RE: Mind Over Matter?
April 10, 2015 at 6:24 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2015 at 6:33 pm by bennyboy.)
Nestor, I don't think I can answer what you're saying, but possibly to reword or reframe it for further discussion once I understand better what you mean.
Let me try again a discussion about physical structures, because I think the same philosophical questions will apply. So with a wave, the question is whether the QM particles in a wave "do" something that collectively forms a wave, or whether an interaction among underlying non-particular "ideas" (gravity, atomic forces, etc) pushes them into place? Or, in other words, is the mathematical function simply a description of physical positioning, or is the physical positioning the expression of underlying mathematical functions? I think the latter view is correct, because you can trace a wave through a large body of water even when the molecules at the source of a ripple have completely ceased undulating. Therefore, the wave principle, while it requires a medium to move through, is still the cause of that movement.
So let's look at computation. Is the word "mind" simply descriptive of observations of an arbitrary amount of data "processing" (I'm still not sure what that means exactly), or is the data processing the expression of underlying principles? One could see, for example, human evolution as a kind of ripple through time, with DNA being a form of communication between physical states at different times. The human mind, then, supervenes not only on the brain, but on relationships between those collective past states. In this case, the brain is seen as an expression of those past states, which themselves are not brain, and so while mind supervenes on something, it is not ultimately so much the specific functions of the brain, but on the fundamental capacity of events in the universe to interact with each other in a variety of ways through time.
In this view, I'd say that any process which brings into relation events or states at different times or places represents a kind of mental activity, and that includes the transmission of information about Galaxy A to Galaxy B via the emission and absorption of a photon over the course of a thousand years.
Let me try again a discussion about physical structures, because I think the same philosophical questions will apply. So with a wave, the question is whether the QM particles in a wave "do" something that collectively forms a wave, or whether an interaction among underlying non-particular "ideas" (gravity, atomic forces, etc) pushes them into place? Or, in other words, is the mathematical function simply a description of physical positioning, or is the physical positioning the expression of underlying mathematical functions? I think the latter view is correct, because you can trace a wave through a large body of water even when the molecules at the source of a ripple have completely ceased undulating. Therefore, the wave principle, while it requires a medium to move through, is still the cause of that movement.
So let's look at computation. Is the word "mind" simply descriptive of observations of an arbitrary amount of data "processing" (I'm still not sure what that means exactly), or is the data processing the expression of underlying principles? One could see, for example, human evolution as a kind of ripple through time, with DNA being a form of communication between physical states at different times. The human mind, then, supervenes not only on the brain, but on relationships between those collective past states. In this case, the brain is seen as an expression of those past states, which themselves are not brain, and so while mind supervenes on something, it is not ultimately so much the specific functions of the brain, but on the fundamental capacity of events in the universe to interact with each other in a variety of ways through time.
In this view, I'd say that any process which brings into relation events or states at different times or places represents a kind of mental activity, and that includes the transmission of information about Galaxy A to Galaxy B via the emission and absorption of a photon over the course of a thousand years.
