Mind Over Matter?

[The Grand Nudger]

I ask that you take it at face value that I do NOT have a definition that I think works in this context.  Your definition of processing, I think, is too narrow; it involves looking at chunks of information as a single unit, which already implies mind.

If by "implies mind" you mean..we're using ours....sure.  If you have some other way...I'm all ears.

  In other word "mind is mind."  It doesn't show how individual data (photons, electrons, neurotransmitters spanning the gap between neurons, etc.) "know" that they are part of a bigger system of thought, thereby allowing a mind to exist.

Mind is mind regardless whether or not mind is also processing, I'm proposing a manner in which it can do what it seems to do.  Not that it's something other than it is.  Red is red...it is also a color.

I believe processing must be defined in purely physical terms, since it is meant to be a physicalist theory of mind.

It isn't meant as any such thing - and I've already offered spirit resistors, so it doesn't have to be defined in that way at all.  If you insist upon defining it as such then that's probably your hangup in our conversations.  You;ve been stuck on this since the word go but I keep explaining to you that I use the material explanations, the physicalist descriptions because they can be demonstrably shown to work. It does not rely on conjecture. If I say " a comp system can do -x-" and then point to an actual machine doing -x- it;s a little more convincing than saying "-everything that a dragon could do". Understand? Comp mind is the notion that mind does comp..that mind is comp. Not what that mind is -made- out of. Sure, Comp mind a physicalist positions go well together (computers are physical systems..brains are physical systems - these are the things we point to as the representatives of their respective class), but they aren't bound by bloodoath. You could be a dualist who prefers comp mind, or a physical monist who thinks it's bullshit.

  So for now, I say, "Processing is any interaction of particles or their properties which affect causality."  Which, of course, is every interaction.

Excellent, now..... pick up a rock (rather than your pc) and post your reply?  

I view human consciousness as an aggregate-- a collection of tiny little mental events which the brain brings into a kind of form or focus. 

as do I.

So human consciousness, I would say, is not the creation of mind,

agreed.

 but the bringing into relation a gazillion little sparks of mind: much as a physical object is the bringing into relation a gazillion little particles.  But we know what brings the particles in a physical object into relationship in a single object: the atomic forces, gravity, and electromagnetic forces.  But your view of mind is very mysterious to me: it doesn't EXIST anywhere except as a ghost in the machinery.  It sounds a little bit like a soul.

Is that a problem..that it sounds like a soul to you?  It exists, plainly enough..as mario exists (we've had this discussion before)...but, it doesn't have to...it could be floating spirit resistors.  Is that a problem for you....do you think that consciousness exists "somewhere"....pretty sure that you don't...so why would it be a problem for you..conceptually?  

In my view, there are a billion little mental events exploding all over that rock,

-and you think computing is mysterious...but these "mental events"..not so much?

 as electrons move through it, as photons hit it, etc.  And the exact same goes for the human brain.  The thing you are talking about isn't so much about an ontology explaining the existence of mind, but a description of how human experience forms.  

And when you're done describing human experience.....what have you described?  The only difference, IMO, between you and I in principle..is that you think there must be "more"...I don't.  

I agree that a rock can't enjoy a Mozart symphony, because it doesn't have the systems which would allow it to do so.  However, the data presented to the rock DO represent a kind of primitive processing system: the transmission of heat from the surface to the center, the transmission of energy waves in vibration, etc.

You need more than transmission for processing.  But that's irrelevant - I'm willing to call everything processing if it means that you provide an explanation of the mechanics..as you see them.

Let's say I play Mozart to a rock.  The surface facing the speaker will vibrate, the vibration will be carried into the rock and generate friction, and the rock will transmit some of that as infrared radiation.

-and?

 Different songs will produce different amounts of friction and at different times, such that a clever scientist might someday be able to read the heat patterns and know what song was being played.  The rock has done a kind of calculation

-huh...sounds to me like a scientist did a calculation.........

"What would Mozart's Requiem Mass look like as a heat signature?"  You could even go beyond this and consider it more complex calculation: "What would Mozart's Requiem Mass look like as a heat signature at sea level in the dead of summer?"

LOL, I hope to god someone with expensive equipment asks this question in an institutional setting someday.  

Now, this isn't a very useful kind of processing, but nobody's arguing for the musical brilliance of rocks.

No, it isn't..in that you failed to describe what processing the rock was doing in the fist place, but as I've already said..who cares?

  My point is that it can be seen as simple processing, and that by a comp mind theory, I'd expect a marginally non-zero amount of mind to be seen at work in even a rock.

I wouldn't.  Any more than I would expect a rock to add 1+1.  But who cares.....I gave you the universe...remember?