Mind/matter duality

[bennyboy]

I'd also like to throw in the emergence theory of mind. The way we understand how neurons work, there's very little wriggle-room for QM effects to say how neurons work and process information both chemically and electrically from what little I know. It's mostly electric & chemical. But how the mind works is not reducible in the emergence theory of mind, because it is dependent on the structure of the brain and all the functions of the neurons and how those work together in this system.

We already are on a road-map to test how the brain works with the BRAIN project.

I'm not an expert in emergentism, but it seems to me there's a duality here, too. If you look at particles in the brain in information from the point of a subjective closed system (i.e. an individual brain treated as separate from objects outside it), then it seems that the brain must be more than the sum of its parts-- the information in the brain consists of the information intrinsic to all the particles it contains, as well as extra information in the form of the now-established relationships BETWEEN all those particles. That's one of the arguments I've made in the past in support of a mind which is supervenient on, but "magically" greater than the mechanism on which it rests.

However, from the point of the universe (i.e. an objective perspective), you could say that all particles are linked with all others right from the start, through gravity, and that the "added" information is more a byproduct of how we label groups of particles with entity-words (like "brain") than of any physically real division. In that sense, the countless particles of the brain are just doing their individual little dances in spacetime, and the unity of that singular object is purely symbolic.

The problem is, that since we have both a subjective mind and an objective model of what it perceives, both of those contradictory views seem valid. Looks light particle/wave, space/time might have a friend: singular/plural. As far as the OP, I really think you can arbitrarily look at either mind or physicalism as the top of the food chain, so to speak, and that as soon as you change your perspective, what is "true" automatically changes with it.