Mental Evolution and Psi

Great article tracing the idea of mental evolution and the Theory of Mind.
http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/mind02....rspectives

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Great article tracing the idea of mental evolution and the Theory of Mind.
http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/mind02....rspectives

The idea of having a major role in evolution for mind goes all the way back.  Of course,  at the very beginning of the bio-evolution concept Lamarck made a case for intentional influence with his primitive version of species change.  Darwin and his appointed follower Romanes believed that mind and intentional behavior have means & ways to evolve, as part of change to a species. This is exactly what instinctual behavior is!!

Mind happening at the level of colony - was another observation stressed by Darwin.  There may be functional information structures that can store past, present and future categories in the informational environment of all living things.  Having a "bio-cloud" makes things like instinct and colony behavior understandable.

 
Outsourcing long term memory

Romanes had gone beyond Clifford in proposing that extracorporeal mindstuff could become organized, but in 1886 he did not consider how this proposed ‘world eject,’ perhaps with its own subjectivity, might relate to the apparently localized subjectivity of an individual brain. Conflicting with the view that ‘the phenomena of mind are invariable in their association with cerebral structures’ (Romanes, 1882: 880), the brain as ‘the exclusive seat of mind’ is today challenged by considerations of the massive storage space needed both by human brains for long-term memory, and by gametes for the transfer of instinctual information into the long-term memory of the embryos they generate (Forsdyke, 2009). Indeed, recent reports hint that such information might be stored in, and retrieved from, an extracorporeal source, by a process analogous to ‘cloud computing.’ 

bolding mine

This thread has been fallow for a while.  I hope to reintroduce this idea of a bio-cloud for information that interacts with living things.

Is this informational environment, where there is some level of communication, a basis for Psi?  Is the "collective unconscious" a real storage environment?

How might it work and how can it be measured?

This thread has been fallow for a while.  I hope to reintroduce this idea of a bio-cloud for information that interacts with living things.

Is this informational environment, where there is some level of communication, a basis for Psi?  Is the "collective unconscious" a real storage environment?

How might it work and how can it be measured?

I think this concept of an "informational environment" or informational bio-cloud might at least be a start. Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic field" might be another one. The basic problem with these ideas is that they don't get at the central mystery of biological form and design. This is that the evident ingenious, extremely intricate, complex and often aesthetically pleasing forms and inner designs of biological organisms virtually shout that their origin is some sort of unknown mysterious conscious intelligence(s) that can utilize such proposed informational fields in their creative engineering. This would be the primary function of such informational fields. 

The structure and behavior of living organisms clearly are designs that required some form of creative cognitive process. The nature of this intelligence is a complete mystery at this time. The total impotence of mechanical Darwinistic processes in the origin of organic form has long been apparent.

There evidently being with this putative bio-cloud some level of communication, possibly a medium for Psi and esp, and maybe a storage medium for a human collective unconscious, doesn't address the central mystery of what the conscious intelligence of nature that utilizes such informational bio-fields really is. It seems to me that the central mystery is what is the nature of this intelligence or intelligences, not how it utilizes, obtains and stores information.

This is that the evident ingenious, extremely intricate, complex and often aesthetically pleasing forms and inner designs of biological organisms virtually shout that their origin is some sort of unknown mysterious conscious intelligence(s) that can utilize such proposed informational fields in their creative engineering. This would be the primary function of such informational fields. 

The structure and behavior of living organisms clearly are designs that required some form of creative cognitive process. The nature of this intelligence is a complete mystery at this time. The total impotence of mechanical Darwinistic processes in the origin of organic form has long been apparent.

We strongly agree that observation of evolving biological behavior exhibits designed functionality and creative understandings coming as response to environmental feedback.

There is further agreement about mechanistic neoDarwinian processes being the root cause for these observations about life.  I promote that physically expressed biological behavior is integrated with immaterial information processing, where minds are directly structuring real-world probabilities by experiencing them.

Let me address this in terms of ID ideas.  Professor Behe's assertion that there are structures, when measured by information science tools (complexity), reveal creative action from mind (IC).  Information structuring must have taken place due to the number of nodes and their relations fixed in logic targeting a purposeful goal state.

Simple and backed by the science, and imho fully consistent with experience "inducing" changes in the brain enabling adaptive output. 

The theory is that these changes in the brain represent extant information objects generated by mind in an informational environment.  Instincts can be simulated, hence we can model them as information objects.  In this way informatics is leading the way in uncovering our long-ignored development of mind as at the root of evolution.

We strongly agree that observation of evolving biological behavior exhibits designed functionality and creative understandings coming as response to environmental feedback.

There is further agreement about mechanistic neoDarwinian processes being the root cause for these observations about life.  I promote that physically expressed biological behavior is integrated with immaterial information processing, where minds are directly structuring real-world probabilities by experiencing them.

Let me address this in terms of ID ideas.  Professor Behe's assertion that there are structures, when measured by information science tools (complexity), reveal creative action from mind (IC).  Information structuring must have taken place due to the number of nodes and their relations fixed in logic targeting a purposeful goal state.

Simple and backed by the science, and imho fully consistent with experience "inducing" changes in the brain enabling adaptive output. 

The theory is that these changes in the brain represent extant information objects generated by mind in an informational environment.  Instincts can be simulated, hence we can model them as information objects.  In this way informatics is leading the way in uncovering our long-ignored development of mind as at the root of evolution.

There is ample evidence that consciousness is not a function of and totally tied to the physical brain. Furthermore, experience inducing changes in the brain has indeed been established, but the import of this merely leads back to the central mystery of what is the consciousness of nature, since "experience" clearly presumes the existence of this mysterious consciousness, which much evidence (below) indicates cannot be the collective intelligence of organisms. 

This mysterious intelligence of nature can't be the locally entrained consciousnesses of various levels of complexity maintained by animal organisms, since this is for the most part unable to carry out the cognitive processes required to generate the observed highly complex, sometimes irreducibly complex, and aesthetically pleasing biological designs. The mysterious mind of nature seems very much to be conscious sentient intelligence(s) capable of a high degree of cognition, where the required mental processes include foresight, insight into technical problems, analysis, and design creativity The collective mind(s) of animals themselves cannot be the creative mind of nature, especially considering the fact that creative evolution has been taking place since long before development of metazoan animal brains - namely with bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes with only very primitive cognitive capacity.  

There is ample evidence that consciousness is not a function of and totally tied to the physical brain. Furthermore, experience inducing changes in the brain has indeed been established

The mysterious mind of nature seems very much to be conscious sentient intelligence(s) capable of a high degree of cognition, where the required mental processes include foresight, insight into technical problems, analysis, and design creativity The collective mind(s) of animals themselves cannot be the creative mind of nature, especially considering the fact that creative evolution has been taking place since long before development of metazoan animal brains - namely with bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes with only very primitive cognitive capacity.  

Thanks for the response.

I see Psi - not as mystery - but as real interaction that fits a natural pattern.  Mental activity like foresight and creatively picturing a desired future are fundamental mental processes.  Your argument makes sense as long as the fundamaterialist assertion that "brains" do the ALL the processing is true.  It is not.  Single cell organisms do process information and have collective mind.  The measurements are clear.

To go from the state of order of a physical system (where forces and materials count) - to a biological one (where desires and possible intended targets count) - means that exacting operations of mind function in a naturally logical way.  

Science can parse mind as information processing and outcomes.  Mind creates the organization of biological materials.  Not only in terms of changes to the brain, but by coding the entire phenomena of an organism.  Before an organism goes for food - there has to be an information object, as an affordance, created by mind. 

Mental evolution would then have to take place in the informational environment first.  Mind began organizing around the probability for interaction within the environment.  Detection of food (energy) had to exist before an organized system for acquiring evolved.

Mind, materials, energy and potential future meaning all squeezed out of the big bang.  If it were not possible for mind to arrange objective information - right from the start - it could never have evolved.  (my take on the Anthropic Principle)  


  
For a computer program to run it needs a start/go command.  Here in this command is fundamental foresight.  If you follow H. Stapp and J. Von Neumann this is Process 1 - a selection with a "designed" information objective.  Eat, engage reproduction, find shelter, avoid danger/predators and address excretion are all instincts that must be informationally functional for a bacteria to thrive.  Each an information objective, where a command is executed that is logically relational to an expected outcome.

Thanks for the response.

I see Psi - not as mystery - but as real interaction that fits a natural pattern.  Mental activity like foresight and creatively picturing a desired future are fundamental mental processes.  Your argument makes sense as long as the fundamaterialist assertion that "brains" do the ALL the processing is true.  It is not.  Single cell organisms do process information and have collective mind.  The measurements are clear.

To go from the state of order of a physical system (where forces and materials count) - to a biological one (where desires and possible intended targets count) - means that exacting operations of mind function in a naturally logical way.  

Science can parse mind as information processing and outcomes.  Mind creates the organization of biological materials.  Not only in terms of changes to the brain, but by coding the entire phenomena of an organism.  Before an organism goes for food - there has to be an information object, as an affordance, created by mind. 

Mental evolution would then have to take place in the informational environment first.  Mind began organizing around the probability for interaction within the environment.  Detection of food (energy) had to exist before an organized system for acquiring evolved.

Mind, materials, energy and potential future meaning all squeezed out of the big bang.  If it were not possible for mind to arrange objective information - right from the start - it could never have evolved.  (my take on the Anthropic Principle)  


  
For a computer program to run it needs a start/go command.  Here in this command is fundamental foresight.  If you follow H. Stapp and J. Von Neumann this is Process 1 - a selection with a "designed" information objective.  Eat, engage reproduction, find shelter, avoid danger/predators and address excretion are all instincts that must be informationally functional for a bacteria to thrive.  Each an information objective, where a command is executed that is logically relational to an expected outcome.

I know I've asked this before but I have a hard time understanding how this isn't Dualism? Or are the "physical" and "informational" referents not to metaphysical states but rather dual aspects of a singular substance?

I know I've asked this before but I have a hard time understanding how this isn't Dualism? Or are the "physical" and "informational" referents not to metaphysical states but rather dual aspects of a singular substance?

Dualism has a lot of baggage.  Rather than metaphysical states, this process model lands on epistemological practice of both scientific and practical searching to understand reality.  Step one is to declare physics/materials science as just one type of understanding of natural patterns.  And that information theory, logic and linguistics map another level of real world activity.
  
In this worldview there are also ethical structures in reality to be observed, which are not reducible to either physical or informational patterns.  There could be 10 or more levels of reality to be understood.   The requirement is to assign process maps that detail interaction and predict outcomes.  With no authority - I personally would "see" physical objects, informational objects and ethical or spiritual objects.  Who knows what other objects of causality may exist.

The key thing I have to say is about mental causation as an informational process.  A process where mental work causes changes in probability for events to occur.

Here is much better prose than mine - which speaks for me on the approach.  The following is part of the the conclusion to the SEP article on mental causation.

 We have been treating the problem of mental causation as though it were a problem in applied metaphysics. Perhaps this approach is wrong-headed. Perhaps the problem really falls under the purview of the philosophy of science. What if we began with a look at actual scientific practice (as suggested in §§6.3, 7.5) and determined what exactly science requires for acceptable causal explanation? An examination of established special sciences reveals that the very features (multiple realizability, higher-level and “broad” properties, for instance) metaphysically inclined philosophers regard as posing apparently insuperable difficulties for mental causation, are routinely invoked in causal explanations in those sciences. This suggests that, rather than let [i]a priori[/i] conceptions of causation (or properties, or causal powers) lead us to regard mental causation with suspicion, we should reason in the other direction: revise our conception of causation to fit our actual scientific beliefs and practices. If the metaphysicians were right about causation, no science would be possible beyond basic physics (biological properties, for instance, would lack causal efficacy).

(bolding mine)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-causation/

The key thing I have to say is about mental causation as an informational process.  A process where mental work causes changes in probability for events to occur.

Here is much better prose than mine - which speaks for me on the approach.  The following is part of the the conclusion to the SEP article on mental causation.

(bolding mine)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-causation/

Ah I suspect the only kind of true causation is mental causation, by which I mean at minimum all causation has to be set into place by a mind such as the Deist God.

This is a huge topic, so I'll just say for now that physical causation is shrouded in mystery (as is the "physical" itself), whereas I at least know of mental causation via experience.