Mind is the brain?

[bennyboy]

For example, I have a theory that every exchange of energy (read: information), via photon or electron, could represent a nanoscopic "spark" of mind,  i.e. that mind is intrinsic to matter and to everything in the universe, but not in a form that we can easily recognize.  If this is the case, then the brain represents a FORM of elements of mind into a more complex arrangement, but really isn't responsible for psychogony-- the existence of mind.

You have an exceedingly low bar for what satisfies you as a theory....and mind,  I think.  I have to ask though, if you have this theory, why do you reel against the notion of a machine mind?  Against a toaster that feels?  You seem to think that there can be information processing -without- mind...ala a claculator or your pc, and that mind is more than "just processing" - as you've said many, many times....and both positions would be entirely inconsistent with that theory above.

True true.  I think I shouldn't have used the word theory, since I just accused science of having no real theory of mind, and my idea is even more speculative than the science.

I'm not against the idea of machine minds.  I just don't think that your comp mind idea is robust enough yet to merit the status of a full-fledged scientific theory.

In any case, you described a situation in which information exchange was intrinsic to matter, in which matter interacts.  Not exactly newsworthy, and we'd have to allow some liberty to call interaction information exhange in and of itself, but hey, we can be flexible, eh?  Not sure why you call that mind, or even spark of mind.  I've got a notoriously low bar for what I'd accept as a candidate for mind and that doesn't even cut it for me.  Sand falling through an hourglass.....just look at all that mind, right?

The way I see it, there are two mutually exclusive views: either mind supervenes on complex structures, or it is intrinsic to matter at an elemental level.  If we are to look beyond organic chemistry (as you and I both do) for the essence of mind, then we have to look at some kind of function.  But then you end up with a semantic problem: what do you call "processing" and what is just stuff happening?  There's no non-arbitrary way to really answer that semantic question.

My solution to this issue is to avoid drawing arbitrary lines at all, and to look at the simplest possible thing that could be thought of as processing: and that would be things like photon transmission, electrical bonds, quantum entanglement, and things like that.