Supervenience, Transcendence, and Mind

[The Grand Nudger]

It's transcendent in the sense that its existence isn't ultimately dependent on the SPECIFIC mechanism involved, but rather on the intentions of the people who formed that mechanism. That green-ness was going to happen, with or without that particular arrangement of LED lights.

No it wasn't, and...for a very long time, didn't ( I had to look it up...I knew there was a good story in there but couldn't remember it. Railroads used white for go until a design flaw in their signaling lanterns caused the red "stop" lenses to fail sending a white "go" signal to oncoming trains sharing tracks in switching yards and, importantly, over bridges) . The existence of that green-ness is directly dependent on the specific mechanism. Different mechanism, different color (even different shades of green). Our intention to create a "green light" means nothing -without- a specific mechanism to achieve it. I'm not sure I understand..........maybe traffic lights are a poor analogy?

I should think you'd find this idea highly compatible with your gate-logic model: mind is going to happen wherever there's a possibility of the evolution of systems which compare data in consistent ways: but the specific mechanism (brain vs. electronic computer vs. quantum computer etc.) isn't really that important.

You may have misunderstood my model. The specific mechanism is -incredibly- important. Different mechanism, different mind (mind -is- mech).

You imply this is a fact of convenience, but I don't think that's quite right. The fact is that we CAN'T go all the way down the rabbit hole. We can't determine, ultimately, why things exist rather than not, or why mind exists rather than not.

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In the sense that on might consider the qualia of vanilla, "vanilla-ness" a supervenient property, maybe.

Huh? Wait a minute now......why isn't vanilla an entity in it's own right like mind?

Okay, if you are defining brain as any structure which has a mind, and you are defining mind as the ability to perform logical comparisons on data, then I'd say that mind is the expression of the principle of logical comparison, rather than of the specific mechanism of the brain (be it biological or electronic).

I wouldn't define brain that way, or mind- but...

It has to be one or the other? Can't be both? Both appear to be required. Logic has to be possible (lol) and there has to be a system leveraging that. Without one or the other you don't seem to get the pudding. Computation was possible for eons before we ever came up with my quad core. It's not like the universe bent to accommodate the invention of the micro processor. It was possible long before it was realized - but just because it was possible...that doesn't mean that it occurred. There are no medieval microprocessors.

And I'd definitely say that "plane-ness" isn't a property of a hunk of aluminum, but rather the aluminum is the medium through which the idea of planeness was manifested.

Flight, "flight-ness", more accurately. Aluminum -can fly- because it's material properties -allow it to fly- (it's light, here)...but it doesn't fly until we arrange it into the proper structure (and the structure would not matter if the properties of aluminum were not such - and the properties of aluminum are meaningless regarding flight unless the proper structure is present). We cannot manifest flight or "plane-ness" out of whatever we wish as a medium. Hence the question "Why don't they build the plane out of the same stuff they build the black box out of?".

I'm trying to get a grip on your position here......is fiber and beta c just the medium through which the idea of carrot-ness is manifested?