(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]A lot to consider. My thinking on this so far.
I appreciate your ongoing engagement.
(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Your view as expressed here is that both the conscious mind and the subconscious are "in some sense, not "ineffable" but in fact "effable", having some objective substantive form which "functions" within (as) the mind..."
I would still hold that mind simply can't have an objective, substantive aspect or property or component, because mind is of another entire level of reality than the physical, at least when considering the incommensurability of all known aspects of the two. This means they are totally unsuitable for comparison - that is, they are lacking any features that can be conceivably compared. Like the inner experience of red as opposed to the objective measurable wavelength of the corresponding light waves.
It seems that what bothers you here is the "physicality" that you presume of that which I've termed "mental energy". I've tried to make clear that it's not "physical" in the sense of having such properties as, say, mass, and presumably not wavelength either - and I add that it isn't comprised of particles such as atoms as physical matter is - but I guess it's difficult to dispel the association totally given that I've referred to it as "substantive" in some sense.
Having thought it over, it seems to me to be useful to try to bridge our way to what might or might not turn out to be the necessity of the concept of mental energy even on interactionist (substance) dualism, albeit that the bridge might not be completable (I don't want to presume in advance). Let's do this by removing the "substantive" property from mental energy, and then renaming the new concept "experience representation" (let me know if you can think of a better name).
An "experience representation" is purely
abstract, rather than substantive (energetic). It is the
objective conceptual, informational, and/or mathematical structure that perfectly represents and correlates with
subjective, inner experience (I have more in mind for the definition, to make it more rigorous, and some comments on how it relates to existing work on consciousness, but that's enough to introduce it).
Now, I think we have reason to believe that such a perfectly correlated representation
might at least
in theory be possible, and that reason is that we have partial representations of experience in various forms already, for example (roughly from lowest fidelity to highest):
- Psychological diagnostic tools: simple scales such as "rate your pain from zero to ten" objectively represent aspects of subjective experience with a crude level of fidelity.
- Thought inference from brain scanning: given that even the physical brain represents at least some inner thoughts to a degree of fidelity that they can, with current technology, be pretty reliably inferred or used to control devices, it is conceivable that abstract structures can represent such subjective experiences with higher fidelity.
- Human language: each of us can partially, with imperfect fidelity, represent his/her subjective, inner experience in words.
- Virtual reality: an individual's visual perspective on physical reality can be represented via data structures - which, again, qualify as objective informational and/or mathematical structures - implemented in a computer.
- Large-language models: these appear to be capable of representing meaning itself in artificial neural networks, to such a degree of fidelity that highly cogent human-level dialogue is possible. Meaning, of course, is a large part of human experience, and an artificial neural network meets our definition of an objective informational and/or mathematical structure.
Those might all be challenged in various ways, but the point is not that they're perfect examples, just that they're at the least
suggestive ones.
(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]My impression of your "mental energy" is that it is a feat of imagination, a sort of philosophical device invented for the purpose of solving a problem, but something that is actually inconceivable when deeply considered.
Maybe, given the examples above after stripping substantiveness from the concept of "mental energy", to end up with the concept of "experience representation", it is more conceivable than at first it seems to be. Then again, maybe you think that after stripping substantiveness, the point is moot.
(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Unfortunately, interactional dualism similarly has features that are inconceivable to the logical mind conditioned to the physical world, but it seems to be considerably simpler.
I'd be interested in your enumeration of those features.
(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]There is then the Ockham's Razor principle of parsimony to be considered.
Your suggested mental energy or objective substantive aspect of mind would presumably exist for all states and conditions within the physical world, not just in the special case of embodiment, that is, in the interface between the mind and the physical brain that allows the mind to be causally efficacious in the world. Why isn't "mind energy" always manifesting itself all over the physical world? This would inevitably complicate the theory with all sorts of rules governing how this interface works, and a required explanation as to why the interface normally only works for embodiment. So there would be no simplicity, or principle of parsimony, advantage to the theory over interactional dualism.
First up: as I conceive of them, "mental energy" is
compatible with interactionist (substance) dualism. It seems to me that the real comparison is between an interactionist dualism in which consciousness has
only an inner, subjective aspect, and one in which it
also has an objective "outer" aspect.
That said, I agree that there is no advantage for the "mental energy" version of interactionist dualism in the respect which you point out.
(2024-01-22, 01:05 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]But in fact, your theory would seem to be more complicated by far than interactive dualism, because now instead of two, there are three different levels or kinds of existence whose interrelationships have to be explained: (1) consciousness or mind, (2) a hybrid - a mental energy which may be multidimensional that somehow (inconceivably) shares aspects of both physical objectivity and the immaterial mental realms, and (3) the physical realm.
Of course, Ockham's Razor isn't a hard and fast law of nature, it just has a strong tendency to be fulfilled.
Indeed: this is why I wrote in the post to which you were responding that the concept of mental energy would need to be justified on the basis of some sort of necessity or enhanced explanatory power. Right now, I'm focussed - via the bridging concept of "experience representation" - on exploring whether it is in some sense necessary.