Im usually sceptical to theories thike that, — Anirudh Sharma

Care to elucidate the skepticism?

The sensation of "mind" is a series of chemical and energetic processes that result in self awareness, felt similarly to how a ghost limb can be felt after limb loss. We have evolved to adapt and tolerate many things, the "mind" is an evolutionary adaptation whereby the body tells itself that it exists.

My view is that it's nature's way of leading a complex organism toward replicating itself non-organically.

As far as I can tell (so far), I am a collection of complex, interactive processes (chemical and physical) that amount to a feeling, sensing, thinking and remembering/imagining process of ‘being’ that seeks ultimately to increase awareness, interconnection and overall achievement at every level.

All the processes of this organism in interaction with each other and the universe, including but not limited to the brain, are essential to this process of information in and out. But at the end of the day, I am a temporary collection of processes, and it is only the unique wealth and complexity of information I can acquire, process and, more importantly, contribute to the overall achievement of the universe and life in general that matters in the end.

What I do with my life should then amount to maximising awareness, interconnection and overall achievement external to this temporary sense of ‘self’, insofar as I am currently aware of the universe as an ongoing and complex series of processes and interaction in spacetime.

Any positive contributions I make will amount to my ‘eternal life’, and whatever I hold onto or take with me to the grave is wasted effort.

I feel it necessary to introduce the notion that existence is irrational. There is no necessary correspondence between my immediate existence and our concepts. Conception (thinking) is qualitatively removed from actual existence, only serving to mediate it as a rational form, to represent it as idea. It can be pointed out here, that my simply talking about existence here, is nothing more than speculation here, and only serves to draw away from actual existing here. You would experience existing more directly in a sense deprivation chamber, than you ever could through a conceptual expression. Nevertheless, immediate existence is naturally appropriated into understanding through creative reasoning, and it is only by superimposing rational concepts upon existence that it takes on a logical aspect. But that logical aspect is confined to the realm of the ideal, it has no concrete reality, and any communication of the idea is mere speculation, all an approximation of truth (qua. existence).

If we are to assess what is primary in regard to existence, it is obvious that subjectivity comes into contact with it well before any objectivity (i.e. speculative truth) can be extracted from it.

The sensation of "mind" is a series of chemical and energetic processes that result in self awareness — whollyrolling

And thoughts and illusions, etc. So how does it make sense to say those processes don't exist?

They do exist--as physical and energetic processes. They don't exist as ethereal or non-material or whatever other fantasy could be thrown at them. Fantasy is a defective but sometimes useful computation. It is useful because it appeals to useful but defective processes such as emotion.

They don't exist as ethereal or non-material or whatever other fantasy could be thrown at them. — whollyrolling

Right, but just say that, then. "There is no mind a la ridiculous, confused notions such as it being nonphysical. There is mind, but it's physical, just a set of brain processes, etc."

No. Mind is an illusion. Take for example one of the many sensations of "mind"--that it can be perceived as vast internal space. Do you believe that vast space exists within the human brain, or is it more likely that such a sensation results from something happening within the material of the brain? Or would you believe that it's some other plane of existence where "mind" or "spirit" exists apart from all material things, which can't be demonstrated even to the self?

A Reductive Physicalist view upon it would not call it phenomena. — SethRy

By all accounts I'm a reductive physicalist. I call it phenomena.

You are right in saying, that if the brain dies, it is the the communication between the cells that has ended,the cells are still alive by themselves.Which implies that maybe your consciousness is merely an illusion created by a mass of cells,and nothing significant. — Anirudh Sharma

"Illusion"? "Nothing significant"? Maybe your consciousness is not a feature of your cells, but of their interconnections? It's the network that does what we're considering here. A reductionist view - that the brain is merely a collection of individual cells - fails to even see the real actor here, the nexus.

Reductionists can say that relations and processes are parts that have to be accounted for.

The sensation of "mind" is a series of chemical and energetic processes that result in self awareness — whollyrolling

You have a sensation of mind, and through that mind you experience phenomena that you call chemical and energetic processes, now how can you conclude that your sensation of mind is nothing more than these processes you experience using your mind?

the "mind" is an evolutionary adaptation whereby the body tells itself that it exists. — whollyrolling

If the "mind" is nothing more than a series of chemical and energetic processes, what survival purpose does it serve if we're just spectators and our experiences do not act on anything? Why did evolution select for it if it offers zero survival advantage? Why doesn't our body act in the exact same way without us experiencing anything, what is the use of the experience itself?

While I accept most of this, I find myself wondering what would be accomplished by “....superimposing rational concepts upon existence...” given “...the notion that existence is irrational.”

What logical aspect would arise from superimposing rational concepts on an irrational notion?

Even granting “....it is obvious that subjectivity comes into contact with it (“it” being the so-called irrational notion of existence)...”, there still seems to be some indication a theory incorporating this tenet relegates subjectivity itself to irrational grounds. I don’t think a worthy epistemological theory can afford to do that.

Reductionists can say that relations and processes are parts that have to be accounted for. — Terrapin Station

I suppose reductionists can say what they like. But their chosen method is a divide-and-conquer approach. We can't understand a whole human in one bite, so we divide it into smaller and smaller pieces, in the hope that we can understand them individually, and somehow assemble all the little understandings until we can understand the big thing we started with. This works where the functionality that concerns us is intrinsic to the parts, but not where the functionality depends on the interconnections between the parts, that we break without thinking as we divide the big thing up. Reductionists don't even notice this interconnection functionality, because their method cannot examine or even expose it. It's as if it doesn't exist.

If relations and processes are something that has to be accounted for, we'll need a different investigative technique. One to which the interconnection-functionality is actually detectable!

Why did evolution select for it if it offers zero survival advantage? — leo

Just one of many possibilities: evolution selected for something else, and your "it" just happened to be connected to the thing that's being selected-for by evolution. This is very common. Ask an applied evolutionist.

Nevertheless, immediate existence is naturally appropriated into understanding through creative reasoning, and it is only by superimposing rational concepts upon existence that it takes on a logical aspect. But that logical aspect is confined to the realm of the ideal, it has no concrete reality — Merkwurdichliebe

We overlay all of our mapping-ideas onto reality. The ones that fit, we use. But, as you say, they are our overlays, and not part of the real world. When we look for rationality in the world, and in humans, we sometimes find it; more often we don't. Logic and rationality are just human ideas, ambitions and aspirations: wishful thinking. "Ought" not "is".

Neuroscience has been trying to work out the intricate mechanism of thinking, but we haven't quite grasped it, not to say that it won't be explained in the next few decades. — Anirudh Sharma

Think about it this way:

We have a map that is a shortcut representation of the world that includes some life history (memories) - this is our mind. This map is how we access the world. We represent our selves as bodies on this map.

Whenever we act, we act in the world, not in the map. The map updates itself as we act providing us with near-real-time sensory feedback. How it updates is a causal process that is an interaction between the new state-of-affairs in the world and your body.

We can only ever get at the map, which is a more causally processed state-of-affairs than the state-of-affairs that isn't the map (the world). We explain things on the map, not in the world, so when we get things wrong or incoherent, (QM) it may be because we didn't take into account how our sensory interaction with the world affects how the world appears as the map.

Most people confuse the map with the world (naive realists, idealists (who believe the world is only maps) and those that don't have a clear understanding of the distinction between "subjective" and "objective" (are they referring to the map or the world when they talk about the world as it is?))

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics

so we divide it into smaller and smaller pieces, in the hope that we can understand them individually, and somehow assemble all the little understandings until we can understand the big thing we started with. This works where the functionality that concerns us is intrinsic to the parts, but not where the functionality depends on the interconnections between the parts, — Pattern-chaser

It doesn't exclude the interconnections between the parts if it includes relations and processes.

And it doesn't reduce anything more than it can be reduced.

Just one of many possibilities: evolution selected for something else, and your "it" just happened to be connected to the thing that's being selected-for by evolution. This is very common. Ask an applied evolutionist. — Pattern-chaser

So in this case the mind would be connected to the motions of electrons and molecules, which leads to panpsychism.

But still, the problem with assuming that the mind is an epiphenomenon that doesn't cause anything, that it is in principle completely described by the motions of particles (so-called 'chemical' or 'energetic' processes), is that why does it feel good to eat, to drink, to win, to have sex, to be safe, and why does it feel bad to eat too much, drink too much, lose, be threatened, ..., why do most of the things that help us survive feel good and most of the things that threaten our survival feel bad? If our experiences didn't cause anything then that would be a cosmic coincidence, if we were just spectators then it might as well feel good to burn or cut our skin and it might feel bad to drink or have sex and supposedly it would make zero difference to what we do, and I find that highly implausible.

Nothing is experienced through the mind or by the the mind--it doesn't experience processes. The brain stores and transmits information--everything is experienced through the senses or by the senses. Things that you perceive as in your mind are information stored in your brain after experiences, from fractions of a second after an experience to years later, plus a memory or an awareness of self, which is a process that serves numerous functions in the body and outside it. It is directly linked to survival.

It doesn't exclude the interconnections between the parts if it includes relations and processes. — Terrapin Station

But if it includes relations and processes, it can't be reductionism. :chin: Dividing the Big Thing into many Little Things - necessarily destroying and losing all of the interconnections between those Little Things - is central to the technique of reductionism.

So in this case the mind would be connected to the motions of electrons and molecules, which leads to panpsychism. — leo

How do you come to that conclusion? Of all the things that could have been related to the mind, you have identified one, and jumped straight to a conclusion. Admirable brevity, for sure, but I can't see the reasoning?

You classify a part of your experiences as coming from a world filtered through what you call your senses, then at some point you come to assume that everything that exists is attainable through these senses, which leads to a material view of the world and to the belief that the mind is nothing more than matter and in principle can be described entirely from matter, or from what you call chemical and energetic processes.

The idea of these processes that you have comes from your experiences (which make up what we call the mind). Now how can you trust that these experiences tell you the whole story on what these experiences are, on what they can be reduced to?

That we can find some fuzzy correlation between measured electrical activity in the brain and reports of experiences, does not imply that these experiences can be completely described by the measurable processes within the brain that we see through our senses. Saying that all our experiences reduce to that rests on a lot of assumptions, and one could equally pick different assumptions and conclude that the mind is more than brain processes and cannot be completely reduced to that.

As one example of a difficulty arising from equating the mind with brain processes observable in principle through the senses, is that no amount of analysis will allow to say how such or such process gives rise to such or such experience, you could describe all the measurable processes going on and that still wouldn't say why this gives rise to experiences at all.

But if it includes relations and processes, it can't be reductionism. :chin: Dividing the Big Thing into many Little Things - necessarily destroying and losing all of the interconnections between those Little Things - is central to the technique of reductionism. — Pattern-chaser

Non-reductionists are supposed to be saying that things are more than the stuff, relations and processes that are the "parts." That somehow there's something "emergent" in a "transcendent" sense above that.

It is my understanding that the transcendent bit emerges only to those who failed to notice the interconnections in the first place, so they had no idea that such connections existed. So they're surprised when the effects of these relationships are observed when they have no knowledge of them. In other words, it only looks like emergence to reductionists?

Just a thought...?

Doesn't it seem like a pretty obvious straw man to say that reductionists have to be talking about parts without relations/processes, though? I mean, who would say something like that?

How do you come to that conclusion? — Pattern-chaser

Do you have a hypothetical example of something that evolution selected for, that could be connected to the existence of the mind (the existence of our experiences), but that would be unrelated to brain processes? (which in the common materialist view reduce to chemical processes, which themselves reduce to motions of particles)

I mean, who would say something like that? — Terrapin Station

Someone who thinks division is an intrinsic part of reductionism?

You're misconstruing what I'm trying to communicate. I haven't classified any experience as coming through or filtered by anything. I've classified experience as something that only happens to senses.

I haven't assumed that anything that exists is attainable, I've posited that it is sensed, or experienced at a sensory level. I'm more inclined to assert that the mind is nothing than that it's matter or that it can be described because obviously the mind can't be described.

If the mind is nothing, then the perceiver of the mind is not experiencing anything. If I've eliminated the mind as the experiencer and limited experience to the senses, what's left is the notion that after experiencing something, the senses send information to the brain, and the brain constructs a memory of the experience of the senses. This is not an experience, it's a data sequence, a memory of past experience.

I can't trust anything while senses are incapable of experiencing everything that exists because there will always be something that evades them.

I'm not "equating the mind with brain processes", that's a gross generalization. I'm saying that the mind is a subset of processes within a broader spectrum of processes in the brain.

We don't need to measure or comprehend these processes, and we're in fact incapable of doing so. It's the compulsion to measure and comprehend ourselves that drives us toward ironically replacing ourselves with something non-organic that does understand us. Life on this planet is incapable of outlasting or escaping the death of the solar system and is motivated by necessity to imprint itself on something that has potential to do so.

I may be assuming a lot, but I'm not doing so without reason.

By all accounts I'm a reductive physicalist. I call it phenomena. — Terrapin Station

Phenomena, by what I would know, is an unexplained occurrence. And neuro-scientists from around the world have proposed research findings that our thoughts are maneuvered and fueled by our daily experiences and partly of our genetic material. They have deconstructed and made that process to detail, henceforth reaching a conclusion where it is explained. Meanwhile, the mind is a transcendent substance external to our physical states, and therefore unknowable — to this point of time at least. So, some would assume that the mind is beyond the brain; that there is disparity between the two substances, which is for a dualist point of view.

I don't understand how it must be labelled 'phenomena'.