Mind Over Matter?

[Mudhammam]

Mezmo!
I do believe that (hate to say it but) the Schoolmen took great care to differentiate between the process of abstraction and form isolated by that process. The E=mc^2 formula is most certainly a propositional description, but it would not qualify as either the formal or dispositional properties at play.

Slow down there, bud. You're losing me! Can you clarify the difference between the "process of abstraction" and "form isolated by that process"? What I take you to mean (which is probably incorrect) is that mathematical descriptions involve a process of abstractions but what it is they're actually describing are the forms that material substances prosecute. I'm also not so sure what you mean by the last sentence. I would agree (with you, I think, but maybe not) that no descriptive formula, such as E=MC^2, is anything other than a conceptual representation of material properties as they correlate to our experience of matter, but it is the properties or the principles that define them (which we can only describe with the language we impose, though the rules of the language, such as in the case of numbers, is not our invention) that I doubt can be said to exist in any material sense. I've also not read any of the Scholastics (yet) but in going through the complete works of Plato and being now about halfway through the most important works of Aristotle, I can appreciate the care and thoughtfulness they put into these issues that still seem largely unresolved, even if the perspective from which they constructed their various solutions was largely naive. I imagine much the same can be said in regards to the Scholastics.

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Perhaps they are commonalities in composition of the particles which you interpret as some abstracted connection. A connection which they don't have.
Example:
You observe a yellow truck in Paris and a yellow truck in London.  These items (by my hypothetical) have no association other than you have observed both to be yellow trucks.  The connection occurs only because of your observation.

While there could be an underlying mind stuff in the universe, I see no evidence of it while I do see evidence connecting the experience of consciousness to the physical organization and chemical operations in the brain.  Only systems of a minimum, apparently necessary, complexity in neuroanatomy exhibit behaviors characteristic of conscious individuals as experienced (me) or granted (to others by comparison with myself.)  We do not yet have bottom up understanding of the design and operation of the wetware involved.  I believe this will be obtained within a century and that once in hand, it will be replicated or simulated.   At that point the question, "Are you there?" will have meaning and the answer must be believed to the same extent that it is when asked of another person.
There arises an interesting situation if the system under observation answers, "No."

The way I see it, to deny the abstract connections with regards to what I'm speaking about as having an independent existence would be tantamount to saying that all of the concepts employed by science in the attempt to formulate an intelligible framework of the world are... subjective illusions. For example, the force of gravity is described mathematically like this: 
This tells quite a bit about how the Universe operates at the macroscopic level, from planetary orbits to colliding billiard balls. Now, the formula is a construct that humans invented to describe the patterns of material phenomena we perceive, but the underlying truth of this description was and is true regardless of our conceptual grasp of it. Planets and baseballs still obeyed this rule before Newton came along. So what is it that forces physical objects, whatever they may be---space or the matter in it---to follow this rigid set of mandates if not something that is abstract, and hence discovered by abstract means? What is this mathematical formula a description of?---matter itself, or the abstract principles that underlie, or coexist with it, in some manner?

I wouldn't want to say that mind or consciousness is in all matter. I agree with you that it is inextricably linked to "the physical organization and chemical operations in the brain." But like physical structures that follow abstract rules and can be described using abstract objects (numbers, their properties, functions, etc.), I wonder if the brain is the physical structure, and mind is the abstract governing rule.