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https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/335736

Whats the standard for Mind/Body

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

The ancient Mind/Body conundrum is based on a false assumption : that the Mind/Soul is a thing apart from the Brain/Body. Like the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, it derives from the human propensity to reify abstractions.

In fact, the Mind or Soul is merely the Function of the Brain/Body : to produce Consciousness & Life.

Transportation is the function of an Automobile, but we don't imagine it as a spooky doppelganger of the car. Likewise, Mind is merely what the Brain does. So, scientific experiments should be trying to clarify exactly how the brain does what it does, and not looking for mysterious Ghosts or Homunculus operators of the body. It would help to view the Mind/Body as an integrated whole system instead of as a loose association of parts.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/335908

That's not 'the ancient mind/body problem' but 'the modern mind body problem'. — Wayfarer

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. It was an early form of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria argument.

Ironically, now that Science has allowed us to create human-like autonomous robots, the question again arises whether they have souls. That's a staple theme of futuristic Sci-Fi like WestWorld.

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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 ... er-created

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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

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... indbody/p2

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.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... indbody/p3

‘mind’ as a concept refers collectively to relations of experience — Possibility

Yes. Scientists have looked for the correlates of consciousness in particular things. But, as you implied, the locus of Mind is in the relationships between things. Mind is meta-physical, like Mathematics, not physical, like neurons.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... indbody/p3

If we are to create something that is conscious in the way we are, it seems to me that we need something qualitatively different from a computer. — petrichor

Yes. What's missing from current computers is Qualia. 1s and 0s can be processed mathematically, but don't add-up to the quality of consciousness.

My own suspicion is that our consciousness is really just a highly organized form of something that is fundamental. What I mean to say is that basic subjectivity is there everywhere in nature at a very low level. — petrichor

I see that you have thought deeply about the mystery of Consciousness. And your conclusion is similar to mine, that something like the ancient theory of Panpsychism must be involved. As you hastened to point out, that doesn't mean that atoms or single-cell organisms are conscious, but they do "sense" their environment in exchanges of energy ("atoms of experience"). You could call that "subjectivity" as a loose metaphor, but it wouldn't be anything like the New Age notion, which would attribute the "what it's like" feeling to every particle in the universe.

In my own worldview, I refer to that "something fundamental" as Information. That's why I call my personal theory of everything, Enformationism : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Suppose you just have primitive Being, or Unity, or whatever, The Undifferentiated. Call it what you like. — petrichor

In my thesis, I call that source of all that is, BEING : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

Maybe the primordial unity objectifies itself and thereby becomes a subject. — petrichor

For the purposes of distinguishing between the space-time world and the infinite-eternal BEING, I refer to the ultimate source as G*D, but only in a non-humanoid sense. As a form of PanEnDeism, we can imagine that the holistic G*D created our world to serve as something like a mirror. Thus, an undifferentiated BEING could become subject and object. I wouldn't take that metaphor too literally, but it might give us a clue to answer the old "why create an imperfect world?" conundrum.
G*D : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

And then we wonder how our interiority could possibly "emerge" out of special arrangements of these empty, purely structural, substanceless objects. No wonder there is a mind-body problem! — petrichor

My answer to the Mind/Body problem is to note that both are forms of fundamental Information. We now know that Information is not just mind-stuff, but also material-stuff. Scientists have equated Information with Energy, and Energy with Matter. So, in my thesis the emergence of Mind/Consciousness from Matter/Body is a high-level instance of the Phase Changes that are found throughout Physics. I could go into much more detail, but for now, I'll just leave it as a speculation.
Mind/Body Problem : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page30.html

information integration, a la Tononi — petrichor

Yes. Holism is essential to my theory of Enformationism

But a computer running a simulation of a brain or whatever, has, in its physical substrate, a very different causal structure, one that probably lacks the kind of intentional content we want it to have when we want it to be conscious in the way that we are. — petrichor

Yes. That's why computers cannot become conscious until they develop a point-of-view (self image) and are able to intend future actions that are not pre-programmed.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... indbody/p3

Technically, I agree. But I don’t find this helpful as an either-or dichotomy, as if the metaphysical is not physical and vice versa. — Possibility

For clarity, I define Physical and Meta-Physical according to my personal interpretation of Aristotle (see Glossary). I also try to make a clear distinction between Real and Ideal. They are all various forms of universal Information, but for the purposes of dialog we must be more specific.
Meta-Physics : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... indbody/p3

<< Yes. What's missing from current computers is Qualia. 1s and 0s can be processed mathematically, but don't add-up to the quality of consciousness. — Gnomon >>

I don't know if qualia is actually missing. I just think that, though being a modification of the same underlying substance, it must be quite different in structure. — petrichor

Yes. The underlying "substance" is generic Information. Digital information is Quantitative (discontinuous), while Analog information is Qualitative (continuous). Computers process 1s & 0s as abstractions that never occur in reality. But humans process information in terms of values between Zero and 100%. That's the insight of Bayesian logic : binary logic is two-valued (absolute, either/or), while human logic is multi-valued (probabilistic; both/and). That's why programmers are now experimenting with Analog computers that use Bayesian logic to approximate human reasoning (inference). Such calculations allow freedom, but also errors. The role-playing robots in WestWorld are supposed to have analog brains, which makes them eerily life-like, but also unpredictable.

Bayesian Inference : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference
BothAnd Principle : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html


Are the 1s and 0s represented themselves aware of anything? Is the digital image represented by them itself aware of itself? No, no, no, and no. — petrichor

No. Digital processing is unlikely to be aware of anything apart from voltage fluctuations. But Analog processing might be the first step toward self-awareness. Simple awareness is an inference from incoming information that something is out there. Higher level awareness (self-consciousness) might require more detailed inference that includes self-reference.