Ironically, now that Science has allowed us to create human-like autonomous robots, ... — Gnomon

Such things have arrived?

loads of assumptions resulting in no real answer. did the idea I was somehow emotionally attached to the scenario change the parameters? Not sure I follow. I kinda feel like just as the discussion was flowing my dad walked and changed the conversation.

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism?

They’ll have to prove where the body ends and the mind begins.

I fear that you might be faced with such a situation now. If so, I don't want to tell you what you should think of it.

Considering man never directly experiences anything other than mind, I am very curious what such a proof would look like.

Considering man never directly experiences anything other than mind, I am very curious what such a proof would look like.

I don't think that's the case unless you submit to the homunculus fallacy.

Man directly experiences the world around him. He directly touches it, looks at it, tastes it, listen's to it and so on. These aren't indirect interactions.

I see your point. But the notion of a Soul separate from the Body goes back at least to ancient Egypt. Descartes merely made the distinction formal in order to allow physical Science to proceed without concern for controversial metaphysical assumptions. — Gnomon

The problem is that it was never couched in those terms. When you read early accounts of the soul, they're often metaphorical, mythical or allegorical; they're not presented in Descartes' crisp and distinctively proto-modern terminology. It was doing that, that lead to the 'ghost in the machine' criticism that Gilbert Ryle levelled to great affect against Cartesian dualism.

The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? Be very careful when you respond, as it's easy to miss the fact that what 'grasps meaning' is itself never an object of perception. It is, to allude to a Hindu doctrine, 'the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the unthought thinker'. Descartes' error was to conceive of this as something that exists, which leads to the intractable problems of how 'it' interacts with 'the body'.There is no 'it' as an objective reality but at the same time, it's impossible to deny the reality of the thinking subject. There's a cognitive shift required here - mind is the condition of all knowledge, all statements about what is or isn't, but mind itself is unknowable.

A concept could be personally encountered in a way, but you’re right - in articulating what I think a concept is, I do recognise that it isn’t the same as an experience.

The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? Be very careful when you respond, as it's easy to miss the fact that what 'grasps meaning' is itself never an object of perception. It is, to allude to a Hindu doctrine, 'the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the unthought thinker'. Descartes' error was to conceive of this as something that exists, which leads to the intractable problems of how 'it' interacts with 'the body'.There is no 'it' as an objective reality but at the same time, it's impossible to deny the reality of the thinking subject. There's a cognitive shift required here - mind is the condition of all knowledge, all statements about what is or isn't, but mind itself is unknowable. — Wayfarer

I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘know’. It seems (to me, anyway) that the confidence with which we ‘know’ in any complete or ‘objective’ sense has been eroding for some time. To know is to approach a comprehensive sense of meaning from all possible perspectives. I think it’s at least possible to approach this with respect to mind, but it certainly won’t be deemed ‘knowledge’ by current expectations in that it won’t be reducible to confident statements about what is or isn’t.

From my perspective, at least, ‘mind’ as a concept refers collectively to relations of experience, in the same sense as ‘time’ refers to relations of events. How those relations are structured is where I think a paradigm shift is required, because we don’t often consider ourselves (at least from a scientific perspective) to exist ‘outside time’, let alone interact with this aspect of reality, or even acknowledge such an aspect as reality. And yet this is how social creatures interact with the world.

Man directly experiences the world around him. He directly touches it, looks at it, tastes it, listen's to it and so on. These aren't indirect interactions. — NOS4A2

This is a standard way of describing how ‘man’ interacts with ‘the world’, sure. But consider this:

To listen is to mentally interpret the vibrations of the eardrums in response to vibrations of surrounding air molecules in response to vibrations of other molecules.

To look at something is to mentally interpret differences in the speed and strength of light particles from a number of sources as they reflect off the retina from reflections off a variety of surface molecular structures.

These aren’t direct interactions in reality. How we experience the world is through a series of complex relations with our sensory systems and with the relative structure of the world. To say that ‘man directly experiences the world around him’ as an argument against the importance of ‘mind’ is to be ignorant of the actual systems and relations that constitute both ‘man’ and ‘the world’.

This is a standard way of describing how ‘man’ interacts with ‘the world’, sure. But consider this:

To listen is to mentally interpret the vibrations of the eardrums in response to vibrations of surrounding air molecules in response to vibrations of other molecules.

To look at something is to mentally interpret differences in the speed and strength of light particles from a number of sources as they reflect off the retina from reflections off a variety of surface molecular structures.

These aren’t direct interactions in reality. How we experience the world is through a series of complex relations with our sensory systems and with the relative structure of the world. To say that ‘man directly experiences the world around him’ as an argument against the importance of ‘mind’ is to be ignorant of the actual systems and relations that constitute both ‘man’ and ‘the world’.

Listening begins the moment sound waves touch the ear. It is the necessary first step of listening. This contact with sound waves is direct, meaning, there is nothing— no veil, no screen, no sort of buffer—between man and what he experiences. So it is with light and the eye.

These are direct interactions with reality.

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL

There isn't a standard. Mind-body dualism is the result of a language confusion. As Gilbert Ryle put it, "Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject. A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them."

It's like watching a game of football played in good spirit and then wondering how that spirit interacts with the teams. Or where it goes when the teams leave the field.

Take this as an example;
When we think we see an object, we are not actually directly experiencing it, but instead looking at an image that our mind creates. Thus, we are not directly experiencing the object.

We could go even further. Our mind doesn't experience the object directly, but neither do our eyes. Our eyes experience light; not the object itself.

When we think we see an object, we are not actually directly experiencing it, but instead looking at an image that our mind creates. Thus, we are not directly experiencing the object.

We could go even further. Our mind doesn't experience the object directly, but neither do our eyes. Our eyes experience light; not the object itself.

Such a thought presupposes that something—maybe a little man or some other being—is in our head looking at the image, insulated from reality. That isn’t the case. We are also our eyes, our skin, our hair, all of which directly interacts with world and it directly with us.

Such a thought presupposes that something—maybe a little man or some other being—is in our head looking at the image, insulated from reality. — NOS4A2

Yes. You.

Where do you draw the line between processes and processing? Obviously none of the pre-processed data is ever directly experienced, albeit experienced by one's faculties.

So if there's no mind driving matter, why are all faculties enabled to an end-product autonomous overseer? If we have to go through the analogy of eyesight, we could substitute eyes for fiber optics and brain for a TV - so who's observing?

Yes. You.

That’s the homunculus fallacy. Of course, when we open up and look, there is no little being.

Where do you draw the line between processes and processing? Obviously none of the pre-processed data is ever directly experienced, albeit experienced by one's faculties.

So if there's no mind driving matter, why are all faculties enabled to an end-product autonomous overseer? If we have to go through the analogy of eyesight, we could substitute eyes for fiber optics and brain for a TV - so who's observing?

There is no demarcation between mind and body unless that boundary can be demonstrated. If it cannot be demonstrated, mind and body are either one and the same, or there is no mind.

Each step and instrument along the process of sight, from the moment the light passes through the iris and onward, is your doing, is you.

If you think I was referring to an actual physical midget living in your brain, you must be a tad simple.

If you think I was referring to an actual physical midget living in your brain, you must be a tad simple.

You referred to something that looks at images in your head, and I’m simple?

I explained how the mind produces our vision; not the eyes. And this is not disputed, at all. If we saw directly through the eyes we'd be seeing everything upside down.

I explained how the mind produces our vision; not the eyes. And this is not disputed, at all. If we saw directly through the eyes we'd be seeing everything upside down.

The body—from cornea, to lens, to retina, to visual cortex, to brain—produces vision. Every piece is involved in seeing.

"Involved in", sure. But the mind produces the image. Even without the eyes the mind can produce images, no?

Such things have arrived? — petrichor

We are now in the early stages of producing humanoid robots. I doubt that anyone would think the current models have souls, but people typically find them eerily life-like. It's only a matter of time until we're faced with moral questions such as those addressed in Sci-Fi (WestWorld).
Life-Like Robots : https://futurism.com/the-most-life-life-robots-ever-created

The duality can be demonstrated as simply as severing any body part.
Unless the mind is plugged in to the body, the body has no battery life and is a body no more, but a pile of flesh.

The disparity between creature and carcass is clear, there's nothing to prove - but if you've got a better explanation for this disparity, do share.

The duality can be demonstrated as simply as severing any body part.
Unless the mind is plugged in to the body, the body has no battery life and is a body no more, but a pile of flesh.

The disparity between creature and carcass is clear, there's nothing to prove - but if you've got a better explanation for this disparity, do share.

“Mind” need not be assumed, much less proven. An organism propagates it’s own life. Tear a piece from the organism, you tear it from the systems necessary for its living.

The disparity between living and deceased is a matter of biology in every single case.

We are now in the early stages of producing humanoid robots. — Gnomon

We are creating robots that sort of look like people, mainly because they have a rubber face made to resemble a person. But they aren't even remotely convincing! And they certainly aren't autonomous. And by no stretch could anyone think them even remotely close to being conscious.

Before we claim to be making something like a human, first make a very simple robot that can feel pain. That will impress me greatly! A robot worm that feels pain. Do that first. Or if that seems cruel, make a worm that feels pleasure.

I have long wanted someone to even give me a sketch of a shadow of an impression of an idea of how one might go about programming a computer to feel pain. And I mean with code! How do you write a set of machine-readable instructions for feeling a pain sensation? I can see how you can write code that for a given input, gives a certain output. You can add numbers, for example. Or if some condition is met, you can trigger an actuator. So if light is detected, an arm can move. You can write complex sets of conditionals like this that could, if well-done, create the illusion that the machine is feeling something. But actually feeling pain? Come on!

now that Science has allowed us to create human-like autonomous robots — Gnomon

Not even close!

The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? — Wayfarer

Yes. That question has perplexed scientists for years, since they don't accept the existence of a black-box Soul. Ironically, most of their mechanical hypotheses imply, but don't assert, the existence of some kind of Homunculus, a ghostly version of the Self that views the "cartesian theatre" in the brain. But that's essentially what a Soul is supposed to be : an immortal ethereal twin of the physical body -- with some unique features : Life & Consciousness.

I think the ancient hypothesis of a Soul was a good guess, considering the primitive state of understanding of how the body and brain work. Today, Atheists assume that consciousness is "nothing more than" neuronal activity. But they still have no idea how physical electrical activity transitions into meta-physical mental activity.

That's why Enformationism takes a Holistic view of the process, taking into account the well-known fact that wholes are "more than" the sum of the parts. That doesn't explain the step-by-step "mechanics" of consciousness, but it gives us a clue that it's not any particular part or set of parts that produce consciousness, Instead it's the system as a whole. My guess is that consciousness emerges from a high-level form of the Phase Changes that we observe in physics, when water suddenly transforms into ice or gas, with their own unique properties.

Presumably, EnFormAction works both ways : to create meaningful patterns, and to interpret them into meaningful ideas. Unfortunately, for that to work, some kind of intentional conscious Enformer is logically required to create the cosmic system that evolves to a point where living conscious creatures can emerge from non-living non-conscious matter & energy. I say "unfortunate" because the Enformer is the ultimate black-box, and may be forever beyond the reach of our understanding. So, the EnFormAction hypothesis is just an update of the older guesses about Life and Mind. As you implied : Mind (G*D) is unknowable.

Emergence of Mind : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page69.html

But the biology of the living and recently deceased is the same. Like a computer that is on or off is the same.

So if it isn't mind, what is this separate power supply that determines whether an organism is on or off?

Before we claim to be making something like a human, first make a very simple robot that can feel pain. — petrichor

As I said, we are in the early stages of robotics. And I am also skeptical of Sci-Fi stories of conscious robots . . . in the near future.

But . . . due to the long arc of my Enformationism worldview, I can't rule-out the possibility that artificial consciousness could be the next phase of evolution. Don't underestimate the motivation & ingenuity of human animals, who -- against all odds -- realized their ancient dream of touching the moon. Consciousness is not magic, it's meta-physics.

PS__In my personal world model, the Potential for Life & Consciousness was inherent in the physical world from the beginning, and emerged only when conditions were right for their expression . . . not as a miracle, but as an inevitable function of the creative evolutionary process.