A tabulation of mind-body possibilities

[Laird]

(Linking to some old threads to keep the reply brief and avoid too much repetition of stuff I think you've probably seen before.)

I don't think I actually have read any of the articles linked to from those threads, so I'll do that before responding again. It could take some time especially as I have another task on the go plus the usual routine of daily life.

[Laird]

The truth table of the OP seems to be incomplete in that it does not factor in in some way the existence of much paranormal veridical evidence, in formulating the likelihood of the various propositions. I think that to be complete, the truth table should include some sort of weighting factor to account for the probable existence of certain veridical empirical evidence. This would I think make interactive dualism even more likely as being the proposition closest to the truth. The assumed values of this weighting factor would naturally be extremely controversial, and would make some of the other options even more unlikely, and create an impass of logical contradiction for others.

Of course, such a change would make the table no longer a purely logical and mostly unassailable proposition, but it would at least entirely cover the territory. The winner would still be selectable using abductive reasoning from the best of a number of different proposed explanations.

Yes, you're right. That was simply a little beyond the immediate purposes for which I constructed it. It would be an interesting extension.

To even make this argument one has to explain what the physical is...and without conscious observation (mental) and mathematics (mental) I don't see how one even gets started?

I do agree we can make the distinction @Laird does, that the physical is the consensus experience we share...but that just means the "physical" is tied to our experience of it.

Also, more specifically, I was considering the reality of laws which seems to be the primary contrast between the "physical" and "mental". My point was that the physical is no so orderly, nor the mental so chaotic, that we can make a clean separation between them based on this criteria of "laws".

What are the properties of the physical? Key ones include weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy, physical dimensions and location in space. Do thoughts, feelings, perceptions, qualia, etc. or any other properties or aspects or components of consciousness have any weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy or other "physical" aspects? I don't think so. These observations seem definitely to point to consciousness being of an entirely different kind of reality than the physical. And these observations and the conclusion drawn from them don't require one to explain what the ultimate nature of the physical is.

What are the properties of the physical? Key ones include weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy, physical dimensions and location in space. Do thoughts, feelings, perceptions, qualia, etc. or any other properties or aspects or components of consciousness have any weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy or other "physical" aspects? I don't think so. These observations seem definitely to point to consciousness being of an entirely different kind of reality than the physical. And these observations and the conclusion drawn from them don't require one to explain what the ultimate nature of the physical is.

So the "physical" consists of relations gleaned from measurement (observations) and modeled using mathematics (mental content)?

What are qualia/perceptions but a consciousness taking in the "physical"?

For example temperature has a numerical reading that is observed along with a feeling of getting "hotter" or "colder". But the key here is "reading", which means the data itself is recorded by a consciousness. We could posit molecules vibrating as the "physical" part of temperature but this gets us into how molecules are posited due to observations + mathematical modeling that yields applied effects...

So I [am] still unclear on what the "physical" is just going by your claims regarding "weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy, physical dimensions and location in space". [These are relations.] Note my use of "relations" here is based on the physicist Smolin's writing:

We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties.

Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.

All to say the "physical" is known through consciousness and as such there is difficulty in clearly demarcating it as something non-mental. As I noted in my replies to Laird there is still issue for the Idealist regarding the "physical", but I don't think the physical/mental dichotomy is as clear cut as you make it sound...

So the "physical" consists of relations gleaned from measurement (observations) and modeled using mathematics (mental content)?

What are qualia/perceptions but a consciousness taking in the "physical"?

For example temperature has a numerical reading that is observed along with a feeling of getting "hotter" or "colder". But the key here is "reading", which means the data itself is recorded by a consciousness. We could posit molecules vibrating as the "physical" part of temperature but this gets us into how molecules are posited due to observations + mathematical modeling that yields applied effects...

So I [am] still unclear on what the "physical" is just going by your claims regarding "weight, velocity, temperature, electric charge, energy, physical dimensions and location in space". [These are relations.] Note my use of "relations" here is based on the physicist Smolin's writing:


All to say the "physical" is known through consciousness and as such there is difficulty in clearly demarcating it as something non-mental. As I noted in my replies to Laird there is still issue for the Idealist regarding the "physical", but I don't think the physical/mental dichotomy is as clear cut as you make it sound...

As I mentioned, it is very unclear to me why knowledge of the ultimate nature of the "physical" is required in concluding based on extensive evidence that there is an existential fundamental divide between the physical and the mental (consciousness).

And are you then doubting or denying the validity of the so-called "Hard Problem" of consciousness, where the undoubted existence of the totally immaterial qualia of conscious perception is seen as making physicalist or materialist explanations of consciousness invalid?

As I mentioned, it is very unclear to me why knowledge of the ultimate nature of the "physical" is required in concluding based on extensive evidence that there is an existential fundamental divide between the physical and the mental (consciousness).

And are you then doubting or denying the validity of the so-called "Hard Problem" of consciousness, where the undoubted existence of the totally immaterial qualia of conscious perception is seen as making physicalist or materialist explanations of consciousness invalid?

The Hard Problem is about a conceptual divide that can be resolved in many ways, among them the dissolution of the boundary between the "physical" and "mental". Why Chalmers has listed Idealism and Neutral Monism as solutions and written about both.

Of course there will continue to be a functional dualism, in the sense that what seems to be outside my mind-as-perceiver and what is my mind's first person reflections/experiences/etc. But this applies even to supposed non-physical realms mentioned in Survival accounts, since those worlds also seem to have some solidity...

[Laird]

I've revised the original PDF in part due to discussions in this thread, and produced a second version, now newly attached to the original post. Sci, I still intend to read the threads to which you've linked as well as the linked resources within them, and then respond here, but can't say how long it will take me to do that. Thanks to all for the ongoing conversation.

I've revised the original PDF in part due to discussions in this thread, and produced a second version, now newly attached to the original post. Sci, I still intend to read the threads to which you've linked as well as the linked resources within them, and then respond here, but can't say how long it will take me to do that. Thanks to all for the ongoing conversation.

I like your added truth table case for if both brain and mind are mental, and Brain⇄Mind, a sort of “Interactive dualist idealism" obtains, which accounts for the existence of much paranormal evidence for an afterlife, soul or spirit, etc.,  but you then point out the flaws of this scheme:

"(This) accounts for the survival evidence better than idealism proper, but nevertheless seems unlikely because (1) it is unlikely that a mental entity (even in the form of a brain) would follow the laws of physics, and (2) the existence of both a mental brain and a mental mind seems to imply two selves, whereas most of us experience ourselves as unitary."

Good arguments, and I agree that it is not plausible, regardless of there being some leading philosophers that seem to me to favor it.

[Laird]

I don't think I actually have read any of the articles linked to from those threads, so I'll do that before responding again. It could take some time especially as I have another task on the go plus the usual routine of daily life.

Done. Here's my foreshadowed response:

I think gets into the question the neuroscientist Smythies asked - "How can the brain be in the head when the head is in the brain?"

Donald Hoffman goes into this at length, pointing out the brain itself is a phenomenal object that isn't by necessity the truth of the underlying reality. Just as a virtual volleyball in a multiplayer game is not indicative of the underlying circuitry, neither is the brain by necessity indicative of the underlying reality.

So it seems possible to me that everything can be mind, and even that my brain could be a mental object that correlates with but is not ultimately the same thing as my mind. However I would agree that the brain is a very curious object in Idealism, as the Idealist Mander himself notes, and it isn't clear Idealists have really done a good job explaining its existence in their metaphysics.

Thanks, that's a useful alternative framing: a brain (distinct from a mind) being "mental" not in the sense of being an experiencing entity but of being an experienced entity.

I've thought about this framing and, on it, as a (mere) phenomenal experience in (personal) consciousness(es), I'm not convinced that the brain it posits qualifies as an entity in its own right. The Mander article in particular makes it clear that the-brain-as-experientially-perceived is a (recursive) self-representation of one's experience as a whole, and in that sense the-brain-as-experientially-perceived cashes out in the mind which it re-presents (to itself). The two (brain and mind) aren't really distinct then. This is not explicit on Donald Hoffman's account, but it seems to be implicit there too: whatever underlying reality a brain-as-phenomenal-object corresponds to, it seems to be that same underlying reality which is a (personal) mind.

Now, maybe you think I'm being uncharitable here, and if so, I hope you'll go ahead and say so, but this is the view I've come to on consideration.

The Mander article in general has a lot of merit, but I'm not convinced that, ultimately, it successfully accounts for the brain on idealism. For example, its explanation of the brain (as an object of perception) as being a self-representation of one's whole experienc(e|ing) is intelligible, but the brain seems to be a whole lot more than that: to a large extent it seems to direct the body, and it's not clear how the article's narrative takes this aspect of brain function into consideration, let alone the existence of the body and its relationship to experience (as the mind) in the first place.

There are deeper questions too (which the paper has, admittedly, admirably anticipated), for example: if the brain is a (mere) experience, then whose experience is it given that "the" experience - whomever's it is - is intersubjectively shared to a meaningful extent? How is this intersubjective sharing of "an" experience as multiple experiences (that is, from different perspectives) possible?

I don't find its answer to these particular questions - which, it seems to me, amounts to a vague appeal to a shared consciousness - to be particularly edifying. I think that these questions require a deeper (more detailed) response. I could lay out roughly why, but, for brevity, I won't in this post.

I do think I better get your objection to the idea that the brain is merely the image of the mind seen from outside. Even if we accept QM indeterminism there does seem to be an issue that the image could be described in physical terms while that which generates said image seems to be in opposition to any such mathematically reduced description.

Yes, that's one good way of expressing my misgivings.

I would note that much like a shadow the image cast in "physical" terms is not something that allows for a whole description of the actual entity that casts it. You could get some information about an object from the shadow it casts, but much about said object would remain mysterious. Similarly, as per Goff's argument about Mary and the Quus problem, we cannot actually determine the mental contents solely by looking at the brain.

I accept this isn't a completely satisfying answer

Yes, it's not completely satisfying but it does go some distance. The Mander article also seems to be an attempt to address exactly these sort of misgivings. In providing its own rendering of an answer, it - admirably - points out that the problem is significant, acknowledging the radical and unintuitive nature of the premise to which idealism (as Mander conceives of it) is committed: that "the world I perceive is aligned in accordance with my mental history" (as opposed to being subject to independent causal laws of nature) and that "the succession of our own mental experiences, tracked in mysterious but undeniable fashion by the content of the experiences we have of our own brains, [entails that we --Laird] regard the rest of our experience as a fiction or shadow that falls into line with that."

I think it's only fair to point out that probably most of us here don't hold to the causal closure of the physical anyhow, so that such notions are not as radical and unintuitive as they might otherwise have been. Still, I think that the article presents us with a false dichotomy, with the other - rejected - option being "our experience of the brain as in a certain condition is to be accounted for by the regularities we have noted within our wider experience of neurophysiology, which themselves align with the regularities we have observed within nature more widely, in which case we must deem our conscious experiences but a redundant epiphenomenalist shadow of whatever neurophysiology reveals to us."

As a dualist, a third option is readily apparent to me: that the brain (along with the rest of the natural world) generally follows the laws of nature, but it interfaces with a mind which also affects it, and which it in turn affects. This is, to me, by far the most intuitive and plausible of the three options, although there is definitely a very seductive allure to the article's notion of a creative experiential external reality moulding itself to one's personal experience: in its words, "analogous to that of a semi-autobiographical novelist who crafts an entire novel so as to fit in with just a handful of incidents which really did take place. To be sure, the whole plot is dictated by a few real-life episodes, but when the thing is intelligently done with a careful eye to the integrity of the whole, this fact is neither noticeable nor important."

Goff's argument is a good one. Physicalism though is nonsense (and it seems we agree on that) in the strict sense before even getting to arguments like this.

as per my above comment I do think the brain presents a problem for Idealists. OTOH, admittedly, I am not an Idealist so I may not have dived deep enough into their work on where the brain fits in a reality where everything is mental.

Likewise. I'm not even familiar with any idealist variant in the literature beyond Analytic Idealism and those I explored in my thread analysing the decombination and related problems and solutions. I have though at least imagined scenarios for myself of individual minds connected either in P2P or client-server arrangements, without exploring them in depth.

They might be both. Under a strict Idealist reading I don't think there's a distinction, or at least laws are by nature the more orderly mental thoughts

OK, yep, if we're assuming idealism for the sake of discussion then that's true.

...though again there's the pesky issue of QM level indeterminism...

Of course there's also a plainer theist reading, that God willed the ordered reality into being and possibly upholds said order as a concurrent cause...

And, in a sense, you object to both (indeterminism and God's willing reality into existence), at least on typical interpretations, on the same grounds - that they amount to creation ex nihilo, right?

I think part of the challenge is descriptions aren't causal discoveries, in the sense that if we accept the "physical" as a brute fact reality we don't get into the question of essence. What exactly is the "physical" being [beyond] its relations, and what is the inner "oomph" of its causal properties that seem to obey "laws"?

I see better what you were getting at now. I'm perhaps more content than you to simply leave that unspecified without finding that particularly troublesome: at this point I don't see a strong reason to believe that there aren't unproblematic answers (that's an unwieldy triple-negative but it's hard to put it another way).

Well the current evidence is, AFAIK, showing us that QM is indeterministic. Whether this is due to our lack of knowledge of a deeper determinism is unknown. However I think Aaronson's critique of the determinist's hope gives good reason to accept QM is ontologically indeterministic...well, barring some new future evidence...

Fair enough - all I can say is that that physics is well above my current level.

I think there are varied possibilities that could be true...it's actually hard to rule out any of the options besides Physicalism which IMO is just nonsensical. I think Idealism does need to face up to the problem of the brain, but I'm not convinced this is an insurmountable problem.

Maybe this conversation will end up shedding some better light on the problem and potential solutions.

I've thought about this framing and, on it, as a (mere) phenomenal experience in (personal) consciousness(es), I'm not convinced that the brain it posits qualifies as an entity in its own right. The Mander article in particular makes it clear that the-brain-as-experientially-perceived is a (recursive) self-representation of one's experience as a whole, and in that sense the-brain-as-experientially-perceived cashes out in the mind which it re-presents (to itself). The two (brain and mind) aren't really distinct then. This is not explicit on Donald Hoffman's account, but it seems to be implicit there too: whatever underlying reality a brain-as-phenomenal-object corresponds to, it seems to be that same underlying reality which is a (personal) mind.

I think this holds for Mander's conception of what the brain is under Idealism, but not Hoffman's.

The way I understand Hoffman is that the brain is an object whose correlations may only show us a deceptive veneer over the actual causal relationships.

I guess the question is does Hoffman's view actually provide a good reason for the brain to exist under his Conscious Realism, which AFAICTell is an Idealist stance. (Hoffman I think has tried to argue it's different, but IIRC he was saying it's not akin to the kind of Absolute Idealism we get from Kastrup.)

I can sorta see how this would work, with the brain being an icon that provides some representation along with a means of causal influence. A thermostat isn't capturing the indeterministic movement of particles making up vibrating molecules, nor is it capturing the actual feeling of warmth/cold, but nevertheless you can get a sense of both. In fact to some degree this idea of the brain as an icon is true even in - if not especially - in Physicalism, since the brain has to generate the image of the brain along with providing qualia to the rest of observed reality ->



Credit to Lehar for the image.

So no matter one's metaphysical position, the brain as an object is seen as an image...This arguably, however, is where Idealism goes off the rails a bit because Idealism is trying to say qualia are real and they make up everything...but the brain's involvement suggests these qualia are not exactly aligned with reality. There is a way around this by noting that the brain really does allow us to perceive qualia that make up the world we see but only a portion of it.

Will reply to your specific critiques of Mander, among other things, in my next post. I don't think we're that far apart in our views on where Idealism falters, though I don't seem to feel the criticisms hurt the Idealist advocate as much as you do. Really I'm not sure if the Dualist can simply say the Mind escapes Physical Closure while the Brain doesn't, this also seems like a position that will run into problems...though admittedly I don't believe there is a reality that is physically closed + I don't believe there are "natural laws" unless there is a Mind...

But we'll get there, just give me some time to reply to the rest of your post.