A Conscious Universe

[Pizza]

-and you're not satisfied with this underlying nature unless it contains some comments about photons -and-....the mind, eh? Baggage.

How about we negotiate, photons, sure, you can have em...mind - not so much, mind isn't a photon...eh? Perhaps photons are spooky, but mind is just something that objects -made out of information- do. Same as a pc in my physical world.

Yay, I got photons! *high fives nobody in particular*

You say this about mind, and there is certainly a strong link between the human brain and the human experience, but there are a couple of problems:

1) You define mind AS brain function-- not a product of it. But you haven't defined exactly what it is about the brain that "IS" mind, except in very vague terms. Is it the information itself? Is it the sensation of a particular brain part firing? Is it a field generated by the electromagnetic fluctuations in neurons as signals travel through them? What is it, other than a general wave toward the brain, and a strong feeling that the mind must be "in there somewhere"?

I don't think vagueness is a deal breaker since that's a problem for both sides of the debate. I know what an idea is until someone asks me what an idea is.

2) It is impossible to use your definition of the mind outside the context of animal brains. You cannot, for example, look at any other physical system, and know whether it is experiencing qualia or not. In fact, in a philosophical sense, you cannot establish the existence of mind outside your own experience. It seems to me that an objective world view, largely in vogue because of scientific objective observation, is incompatible with a super-important "thing" that you cannot even identify. Is it really correct to say, "I denounce solipsism because it's a pointless position that lends little to an understanding in life," and then follow that arbitrary assumption through a chain of ideas to the brain as creator of mind?

This really depends on what set of philosophical views of knowledge we decided to go with. There are views of knowing that don't require a knower to know that she knows in order to know. I think the view I'm talking about is called externalism and the view you have seems to be internalism.