Mind is the brain?

[bennyboy]

I wouldn't say that a rock has "a mind," though I'd say that in the QM-mind idea (and remember, it was just one of half a dozen options that I said we had to choose from), there certainly are a gazillion little sparks of elemental mind.

Let's remember this moment.  Clearly, to you, "spark of mind" and mind are different things.  You can draw a very fine line here, and the line seems to be that mind isn't fundamental after all, spark of mind is, whatever that is.  

They're different in the same way that QM particles and the objects that are composed of them are called "stuff" or "matter." However, I'd say that a spark of mind is still mind-- just a maximally simplistic one.

Turtles all the way down as in the ability to experience qualia all the way down?

That's right. Down to the most minimal possible exchanges of energy or changes of state.

I can never distinguish between your why and my how.  I suspect that they're interchangeable.  

Sometimes I think we're not that far off, but the subtle differences are those of great philosophical import.

I'm not sure what you mean by "it disappears", nuerons -do not- disappear under a microscope...and the table doesn't disappear either.  Resolution or scale and existence are not the same thing.  If you "zoom in" on the qm particles of the table you are still looking at the table. ....?

There is nothing of "table" to be found in any of the QM particles of which it is composed. If you are observing QM particles, you cannot know whether you are looking at part of a table, a chair, or an apple. I'd say that at that scale, the table doesn't exist, since it cannot be found to exist at that level.

We actually don't know that.  We suspect it, it's a working hypothesis, remember?  We've designed our experiments to show results if that were the case because it provides an explicable mechanism for the function of the brain.  

I'd say in the context of your view, we know it because it's given: processing happens in the brain.

Recall that moment above, wherein you drew such a subtle distinction between mind and spark of mind.  Guess what, what;s "going on" in your bedroom is not, at all, what I'm discussing...unless you're talking about your pc.  At which point, ofc, because I'm discussing the Comp Theory of Mind.  You most certainly -cannot- pull out an arbitrary amount of your pc and have it "still work".  The same seems to apply to our brain.  

As I said, this is your view: that there's a critical mass at which since the functions you call mind will fail, you'd say there's no mind at all.

Let's put it this way with a thought experiment. Let's say you've identified a physical system that processes data in certain ways that you call "mind," and then you pull out a QM particle. Is it still "mind"?

Your position is that at a certain point, one more QM particle pulled will break the system-- it will be the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. My position is that this is not the case-- that at some point, you will give up on using the system in useful ways-- but that under the hood, there's never a discrete separation between "mind" and "not mind," only a gradually degradation in the nature of the mind until it is traced down to the simplest possible interactions available to the physical universe.

If one of those atoms was holding together the structure of the comp system then this would happen, ofc.  In the same way that if some atom was the last thing between your brain and dissolution...and it were removed, I would expect your brain to cease to be.  Whether something is a comp system is a pass/fail proposition, and a candidate comp mind has further benchmarks to cross.  It's pointless to continue referring to these increasingly specific conditions as arbitrary.  Your position is that there will -never- be such a point where there is no mind?  What about that bit above, where things don't have a mind, but a gazillion spark of mind?  Clearly you allow for precisely what you have objected to.  I simply use more descriptive (and less fanciful) terms.  Your bedroom is full of material interactions, but not all material interactions are comp systems.

My position is that there will be a point at which a system won't meet your definition of a mind, but at which the kind of physical interactions and processes which are the real essence of mind continue on perfectly contentedly.