why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[The Grand Nudger]

If you say so, but that doesn't really change the contents of my comments anymore than anything before it did.  

If qualia is the subjective experience of what things are like...that doesn't sound like a full description of whats going on in my mind any more than our qualia is a full description of our field of observation.

Again, our minds are doing alot of things, most of which we have no experience of whatsoever.

Do you remember the statement that this refers to?

You indicated that the mind didn't seem to be doing anything, or have any purpose, aside from qualia. That can only -be- true if you're using the two terms synonymously...but if you're using the two terms synonymously it's truth is inconsequential and uninformative. The "Not mind" is doing alot of things, then...as well as doing qualia/mind - this is a bit of the Not mind, which is definitely not any bit of the brain. Not only is your concern irrelevant to evolutionary biology, it's content is false on it's face.

An artifact of your semantics, nothing more or less.

[The Grand Nudger]

-as an afterthought, I think you should probably check into model based control theories.  They seem very nearly tailor made for the sorts of questions/issues you have.

[bennyboy]

You indicated that the mind didn't seem to be doing anything, or have any purpose, aside from qualia.

No, I didn't. I defined mind as mental experience, precluding things like breathing and heartbeats. However, upon further consideration, I know that very many people refer to the under-the-hood stuff as mind, as well.

[The Grand Nudger]

Mind doesn't seem to be anything at all, except the capacity to subjectively experience.

This is where things went through the looking glass, for me.

I think we can move beyond it, though, seeing the above. Since we both agree that the mind (or what very many people refer to as the mind) is doing alot of things, any underlying question about what the mind is doing, to what end (and I'm using the term very, very loosely) it could have been leveraged as an adaptation..is effectively settled.

You seem to be more concerned with what qualia specifically, as one of many things mind™ is up to, brings to the table. Model control theories posit that consciousness is an attention schema. That the subjective report can be leveraged to refine control of the finite operational assets of the system. This would be the evolutionary benefit conferred..the sort of thing that would make the evolution of consciousness "make sense". Mostly, because for any evoilutionary anything to make sense, it needs to refer to an inheritable biological structure or architecture or trait. Honestly, the very moment we divorce something (even conceptually) from the organ of contention..then there's really no sense in trying to make evolution make sense, because that's what evolution is about..and if whatever we're talking about doesn't have anything to do with that...then evolutionary biology doesn't have anything to do with -it-.

[bennyboy]

Mind doesn't seem to be anything at all, except the capacity to subjectively experience.

This is where things went through the looking glass, for me.

I think we can move beyond it, though, seeing the above.  Since we both agree that the mind (or what very many people refer to as the mind) is doing alot of things, any underlying question about what the mind is doing, to what end (and I'm using the term very, very loosely) it could have been leveraged as an adaptation..is effectively settled.

You seem to be more concerned with what qualia specifically, as one of many things mind™ is up to, brings to the table.  Model control theories posit that consciousness is an attention schema.  That the subjective report can be leveraged to refine control of the finite operational assets of the system.  This would be the evolutionary benefit conferred..the sort of thing that would make the evolution of consciousness "make sense".  Mostly, because for any evoilutionary anything to make sense, it needs to refer to an inheritable biological structure or architecture or trait.  Honestly, the very moment we divorce something (even conceptually) from the organ of contention..then there's really no sense in trying to make evolution make sense, because that's what evolution is about..and if whatever we're talking about doesn't have anything to do with that...then evolutionary biology doesn't have anything to do with -it-.

Evolution as viewed in terms of genetics and its persistence due to phenotypes that benefit fitness is about that.

But under the hood, we're really talking about energetic interactions which promulgate forward through time in a kind of causal ripple THROUGH DNA.  I'd say that genetics as much represent the essence of moments (i.e. the ideas of them) as vice versa.

[I_am_not_mafia]

If time is a dimension ...

Yes ...

and mind is the experience of moving through that dimension

I wouldn't define it as that but I would argue that intelligence more developed than that of a stimulus / response agent, and consequently the mind, can be understood to include time as an extra dimension in an energy landscape ...

then there are no events at all without a subjective observer. Essentially, without subjective observation, you have a singularity.

Woah now you've taken a step too far.

That's like saying, I see and hear a tree falling down in a forest but it won't happen if I am not there.

Besides, events are discrete whereas reality works at a more finely grained continuous scale (let's not start talking about quantum mechanics)

[The Grand Nudger]

This is where things went through the looking glass, for me.

I think we can move beyond it, though, seeing the above.  Since we both agree that the mind (or what very many people refer to as the mind) is doing alot of things, any underlying question about what the mind is doing, to what end (and I'm using the term very, very loosely) it could have been leveraged as an adaptation..is effectively settled.

You seem to be more concerned with what qualia specifically, as one of many things mind™ is up to, brings to the table.  Model control theories posit that consciousness is an attention schema.  That the subjective report can be leveraged to refine control of the finite operational assets of the system.  This would be the evolutionary benefit conferred..the sort of thing that would make the evolution of consciousness "make sense".  Mostly, because for any evoilutionary anything to make sense, it needs to refer to an inheritable biological structure or architecture or trait.  Honestly, the very moment we divorce something (even conceptually) from the organ of contention..then there's really no sense in trying to make evolution make sense, because that's what evolution is about..and if whatever we're talking about doesn't have anything to do with that...then evolutionary biology doesn't have anything to do with -it-.

Evolution as viewed in terms of genetics and its persistence due to phenotypes that benefit fitness is about that.

But under the hood, we're really talking about energetic interactions which promulgate forward through time in a kind of causal ripple THROUGH DNA.  I'd say that genetics as much represent the essence of moments (i.e. the ideas of them) as vice versa.

You're talking about something else making sense, then, in panpsychism, to you.  Evolution is just a word you attached to whatever that is.  

This is important, consider how we got here.  You had concerns that there was no evolutionary explanation for the existence of qualia, under a material monism, on account of how it didn't seem to serve any purpose.  That turned out to be both uninformative if true...and false if any of the competing evolutionary theories of qualia  (such as model control theories) are true.   You further posited that under some other paradigm, the evolution of mind made sense..this granting conceptual credibility, a bonus... to that other paradigm over others.  That other paradigm had nothing to do with the subject of evolutionary theory, however.

Now, addressing that directly, and on it's own merits, rather than the merits of the misapprehensions above...positing substance dualism or panpsychism doesn't actually move the chains of explanation a single inch when it comes to mind. Stating that mind is somehow elemental is not an explanation for how we achieve that thing. No more so than my saying "the world is made of stuff, and stuff is elemental" would be. Perhaps more interestingly, there's nothing about the statement "mind is elemental" that is uniquely true or meaningful under panpsychism or substance dualism but not materialism. If mind is information processing that occurs in the brain..well...information processing is "elemental" to material monism as well. We call it material interaction. Does that, to you...seem to make material monism or mind "make sense". It may not, and I'm not telling you that it does, in and of itself...but if this business about things being "elemental" is informative in that regard for panpsychism, then it ought to be equally informing in the case of material monism.

As a sideline, did you happen to peruse the field of model control theory?

[bennyboy]

Woah now you've taken a step too far.

That's like saying, I see and hear a tree falling down in a forest but it won't happen if I am not there.

Besides, events are discrete whereas reality works at a more finely grained continuous scale (let's not start talking about quantum mechanics)

If I'm talking about physics in a thread about mind, you can be guaranteed that I'm talking about quantum mechanics. It is very much an interest in the quantum eraser effect, and the idea of what unresolved superpositions mean to our view of time, that make me wonder what it would mean if there were no observers.

I know that "observer" doesn't necessarily mean a conscious observer. However, it also seems to me that a conscious agent might be interestingly viewed as a kind of superposition-resolving machine. Maybe all trees are both fallen and unfallen until we discover them so.

(sorry for woo, it's 6:00am here and I just got up for some water).

---

Now, addressing that directly, and on it's own merits, rather than the merits of the misapprehensions above...positing substance dualism or panpsychism doesn't actually move the chains of explanation a single inch when it comes to mind.  Stating that mind is somehow elemental is not an explanation for how we achieve that thing.  No more so than my saying "the world is made of stuff, and stuff is elemental" would be.  Perhaps more interestingly, there's nothing about the statement "mind is elemental" that is uniquely true or meaningful under panpsychism or substance dualism  but not materialism.  If mind is information processing that occurs in the brain..well...information processing is "elemental" to material monism as well.  We call it material interaction.  Does that, to you...seem to make material monism or mind "make sense".  It may not, and I'm not telling you that it does, in and of itself...but if this business about things being "elemental" is informative in that regard for panpsychism, then it ought to be equally informing in the case of material monism.

There are two pseudo-scientific responses to questions of mind which I dislike, as you know:
1) A generalized waving toward the brain, without any specific proposed mechanism
2) An evolutionary narrative without any proposed mechanism.

The issue for me is this-- how is it that the Universe, under any material configuration or process, allows for mind rather than not allowing for it? I can say, "If there were no photons which are emitted, travel through space, and received, then there would be no light." That doesn't exactly explain why there's light, but we've gotten close enough to the essence of it to really benefit from that understanding.

I'd be happy enough with "If there were no _____, there would be no consciousness." Thoreauvian has confidently asserted that the organic brain (rather than say a robot processing unit) should fill in that blank. And fair enough-- the only material system (given non-solipsism, non-simulationism etc.) that is associated with consciousness is my own brain. The next extension would be other human brains, then the most human-like mammals, and so on. Okay, but identifying systems I'm willing to accept have mind, and identifying any kind of mechanism at all which allows for mind to exist where there was none before, are very different things.

Short question: if mind is in the brain, on what level of organization does it supervene, and why?

As a sideline, did you happen to peruse the field of model control theory?

I googled it, and found a lot of hits on control theory, some including the word model, but I couldn't easily find a theory of mind. Link?