you have a scientific "foundation and starting point" for our evolving Cosmos.

*5. A.N. Whitehead's beginning of an explication of the beginning of evolution :
However, if you think of the evolutionary Process as a computer Program, an appropriate metaphor might represent the system designer as a Programmer. “Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of God and the mind includes the idea of a timeless mind that contains pure potentialities and a mind that is empathic with the world”. {Google AI Overview}
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page46.html

Quoting Gnomon

Planck's Scale is not an actual measurement, but a theoretical limit to measurement.

It’s defined by the three constants, c,G,h. And there is a reason why Newtonian physics has been evolving towards a theory of quantum gravity by successively adding these constants.

Quoting Gnomon

For all practical purposes, you might just as well say that the near-infinite universe we now experience originated from nothing --- no atoms or quarks --- but near-infinite Energy. That immeasurable, almost unimaginable, quantity of world-creating Causal Power is literally super-natural. And it is analogous to what I call, philosophically, Infinite Potential*

My point is that the Planckscale is defined by this trio of fundamental ratios. They describe a first symmetry breaking in terms of a first spacetime extent with its matching energy density or momentum uncertainty content. Quantum uncertainty says that in a spacetime point of limiting size, there is a matching energy density or raw heat.

And all our physical theories embody this basic fact of existence. They require it to work as a system of differential equations.

So right there is something exactly the opposite of your handwaving. We have a triad of constants that are in a pure symmetry breaking relation. A unit 1 story as they are all the fundamental units and may as well be set to 1 as “measured values”.

If you want to get metaphysical, it starts with seeing that the “infinite” in fact has this finitude. Existence starts with neither nothing, nor everything, but with this unit 1 scale that is a symmetry breaking. A fundamental ratio between spacetime described under general relativity and energy density described under quantum field theory.

Our ideas about how this could be the case have to take to take a back seat to the fact it is the case. What becomes handwaving and speculative is ignoring what is now built into the very structure of our best physical theory.

To put it simply, Okun’s cube tells us that the Universe has the basic structure of being a relativistic spacetime container with a matching quantum energy density content. This is the broken symmetry. And that is then the new starting point for speculation about how to make sense of the situation.

If you are not addressing that fundamental fact - that when spacetime got started, it came full to the brim with an energy density content - then you just aren’t in the game.

Quoting apokrisis

The fact that it is a standard symptom of schizophrenia ought give pause for thought.

That is perhaps the worst poisoning of the well i've seen in a long time. Well done. It's also a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of two separate concepts:

Schizophrenics are under the impression their thoughts and feelings are imported from an external consciousness.

The brain-as-receiver model says nothing about any of that, and instead, posits that thearising of consciousness at all is akin to a television receiving signals for any image whatever. Its reasonable, albeit totally fringe and unsupported.

But your response was childish and dumb.

Quoting AmadeusD

It's also a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of two separate concepts:

Nope. I was making the point that a hallmark of “consciousness” is that it is embodied and agential. And we know how that is so from having studied the neurobiology - the architecture of brains.

Schizophrenia appears to arise from a fundamental breakdown in the timing and integration of neural activity. The sense of authorship for intents and actions, and also the ability to filter sensation in normal attentional fashion, goes awry as there is not the proper traffic in “efference copy” information. In simple terms, the frontal motor areas may initiate actions, and the sensory half of the cortex doesn’t get its copy of the commands in time to cancel them out of the state of sensory experience it then produces.

This is why symptoms like thought insertion and thought broadcasting arise. The precise compensation of an “implicit timing” connection breaks down. Normally we can tell whether we are moving the world or the world is moving us as in the first case, our sensory areas knows in advance to subtract the predictable action from its interpretive response. In the second case, the self-generated action catches the sensory areas by surprise. It feels like an alien hand is now in control. Sensations are thrusting at us. Thoughts and ideas are being imposed.

So we know how the brain generates consciousness by solving all these timing issues. How it has an architecture that deals with the fact it takes time just to pass along the message of what motor action we have planned so our sensory processing can already take that into account. An integrated sense of a self in its world can then arise out of a tricky neurobiological interaction. And schizophrenia is the kind of disorder that really brings this fact home.

And then we have this other nonsense about the brain being an antenna tuned into a cosmic psychic frequency. A sloppy and lazy analogy that we are meant to allow for the sake of argument. A hypothesis that completely wastes our time when we should instead be marvelling at the biological intricacy of the neural engineering that so easily seems to sustain the “normal” mind.

Being embodied and agential seems so effortless that yes, maybe it could be just a broadcast picked up off the airwaves.

But then nope. The neurobiology to get the job done is what we should reserve our amazement for.

Quoting AmadeusD

The brain-as-receiver model says nothing about any of that, and instead, posits that the arising of consciousness at all is akin to a television receiving signals for any image whatever. Its reasonable, albeit totally fringe and unsupported.

Another interpretation of the "Cosmos Created Mind" is Kastrup's Analytical Idealism*1. Reply to Wayfarer discussed this alternative in his thread*2. I'm not sure I fully understand K's "reasonable" and diligently documented update of ancient Idealism. Also, in order to maintain a philosophical line of reasoning, and to avoid getting into Religion vs Scientism diatribes, I prefer to use less dogmatic & divisive terms than "God". But Kastrup is bolder, and more self-assured than I am.

I wouldn't expect empirical support for a theoretical philosophical conjecture, that postulates a Cosmic Mind of which our little limited logic-parsers are fragments. But what do you think of his Mind as "foundation of Reality" and Idealism as "ultimate Realism" theory? I must admit that it bears some general similarity to my own Holism/Information/Causation hypothesis*3, which follows the chain of evidence back to the precipice of space-time, and merely points a philosophical finger toward the abyss of ignorance beyond. :chin:


*1. Bernardo Kastrup's Cosmic Mind :
he posits that the brain is not a receiver or filter of consciousness, but rather an image or representation of a universal consciousness that has undergone a dissociative process. In this model, physical reality, including the brain, is an external manifestation or "outside image" of internal mental processes
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=In+Bernardo+Kastrup%27s+view%2C+the+brain+is+not+a+receiver+of+consciousness%2C+but+rather+an+image+of+a+mind%27s+dissociative+process.+

*2. In Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism, the "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality. He uses the concept of dissociation, a mental process where a larger mind fragments into smaller, individual minds, to explain how individual consciousnesses like ours arise from this single cosmic mind. This "God's mind" is not impersonal but is, in this view, the ultimate reality, and the world we experience is an externalization of this mind.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1012470

*3. Creative Mind and Cosmic Order :
The traditional opposing philosophical positions on the Mind vs Matter controversy are Idealism & Realism. But Pinter offers a sort of middle position that is similar in some ways to my own worldview of Enformationism.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page10.html

Quoting Gnomon

The "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality.

- "undivided" but fragments.

- consciousness is a process and is thus not simple; it has system parts of thinking, planning, implementations, memory… Higher being may evolve in the future; the past is the wrong direction to look for it.

- Brahman myth again.

- Look up quantum field q-number table descriptions to approach the ultimate reality.

- Woo.

Quoting apokrisis

So right there is something exactly the opposite of your handwaving. We have a triad of constants that are in a pure symmetry breaking relation. A unit 1 story as they are all the fundamental units and may as well be set to 1 as “measured values”.

Sorry. But your notion of a "triad of constants"*1 that add-up to 1, sounds like "handwaving" to me. Not because it's wrong, but because it's over my head, as a layman. Besides, those "fine-tuned" constants*2 are interpreted by some scientists as evidence of an Anthropic Principle*3. Do you agree with that interpretation of pre-set or programmed initial conditions? Do you have a better explanation for the pre-bang existence of mathematical settings that are logically necessary for the emergence of animated matter? :smile:


*1. The triad of constants related in a pure symmetry breaking relation refers to the speed of light (\(c\)), Planck's constant (\(\hbar \)), and the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field (\(v\))
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=triad+of+constants+that+are+in+a+pure+symmetry+breaking+relation.
Note --- The "vacuum expectation value" is theoretical, not measurable. Do you view unsubstantiated theories as "handwaving"?

*2 Constants in science are fixed numerical values that describe physical quantities and are the same everywhere in the universe. They are either fundamental, like the speed of light (\(c\)), or used in experiments as "control variables" that are kept constant to ensure accurate results.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=constants+in+science
Note --- The Anthropic Principle seems to view your "triad of constants" as "control variables" to guide evolution toward the emergence of intelligent apes.

*3. The anthropic principle is the idea that the universe's fundamental constants have values that are necessary for the existence of life, which is why they appear "fine-tuned" for our existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=anthropic+principle+constants

Quoting PoeticUniverse

The "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality. — Gnomon
- "undivided" but fragments.

"Undivided-yet-fragmented" may sound like nonsense, unless you are familiar with Kastrup's analogy of psychological Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder)*1. But I would interpret his description of the Cosmic-yet-local mind of God more favorably --- as rational philosophy instead of spooky "woo" --- by using terms like : Holistic, yet composed of Holons*2.

For example, scientists treat Atoms as fundamental units of reality, yet they seem to consist of even more elementary elements such as protons, which are imagined to consist of invisible Quarks*3 : a nested hierarchy of systems within systems. I've never seen a quark, but I accept the hypothesis as a logical inference from "indirect experimental evidence". Does that whole-part notion make any sense to you? Sounds poetic to me. :nerd:

HOLISTIC HIERARCHY
[i]In structure's dance, a grand design,
Where systems within systems intertwine,
A nested view, a deep descent,
Through layers linked, omnipotent.

From simple cell to complex state,
A chain of being, small to great.
The root-bound earth, the tree above,
Each part connected, bound by love.

The universe, a cosmic whole,
Within it galaxies find their goal.
Each galaxy, a star-lit sea,
With solar systems, you and me.

The atom holds the proton's hum,
The quark, the part from which all's come.
A fractal pattern, ever true,
Reflecting order, old and new.

No level stands in solitude,
But fits within its multitude.
A box inside a larger frame,
Hierarchy is the constant game.

So see the order, clear and bright,
From deep below to soaring height,
The nested world, a wonder vast,
In structures built that ever last.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=poem+on+nested+hierarchy


*1.Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) :
A condition where a person experiences two or more distinct personality states or identities, which may have different names, memories, and ways of interacting with the world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=psychological+dissociation

*2. "Holistic holons" refers to the concept that reality is made of nested hierarchies of "holons," which are entities that are simultaneously both a whole and a part of a larger whole. This concept, introduced by Arthur Koestler, attempts to reconcile the part-whole dichotomy by viewing every entity as both autonomous in itself and a component of a greater system. A cell, for example, is a holon because it is a whole with its own internal structure and is also a part of an organ, which is part of an organism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=holistic+holons

*3. While quarks have not been directly observed, their existence is supported by a wealth of indirect experimental evidence, making them a foundational concept in modern physics, not a fabrication.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quarks+not+real

Quoting apokrisis

So we know how the brain generates consciousness by solving all these timing issues.

That's a somewhat different theory from all your previous ones. Are brains necessary for consciousness then? Is solving all these timing issues sufficient for consciousness?

Quoting Gnomon

I'm not sure I fully understand K's "reasonable" and diligently documented update of ancient Idealism. Also, in order to maintain a philosophical line of reasoning, and to avoid getting into Religion vs Scientism diatribes, I prefer to use less dogmatic & divisive terms than "God". But Kastrup is bolder, and more self-assured than I am.

'Idealism' is not ancient. The term first came into use with Liebniz, Berkeley and Kant. In hindsight, it is possible to describe some elements of Platonism as idealist, but it is not a term that was used in Plato's day.

As for Kastrup, I think he's worth reading, or listening to. He's an articulate defender of idealism.

Quoting Wayfarer

'Idealism' is not ancient.

:roll:

https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase_mobile?openform&fp=wcp23&id=wcp23_2018_0002_0001_0025_0035

Reply to 180 Proof I know that the Upanisads (for example) were described as 'idealist philosphy' by a German scholar, Paul Deussen. But the term 'idealism' only entered the philosophical lexicon with Leibniz, Kant and Spinoza. Once the term was introduced with its associated ideas, then precursors to it could be seen in Greek and Indian philosophy. But at the time, they didn't use that terminology and they didn't have the same categorical distinctions between mind, matter and idea, that modern idealism contains. "Idealism” in its systematic sense — the thesis that reality is in some way dependent on mind or spirit — only becomes a defined philosophical position in early modern Europe, with Leibniz’s monadology, Spinoza’s substance monism, and especially Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Once that vocabulary existed, scholars like Deussen and later Radhakrishnan could look back and identify idealist currents in Plato, Plotinus, and the Upani?ads. But those traditions themselves never used the conceptual apparatus of Idee, Bewusstsein, or Geist — their metaphysical language was quite different.

The abstract noun “idealism” appears in French as idéalisme by the late 17th century and in English around the mid-18th century. The Oxford English Dictionary records its first philosophical use in 1702, referring to “the theory that external objects are known only as ideas.”

So, yes, there are ancient pre-cursors to idealism, but idealist philosophy really only appears in the early modern era. This is further discussed in the thread Idealism in Context (of which yours was the first comment.)

Quoting Wayfarer

'Idealism' is not ancient. The term first came into use with Liebniz, Berkeley and Kant. In hindsight, it is possible to describe some elements of Platonism as idealist, but it is not a term that was used in Plato's day.

I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not ancient. But I was referring to the general belief that A> Reality is fundamentally Mental*1, or B> that the Human mind's model of reality is as close to true reality as we are likely to know*2.

Was your own Mind Created World talking about ancient A or modern B, which is a more recent update of Platonism based on modern science & philosophy, or some combination of the two, which is my BothAnd position? Either way, I'd still lump it under the broad heading of Idealism. Wouldn't you agree? Or do you prefer a less black & white distinction between Mind & Matter? :smile:


*1. Idealism originated in philosopher Plato, who is considered the father of the philosophy. It has roots in Classical antiquity and has evolved through various periods, including the 18th-century German Idealism movement, but its foundation was laid by Plato's idea that "the world of ideas" is the most real and perfect form of reality
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=where+did+idealism+originate

*2. while idealism holds that reality is fundamentally mental or a product of consciousness. Realism emphasizes the importance of empirical observation and the tangible, physical world for knowledge. In contrast, idealism prioritizes ideas, thought, and mental constructs as the basis for reality and knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=idealism+vs+realism+philosophy

Quoting Gnomon

I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not ancient. But I was referring to the general belief that A> Reality is fundamentally Mental*1, or B> that the Human mind's model of reality is as close to true reality as we are likely to know*2.

These are very difficult distinctions. But the point of my other thread, Idealism in Context, was that the human sense of their relationship with the nature of being has fundamentally changed over the course of history. (This is an Hegelian theme). The ancients did not have the sense we do that the world comprised material objects being driven by physical causation. Because of their religious sense, the Cosmos was seen as in some sense purposeful or as alive, in a way that is very hard for us to grasp. The way I put it in the other thread was:

Quoting Wayfarer

The earlier philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, maintained that true knowledge arises from a real union between knower and known. As Aristotle put it, “the soul (psuch?) is, in a way, all things,” meaning that the intellect becomes what it knows by receiving the form of the known object. Aquinas elaborated this with the principle that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.” In this view, to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is. (Here one may discern an echo of that inward unity — a kind of at-one-ness between subject and object — that contemplative traditions across cultures have long sought, not through discursive analysis but through direct insight).

So here, at the risk of sounding trite, the theme is the at-one-ness of being and knowing. Not as an intellectual construct or as the idea in the subject's mind corresponding to the object in the external world but as a way of being-in-the-world. That innate sense we possess of subjective awareness in a realm of objects had not yet taken hold. (I suppose, in some ways, this can be related to Julian Jayne's 'bicameral mind' or to R M Bucke's 'cosmic consciousness'. )

It is often said that Aquinas is a realist - which is true, but he was a scholastic or Aristotelian realist, which means something completely different to what we mean by 'realist'. For Thomism, with God as Being, reality is inherently participatory, in a way that it can't be for us. It is ecstatic realism, if you like. But as the belief took hold that the Cosmos was not an expression of the divine Intellect, then physical reality was accorded the kind of inherent reality that scholastic philosophy would never grant it. This is the origin of the 'Cartesian division' and the pervasive sense of 'otherness' that characterises the modern mind. (See this blog post on Radical Orthodoxy).

So Berkeley's idealism was a reaction against the whole idea of matter as a mind-independent substance - something which wouldn't have occurred as neccessary in earlier philosophy, as material form was always seen in combination with the intelligible idea which was immaterial as a matter of definition (but emphatically not an 'immaterial thing'! :brow: )

This is why expressions such as “cosmic mind” are inherently misleading when taken to denote some objective existent, as if it were on par with scientific concepts like fields or forces. In classical thought, the divine intellect was not conceived as an object within the universe but as the very ground of intelligibility — the condition under which being and knowing are possible at all. To interpret it as a thing among things is already to have shifted into a different ontological register. Whenever such expressions are used, we risk reifying what was never meant to be reified — trying to understand the source of intelligibility from within the subject–object framework that depends upon it.

Quoting Gnomon

Do you agree with that interpretation of pre-set or programmed initial conditions?

I’m arguing not for pre-set material conditions but for Platonic strength structural necessity. The argument is that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organisation.

Anything could perhaps be possible. But to become actually something, there is only the one kind of logical arrangement it could fall into.

The Planck constants of cGh - the speed of light, strength of gravity and unit of quantum uncertainty - are not about some specific material quantity. They are about the basic thing of a triadic structure of relations. The kind of self-organising or self-causing systems understood in particular by philosophers like Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce.

So if physics tells us that the Universe divides into the maths that describes its relativistic container and its quantum content, then right there we have the three things of the G that scales the relativist container, the h that scales its quantum content, and then the c that scales the integration of that which has been thus divided. The interaction between the tiniest scrap of coherent dimensionality and the way it is thus full of the hottest content – a situation which makes it inevitable that it would double and half its way to the opposite end of the spectrum that it itself has just opened up. The space will expand to some maximum extent in terms of how much drive is coming from a hot content itself cooling eventually into dilute insignificance.

You are thinking of initial conditions as a state of pre-existent material being. But I am thinking of them as a state of immanent logical structure. A very different metaphysics.

In this light, the Planck constants are logical constants rather than material quantities. It is the same as have 0 as the additive identity, and 1 as the multiplicative identity in arithmetic.

Give me a zero and I can break its symmetry by adding or subtracting.

The zero exists as that which is neither +1 nor -1, but already a start in those counterfactual directions.

More relevantly, given the growth of the Cosmos is geometric, one-ness then "exists" as that which anchors multiplication and division. It is the symmetry that gets broken by going off in those two opposed and complementary directions.

So the Planck scale encodes a "one-ness" as the symmetry that is revealed to "exist" because it did transparently get broken. It got broken by this doubling~halving story of a flexi-container with a diluting hot content.

And when we get deeper into the theory, we can see that this is the oneness of the Riemann sphere. A unit 1 geometry based on marry a real number translational symmetry with a complex number rotational symmetry.

The Riemann sphere has its foot in both the relativistic and quantum camp in that regard. But now we really are getting into the technicalities.

The point is think structural principles rather than material facts. The Big Bang has to have an explanation that goes beyond the contingencies of material being. It has to have the logical truth of a structural account.

Quoting bert1

That's a somewhat different theory from all your previous ones. Are brains necessary for consciousness then? Is solving all these timing issues sufficient for consciousness?

Is it really? Or are you just – as usual – always questioning and never listening?

Quoting apokrisis

I’m arguing not for pre-set material conditions but for Platonic strength structural necessity. The argument is that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organisation.

Again, I had to Google your abstruse terminology to break it down into more commonsense concepts that an untrained amateur philosopher can relate to. For example, I can imagine "symmetry-breaking" as an event characterized by change from static balance (nothing changes) to dynamic dis-equlibrium (directional change occurs). But then, if you add "spontaneous" to the mix, it describes an event that occurs suddenly & without warning, like a Cosmos-Creating Big Bang with no pre-history. Hence, inexplicable and not accessible to Reason. It must be taken on Faith.

The only way I can make sense of such enigmatic language is to compare it to something I am already familiar with. For example, Plato's notion of Cosmos from Chaos, in which Cosmos is imagined as timeless nothingness, but with simple un-actualized Potential (Ideality) for transforming into complex organized Reality. Perfect symmetry is static balance, and Reality is dynamic dis-equilibrium (things change). Perhaps Chaos is the realm of perfect-eternal-unactualized Forms, from which emergent-space-time-real Things emerge.

Consequently, the precise mathematical initial conditions of the Big Bang were "set" by accident instead of by intention. Hence, there was no Intentional Mind (God), only the infinite Potential of random Chaos (Fate) to explain how our living & thinking world came to exist. Is that what you are saying? :meh:



*1. Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking :
The statement that reality can only exist with a certain dichotomous or symmetry-breaking organization has significant support in both physics and philosophy, where the move from a perfectly symmetric potential state to an [i]asymmetric, ordered state is often seen as essential for the emergence of phenomena and complexity.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=reality+can+only+exist+with+a+certain+dichotomous+or+symmetry-breaking+organisation.

*2. Spontaneous vs Accidental :
Spontaneous events are unplanned and happen out of a natural, often sudden, impulse, while accidental events are unintentional or unintended
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spontaneous+vs+accidental

*3. Platonic strength structural necessity :
In a Platonic sense, "strength" would be an eternal and unchanging "Form" that exists in a non-physical realm, independent of any particular physical structure. Any real-world, physical structure only partakes in this ideal Form to a limited and imperfect extent.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Platonic+strength+structural+necessity
.

Quoting Gnomon

Plato's notion of Cosmos from Chaos, in which Cosmos is imagined as timeless nothingness, but with simple un-actualized

The Timaeus sort of gets it. The basic idea is that rather imagining the Cosmos as either a sudden creation event or as an eternal existence, it arises as an evolving structure where form is being imposed on a chaos. It all starts from a confused everythingness - so confused in its expression that it amounts to a nothing. It lacks any orderly structure. And then that structure starts to appear.

With Plato, the structure is already final and familiar as it comes from some transcendent realm of the good and the ideal. The sun, the stars, the planets. The cats, the dogs, the mice. These ideas exist as the eternal shapes of things, and these shapes are like cookie cutters to be impressed on matter as like some universal dough.

But my structuralism is more like Anaximander’s Apeiron and Heraclitus's Unity of opposites. The structure is logical and evolutionary. Counterfactual and dialectical. The symmetry-breaking of a dichotomy. And so everything starts by identifying that first act of dichotomisation that could start to organise a world.

Anaximander's Apeiron sounds like a primal stuff, but it was more like the most primal state of unformed and unbounded potentiality. And the first symmetry-breaking that started to organise it into a definite state of somethingness was this raw possibility starting to separate in two counterfactual directions. Just as a random fluctuation, some part of the Apeiron could start to grow a little warmer. But with counterfactual logic, that meant it had to leave some adjacent part of the Apeiron a little cooler.

You get two for the price of one with this kind of logical symmetry-breaking. Both the something and its other thing. What starts to emerge in co-arising fashion is the larger significant thing of a widening state of contrast. The heat can keep getting hotter, and the cool keep getting cooler. And before long, this is triggering other symmetry-breaking change.

The cool naturally is damper. And the hot is naturally dryer. So now we have also the appearance of wetness as the increasing absence of the dry, and the dry as the increasing absence of the wet. With everything becoming increasingly divided like this, you get the four elements emerging. The warming and drying zone turns into the still a little bit cool and damp thing that is the air. Shedding its lingering cool and damp in this fashion, it thus gets really hot and really dry so turns into fire. The lightest element which therefore rises even beyond the light air to fill the heavens with its flames.

In counterfactual fashion, the cold and the damp goes in its shared counter-direction to congeal into first water and then earth. Being heavy – subject to gravity rather than levity – it all falls towards a common centre where it composes the Earth with its land and ocean.

So this is the metaphysics. A hierarchy of symmetry breaking. One kind of change builds on the others. Each change is a dichotomous splitting. And then as all these changes pile up on each other, we start to get a complexly developed world. The Earth as a clod of dirt and with its puddles of water. The sun and stars as fiery points of heat and light that have risen up as far as they can go. Being divided allows also for a mixing of the elements while also preventing their collapse back into the undifferentiated potential of the Apeiron that begat them.

And you should be able to see how the Big Bang has the same symmetry-breaking metaphysics.

In the beginning there was just some generalised notion of a potential. Logically there has to be at least the possibility of such a state of raw possibility because – well here we are. And then it was broken by being divided against itself.

Your favourite dichotomy is information~entropy. Order versus chaos. Form vs matter. Rules vs actions. So if you imagine that as the broken symmetry that had to develop out of some initial symmetry, how does that story go? If information is a difference that makes a difference, and entropy is a difference that doesn't, then what is the step that comes before that distinction arises? What is it for there to be just an Apeiron of difference where differences neither clearly yet count as making a difference, but also not clearly failing to count as a difference.

If you can account for that state – as perhaps a state of radical logical vagueness, Peirce's definition of that to which the PNC fails to apply – then you are starting to think about reality coming into existence not out of nothing, nor even out of an everythingness exactly, but something even less than that. The less than nothing which is a vagueness, an Apeiron, a state that has neither matter nor form as yet as that is what still needs to co-arise as a primal symmetry breaking.

So getting back to the Big Bang, I pointed out to how it is a tale of dichotomous symmetry breakings. Somehow relativity gives us the dynamical container – the spacetime ready to grow. And quantum theory gives us our dynamical content – the energy density or momentum uncertainty that will grow the container, but in doing so, begin to cool itself in reciprocal fashion.

Each direction is set up so that the symmetry breaking is not all done in a split second. It is a symmetry breaking that takes until the end of time to complete itself. The doubling~halving can just roll on forever as the Big Bang grows larger and cools down more. We are now down to just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. But it will take about eight billion years to chop that number in half to 1.35 degrees K.

So the Universe is in some ways almost completely symmetry broken. A really long way from its starting point of 10^32 Kelvin. And yet also still relentless growing and cooling. It can't arrive at its Heat Death until it gets right down to 10^-30 Kelvin, presuming we can believe that dark energy sets this final limit on cosmic growing and cooling.

Anaximander imagined the world starting out of the self-organising separation of the warm and the cool. That rather presumed the existence of space and time as the stage where this rather material event could have happened. But still, it was the right logical idea. Symmetry-breaking as a developmental process feeding on itself. A division that continues until it reaches its own end. A division that also grows complexity in the process as new divisions can arise out of the old divisions and add all the material variety that we see. Starting with the four elements.

The Big Bang is based on cGh physics. A triad of constants. Or the set of basic relations that defines the basic symmetry being broken – the way G stands opposed to h as the measures of what is the cooling relativistic container, and what is its hot quantum contents. And c is the measure of the rate at which everything is being moved apart while also remaining in causal connection. The rate at which this mixture of dimensionality and energy density is thermalising.

The Big Bang is also the tale of all the topological phase transitions that rapidly complexify the initial symmetry breaking. First you get radiation. That cools and spreads enough to condense into a fine dust of gravitating matter. The dust clumps into balls that under pressure catches fire – becomes stars powered by fusion. That results in the production of heavy elements which get released in supernova collapses. Clumping of heavy elements makes planets. Eventually it is all going to get swept into blackholes and radiated away as the coldest and longest wavelength radiation possible.

So the same metaphysical picture. A symmetry breaking of the kind that can feed off itself and so persist until its time is at an end. A symmetry breaking that also is self-complexifying for a long time, but then eventually re-simplifies to its simplest end state. Anaximander's cosmology also reasoned that what arose would also collapse back into the great vagueness whence it came.

Another Greek metaphysical dichotomy or unity of opposites. Heraclitus's harmony and strife. Aristotle's growth and corruption. Order can grow, but then it can also decay. Information can arise out of entropy, but it can also return to entropy. Signal looms out of the noise, and can then get lost back in the noise again.

It is all about a way of seeing reality as a developmental process. The symmetry breaking that creates some seed of distinction. A primal contrast that is already growing as it is logically a reaction against itself. To go in one direction is not to be going in the other direction. And now there the thing of that other direction going in its own counter-direction. This logical starting point can keep going off in its two opposed directions forever, and even start complexifying to become full of such dichotomous symmetry-breakings. But it also can eventually exhaust itself. The Big Bang can become so spaced out and cooled down that it just runs out of puff.

So the symmetry-breaking that I have in mind is the dichotomisation that takes forever to reach its own natural end. The contrast that both grows and dilutes. It grows as it is driving itself apart in opposed directions. But that drive is also being sapped at a matching rate.

The result is a powerlaw curve. A doubling~halving trajectory that begins with a hot bang and ends with the coldest and emptiest whimper.

Reply to apokrisis Ever a drunk in recovery/reflection, I'll drink to your fact-based, autopoietic story. :up:

Reply to apokrisis I am interested in this topic, including a biosemiotic approach to the emergence of consciousness. I can't elicit replies from you about it, which is very frustrating, but what you do and don't want to engage with is obviously up to you. I wonder if you would be willing to recommend a paper or two specifically on this topic, focusing as much as possible on the move from unconscious processes, to those involving meaning, the development of a self-other distinction, developing models, making predictions, or however the argument goes, until we get to the necessary and sufficient conditions for experience. You have given some idea of this, but by no means in enough detail for me to be able to get the argument clear in my head. I have read Pattee's "Cell Phenomenology: The first phenomenon" which was very interesting. Are you aware of any other papers on this? I could ask AI, and I may yet, but I'm hoping it will be easy for you to point me in the direction of a paper or two. If you don't want to that's OK. It's not my preferred method of learning - I prefer a live specimen to examine, but we can't always get what we want.

Quoting apokrisis

The Timaeus sort of gets it. The basic idea is that rather imagining the Cosmos as either a sudden creation event or as an eternal existence, it arises as an evolving structure where form is being imposed on a chaos. It all starts from a confused everythingness - so confused in its expression that it amounts to a nothing. It lacks any orderly structure. And then that structure starts to appear.

Timaeus*1 observed that, in the real world, "nothing happens/changes without a cause". So he seems to assume that even the ever-changing Real world must have had an Ideal origin : a hypothetical god/urge/impulse with creative powers. That seems to be the presumption behind most of the world's religions. Except that the God is typically envisioned more like perfect order & absolute power, instead of "confused everythingness".

Most religious/philosophical worldviews have also postulated a logically-necessary First Cause from which space-time was born. Yet, in order to avoid getting into religious debates about which god, I tend to use the abstract-generic term "First Cause", or simply "Causation", without specifying any attributes, such as structure or personality. And First Cause or Prime Mover usually implies a transcendent source of causation.

Unfortunately, my trolling nemesis on this forum is an immanentist*2, who denies any beginning to space-time. Hence, there is no First Cause, or Demiurge or Apeiron*3. So the Real World is an "evolving structure" that has existed forever, cycling but never beginning or ending. Does that sound like a reasonable alternative to the current scientific evidence that space-time suddenly exploded from a mathematical point into a complex cosmos? Does forever causation make the Hard Problem of human consciousness irrelevant?

Heraclitus' Unity of Opposites*4 sounds more like a logical truism than an explanation of our evolving universe. Yet again, it seems to imply that Consciousness exists eternally in opposition to Unconsciousness, whatever that means. And one traditional name for that immortal Mind is "God" or "Brahma", serving as the whole of which our mortal minds are holons.

The topic of this thread --- Cosmos Created Mind --- could be construed as "form being imposed on chaos". Hence, Mind is a natural emergent biological process that originated in the sudden transformation of potential Chaos into actual Cosmos and subsequent evolution. Does that make sense compared to the other theories of Ontology and Epistemology? :nerd:



*1. Timaeus suggests that since nothing "becomes or changes" without cause, then the cause of the universe must be a demiurge or a god, . . . .
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=timaeus

*2. Immanentism : Spinoza's concept of an immanent God is that God is inseparable from nature and exists within the universe, rather than as a transcendent, external creator. For Spinoza, "God or Nature" is the single, all-encompassing substance, and everything in existence, including humans, is a modification or expression of this divine substance. This means God is the active force in the world, not a being that stands outside of it, making the world and God identical and interconnected.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spinoza+immanent+god
Note --- According to physical science, the "active force" in the real world is Energy. Which causes all change, via impulse & inertia, but does not explain such immaterial processes as Life & Mind.

*3. Apeiron : Anaximander's apeiron is the concept of a boundless, indefinite, and eternal "first principle" from which all things originate and to which they return.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=anaximander+apeiron

*4. Unity of Opposites : Heraclitus's "unity of opposites" is the concept that seemingly contradictory forces are interconnected, mutually dependent, and part of a single, unified whole. This dynamic equilibrium is essential for the cosmos, as tension and strife between opposites like day and night, or hot and cold, create harmony and are the engine of change. According to this view, opposites define each other; a shadow needs light to exist, and a thing becomes warm by first being cold.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Heraclitus%27s+Unity+of+opposites.+

Quoting Gnomon

So the Real World is an "evolving structure" that has existed forever, cycling but never beginning or ending.

This story makes more sense – is more consistent with quantum cosmological evidence (as well as e.g. Spinoza's, Epicurus' & Laozi's spectulations) – than any of the other cosmogenic alternatives.

Does that sound like a reasonable alternative to the current scientific evidence that [s]space-time[/s] [false vacuum collapse] suddenly exploded [s]from a mathematical point[/s] into a complex [spacetime]?

It's not an "alternative"; (metaphorical) BBT might be just (our) observation-limit of the most recent phase-transition (i.e. symmetry-breaking event 13.81 billion years ago) in the "cycling" "evolving structure" of the universe.

Does forever causation make the Hard Problem of human consciousness irrelevant?

Well, that's a pseudo-problem at most (i.e. faux-epistemological fodder for woo-of-the-gaps idealists), so it's not even "irrelevant". :yawn:

Quoting apokrisis

The result is a powerlaw curve. A doubling~halving trajectory that begins with a hot bang and ends with the coldest and emptiest whimper

Great post!

Quoting Wayfarer

This is why expressions such as “cosmic mind” are inherently misleading when taken to denote some objective existent, as if it were on par with scientific concepts like fields or forces.

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects. To avoid misleading, when I use the Quantum Field or Universal Gravity as analogies to the Cosmic Mind notion, I try to make clear that these "forces" are not "objective" and observable, but rationally inferrable from observed processes.

For example, Gravity, like all forces, is not a material thing, but a causal relationship between things*1. One theory even postulates that Gravity is negative Energy, i.e. Entropy*2. Yet again, those "forces" are measurable only in terms of inter-relationships, not directly. And relationships are mental, not material.

A recent blog post discussed the notion of Active Information, and noted that "Ironically, the primary methods of highly effective Quantum Physics are based, not on Matter, but Mathematics : Quantum Field Theory (QFT)*3. :smile:



*1. Cosmic energy is the highest form of all kind of life force that is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient- which exists in the earth cosmos, between the galaxies, and in the space. It is this energy that animates life and maintains balance in the entire universe.
https://siddhacosmic.org/profile/
Note --- This interpretation of Vacuum Energy is not my theory, but merely an example of various Cosmic Field/Mind/God theories drawn from scientific models. And it seems similar to the Non-local Consciousness concept in Dan Brown's novel. I'm merely exploring that non-mainstream cosmology in this thread, because it seems implicit in some forms of Idealism.

*2. Entropic gravity is a theory proposing that gravity is not a fundamental force but an emergent, macroscopic force driven by disorder and the tendency of the universe towards greater entropy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=gravity+is+entropy

*3. Quantum Fields :
“QFT taken seriously in its metaphysical implications seems to give a picture of the world which is at variance with central classical conceptions of particles and fields, and even with some features of Quantum Mechanics.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/
Active Information blog post : https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html

Quoting 180 Proof

This story makes more sense – is more consistent with quantum cosmological evidence (as well as e.g. Spinoza's, Epicurus' & Laozi's spectulations) – than any other cosmogenic alternatives.

Cyclic cosmology does seem to fit with the current science. But isn't that because time has yet to be brought properly within its models? Quantum physics still assumes the existence of a Newtonian notion of time and that remains to be fixed.

So eternalism becomes just an assumption baked into the theory, not something the theory explains or provides reasons for. And then a cyclic universe is a way to fill that eternity with something we can be more sure about – a Big Bang/Heat Death story of at least one Cosmos that self-organised itself into existence, but then also appears to permit the externalist to argue for an infinity of such cycles of birth and destruction.

However once we dig into cosmology, there is concrete evidence of how time itself must have an evolutionary development.

A big case in point is how the Universe starts out as a relativistic soup of radiation - a world ruled by c - but then with the Higgs phase transition, suddenly turns into a realm of co-moving matter dust. Particles gain the mass terms that now mean they all travel at some speed between “rest” and c. And so time is changed in the qualitative sense that mass lags the global rate of thermalisation and decoherence.

The radiation fireball decouples to become the cosmic microwave background, racing away - doubling and halving - at its rapid rate with its one speed. And a matter dust is left behind as a swirling gravitational cloud of particles moving at a sub-c rate and thus experiencing this new thing of now trailing along in the wake of the CMB. All sorts of different speeds or rates of change and interaction have become possible. The very nature of time has been transformed - even though this more complex temporality is what we see as our simplest possible Newtonian notion of time.

So time is scaled by c under special relativity. And it gains inner complexity by that speed limit being broken by mass allowing particles to drag behind the general rate of change to now have their own individual experiences of how time is passing from their own inertial or comoving frame.

Then another way time gets complexified is by it being broken superluminally. If the metric expansion is decoupled from the energy density dilution - as it is supposedly during inflation, or again at the Heat Death when dark energy eventually freezes the cosmic event horizon at a fixed distance - then again this is a phase transition from the simple SR light cone point of view.

You start with the simplicity of a Cosmos that just evolves at c. But then that can be broken by both the emergence of a super luminal structure and a sub-c rest mass or comoving level of temporal structure.

So my point is that what we know about the Big Bang should act as a constraint on our metaphysical claims. And we know the Universe was a doubling-halving symmetry breaking from at least is first billionth of a second. We can see it had a decoupling when the radiation dominated part split off and raced away, leaving a comoving dust diddling about at all speeds between 0 and c. We can surmise the appearance also of a superluminal aspect to temporality as both inflation and dark energy have good arguments behind them.

There is a lot to show the way our reality works. And it is a story of emergence rather than eternity. Of self-finitude and its topological complexification rather than infinity and a lack of meaningful physical development.

Both eternalism and emergence could be jammed together. And that is what cyclic cosmologies try to achieve. But my view is that is metaphysically confused. A ruse to stave off having to give a fully consistent account.

Our Big Bang cosmos has emergence stamped all over it. I have already argued here about how that can work. How the Planck triad of constants emerge in “unit 1” fashion, with space and time being baked into that in the way the Riemann sphere can describe. The sphere that Hawking employed in arguing time emerges in the fashion that when you stand at the North Pole, there is no further north you can stand. If you move at all, you are now rotating back southwards in mirror fashion.

Sure, some big names like Penrose and Bojowald are pushing cyclic cosmology. There is no reason not to have a go at other explanations.

But also, the Big Bang tells its own story. We have clear evidence of the nature of temporality evolving. Time seems irreducibly complex as we should know just by it having the universal speed limit of c baked into its Planckian initial conditions. And then by the fact this “unit 1” rate of change - this rate of events, rate of decoherence, rate of causality - is itself swiftly broken into both sub-c and superluminal sub-realms of spacetime.

Complexification is inevitable once the Universe makes its first symmetry breaking that defines “eternity” as a clock that is ticking in a period doubling fashion. Starting as hot as it is small and then doubling and halving in a forever-ised fashion.

Newtonian time is a clock that ticks out the same beat all the time. There is nothing thus to distinguish a beginning from an end. A second is always a second.

But the Big Bang ticks out a period doubling rhythm. It starts out dropping off a cliff in terms how fast it seems to be expanding and cooling. But 14 billion years on, the tick that once lasted a mere 10^-43 seconds as its first beat now takes a rather leisurely 8 billion years to achieve the same degree of thermalising change.

Time has slowed almost to a stop from that emergent perspective. And it will continue to slow and thus eventually become the moment lasting “forever”.

Quoting Gnomon

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects.

Science has moved beyond the simplistic everyday notion of “matter” is what you should be saying.

They know that this notion is simplistic folk physics.

Reply to PoeticUniverse :up:

Quoting bert1

I have read Pattee's "Cell Phenomenology: The first phenomenon" which was very interesting.

And how did this change your opinions? What more focused questions will you be bringing to your interrogation of the “live specimens” that you have locked up in your padded cellar?

Reply to apokrisis Do you know of any other papers on this topic I can read?

Reply to bert1 Yes.

Reply to apokrisis It didn't change my mind much, mainly because of what seemed to be his definition of the phenomenal. Some of the questions I would ask i have already asked you in this thread. Questions about definitions, necessary and sufficient conditions, and the precise relationship between structural and functional concepts and phenomenal concepts. Also elaborations on concepts that are unfamiliar to me.

Please will you make a recommendation or two?

Quoting Gnomon

Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects. To avoid misleading, when I use the Quantum Field or Universal Gravity as analogies to the Cosmic Mind notion, I try to make clear that these "forces" are not "objective" and observable, but rationally inferrable from observed processes.

Right - so what you're saying is that 'cosmic mind' is analogous to the 'noumenal'. Agree they might be rationally inferred, but as such cannot be empirically validated.

Quoting apokrisis

So my point is that what we know about the Big Bang should act as a constraint on our metaphysical claims.

Do you think that the 'multiverse speculation' (that there are potentially infinitely many 'other' universes) can be or ought to be similarly constrained?

Quoting Wayfarer

Do you think that the 'multiverse speculation' (that there are potentially infinitely many 'other' universes) can be or ought to be similarly constrained?

Absolutely. If anyone is extrapolating some aspect of reality to infinity, it has to be wrong. Just because dichotomies are what rule metaphysical logic. The infinite is impossible if symmetry-breaking is by definition the finitude of arising within complementary limits.

Reply to apokrisis Agree. I think an awful lot of specious reasoning is associated with multiverse ideas. (Not that it isn't fertile ground for science fication.)

Quoting Wayfarer

Right - so what you're saying is that 'cosmic mind' is analogous to the 'noumenal'. Agree they might be rationally inferred, but as such cannot be empirically validated.

Yes. If noumenal Mind could be empirically validated, we wouldn't be discussing it on a philosophy forum. But, since the 20th century, scientific validation has become more Mathematical (rational) than Empirical (sensory), more inferential than observational. For example, the scientific theory of an ethereal Quantum Field*2*3 as the fundamental essence of reality has led some thinkers to equate it with a Cosmic Mind*4. The theoretical "points" that define the field are mathematical entities that do not occupy space or exhibit mass. Hence, the foundation (substance??) of our material world is postulated to be immaterial*3 : more like a mental definition than a material object*5.

Since it is contrary to my current understanding, in order to make sense of the Brain-as-receiver-of-cosmic-signals notion featured in Dan Brown's fiction (OP), I've been motivated to venture into such speculative (fictional?) Physics/Philosophy. But I'd still like to see some empirical evidence (pro or con) that the human brain could conceivably be a passive receptacle for meaning, instead of an active generator of ideas. Until then, I'll continue to assume that my thoughts are my own. And that the Cosmos is not an eternal deity (Spinoza), but a temporary physical/mental system born of uncertain parentage. :smile:



*1. Noumenal Science :
The statement "quantum is noumenal" is not a standard scientific or philosophical claim, but a specific idea within certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and philosophy. It suggests that the reality that physics describes (the "phenomenal") is different from the true, underlying reality (the "noumenal"), which is the case in Emmanuel Kant's philosophy. Some physicists propose that "noumenal" descriptions of quantum systems, which are local and complete, are what quantum mechanics is truly about, rather than the observer-dependent phenomena we observe. 
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+is+noumenal

*2. In Universal Quantum Field theory (QFT),the universe's fundamental building blocks are not particles, but universal quantum fields*3 that permeate all of space and time. Particles like electrons and photons are considered to be excitations or "ripples" in these underlying fields. This framework views fields as the fundamental entities and is the basis for particle physics.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=universal+quantum+field+fundamental
Note --- Most particles, except Photons & Gravitons, possess measurable rest mass. But quantum Fields are supposed to be composed of statistical relationships between dimensionless points.

*3. A universal massless quantum field is a theoretical concept that posits a field permeating the universe with zero mass, with implications for topics like dark energy and dark matter.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=universal+quantum+field+massless

*4. Quantum Field = Cosmic Mind :
The "quantum field - cosmic mind" is a concept from speculative physics and philosophy that suggests the quantum field is a fundamental, universal consciousness connecting all things, including individuals. This idea, which overlaps with spiritual and mystic traditions, posits that our minds are not isolated but are expressions of this larger, non-local field, leading to the conclusion that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe itself, not just an emergent property of the brain. It's important to note that this is not a universally accepted scientific theory, but rather a group of hypotheses and philosophical interpretations.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+field+cosmic+mind
Note --- I prefer to say that Information (energy), not Consciousness (mind), is the essence of physical & mental reality.

*5. What is Matter? "
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter

Reply to Gnomon :eyes: :rofl:

Quoting apokrisis

Nope. I was making the point that a hallmark of “consciousness” is that it is embodied and agential.

You didn't make it well.

Quoting apokrisis

It feels like an alien hand is now in control. Sensations are thrusting at us. Thoughts and ideas are being imposed.

Which is specifically not what the receiver theory entails, or imagines. It jettisons this entirely to even get moving. Given this context, I understand what you've said and why. But then it's simply ignorance of what's posited in this theory (and again, I've already acknowledged its weak and we have no good reason to take it on).

Quoting apokrisis

And then we have this other nonsense about the brain being an antenna tuned into a cosmic psychic frequency.

This is a strawman like no other. Turns out, I was right in my charge.

Quoting apokrisis

Being embodied and agential seems so effortless that yes, maybe it could be just a broadcast picked up off the airwaves.

But then nope. The neurobiology to get the job done is what we should reserve our amazement for.

This says nothing. It says that maybe the receiver theory is correct (in some way). And then just says no, lets be in awe of something else.

Everything you said can be true, and the basis of consciousness can still be a signal from without. I don't care to go further.

Quoting Gnomon

I wouldn't expect empirical support for a theoretical philosophical conjecture, that postulates a Cosmic Mind of which our little limited logic-parsers are fragments. But what do you think of his Mind as "foundation of Reality" and Idealism as "ultimate Realism" theory?

I've watched about 14 hours of Kastrup. He strikes me as someone I would consistently love to talk to, and would consistently laugh at through the course of our conversations. He has a great mind, imo, and some good ideas. But there are some extremely fundamentally concerning issues with his theories.

If 'mind' is the foundation of reality, he still has a massive job getting the sensation of the physical in. And he's never adequately done that, in my watching. I think the bold is interesting, and exactly hte reason responses like akroposis' up there is unwarranted. We couldn't seek empirical evidence, and we can't rest on incomplete descriptions via biology. Its is/ought all over again and I prefer to just entertain all comers while resisting magical thinking.

Quoting AmadeusD

Everything you said can be true, and the basis of consciousness can still be a signal from without. I don't care to go further.

You are being histrionic. This is a simple case of humans using their latest technology to explain the mind. The marvel of radio broadcast - the BBC world service as a message bounced off the ionosphere - offers a striking analogy. And more than a few people have built their own pet theories of mind around it. More than a few scientists indeed.

Quoting Gnomon

In Universal Quantum Field theory (QFT),the universe's fundamental building blocks are not particles, but universal quantum fields*3 that permeate all of space and time. Particles like electrons and photons are considered to be excitations or "ripples" in these underlying fields. This framework views fields as the fundamental entities and is the basis for particle physics.

[i]here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.
[/I]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKCP5k1RTmM&t=13s

Reply to PoeticUniverse :up: :up:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.

I would disagree. What emerges as fundamental are the invariances. The constraints of symmetry and then the degrees of freedom that result.

And the relativity vs quantum issue is about how the real number constraints captured in special relativity as it’s Poincare group structure, then turn out to have their gauge complex number symmetries as the local degrees of freedom.

So SR wants to constrain a 4D metric to a collection of spacetime points. But those points then gain the possibility of having an intrinsic spin structure. The realm of QFT organised particles or excitations arise as being that which the global Poincare invariance can’t suppress and now a further internalised level of symmetry and its breaking.

Everyone comes at relativity and QFT seeking to make one the master of the other. But a systems view says that never works. What works is complementarity. Relativity and QFT must somehow be a unity of opposites. Each is what constructs the other as that which it is.

So SR embodies the SO(3) spin invariance of a spacetime point. But that is also what makes possible the SU(2) gauge freedom that produces chiral particles with intrinsic spin organisation. The points of spacetime can turn out to have an internal fibre bundle structure where they become a thermalising network trafficking in the broken symmetry of their “twists”.

The metric can grow and its points can cool. It is that relation which is the fundamental reason why there can be anything at all.

So the big question is can gravity be assimilated to QFT as gravitons. And Lineweaver for example makes a good case for how gravitational dof are not really quantum but emergent at the level of the particle vectorisation that takes place at the reheating moment when inflation ends.

Vectorisation begins the Standard Model era by producing QFT particles doing their thermalising thing. The next step is the particles picking up a significant mass term with the Higgs symmetry breaking. And so you now have a sub-c story of vectors and spinors that are individuated. The points of spacetime have developed an inner spin structure that carries some momentum and position state that is individually distinctive and so now is mixing as a statistical ensemble - a thermal gas, that soon enough condenses into a matter dust.

So we arrive at massive particles as gravitational degrees of freedom - the matter dust wanting to clump into cosmic structure. But also a matter dust - a dust of protons and electrons - also organised under U(1) electromagnetic charge.

We can see right there how the complementarity principle is so fundamental it is organising everything at the start and still organising it at the end.

We have gravity as the mass of a Poincare-constrained real number point. And we have EM as the energy of a QFT complex number structured charge polarity. Two kinds of local dof. And the cosmic web is the comoving pattern of planets, stars, galaxies and filaments that results as electric charge largely neutralises itself as atomic structure, allowing the relatively weakness of gravity to show through as the complementary organiser of what exists. The extrinsic spin story of the turbulent and swirling heavens, dissipating angular momentum on the way to collapsing into black holes where it can.

This is the paradigm shift. Expecting a dichotomous logic whenever things get fundamental. Nature exists as a dynamical balance. And Nature may evolve in terms of its topological organisation - turn from a relativistic plasma to a comoving matter dust. But the same general principle of arriving at a mutual balance must always apply.

Which is why we shouldn’t try to dissolve one side of anything into what seems its other side. Both gravitational dof and electric charge dof rise to the surface in time as the Cosmos is thermally shaken down into its simplest possible invariant states. And one is the distillation of Poincare invariance, the other of gauge invariance.

You have massive and electrically neutral atoms doing their gravitating and radiating dance in an empty void. Or at least effectively empty as the quantum vacuum is now as cold in its energy density content as it is flat in its SR extent.

Quoting apokrisis

What emerges as fundamental are the invariances. The constraints of symmetry and then the degrees of freedom that result.

:chin:

Quoting AmadeusD

If 'mind' is the foundation of reality, he still has a massive job getting the sensation of the physical in.

Good point! Deriving Physical sensations from Metaphysical fundamentals, seems to be the inverse of the usual philosophical Hard Problem : Mental ideas from Physical substrate ; Ideality from Reality. That's why I put my money on the recent evidence of an Energy/Information interrelationship. Everything in the universe boils down to creative (change-causing) Energy. And tracks back to a logically necessary First Cause.

What we call Energy is not a material object but a causal process. And that process has evolved complex forms of matter such as the human brain*1. But so far, no clear explanation for why complexity of physical interconnections (wiring) could produce metaphysical Meaning and immaterial imagery.

Information is a pattern of dichotomies & oppositions --- black/white, one/many, certainty/uncertainty, etc. Such dual relationships are perceived as comparative ratios : mathematical values that can be written as strings of numbers. For example : the ratio of 3 to 7 is 0.428571428 ; which is not the way we perceive, but how we calculate, rationally.

The Energy/Information*2 relation is similar to the inverse Certainty/Uncertainty ratio of Quantum Physics. And Randomness vs Organization is also the focus of Complexity Science. But how do we convert those physical ratios and mathematical dichotomies into perceptual distinctions, and thence into mental experiences?

These comments may not make sense of the relation between Ideality & Reality (sense & sensation) until put into a larger context*3. Deriving Mind from Cosmos. :nerd:



*1. Yes, the human brain is widely considered to be the most complex object in the known universe due to its intricate network of approximately 86 billion neurons and over 100 trillion connections. This complexity allows for higher-level functions like consciousness, thought, and emotion, which are the basis of human experience, but also makes the brain extremely difficult to fully understand.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+the+human+brain+the+most+complex+thing

*2. The "mass-energy-information equivalence principle" suggests that information has a physical mass per bit.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+information+relation
Note --- Einstein equated causal Energy with measurable Mass and ultimately with tangible Matter. But when you add meaningful Information to the equation the result may be Conscious Mind. Hence, a possible path to a solution to the philosophical Hard Problem. It remains for physicists and information scientists to work-out the details.

*3. Active Information :
To explain the “active” element of Information, Peat says “I suggest that Information is the final element in a triad—information is that which gives form to energy”.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html
Note --- "Form" in this context can be both material Shape and mental Meaning.

Quoting apokrisis

You are being histrionic.

I am being exactly the opposite. I've explicitly said everything you're pointing out can be true, and consciousness can still arise from an external signal.

There's nothing ... at all.. histrionic about this. In any way, whatsoever.

Humans have not explained the mind.

Quoting AmadeusD

Humans have not explained the mind.

And you have studied the relevant science or merely offer an opinion?

Reply to apokrisis I've both studied the relevant science (to the degree a non-scientist) and (more importantly, for this discussion) the metaphysical philosophy. There is no mechanism identified for the emergence of consciousness by either crew (well, i say identified - I should be saying pinned-down. Several have been posited). To the degree this is an opinion, sure. But it is derived from quite a bit of uncomfortable reading. My position has had to change, for instance, upon that reading. I was initially an 'it must be entirely physical and contained within the structures of hte brain, even if hidden' person.

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, I'm sure it would be quite easy to explain (and honestly, I'd love to know. It's quite annoying feeling logically obligated to entertain divine command lmao). Please do (there is absolutely no sarcasm here, whatsoever. I am under the impression I'm under, and if it's wrong please set me right).

I am really not trying to be antagonistic. I felt you were being that way..

Reply to AmadeusDIf you have some enthusiasm for the “brain as an antenna” hypothesis, have you pursued the literature on it?

It was going the rounds in the 1990s. I chatted to quite a few of those pushing versions of it. Like Karl Pribram, Susan Pockett. Johnjoe McFadden, Benjamin Libet, Stuart Hameroff, Jack Tuszynski and others.

There is the more plausible version of the story which involves EM fields or quantum coherence being somehow part of how neurons get organised and so do their job within the brain. And then the plainly crackpot idea of there being a mind field or plane of consciousness which brain biology “tunes” into and so “lights up with” that magically subjective phenomenonal state.

So conversations about just this kind of sideshow controversy have shaped my own opinions about where the correct mind science is at. And I feel the proper way to think about all this is to seek the right structuralist theory of life and mind in general. An explanation broad enough to include everything from biology to sociology.

We don’t need to explain “consciousness” as if it is some magically emergent non-material stuff produced by nervous systems.

We need to have a structural understanding of cognition at its most generic evolutionary level - the central “trick” that we would call semiosis or the modelling relation.

This paper was cited earlier in the thread. And Pattee was about the single most rigorous thinker I encountered on the issue. But you have to plough through all the ways people get the issues confused before you can see why this kind of high level argument makes so much sense.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279737928_Cell_Phenomenology_The_First_Phenomenon

Quoting AmadeusD

If there were such a mechanism pinned down,

I defend biosemiosis as the mechanism behind life and mind.

Quoting AmadeusD

I was initially an 'it must be entirely physical and contained within the structures of hte brain, even if hidden' person.

And this is the mistake of searching for a particular causal explanation of consciousness rather than establishing first a general ground for such an account.

It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being.

Quoting apokrisis

We don’t need to explain “consciousness” as if it is some magically emergent non-material stuff produced by nervous systems.

This sounds like a straw man. It is a view, but not one that anyone I can think of holds.

apokrisis:It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being.

We need a lot more detail of course, but at first glance it is not clear what prevents this being accomplished by a zombie.

Quoting AmadeusD

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, I'm sure it would be quite easy to explain

One would have thought so.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.

Are these your words, or those of Vedral?

I'm vaguely familiar with Vlatko Vedral from his association with the Santa Fe Institute for the study of Complexity and Systems (Holism). Einstein forced us to accept that space & time are conventional concepts, not physical objects, that we use to convey notions of extension and change. But q-numbers and c-numbers are way over my little layman head. And, since I'm not a mathematician, I don't see them as beautiful or poetic.

So, if you don't mind, I'll continue to think of Space as a ocean that we can swim around in, and Time as-if a road that we can conceptually move forward & backward on. Even Einstein portrayed space-time as the fabled fabric of reality. And I suppose the theory of a universal quantum Field is an attempt to metaphorically express the philosophical notion of an interwoven warp & woof of abstract time & space. Besides, metaphors do exist, in some poetic sense, as ideas in human minds. But we shouldn't take those metaphysical analogies literally, as physical facts.

Such scientific figures of speech are merely updates on Plato's metaphors of Ideal Forms and Aristotle's theory of Reality in terms of Substance & Essence. Likewise, today some of us still imagine the real universe as-if it's a rational (enformed) Cosmos born of an negentropic Chaos*2. So, it's not too far-fetched to imagine our Real Cosmos as the metaphorical offspring of an Ideal (omnipotential) Source*3, beyond space-time, upon which our world depends for all necessities (matter & energy) of Life & Mind. :wink:


*1. Reality Is Not What It Seems : and there is no space or time. Instead, for Vedral, quantum numbers, also known as Q numbers, are the true essence of reality, and it's a much more beautiful and useful way to understand the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKCP5k1RTmM&t=13s

*2. Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

*3. " Omnipotential Chaos" describes the idea of the ultimate power of chaos, often found in mythological, fictional, or philosophical contexts, where chaos is not just disorder but a source of all possible potential.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=chaos+omnipotential
Note --- The Multiverse theory may be a 21st century version of Plato's Cosmos from Chaos myth.

Reply to bert1 When facts meet ignorance, opinions always win.

You are not exactly a guy for the details, even if you continually demand them. :grin:

Quoting apokrisis

You are not exactly a guy for the details, even if you continually demand them.

Regarding my own views, I don't have a great many details. There are large areas of uncertainty and doubt for me.

Quoting apokrisis

If there were such a mechanism pinned down, — AmadeusD
I defend biosemiosis as the mechanism behind life and mind.

Since I am only superficially familiar with the theory of Biosemiosis*1, can you briefly summarize the steps or stages in the evolutionary mechanism of A> Big Bang . . . . . X> Life . . . . Z> Mind? It seems to follow an evolutionary track similar to my own Enformationism thesis. But as far as I can see, neither can connect all the dots. For example, the transformation of Matter into Life, and Biology into Symbols, and Symbols into Consciousness. The only common factor that I see is Energy/Causation. :smile:

*1. Biosemiosis is the study of how life and meaning are interconnected, arguing that meaning-making (semiosis) is an inherent and fundamental feature of all life, not just humans. Biosemiotics connects the biological world to the mental by exploring how organisms use signs to interpret and interact with their environment, suggesting that the mind is not a separate entity but emerges from these complex biological and social relationships. This field considers communication and meaning-making at all levels, from cellular to social, and offers insights into the origins of life and consciousness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiosis+life+mind
Note --- Meaning, Symbols, Signs are forms of generic Information, which is ultimately related to causal Energy.

Quoting apokrisis

It we understand the semiotic modelling relation that gives us life and mind, we can then start to analyse “consciousness” as the stack of modelling relations that an embodied and socially cocooned organism can weave around its being

This may come across antagonistic - but it is unintended: I think you're looking at leaves and missing the trees they sprout from.

I respect that you take there be a, more or less, full answer to the problem of consciousness but to me, none of what you've put forward (which I highly appreciate) even attempts to answer it. I actually thikn what you're talking about is highly important, and you're dealing with it well. It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem. I don't take hand-waving very well..

Quoting bert1

This sounds like a straw man. It is a view, but not one that anyone I can think of holds.

It is an incredibly strawman, but its one people like Dennett tended to embrace, conceptually. I think its just a stand-in for "I dunno *shrug* lets look at something else".

Consciousness is a discreet sensation. We need it explained (well, no. We want it explained). We currently have no explanation for its emergence, or origin. All we have are postulates - none of which have held thus far.

Quoting AmadeusD

I actually thikn what you're talking about is highly important, and you're dealing with it well. It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem.

It might be repurposed as a theory of identity (or what makes a system an agent in some sense) rather than a theory of consciousness, perhaps.

I had a similar thought with Tononi's IIT model of consciousness. It might work better as a theory of individuation: the more information a system integrates, the richer its experience, and the more it has a sense of identity, perhaps.

Reply to bert1 That works for me, in an extremely cursory way. I'm not doing technical reading right now lol. Seems reasonable to integration is what's interesting to explain, but emergence is going to be the actual breakthrough.

That said, serious people (as apokrosis notes) do consider that consciousness is not its 'own thing' to be explained. I guess that makes no sense to me and smacks of how I described it above. I just could be dead wrong.

Quoting AmadeusD

It just seems utterly wrong to think it answers something like the Hard Problem. I don't take hand-waving very well..

Well I was in the audience when Chalmers first raised his hard problem argument. I had lunch with him after to see if he was actually serious and had much email debate with him in the year after that.

But of course, your unexamined opinions must prevail here too.

Be reassured, you seem marvellous at the hand-waving. A duck to water. :up:

Quoting apokrisis

“brain as an antenna” hypothesis . . . . It was going the rounds in the 1990s. I chatted to quite a few of those pushing versions of it. Like Karl Pribram, Susan Pockett. Johnjoe McFadden, Benjamin Libet, Stuart Hameroff, Jack Tuszynski and others.

I Googled McFadden*1, since I had heard of him, to see how he would explain "how the brain becomes aware". He seems confident that this philosophical & scientific "mystery" has been solved. But, like so many other postulated solutions, his explanation is a tautology, not a mechanism : "consciousness is experience". Yet, Biosemiology basically defines Consciousness as "meaning-making" by manipulating symbols*2b.

From what little I know of Biosemiotics*2a, it seems functionally similar to my own information-based theorizing. And I think it may be on the right track. But I'm not sure it has connected the dots of a physical mechanism of Mind. Instead, the ellipsis of the tautology may be filled-in with metaphysical "hand-waving", as my theory is often criticized. But I don't claim to have solved the Hard Problem. I'm merely proposing a different kind of mechanism. Which is similar to A.N. Whitehead's Process Philosophy*3.

Unfortunately, for a Materialistic forum, his Process fills the gaps in the evolutionary mechanism with an immaterial "Force", which I equate with mundane Energy & Causation (relations, not things). Both of which have been historically interpreted as Spiritual Forces*4. In order to forestall accusations of promoting woo, I try to avoid using spiritualist terminology. But it's not easy, because Modern Science, since Quantum theory, has been struggling with similar spooky concepts : entanglement, superposition, action-at-a-distance, non-locality, contextuality, relativity, and the observer effect. And gaps in Quantum non-Mechanics*5 are often filled with hand-waving notions. So, what's an amateur philosopher to do, when trying to resolve the "mystery" of Mind? :chin:


*1. "Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Surrey, said: "How brain matter becomes aware and manages to think is a mystery that has been pondered by philosophers, theologians, mystics and ordinary people for millennia. I believe this mystery has now been solved, and that consciousness is the experience of nerves plugging into the brain's self-generated electromagnetic field to drive what we call 'free will' and our voluntary actions."
https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/jet93h/johnjoe_mcfadden_genetic_scientist_claims_to_have/

*2a. Biosemiotics explains consciousness as a meaning-making and interpretation process inherent to all living systems, moving beyond a purely brain-centric view. It proposes that consciousness is an emergent property of a non-human organism's unique "sense-making" interface with its environment, shaped by its biology and communication at a cellular level. Rather than a fixed, individual phenomenon, consciousness is seen as decentralized and formed through the dynamic interplay and interpretation of signs from the organism and its environment.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiology+explain+consciousness
*2b. From a biosemiotic perspective, consciousness is a natural, biological phenomenon rooted in the meaning-making, communication, and interpretation processes of all living systems, not just humans.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=biosemiology+consciousness+is

*3. A.N. Whitehead's process philosophy posits that reality is fundamentally a dynamic, creative process rather than a collection of static substances. It views the universe as a constantly evolving "becoming" and emphasizes concepts like actual entities (the fundamental building blocks of reality) and prehensions (the way these entities interact and relate to each other). This philosophy integrates scientific findings with moral and spiritual intuitions, offering a view of reality as a vast, interdependent web of processes and relationships.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=A.N.+Whitehead%27s+Process+Philosophy

*4. Yes, "energy" is considered a spiritual concept in many traditions, where it's viewed as a vital, invisible force that animates all living things and connects the physical, mental, and spiritual self. Spiritual energy is different from scientific energy; it's often described as a life force (like prana or chi) that can be influenced by thoughts and emotions and is believed to be affected by practices like meditation and mindfulness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+energy+spiritual
Note --- Bergson's Elan Vital is a causal process, not a material substance. Causing Change, not "throwing Chi".

*5. Quantum mechanics is often described as strange or "weird" compared to classical mechanics because its principles, like superposition (existing in multiple states at once) and wave-particle duality (acting as both a wave and a particle), are counter-intuitive at a macroscopic level.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+not+mechanical

Throwing Chi looks good in anime, but not in realite

Quoting apokrisis

But of course, your unexamined opinions must prevail here too.

Be reassured, you seem marvellous at the hand-waving. A duck to water. :up:

I'm am completely unsure why you're being antagonistic. The idea that my opinions are "unexamined" after this exchange is risible.

Why not just actually have a decent exchange, rather than descending into ad hominem? I gave you your flowers. I don't take kindly to impolite, antagonistic interlocutors either.

Quoting Gnomon

"consciousness is [the] experience of".

Yes, that certainly seems blatantly question-begging. I don't know if the context helps at all.

EDIT: I haven't read the whole McFadden article, but the opener in the abstract isn't question-begging:

Quoting McFadden

"Abstract: In the April 2002 edition of JCS I outlined the conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory, claiming that consciousness is that component of the brain’s electromagnetic field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its informational content to the outside world. In this paper I demonstrate that the theory is robust to criticisms"

I also think consciousness is field-like, as he says in the opening sentence of the main article. That might be an interesting read.

Quoting apokrisis

…the plainly crackpot idea of there being a mind field or plane of consciousness which brain biology “tunes” into and so “lights up with” that magically subjective phenomenonal state.

What if the whole of evolutionary history is that process? That the emergence of life just is the manifestation of the subjective? And furthermore, that the reason this won’t be considered scientific, is because this field is something you’re never outside of, and so cannot objectify.

Doesn’t this dovetail with Peirce’s ‘feeling’ as fundamental? Matter as effete mind? The embodiment of Firstness?

Reply to Wayfarer That;'s definitely hte approach taken by philosophers who have taken psychedelics. That says whatever it says for different people, but for my part, it shows that there are ineffable experiences. These cannot be 'scienced'. Consciousness, being hte basis of all experience, is a prime candidate for never getting past the shrug response.

Reply to bert1 Quoting McFadden

"Abstract: In the April 2002 edition of JCS I outlined the conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory, claiming that consciousness is that component of the brain’s electromagnetic field that is downloaded to motor neurons and is thereby capable of communicating its informational content to the outside world. In this paper I demonstrate that the theory is robust to criticisms"

Yes. That sounds like a superficially plausible theory. But Materialists will ask, "where's the physical evidence" of an Information Field, and of "downloading" by the brain? Invisible Electromagnetic fields can seem spooky, hence they are imagined by ghost-hunters to be the substance of spirits : ectoplasm. The readings of their electronic instruments are indeed evidence of electromagnetism, but to interpret that static as the presence of a human soul may not be solid enough to convince a skeptic. Who may interpret the signals as the presence of an electrical mechanism, such as a cell phone, power-line or refrigerator . . . . and of belief prior to evidence.

So for me, the jury is still out on the CEMI Mind Field hypothesis. :chin:


*1. The CEMI (Conscious Electromagnetic Information) theory of consciousness, proposed by Johnjoe McFadden, posits that consciousness is an electromagnetic field generated by the brain's neurons. This theory suggests that neuronal firing creates an electromagnetic field which integrates information from the brain's digital processes, with consciousness arising as a part of this field that can influence subsequent neural activity. According to the theory, non-conscious actions are processed solely within the neuronal network, while conscious, voluntary actions are driven by neurons that receive input from this electromagnetic field.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=cemi+theory+of+consciousness
Note --- Animal brains are known to be electro-chemical organisms. But the Hard Question remains : how do those sparks & spurts transform from measurable Physical events into meaningful metaphysical Mental ideas & feelings. How does a flow of electrons integrate information? What integrating power connects a row of isolated dots into a continuous line? What are the steps & stages of transformation?

PS___ The clue I'm working on is the lab-measured relationship between physical Energy and mental Information?

Reply to GnomonAll of this still operates entirely within the materialist frame. It searches for an objective correlate—some measurable physical proxy—that can be mapped onto the intentional, semantic, and affective dimensions of experience. McFadden’s “cemi field” belongs to the familiar genre of quasi-scientific proposals that promise to locate consciousness in some previously overlooked physical substrate. But despite adopting new language (“information field,” “downloading,” “integration”), it remains materialist in essence: the hope is that adding one more physical principle will bridge the explanatory gap.

But ask the obvious question: even if such a field were discovered, would it bring us one step closer to the meaning of "know thyself"? The point is that we already have intimate acquaintance with consciousness—not as an object among objects, but as the observer, to whom anything appears as an object in the first place. No amount of empirical elaboration on electromagnetic dynamics touches this first-person dimension. It only charts more correlations.

So I think Mcfadden's confidence in 'solving' the hard problem is misplaced. Problems are things for which solutions are possible; mysteries are circumstances of which we are a part (McGinn?). In that sense the hard problem is not a puzzle awaiting a clever physical hypothesis. It is the modern reappearance of an older insight: that the subject cannot be catalogued as one more item in the world, any more than walking far enough will take you to the horizon.

Quoting Wayfarer

All of this still operates entirely within the materialist frame. It searches for an objective correlate—some measurable physical proxy—that can be mapped onto the intentional, semantic, and affective dimensions of experience.

I suspect that this Ontological & Epistemological dichotomy has plagued philosophers from the time of Plato & Aristotle : Hyle (matter) vs Morph (form). Which is why I focus on the modern understanding of Information (energy + form), as a possible way to bridge the gap in the map. :worry:

Science answers mysteries by using the scientific method to investigate unexplained phenomena, from the ancient mystery of Earth's regular seismic pulse to the modern enigma of dark matter. When faced with the unknown, scientists formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze data to develop theories, though some phenomena, like the conditions before the Big Bang, may remain outside of current scientific reach.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=science+answer+to+mysteries
Note --- The mystery of the Hard Problem is not about Phenomena, but Noumena. Yet that Physical/Spiritual distinction is denied by Materialists.

Kant argued that we can only know the phenomenal world, the world as it appears to us through our senses and cognitive faculties. We cannot directly experience noumena, but they are the underlying reality that causes our perceptions of phenomena.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kant+noumena
Note --- Noumena are not Percieved by physical senses, but Conceived by mental imagination.
Perceive : to become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses.
Conceive : to form an idea or imagine it in your mind.


Quoting Wayfarer

Problems are things for which solutions are possible; mysteries are circumstances of which we are a part (McGinn?)

Thanks for that reference. I suspect that the success of the empirical method, in over-turning time-honored beliefs, has given modern scientists confidence that it can solve any problem or mystery. But McGinn observes that, for philosophical "mysteries", the experiencing Observer is part of the Problem of learning how & why we experience the real concrete world in terms of abstract ideas. :cool:

[i]Problems are challenges to our current knowledge that we can realistically expect to solve through scientific inquiry or logical deduction. They are external to our being and can be overcome.
Mysteries are aspects of reality that are inherently beyond the scope of human cognitive abilities, not just temporarily unsolved. According to McGinn's view, we are inextricably part of the mystery itself (as conscious beings trying to understand consciousness), which is why we can never achieve a complete, objective solution in the same way we solve a "problem"[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=+Problems+are+things+for+which+solutions+are+possible%3B+mysteries+are+circumstances+of+which+we+are+a+part+%28McGinn%3F%29.

Reply to Gnomon I should add a caveat about McGinn. His “mysterian” view is useful in one narrow sense: he at least takes the reality of consciousness seriously, and he recognises that the standard physicalist story hasn’t solved anything. In that respect he’s a welcome counterweight to the eliminativist impulse.

But I think his explanation for the “mystery” goes astray. He says we can’t understand consciousness because humans lack the right conceptual equipment — as if a special metaphysical faculty were required to see how brain processes give rise to experience.

The difficulty is simpler, and much less exotic: the scientific conception of “nature” that we inherited from Galileo and Descartes deliberately brackets out subjective experience in order to describe the world in purely quantitative, third-person terms. So when we later try to fit consciousness back into that picture, it naturally appears inexplicable. (This has also been subject of the discussion in the First v Third Person thread.)

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one. The framework within which he's considering the problem has already excluded what it is we’re trying to understand. So I think McGinn identifies the symptom correctly — the intractability — but not the underlying cause. 'Knowing your own mind' is still eminently feasible but maybe it doesn't mean what a lot of people would like it to mean.

Ref: https://www.newdualism.org/papers/C.McGinn/McGinn_1989_Mind-body-problem_M.pdf

Quoting Wayfarer

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one.

Very good

Quoting Wayfarer

[C]onsciousness ... appears inexplicable.

That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one.

:up: :up:

Finally, you agree with us eliminativists and physicalists that, in effect, "consciousness" is not what it "appears" to be (e.g. a homuncular / user illusion).

Reply to 180 Proof I have never posited consciousness as a 'thinking thing' or as an homuncular entity. And an illusion is something that only a mind can entertain. Although I suppose I can't do anything about selective readings.

Quoting Wayfarer

So when we later try to fit consciousness back into that picture, it naturally appears inexplicable. . . . . The framework within which he's considering the problem has already excluded what it is we’re trying to understand.

I wasn't familiar with the minority philosophical position, that a Theory of Mind should be eliminated*1 from consideration of the human role in reality. I suppose that it's an attempt to remove the "bathwater" of imaginary gods & ghosts --- along with the "baby" of self-knowledge --- from folk philosophy, as unreal & immaterial. Such purging would result in elimination of Philosophy forums, which waste time & words on literal non-sensation.

But that lacuna would leave the world populated only by lumps of animated matter, some of whom walk bi-pedally and support large brains atop a vertical spine, and who create Cultures*2 that go beyond the providence, and instincts, of physical Nature. But, on a Philosophy forum, shouldn't we include the products of Philosophy (ideas, intelligence) in our analysis? That subjective inward focus would leave time & space for the objective stuff of Science to the experts on physics & chemistry websites. :nerd:


*1. Eliminativism is the view that some things, particularly mental states like beliefs and desires, do not exist and are part of a flawed, "folk" theory that a more advanced science (like neuroscience) will replace. It argues that these concepts are so fundamentally incorrect that they are not just reducible to physical processes but must be eliminated entirely, much like how concepts from older theories were discarded. For example, an eliminative materialist would argue that we don't have beliefs or desires, but rather that our current understanding of them is a pre-scientific theory that will be replaced by a more accurate description of brain activity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=eliminativism

*2. The statement "culture is metaphysical" suggests that culture is not a simple, tangible thing, but a complex system of shared meanings, beliefs, and values that are fundamental to our understanding of reality and human existence. It implies that culture provides the underlying "metaphysics"—the basic principles that shape our worldview—for a society. This view posits that culture isn't just a product of social interaction, but a reality in itself, with its own properties, which can be analyzed philosophically.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=culture+is+metaphysical

Reply to Gnomon I've been a Dennett antagonist ever since before joining this Forum. I thought the title of his book Consciousness Explained was ridiculously pompous (and indeed, it was widely parodied as 'Consciousness Ignored'. Galen Strawson satirically suggested that Dennett should be sued for deceptive trade practice. Been over it too many times.

Quoting Wayfarer

And an illusion is something that only a mind can entertain.

What about mindless facial recognition software that misrecognizes faces? Illusion =/= misrecognition, no?

Reply to 180 Proof It’s an artifact as such an extension of human capabilities.

Reply to Wayfarer It's not a "mind" and yet capable of illusions (just as LLMs can hallucinate).

Reply to 180 Proof The data recorded by such devices can’t be an illusion until it is interpreted by a user. Otherwise it’s just pixels.

LLMs are different, as the operations they perform are orders of magnitude more complex than image capture. Regardless, their ‘hallucinations’ are possible concatenations of words and phrases. Ask any of the LLMs whether they are sentient beings, and they will always respond in the negative.

Reply to 180 Proof For the record, I will never accept eliminativism because it denies the very thing that makes knowing, questioning, arguing, or explaining possible in the first place. Consciousness is not an optional theoretical posit—it is the ground of the awareness within which every fact, every argument, and every experience appears. To “eliminate” it is to eliminate the condition of appearance itself. Whatever difficulties consciousness poses for physicalist explanation, denying its reality is not a solution but a performative contradiction: the eliminativist must rely on the very phenomenon he claims does not exist in order to assert that it does not exist. For me, the given reality of experience is more fundamental than any theory, and no philosophical outlook that begins by denying the existence of its own ground can ever be persuasive. That is my last word on it.

Reply to Wayfarer

You’d think that would be ‘nuff said.

Reply to Mww You'd think!

Reply to Wayfarer

“….This** can never become popular and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for finespun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths.…”
(** this being, or reducible to, critical thinking)

Quoting Wayfarer

I've been a Dennett antagonist ever since before joining this Forum. I thought the title of his book Consciousness Explained was ridiculously pompous (and indeed, it was widely parodied as 'Consciousness Ignored'.

Ironically, even some (supposedly) pragmatic scientists are entertaining (seemingly) spiritual explanations for consciousness*1. Such modern theories are more Mathematical (mental) than Material (substantial)*2. Meanwhile, the concept of "higher dimensions"*3 has been adopted by some religious thinkers as a more sciency-sounding term for what the ancients imagined as an out-of-reach celestial "spiritual" realm.

Personally, I have no experience of dimensions beyond those of mundane space-time. Even "moments of creativity or deep thought" feel ordinary to me. And I don't know how we might "measure" them, other than how we measure Time, in increments of environmental cycles relative to physiological rhythms. And yet, String Theorists seem to take un-measureable multiple dimensions for granted, because the mental math can easily go beyond what counts for the material senses.

Strangely, Math is supposed to be a form of Logic, but has discovered numerical values that are beyond Reason : Irrational & Transcendental. Is it a sign that Mind is not physical, but Meta-Physical? We can imagine future Utopias and Paradises, but never actually reach their golden gates. Even so, are ideas & ideals, that have no manifestation in matter, somehow more real than mundane reality? Or simply a way for humans to strain against the restraints of physical laws?

Anyway, it seems that Consciousness, unbounded by physical limitations, remains a mystery in search of a logical, tangible, explanation. Religious interpretations may meekly accept Spirituality as beyond Reason. But epistemological Philosophers tend to hold-out for a rational understanding, instead of incomprehensible and extra-sensory blind faith. Don't promise me a tantalizing heavenly hereafter, make it real, here, now! :halo:


*1. Spiritual Consciousness :
Physicist Michael Pravica has proposed a controversial theory that human consciousness could originate from higher dimensions beyond our physical reality. This theory, rooted in the concept of hyperdimensionality, suggests that during moments of creativity or deep thought, consciousness may transcend the brain to connect with these unseen realms. While this idea is speculative and not widely accepted, it opens up the possibility that consciousness is not purely a product of the brain and could potentially exist beyond the physical world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Human+Consciousness+Comes+From+a+Higher+Dimension%2C+Scientist+Claims%E2%80%94Meaning+It+Could+Transcend+the+Physical+World
Note --- Is this scientist explaining Consciousness by imagining invisible & dubious parallel realities?

*2. Higher dimensions are a concept in mathematics and physics that represent directions beyond the three spatial dimensions (length, width, and height) and one time dimension we experience. These additional dimensions can be thought of as more "degrees of freedom" for movement, or as mathematical and theoretical spaces used to describe phenomena. While some theories, like string theory, propose the existence of up to 10 or 11 dimensions, these extra dimensions may be curled up or "compactified" at extremely small scales, making them undetectable.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=higher+dimensions
Note --- Do we actually experience Four Dimensions, or do we merely accept it conventionally?

*3. In a spiritual context, a higher dimension can refer to states of consciousness beyond our everyday, three-dimensional physical experience, characterized by greater awareness, love, and unity. It can also describe a more transcendent, eternal, or "unseen" reality that is beyond linear time and separation. These concepts are often tied to spiritual growth, moving from a focus on the ego and material world to a more enlightened, purposeful existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=higher+dimension+meaning+spiritual
Note --- Is this higher realm populated by spirits & gods, or merely by ideal Platonic Forms, whatever that is?

Quoting Wayfarer

I should add a caveat about McGinn. His “mysterian” view is useful in one narrow sense: he at least takes the reality of consciousness seriously, and he recognises that the standard physicalist story hasn’t solved anything. In that respect he’s a welcome counterweight to the eliminativist impulse.

But I think his explanation for the “mystery” goes astray. He says we can’t understand consciousness because humans lack the right conceptual equipment — as if a special metaphysical faculty were required to see how brain processes give rise to experience.

The problem with Mysterian*1 philosophy is that it gives-up on the ancient philosophical quest : to explore the Hard Questions that are not subject to objective answers. Such speculative exploration*2 can be proven wrong though, when observations contradict the conjectures. Today, we might say that dragon warnings about Mars, are "not even wrong". But there are plenty of other scary features of the red planet, that should give rocket-ship explorers pause : 2015 film, The Martian.

Personally, I think we do have "the right conceptual equipment" for seeking answers to the Hard Problem. Yet our "metaphysical faculty" of Reason & Logic does not produce "Hard" evidence, in the sense of physics & chemistry & neurology. Instead, it's our ability to imagine things that possess no material structure, but only logical structure : patterns & relationships. That's why I continue to explore the relation of Causation to Consciousness. I don't think Consciousness is fundamental, but Causation, and its cousin Information, may be essential to the evolving world.

Awareness of things & events inside and outside the body is not some magical substance, but a temporal process*3 : change over time. It transforms sensory data into mental ideas & feelings. That's why I think our metaphysical faculty is more like causal Energy than inert Matter. Recent scientific studies have noted the fundamental relationship between Physical Energy and Metaphysical Mind*4. Further rational & empirical research may eventually dispel the "Mystery", by identifying the causal steps & phase changes between physical Causation & metaphysical Transformation. :nerd:


*1. Mysterianism is the philosophy that some questions, particularly the hard problem of consciousness, are fundamentally unsolvable by humans due to the inherent limitations of our cognitive abilities. This perspective, most famously associated with Colin McGinn, argues that while consciousness is a natural phenomenon and not supernatural, our brains are not equipped to understand how the physical matter of the brain creates subjective experience. It is not the same as saying we don't know the answer yet, but that we can never know the answer.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mysterianism+philosophy
Note --- Mysterianism may be a modern form of Spirituality and Taboo, in that it imagines non-overlapping magisteria like Heaven & Earth.

*2. Here Be Dragons : The phrase was thought to be a literal warning from mapmakers to mariners that they should proceed with caution because the area was uncharted and potentially hazardous.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=maps+used+to+say+there+be+dragons+here

*3. A conscious process is a mental operation that a person is aware of and often in control of, involving explicit awareness of thoughts, memories, feelings, and sensations. These are the processes that form a person's subjective experience of being aware of themselves and their surroundings, such as planning or recalling a memory, and are distinct from unconscious processes that occur automatically.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=consciusness+process
Note --- A Process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. A.N. Whitehead's process philosophy conjectures that reality is fundamentally a dynamic and creative "becoming" rather than a collection of static "things". The Evolutionary Process seems teleological : directed by intention, not accident. Of course, the Intender may remain a mystery until . . . .

*4. Energy is a form of Information :
No, information and energy are not the same thing, but they are fundamentally linked, and information can be converted into energy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=information+is+energy

Quoting Mww

You’d think that would be ‘nuff said.

The problem is that the idea of physicalist inconsistency is a strawman given that eliminativists do not seek to eliminate or discount the fact of being conscious (consciousness) but instead believe that it is an entirely neural, that is physical, process, and that the kind of default imagining of what consciousness is, based on the "seeming" of introspection and rationalist conceptualization, is an illusion.

Now, of course they may be wrong, and there seems to be no way to test that hypothesis, as there is no way to test the idea that consciousness is somehow (although the somehow remains obscure) non-physical.

The point I would contend is the idea on either side of the debate that their conclusions are "slam dunk". That idea only shows dogmatism, closed-mindedness.

Reply to Janus

Useful truths making just as little impression as those useful truths brought against……..

Thing is, consciousness is already strictly a metaphysical conception, hence necessarily non-physical, from which follows that to ascribe to it the possibility of being an integral brain state in accordance with eliminativism, is contradictory, and upon having attributing to it a theoretical brain-state correlate in accordance with materialism, to then attempt to measure the brain state hypothesized by that correlate, is impossible.

Whatever the material correlate to metaphysical consciousness may be, it isn’t consciousness. And whatever metaphysical conception consciousness may be, it isn’t material.
—————-

Put a guy in a chair, hook him up to some device, tell him to think of something……can you even imagine what kind of machine will immediately display the ‘57 DeSoto the guy picked as his thought? No doubt his own brain can bring up the image, so the constructed device would most likely be something like the brain, in order to display what the brain produced. But we don’t know how the brain presents material correlates, so constructing a device the operation of which is unknown to us insofar as its performance is congruent to the brain’s, is manifestly unintelligible.

Even if that were possible, and say there actually was such a device, guy gets up from the chair, might even be awe-struck….but still can’t properly express why he hates the taste of Lima beans, gets back in the chair, gets hooked up, and the device display should by all accounts remain empty, for the human cannot think anything aesthetically, but only subjectively feel some relevant condition qualitatively satisfied by one of them. The subjective condition in the form of mere feeling, is as much a resident of his consciousness as the bean, yet only one of them can be displayed on a device recording brain states related to human thoughts in particular or thinking in general.

Do you really think, that upon being proven by one of the hard sciences, that all metaphysical entities are in fact demonstrable brain states, you will cease speaking from the first-person perspective? If science proves there’s no such thing as “I”, will you therefrom stop saying, e.g., “I think ‘mericans got their heads up their collective asses when it comes to football!!!”

Even if it is the case the metaphysical entity represented by “I” is in fact a brain state, but there is no awareness of brain state activity as such in human consciousness, then it must be logically true that brain state itself is a metaphysical entity, from which follows necessarily that any display on a constructed external physical measuring device, is also a metaphysical entity, insofar as the intuition of its appearance to the senses merely represents a coexistent representation. The human intellectual system, whatever its named speculative constituency, prohibits any other interpretation of the objectivity outside itself.

Humans think natural law, but humans do not think in terms of natural law. The brain, because it is a natural object, must therefore be thought to operate in terms of natural law in order for a human to understand the possibility of it….and he immediately defeats his own purpose in using one to explain the other.

Your point is nonetheless well-taken.

Quoting Janus

The point I would contend is the idea on either side of the debate that their conclusions are "slam dunk". That idea only shows dogmatism, closed-mindedness.

Good point! Accusations of "dogmatism" and "closed-mindedness" have traditionally been directed toward people of Faith. So, it's ironic that posters on a philosophy forum would display those characteristics in dialogs that can't be proven or dis-proven empirically. For example, Eliminativism requires a closed mind, and Immanentism seems to be based on the dogma of Materialism. Are those "slam dunk" positions signs of faith in the belief system of Scientism? :wink:

Quoting Mww

Thing is, consciousness is already strictly a metaphysical conception, hence necessarily non-physical,

That would be so only on certain question-begging presuppositions.

Reply to Gnomon The point is that neither idealism nor physicalism are, contrary to what their opponents like to suggest, self-refuting. Actually idealism is not usually criticized for being self-refuting, but rather for being explanatorily impotent, implausible or even incoherent in that the only forms of idealism which can serve to explain our everyday experience rely, in order to give an account of how shared experience could be possible, on ideas like God or universal mind or collective mind' ideas which themselves are not able to be satisfactorily conceptually explicated or related to everyday human experience.

Reply to Janus Reply to Gnomon Reply to Mww I stil maintain that an effective (if not 'slam dunk') argument against physicalism is from classical philosophy: that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true. Or, as Lloyd Gerson put it, you could not think if materialism were true.

Quoting Lloyd Gerson, Platonism v Naturalism

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.

Interpretation - De Anima III.4–5. Here, Aristotle argues that thinking cannot be the act of a bodily organ because the intellect receives forms “without matter,” i.e., as universals; it grasps the idea of the object, which is an intellectual, not a sensory, act. Whereas a bodily organ always perceives specific material thing. But the intellect must be capable of receiving any form whatever, which requires that it be “unmixed” with the body (429a15–b22).

In the act of thinking, the intellect is identified with the form it thinks. Since the form considered as intelligible is not a particular, and no brain-state can be anything other than a particular, the thinking intellect cannot be identical with any material structure. This is why Aristotle says that intellect is “separate,” “impassive,” and “unmixed.”

Gerson is simply stating this classical Aristotelian point: if materialism is true—that all mental acts are particular physical states—then universal thought would be impossible, and without it, you could not think. But universal thought occurs. Therefore materialism cannot give an adequate account of thought.

Edward Feser amplifies the point:

Quoting Edward Feser

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

Feser makes the same point in contemporary terms: a mental image of a triangle will always be of one specific triangle (isosceles, oriented, coloured, etc.), whereas the concept of triangularity is perfectly determinate, universal, and shareable among many minds. Because the object of intellection is universal, and because thought consists in the mind’s identity with that universal form, no physical state—necessarily a particular—can be identical to an act of understanding.

And from Bertrand Russell:

Quoting Betrand Russell, The World of Universals

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ... In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.

Of course, the nominalist objection will be that there is no universal 'triangle', only particular triangles, which we can see resemble each other. But that objection fails because it can't explain what it appeals to. A mental image or sensory perception is always specific: coloured, sized, oriented, isosceles or scalene, etc. But the concept of triangularity is exact, universal, and common to all minds. No image captures this, and no neural configuration can be identical with something that applies to indefinitely many images. Moreover, nominalism presupposes the very universals it denies: similarity, classification, identity of meaning, and the laws of logic are themselves universals. Without universals, no two thinkers could ever mean the same thing, no inference could be valid beyond the moment, and mathematics would be impossible. This is why the Aristotelian argument stands: the universal content of thought cannot be reduced to any particular material state, and a materialist–nominalist account cannot explain the phenomenon it tries to deny, as any explanation will implicitly rely on the very universal categories of thought which nominalism insists are unreal.

Reply to Gnomon This is the sense in which the mind “constructs” or “creates” the cosmos: not as an external agent shaping an independent material realm, but as the ongoing process of perception, interpretation, and conceptual synthesis that yields our experience of a coherent, ordered world — which is precisely what kosmos meant. The Buddha’s teaching that “within this fathom-long body, with its perception and intellect, is the cosmos, its origin, its cessation, and the path to its cessation” (AN 4.45) is making the same point: the world-as-lived, the meaningful, structured world of experience, is constituted through the operations of cognition. This is not solipsism, nor the denial of an external world, but an insistence that the world we inhabit is inseparable from the activity of consciousness that renders it intelligible. And that, of course, is the bridge to both phenomenology and enactive cognition.

.Quoting Mww

Whatever the material correlate to metaphysical consciousness may be, it isn’t consciousness. And whatever metaphysical conception consciousness may be, it isn’t material.

The philosophy of consciousness has always circled around a central mystery. But empirical science was supposed to dispel those ancient enigmas with indisputable "hard" evidence. For example, Newtonian physics provided mundane explanations for celestial pattern puzzles that had entranced imaginative naked-eye sky-gazers for millennia. The evidence was direct observation, aided by vision-enhancing technology, and vetted by mathematical logic.

Suddenly, certainty about star-gods! But then, Quantum physics came along and muddied Newton's math with Uncertainty. An article in Oct/Nov 2025 issue of Philosophy Now magazine discusses the ramifications of that scientific set-back to an era when science & superstition were often indistinguishable.

Quantum Physics and Indian Philosophy, by Kumar & Varshney, looks at reality from both perspectives, and sees the same now & then parallels that spawned Fitjof Capra's 1975 book, The Tao of Physics. An important lesson from such unorthodox approaches to Science is that the broader context is important : Holism. After millennia of searching for the fundamental Atom of Reality, physicists were appalled to find that the notion of a hard bottom to the material world was an illusion : Maya.

So scientists turned their attention from bits of matter, to bits of information, and to unbounded timeless universal Fields of Potential*1 . Only to find that ancient cow worshipers got there before them : "Ultimate reality (Brahman) is infinite, eternal, and beyond time, space, or change, has no shape or qualities, and is the source of everything."*2 Where does Consciousness fit into Newton's model of space & time, or to Einstein's remodel of space-time? Does the big C exist in time, and occupy space?

The PN article also notes the "tendency toward romanticization --- when for instance it's claimed that ancient Indian sages anticipated quantum ideas"*2. Likewise, those who speculate on threads like this may be accused of a propensity for Spiritualization. :smile:


*1. Cosmic Field of Potential :
Physicists and cosmologists call this divine source the Unified Field. In a profound sense, Brahman (the Vedantic concept) and the Unified Field of physics appear to be synonymous.
https://www.hinduhumanrights.info/quantum-physics-and-vedic-unified-consciousness/

*2. Quantum Physics & Indian Philosophy :
both disciplines challenge the classical notion of an objective, observer-independent reality, and elevate the role of the observer.
Philosophy Now magazine

Quoting Wayfarer

that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true.

I see no reason to believe that. Perhaps you are working with a redundant model of material as 'mindless substance'. If material in all its forms were nothing but mindless substance, then of course it would follow by mere definition that conscious material is impossible. But that is specifically the "question-begging presumption" I was referring to.

Quoting Janus

I see no reason to believe that.

Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell? Or is it just 'what you reckon'?

Quoting Janus

?Gnomon
The point is that neither idealism nor physicalism are, contrary to what their opponents like to suggest, self-refuting. Actually idealism is not usually criticized for being self-refuting, but rather for being explanatorily impotent, implausible or even incoherent in that the only forms of idealism which can serve to explain our everyday experience rely, in order to give an account of how shared experience could be possible, on ideas like God or universal mind or collective mind' ideas which themselves are not able to be satisfactorily conceptually explicated or related to everyday human experience.

Yes. The difference between modern Philosophy and modern Science lies in their explanatory means & methods : the exploring mind of the Natural Philosopher can go beyond the space-time bounds of the material world, and the self-imposed limits of Scientism. But, when conjectures become dogma and speculations become scripture, an open-mind line has been crossed. Besides, even "space-time" and "fabric of reality" are ideal, not real. :wink:

Note --- Idealism and related philosophies, may be impotent to explain immaterial ideas in material terms. Yet religious beliefs have the power to explain "shared experiences" in terms of feelings. And philosophical conjectures are judged, not on material evidence, or scientific orthodoxy, but on Logical Potency.

Quoting Gnomon

... "Ultimate reality (Brahman) is infinite, eternal, and beyond time, space, or change, has no shape or qualities, and is the source of everything" ...

... this speculation is indistinguishable from ancient (Vedic, Greek) atomists' void¹ or quantum vacuum of contemporary fundamental physics (wherein "classical swirling-swerving atoms" are far more precisely described as virtual particles (i.e. planck events)) :wink:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/ [1]

Quoting Wayfarer

Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell?

Sure, mate, eezy peezy – (In addition to what @Janus says) their primary assumption, in effect, conflates, or equates, abstract (map-making) and concrete (territory) which is a reification fallacy (e.g. "Platonic Forms") and renders their arguments invalid. :clap:

Reply to 180 Proof :rofl:

Reply to Wayfarer Your welcome.

Reply to 180 Proof The “map vs. territory” distinction isn’t what’s at issue.
The argument from Aristotle through Russell is about the conditions of intelligibility that make any map–territory distinction possible in the first place — universals, logical form, meaning. These aren’t maps; but they’re not parts of the physical territory either. They’re what both map and territory presuppose. If you want to challenge that, you need to address the argument, not just repeat slogans.

Reply to Wayfarer Consider this article concerning findings on (in my words) 'the materiality of thinking' presented by a distinguished MIT researcher at a recent neuroscience conference:

https://picower.mit.edu/news/brain-waves-analog-organization-cortex-enables-cognition-and-consciousness-mit-professor

Reply to 180 Proof Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking is — because the very act of interpreting neural data requires the conceptual structures (universals, logical form, mathematical norms) that the brain-waves theory is supposed to explain. You cannot use “if… then…” reasoning to argue that reasoning is nothing but brain waves, because the argument presupposes the very universality that oscillations cannot provide. You can't see those mental operations 'from the outside', so to speak, as you're already drawing on them to conduct the research that the findings rely on. 'The eye cannot see itself'.

Quoting Wayfarer

Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking is —

– and neither can idealism, subjectivism, spiritualism nor any other woo.

Reply to 180 Proof C’mon 180. Bertrand Russell and Lloyd Gerson. Middle-of-the-road classical philosophy.