Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

16. Function :
   The ability of a mechanical or mental system to process or compute raw inputs into finished outputs. Thus, Mind is the function or product of Brain operations. It’s what the neural system does.

17. Epiphenomenalism :
  a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process.
   ___Oxford dictionary

18. Noumena :
    the object of a purely intellectual intuition.
    ___Oxford dictionary
Ideas are literally unreal, but they are important to beings who live by their intellect.

19. Intelligent Agent :
   “ . . . . an intelligent agent (IA) is an agent acting in an intelligent manner; It perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or acquiring knowledge.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent

  Post 131.  August 28, 2023

  Creative Mind and Cosmic Order

     Functionalism vs Reductionism

From the comprehensive & systematic perspective of philo-sophical Holism, Nature produces both material Objects, that we can see & touch, and immaterial Functions¹⁶ ─ including the invisible mental aspects of the human brain, that we can only infer in other minds by means of the sixth sense of Reasoning. Georg Hegel labled that spooky immaterial force in the world as The Phenomenonology of Spirit. But Materialists often refer to such immaterial processes dismissively as “epiphenomena”¹⁷, to imply “not real things”¹⁸. Yet those non-things include the world changing Ideas that have propelled homo sapiens from the bottom to the top of the food chain, as the dominant species in the world. While animals still passively browse grass, as they have for millennia, humans now browse books, that contain intangible nutrients for inquiring minds. So, the function of the brain is not just to convert photons into electrons, but to nourish the mind with ideal concepts useful for flourishing as intelligent agents¹⁹ in the world.

Although our perception absorbs information in Gestalt gulps, our brains quickly masticate those chunks into more easily digestible bits, known as Categories or Classes. Hence, Pinter says “the purposeful activity of all animals . . . . rests on the ability to understand the world analytically.” So, Perception is holistic, but Conception is analytic. Eventually, some of those bytes of meaning are incorporated into the mind as beliefs, which we utilize for facts in our reasoning processes. Such innovative reasoning is the key to evolutionary success for homo sapiens. Yet Pinter notes that “creative activity is based on a subtle balance of Gestalt and analytic”. That’s why some particular facts are recombined into more general forms to serve as complex concepts (maps) guiding our forays into the world. Surprisingly, he also concludes “what sculpts the way we perceive things . . . are the forces with which nature opposes us. It is our mind that creates features and attributes to objects. The external world does not need to possess features, only restraints²⁰”. Of course, he’s not talking about “creation” in the sense of Genesis, but of imagination & innovation.

Pinter soberly notes that “the mental activity of constructing meanings is a sophisticated process that the science of language has largely ignored”. But in the emerging science of Semiology²¹, those mental gestalts are treated as symbols or tokens of real things or processes. He says that “the presence of tokens in the brain as stand-ins or representatives of complex objects is confirmed today by experiments on single neurons”. Human technology has always overcome physical limitations by the use of artificial extensions of natural faculties, such as telescopes for eyes. Likewise, Gestalts also serve as ideal stand-ins for real things, allowing us to learn much faster, and without the risk of handling real stuff, such as radioactive rocks. In that case, we substitute mathematical formulas in place of the actual material.

            Blog Post 131 continued  . . . . click Next       

20. Restraints are Laws :
   The laws of nature are restraints on change – on causation – that limit what can happen naturally. But the human mind defines those things & events – in terms of features & structure – in order to make sense of being & change, so we can artificially control natural things & forces.
   This quote underlines the subtitle of the book, which notes the power of Mind to create a science of what is, and a technology of what might be.

21. Semiology :
   The science of fragmenting complex physical reality into gestalt chunks of symbolic & metaphorical meaning that are simpler & easier for thinking beings to control meta-physically. See #16 Function.

Gestalt processing is a function of the brain that converts raw data into the meaningful chunks we call ideas and categories

Click here for enlargement

mammals underfoot
in food chain