Mind in action

[Laird]

The definition of mind and understanding is for quantification and functional output purposes.

Alas, I don't think that we can simply strip out the most highly relevant aspects of mind and expect to come up with useful and truthful theories - especially when those theories sound awfully like they reduce mind to something like an inanimate computational device, with all of these various references to "copying", "bits", "inserting", "appending", "deleting", and "reformatting", etc. Even the proposed "quantification" and "functional" purposes of the proposed (wholly inadequate) definition of mind grant primacy to a sort of deterministic, computational view of mind, ignoring its most crucial properties: awareness and volition. Thus - and again, alas - for the moment I am going to disengage from this conversation. Thanks for engaging yourself to the extent that you have.

 computational view of mind, ignoring its most crucial properties: awareness and choice-making. Thus - and again, alas - for the moment I am going to disengage from this conversation. Thanks for engaging yourself to the extent that you have.

I appreciate your thinking and hope you have reasons to continue to poke at my words.

Not to have the last word but for the sake of clarity, I do not think I have ignored subjectivity - just accept that it is hard to quantify and point to its corresponding objective aspect.  The assertion is we can know more about subjectivity through well-researched science.  My poor way of saying this was:

 Mental processes - besides structuring a object internally from detection - can select it for focus.

  So mind is aware through the processes of detection; and choice making is measured objectively through selection. 

Subjective awareness corresponds to to the detection of inner and outer senses.  Awareness, as sensation, is the processing of sense data on the objective side.  It is not for me to declare what can be firmly learned from detailed analysis of the objective view of mind, but regardless -- everything I see in the computational side steals mystery from material brains and sheds light on the mental states corresponding to using information and communication!  

I am trying not to diminish mind and Psi, but am trying to find objective means to define the output patterns of subject life and consciousness.

I'm curious. If mind acts to change the physical world by changing and creating new probability waves and information structures in some underlying reality, how can it be that in the example just cited the  proximate mechanism is human subjective experience of certain qualia and subsequent free will conscious decision to exert a certain muscular force on a pressure sensor? For that matter it remains a total mystery how the human mind actually interfaces with the physical brain cells to cause a muscular action. Just saying that it is a matter of changing probability waves and information structures doesn't dent that impenetrable mystery of how the mind/matter interface really works.

Help me understand, it is hard to imagine subjective awareness of an inner experience as a mechanism.  Consciousness isn't a machine or found in a chip.  

The bio-signaling system that causes the stimulus for muscle response is called the efferent system.  It is a physical signal.  Going backwards, that physical signal has a logical cause, an inner choice (selection) where mind is holding court with the visual signal, the requirement for a response and a database of experience.  This court is a virtual court, but with a real world outcome  The qualia of red is our detection of its information as perception.  A sincere agent will map the qualia, as a known sensation, to the need to respond.

So, I don't see a mechanism, I see natural software import a signal from the eye, channel it up the optic nerve to the brain.  The brain cells output inner signals and perception occurs.  There isn't red material in perception, there isn't a red light in the skull, the red is an information object assembled from the afferent signal of the eye, with past personal meanings of red, ancient feelings about red in the collective unconscious of the past, red as an abstract response to the latent requirement for the finger >> all bound together as a subjective experience.

If the information object of mind maps to the expected response, its environmental presence is detected by the efferent system as a stimulus and neurons start firing.  Then the mechanism of a finger.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth: ‘We risk not understanding the central mystery of life’

Q. Have your thoughts on that ever taken any spiritual swerve – in terms of the why of there being something rather than nothing?

A. It’s more that I think there’s hubris in assuming that everything will submit to a mechanistic programme of explanation. I think it’s intellectual honesty to acknowledge that the existence of conscious experience as a phenomenon in a universe for which we generally have physicalist accounts seems weird. I want to figure out the ways in which we can undermine this seeming weird. -Seth Anil

Me too.  An account is needed, which readily maps processes that generate what we observe.  Science should make common sense.  Physicalist accounts are not to the task.

The Nobel Prizes are being awarded.  It struck how much process models dominate current progress.  The key is the the fact they are objective data based.  The computations are enabled by machines and their ever-growing reach is discovering patterns.  Patterns that reveal a probabilistic perspective.

Here are two quotes https://www.inquirer.com/news/nation-wor...11005.html

 In their work, all three physicists used complex mathematics to explain and predict what seemed like chaotic forces of nature in computer simulations, called modeling. That modeling has given scientists such a solid understanding of those forces that, for instance, they can accurately predict weather a week out and warn about the climate decades in advance.

“Physics is all about modeling, finding mathematical stories, their equations that accurately reflect how nature works, and allows humanity to use science, as its survival instinct,” said Brown University physicist Jim Gates.

And if you don't think the worldview effects personality --

 Asked whether he expected to get the prize, Parisi said: “I knew there was a non-negligible possibility.”

Kamarling wrote:

Whether that *knowing* can be termed an "information object" is something I don't really know how to answer. I am not hung up on terminology and would frankly rather see and use plain language to describe or explain. It often seems to me that scientists and other specialists can't consider their field respectable unless and until they have invented some arcane and exclusive jargon that only those "in the know" will be familiar with.

The most common of information objects in modern times are commercial signs and symbols.  Icons on a screen are literal information objects, activated when selected.  Each has a formed structure and each has a purpose in identification, instuction and self-reference.  Whether makers marks in prehistory - or contemporary corporate logos - these objects catch the eye and feed the understanding.

If you had a ball - with a magical trait that conferred meaning physically - throwing the ball and hitting someones head someone could transfer meaningful perception.   And when the target is hit, knowledge on contact happens.  A physical object is characterized by its material presence and its energy levels.

An information object as a semiotic tool - like our magical ball - does transfer meaning.  It is presumed to have an orderly and lawful history that generated its form and substantial semantic content.  The corresponding measures to physical energy --- are the motivation, experiential quality and the usefulness embedded in the mind of an agent after transfer.
  
No fancy definition or insider knowledge needed.  Knowing is a natural process.  And thoughts can be analyzed as information objects.  How do we understand information objects?  By seeing them as analogous to physical objects, but in different environmental conditions.

The most common of information objects in modern times are commercial signs and symbols.  Icons on a screen are literal information objects, activated when selected.  Each has a formed structure and each has a purpose in identification, instuction and self-reference.  Whether makers marks in prehistory - or contemporary corporate logos - these objects catch the eye and feed the understanding.

If you had a ball - with a magical trait that conferred meaning physically - throwing the ball and hitting someones head someone could transfer meaningful perception.   And when the target is hit, knowledge on contact happens.  A physical object is characterized by its material presence and its energy levels.

An information object as a semiotic tool - like our magical ball - does transfer meaning.  It is presumed to have an orderly and lawful history that generated its form and substantial semantic content.  The corresponding measures to physical energy --- are the motivation, experiential quality and the usefulness embedded in the mind of an agent after transfer.
  
No fancy definition or insider knowledge needed.  Knowing is a natural process.  And thoughts can be analyzed as information objects.  How do we understand information objects?  By seeing them as analogous to physical objects, but in different environmental conditions.

Here is the same problem I have seen before in these posts. "Knowing" is a term inseparable from there being a necessary "knower", the essence of which is the subjective consciousness of a being. An "information object" is a mass of information presumably embodied in a physical object. An existentially entirely different "thing". Yes, we can understand information objects including the physical objects they are embodied in, but they have not the slightest to do with the mystery of what really is the knowing or the knower. Therefore the use of terminology is erroneous and confusing. 

And I question whether there can be any productive analysis of the real nature of thought, derived from analysis of the information objects of life. For instance, what insight into the nature of subjective consciousness can be derived from an analysis of the paper, ink, typeface, semantics, etc. of the printing on a page of Shakespeare's play Hamlet? Or, especially, of the equivalent "information object" encoded in digital form in a computer memory? Any useful insight must depend on the derivation of the meaning of this data by a living mind, "meaning" being an immaterial mental property.

Here is the same problem I have seen before in these posts. "Knowing" is a term inseparable from there being a necessary "knower", the essence of which is the subjective consciousness of a being. An "information object" is a mass of information presumably embodied in a physical object. An existentially entirely different "thing". Yes, we can understand information objects including the physical objects they are embodied in, but they have not the slightest to do with the mystery of what really is the knowing or the knower.

Any useful insight must depend on the derivation of the meaning of this data by a living mind, "meaning" being an immaterial mental property.

When you speak using the term "essence" - I read not something mystical that is unknowable - but something that is measurable, quantifiable and computational.  Essence is described by modern structural relations and interconnectedness.

If you use the term essence, unless you are speaking about aromatic chemistry, you are talking about information.  A simulation of a physical object, can capture the actual outcomes of its uses and inner processes.  Whatever was meant in the history of the term, the information sciences quants its form and formats and address all its possible semantic meanings.

Information objects - ARE NOT always embodied by physical objects.  Information occurs before any physical objects creation.  QM says that a number of information objects can exist in superposition before one becomes actual.  "It from Bit".

What if you create a plan to overcome obsessive compulsive disorder?  Was it a physical object that Dr. Schwartz found causing the problem.  NO.

He discovered how the MIND can reconfigure the physical channels in the brain.  Are you familiar with his work?

 
So by the word “mind”, I am specifically meaning for scientific purposes, but again overlapping with Christian faith. I’m using the word “mind” to mean choices we make about how to focus and direct our attention. So, choices we make about how to focus and direct our attention can definitely rewire our brain, although a lot of the mundane worldly content of our consciousness is in fact coming from the brain. - J. Schwartz

https://cct.biola.edu/being-mindful-and-...our-brain/
  
Humans do not bestow meaning unto nature.  Nature is deep in meanings that humans can extract process.  The informational environment is deep in meanings - abstract meanings - that humans can process. 

And while it is not science, it appears to me that there is a spiritual environment, with which we can exchange information.

Is the knowable information coming from a spiritual environment based on physical objects?  I think not.

Nature is deep in meanings that humans can extract process.

I don't follow this.  May be semantics, but "meaning" is inexorably tied to "consciousness".  Without the latter, there is no former.  So asserting that nature (presuming you mean the physical universe) is independently full of meaning just doesn't square for me.

What would "meaning" be defined as if we weren't here (being anthropomorphic here)?

I don't follow this.  May be semantics, but "meaning" is inexorably tied to "consciousness".  Without the latter, there is no former.  So asserting that nature (presuming you mean the physical universe) is independently full of meaning just doesn't square for me.

What would "meaning" be defined as if we weren't here (being anthropomorphic here)?

Thanks for pointing to a key point of departure from physicalism.  In this viewpoint - there is both objective meaning and subjective meanings.  Living things import information from their environments.  If there is a predator lurking, the information is there modeling flow in the ecological picture, even if the living thing never sees it.  This meaning is not mental juice in a brain - its real-world possibilities.  The danger is/was real.  The predator may have just learned something and is making a decision to lurk nearer in the future.

Minds change real-world probabilities.

Information in the environment - when detected is then mutual information with an agent.

As long as their is a possible exporting of data from a system - there maybe usable real-meaning, including in far off space.