A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

What thing, and is there a requirement for anyone to be able to identify any conceptual thing? A requirement of complete knowledge?

No. If you are making positive assertions about what makes mind, then it would be better if you could identify whether any particular thing does or doesn't make mind, and how.

Let me ask a very simple and general question. In your framework...why do you and I need computers and an internet connection to have this conversation, fundamentally? What is it about our "idea stuff" that requires this other "idea stuff" in order to interact and form a third set of "idea stuff"? What necessity is there, for starters, for this middle step?

That's a strange question. It's because your ideas and my ideas are unique to each other, and must be drawn into a context together to be communicated.

(you already know my answer, the human voice only travels so far - described by resistance in air, etc...we possess no ESP organ (if such transmission is possible), the comps and internet act as physical states and carriers...on and on)

Funny, that's my answer too. The only difference is that I believe that under the hood, all those objects supervene on a reality which cannot be expressed unambiguously in three-dimensional space.

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If you take any arbitrary collection of physical systems, then they will all meet your definition of mind,

-actually...they wont - no more so than they do (some things...sure, I'm always saying that plants and pcs have "mind" if we have "mind"...aren't I?) - but what may have to be reclassified will comprise such a miniscule portion of all the stuff in the universe...it hardly bears mention in such a manner..since neither of us have taken it upon ourselves to redefine computation.

I wouldn't have thought to do so, until you started saying that mind is brain, and is defined by computation of states.

since all matter is computing information about spin, mass, etc.

-um..no, computation is a bit more strict than stuff interacting - thats why we can;t build a computer out of anything...any old way we like.

The only difference is that we organize the computation of computers in a way that is useful to us. It's all just stuff happening.

If you are conscious, then a rock is not, even if you're both comp systems (there are further undeclared requirements).

Well heck, man, let's go ahead and declare them then. What's the difference between your computational mind and a hunk of rock?

Why not apply the same blade to the relationship between yourself and the universe? Yourself and a photon?

It's not my model of mind. . . it's yours.