On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

But none of this explains why, in our universe, mind manifests rather than not.

In physical monism, a mind is not necessary. So it is not required to prove how a mind arises. I only need to show how a mind can arise and still have physical monism be valid. And I did so with the ANN example.

No, I don't think you did. You are conflating complex data processing with the subjective experience of mind-- something which makes sense if you're trying to support the idea of physical monism, but which does not if you're actually talking about a mind.

I would say #2, excect for the "which we cannot possibly calculate individually."

Really? Okay-- there's a wave. Go calculate all the movements, spins and trajectories of all the particles in it.

QM is an imcompete model of the universe. QFT is a little better, but it still doesn't incorporate gravity . M-theory and Quantum Loop theory are still metaphysical mathematics.

The problem with statistics is that even if you start making a statistical model of mind, you won't actually be able to trace the supervenience of mind down to the fundamental events or processes which make it possible. It will get hidden in the numbers, much as in an ANN. In my college experience programming ANNs, I can get a computer to input data and guess that something's a banana. I do not, however, have any idea exactly what is happening in the network to arrive at that result: only that I spent freaking hours and hours punishing it for guessing "grape" for yellow things.

Here is my point, not everything can be reduced to concepts. Case in point, actions are not concepts. Actions have to change something; concepts describe something. You can conceptualize an action, but that is still not an action. For example, you can conceptualize that your dancing, but it doesn't mean your dancing.

Interactions are not things, but you include events in a physical monist view. Idealism is no different in this regard: you have concepts, and then their interactions.

Plus, all concepts exist even the contradictory ones. Does that mean reality is filled with contradictions?

I think contradictions, ambiguity and paradox work better in an idealistic relaity. It does not make sense to say that a photon is both a wave and a particle in physical terms, because a photon is categorized as a "thing," and things are not expected to be ambiguous. Things like the timeless creation of the universe also work better as ideas. In fact, I'd say that any system which includes ambiguity must necessarily be idealistic, and necessarily not physical monistic.

For example, the concept of a universe where God exist does exist. The concept of a universe where God doesn't exist also exist. If the reality is a collection of concepts, then the universe is where God does exist and where he doesn't exist. Right?

It depends what you mean by "real." All concepts and ideas are real as concepts and ideas. Only some are part of the shared framework that we call the universe.

You have a false syllogism there: all dogs have tails, so all tails are connected to dogs : all real manifested things are concepts, so all concepts are real manifested things.

So your looking at the similiarity of the brain, which is a collection of physical objects, to support the claim of a third party. I find this very strange since physical things don't exist in concept reality.

You seem to think that all idealism is a kind of Buddhist "not-being" or that things are all dreamed illusions. I don't take this position, so if you want to argue against it, it will have to be with someone else. My position is that whether we live in an objective physical universe, or the Matrix, or the Mind of God, a brain is a brain.

The difference is that in an idealistic universe, mind is omnipresent (or, more accurately, all is mind), and all "things" reduce down only to concepts: if you try to examine particles and sub-particles, you'll never find that atomic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.