Physicalism Redux

Mind-as-field, in my view, essentially makes two of the same fundamental errors that Analytic Idealism makes:

1. It conflates experiencer (aka mind/consciousness/person/soul) and experience.
   
2. It treats both as an extended, differentiable energy, and thus in a meaningful sense mistakenly materialises the immaterial.
   

(I'm assuming, to be charitable, that you don't mean a field in the purely abstract, mathematical sense, because that even more obviously is inapplicable, given that it has no tangible reality, and thus could certainly be neither an experiencer nor experience).

Yeah it's field-like but not exactly like a field in the way the term is used - somewhat mysteriously from what I can tell - in physics.

I just think it is hard to see what it means for a Mind to be extensionless, in fact I am not sure the term [extensionless] has any real meaning.

I can't see how one would convince the skeptical but open-minded layperson that extensionless Minds require the intricacies of the brain's structure to filter/transmit consciousness. Heck even after thinking about it [for] over a decade I still have no real clue how anything that has no extension can perform PK, remote viewing, or really even telepathy. 

OTOH if we say a Mind is vastly - perhaps infinitely - extended and all corporeal things are embodiments [within] said Minds then at least we are on the road to a metaphysics inline with Psi & Survival.

It possibly materializes the immaterial [in the sense that it adds "primary qualities" to "secondary qualities"], but the immaterial's relationship to Structure has to be made sense of in some way. 

However if what materializes a mind, in your opinion, is extension...well it isn't clear to me that extension is a material property? As noted by Paul Marshall:

You ask how a non-physical entity can have a shape. The religious and mystical literature is replete with visions of spiritual beings with size and shape. I would question the assumption that spiritual or mental things invariably lack physical properties such as extension. In modern times, this assumption is inherited from the Cartesian dualism of unextended mind and extended matter, and look how problematic that turned out to be. 

And by Howard Robinson:

But Robinson does not merely object to particular responses to the knowledge argument. He also claims that all such replies fail for a deeper reason: in assuming that the physicalist has an adequate account of the non-mental realm, they mistake the force of the argument, which is due to its showing that "qualia are essential building blocks of our empirical world" (144), including even the physical as we ordinarily conceive of it. As Robinson puts the point, "Physicalism's real predicament" is that (i) the knowledge argument shows that "Standard physicalism cannot capture the qualitative nature or aspect of reality"; but (ii) "The qualitative is an essential feature of any conception of the physical that goes beyond the purely abstract or mathematically expressed" (134). The result is that (iii) physicalism "cannot give a coherent account of the physical itself" (134).

Another way to argue this is to note that the Experiencer has an experience of extension, of which the experienced body sits at the center.

I'm sure I'm probably missing some flaws in this idea that all reality is made from Minds that are immensely if not infinitely extended, but I do think it gets us farther than most metaphysics which seem to fail much "sooner" in the sense of having a flaw or just being too abstract, too dependent on a God with unexplained/unjustified powers, etc...

[Laird]

Yeah it's field-like but not exactly like a field in the way the term is used - somewhat mysteriously from what I can tell - in physics.

Can you be more specific? It's extended, but what is it that's extended? Some sort of energy, or some sort of "stuff" more broadly? And is this energy/stuff (or whatever it is) homogeneous or heterogeneous?

I just think it is hard to see what it means for a Mind to be extensionless, in fact I am not sure the term [extensionless] has any real meaning.

How about we start by considering experience before considering experiencer (Mind as you put it)?

If you're amenable to that, then:

Would you agree that experience is subjective and qualitative, and that as such it doesn't have extension: that while it can be of an extended object, it isn't in itself an extended object, or, in other words, that, in a sense, while its content can be extended - just like an object with depth can be painted on a canvas without depth - its essential ("inner") nature as subjective and qualitative precludes it itself from extension?

Remember that - if you're amenable - we're considering only experience at this point. I'm not asking you in that question to commit (yet?) to the experiencer (Mind as you put it) being non-extended.

I can't see how one would convince the skeptical but open-minded layperson that extensionless Minds require the intricacies of the brain's structure to filter/transmit consciousness. Heck even after thinking about it [for] over a decade I still have no real clue how anything that has no extension can perform PK, remote viewing, or really even telepathy. 

I won't present a ready-made answer, but let's see if we can get to an answer through the above exploration.

OTOH if we say a Mind is vastly - perhaps infinitely - extended and all corporeal things are embodiments [within] said Minds then at least we are on the road to a metaphysics inline with Psi & Survival.

It possibly materializes the immaterial [in the sense that it adds "primary qualities" to "secondary qualities"]

Yes, when you talk about corporeal things as embodiments in minds then I really think it's hard if not impossible to escape from the problem of materialisation.

but the immaterial's relationship to Structure has to be made sense of in some way.

Yes. Again, let's see what we can come up with together. I think that for a start it's important to distinguish between experiencer (Mind as you put it) and its experience. Do you agree or do you need convincing? I've made the case in another thread that I can reference if necessary (you'd have seen it but may have forgotten it).

To account for thought and memory (at least), we might need to loosen the distinction, but let's start with just experiencer and (phenomenal) experience, where I think the distinction is pretty clear. What do you think?

However if what materializes a mind, in your opinion, is extension...well it isn't clear to me that extension is a material property? As noted by Paul Marshall:

Hmm. I had interpreted our agreement here as implicitly ruling out immaterial extension. Do you interpret that agreement differently, or have you otherwise changed your mind?

And by Howard Robinson:

I read that article through. I couldn't really see the relevance. Yes, the physical as we ordinarily conceive of it may be qualitative as well as quantitative, but qualities are different from qualia, even assuming they're innately tied to quantitative, extended physicality: even if (the extended) physical has qualities, that doesn't entail that qualia too are extended.

Another way to argue this is to note that the Experiencer has an experience of extension, of which the experienced body sits at the center.

An experience "of" extension: exactly; the experience is not extended in itself, it is an experience of extension.

I'm sure I'm probably missing some flaws in this idea that all reality is made from Minds that are immensely if not infinitely extended, but I do think it gets us farther than most metaphysics which seem to fail much "sooner" in the sense of having a flaw or just being too abstract, too dependent on a God with unexplained/unjustified powers, etc...

Maybe. There's another flaw, or perhaps a misunderstanding on my part: this strange interactionist dualism between mind-as-field and mind-as-body ('the "physical" being of the same kind as the Mind-as-Field' as you put it). I'm not really sure how to make sense of the latter. Is the body itself, as "physical" but actually inherently mental in nature, an experiencing entity? If not, in what sense is it mental? If so, then why is this enclosing mind-as-field even necessary?

Can you be more specific? It's extended, but what is it that's extended? Some sort of energy, or some sort of "stuff" more broadly? And is this energy/stuff (or whatever it is) homogeneous or heterogeneous?

Honestly I've no definitive idea about the technical details. I just see Sheldrake's idea as a starting point because it fits with Psi & Survival evidence + Mysticism + gives us a way of understanding how a physical object like th[e] brain can filter consciousness. So it's more a "TODO stub" of metaphysics that fits the evidence that has to be account[ed] for, and it isn't critically to fatally flawed  - which I see the other options as being...

How about we start by considering experience before considering experiencer (Mind as you put it)?

If you're amenable to that, then:

Would you agree that experience is subjective and qualitative, and that as such it doesn't have extension: that while it can be of an extended object, it isn't in itself an extended object, or, in other words, that, in a sense, while its content can be extended - just like an object with depth can be painted on a canvas without depth - its essential ("inner") nature as subjective and qualitative precludes it itself from extension?

I'm not sure you can have an experience of extension without being extended in some way? I am not even sure how this kind of causation would work where one takes in the experience of the extended world + the experience of embodiment while somehow being...where exactly?

Is it akin to a game engine where your PoV Camera is a just a point demarcated in the 3D environment, that can optionally be attached to a body bound by the game's physics? But that would still be a kind of extension, even if one is supposedly an infinitely small point...

The other option would be that there is no real extension at all, which it seems some Idealisms suggest. Yet I am not sure if this is something that really makes sense, since it's not clear anyone can experience extensionless-ness so it remains merely an idea without a way to genuinely conceive of it.

Remember that - if you're amenable - we're considering only experience at this point. I'm not asking you in that question to commit (yet?) to the experiencer (Mind as you put it) being non-extended.

I think the experience is a connection, possibly a relation, between the extended world and the Experiencer. So I am not sure it makes sense to say an experience is extended or not extended?

I won't present a ready-made answer, but let's see if we can get to an answer through the above exploration.

Yes, when you talk about corporeal things as embodiments in minds then I really think it's hard if not impossible to escape from the problem of materialisation.

Is there a problem though, if there are only extended Minds? One can even claim this is an Idealism with the caveat that Minds have to be extended, with the best explanation being that they are cosmically large or possibly infinite in size.

[Though you could also call it some other Ism, I think the correct designation among existing options is less important than the potential ability to account for the evidence from Parapsychology AND mundane life.]

Yes. Again, let's see what we can come up with together. I think that for a start it's important to distinguish between experiencer (Mind as you put it) and its experience. Do you agree or do you need convincing? I've made the case in another thread that I can reference if necessary (you'd have seen it but may have forgotten it).

To account for thought and memory (at least), we might need to loosen the distinction, but let's start with just experiencer and (phenomenal) experience, where I think the distinction is pretty clear. What do you think?

IIRC the Experiencer is the Point of View, and all that comes to that PoV is the Experience which may or may not - depending on a case by case basis - be *just* experience or an experience *of* something. Right?

Hmm. I had interpreted our agreement here as implicitly ruling out immaterial extension. Do you interpret that agreement differently, or have you otherwise changed your mind?

I think this depends on if we say the quality of Extension has to imply that a Mind [h]as a Structure. Maybe if the Mind is finite in its Extension, but we need not assume that. Depending on certain Proofs of God one might argue that if valid God has to be Extended. For example the Ways of Aquinas where God has to govern causal relations [arguably] suggest It/He/She has to be [extended to] have access to the entirety of Extended reality.

Another issue is not only how does PK work, but why someone with the ability doesn't have Omnipotence. How is an extensionless mind both capable of directly influencing the extended world AND being limited [in] said influence?

I read that article through. I couldn't really see the relevance. Yes, the physical as we ordinarily conceive of it may be qualitative as well as quantitative, but qualities are different from qualia, even assuming they're innately tied to quantitative, extended physicality: even if (the extended) physical has qualities, that doesn't entail that qualia too are extended.

An experience "of" extension: exactly; the experience is not extended in itself, it is an experience of extension.

Can those qualia that are of spatial extension be entirely divorced from extended reality? One might point to dreams, but I am not sure those are fully divorced from extension any more than I could imagine a triangle if I'd never seen one before.

Maybe. There's another flaw, or perhaps a misunderstanding on my part: this strange interactionist dualism between mind-as-field and mind-as-body ('the "physical" being of the same kind as the Mind-as-Field' as you put it). I'm not really sure how to make sense of the latter. Is the body itself, as "physical" but actually inherently mental in nature, an experiencing entity? If not, in what sense is it mental? If so, then why is this enclosing mind-as-field even necessary?

Well for me the whole thing is very much a potential metaphysics [that fits the evidence very well] rather than something fully developed, but I'd say the body is just part of the field akin to how a particle is part of the field that generates it. (Sheldrake may have developed the idea in a book I've not read...)

[Laird]

Sci, a couple of general comments to start with:

Firstly, this whole "mind as field" idea is unclear to me, even granting that you refer to it only as a "starting point". Some clarity would be helpful:

So far, what I understand is that you're proposing that there are minds aka souls that are (1) fields (or field-like) and thus (2) extended, that are (3) infinite in extent and (4) coextensive with all of "physical" reality, which itself then is presumably (5) also infinite in extent, and which (6) itself is mental in nature like the field-minds-aka-souls, and therefore, presumably, (7) has experiences of its own. From this it seems to follow that, also, (8) all field-minds-aka-souls are coextensive with each other too. Finally, beyond that these field-minds-aka-souls are minds, (9) you are unable to say what the nature of these "fields" is - what their substance or composition is.

Is that roughly it? Do you reject or want to clarify any of those numbered points? Is there anything else you want to add?

Secondly, you didn't definitively answer any of my explicit questions, which is your prerogative, but it makes it harder to progress the dialogue. I'm resubmitting those questions with some framing in response to your own responses in the hope that you're more amenable to answering this second time around, numbering them for clarity (though ordering and phrasing them differently than the first time around):

Question #1: Do you agree that an experiencer (a Mind as you put it) and his/her/its experience(s) are distinct?

I mentioned that I've made this case elsewhere. You guessed that case to be...

IIRC the Experiencer is the Point of View, and all that comes to that PoV is the Experience which may or may not - depending on a case by case basis - be *just* experience or an experience *of* something. Right?

...but, while I do endorse that, it's not the case I was referring to, which instead is that experience is contingent on experiencer, but not the other way around: an experiencer who is temporarily not experiencing[*] is a coherent idea, whereas an experience without an experiencer is incoherent.

[*] For example, a person under general anaesthetic, or Tristan in the case of Annika and Tristan during his absence from the body, which he understood as a death.

The one-way contingency serves to distinguish the two, albeit that in my view they're anyway self-evidently distinct.

Bear in mind that I'm not denying that there is a very, very tight relationship between experiencer and his/her/its experience(s), I'm just denying that the two are identical.

Can you now answer "Yes" to question #1?

If so, it makes an affirmative answer to the second question easier:

Question #2: Do you agree that experience (in and of itself) is not extended?

This is easier given an affirmative answer to #1, because in that case we can talk about experience as distinct from experiencer (Mind as you put it), and allow - for now - that the latter might be extended even though the former cannot. Thus, your question in response...

I'm not sure you can have an experience of extension without being extended in some way?

...which seems to suggest an extended experiencer, is beside the point for the moment if you answer affirmatively to #1.

Here's a line of thinking that might help you to get what I'm asking you to affirm:

Let's say you are in a room where incense is being burnt. You experience its strong scent. Would it be sensible then to say that your experience has an odour: that we could in turn smell your experience?

Alternatively, let's say that you are eating a rich meal. Would it be sensible then to say that your experience has a flavour: that we could taste your experience?

Alternatively again, let's say that you are thinking of the number three. Would it be sensible then to say that your experience has numericity (can be counted three times)?

Finally, let's say that you are thinking of a circle. Would it be sensible in that case to say that your experience has a shape?

My own answer to each of those four questions is identical: no, that would not be sensible; neither the sensual qualities of an experience nor the qualities of the object of an experience transfer to the experience itself.

Just so, when you experience some extended object, your experience does not itself have extension; it is not in itself extended, only its object is. Experience is not the sort of phenomenon that has (can have) either an odour, a flavour, numericity, a shape, nor extension.

Perhaps this is something like what you were getting at when you wrote:

I am not sure it makes sense to say an experience is extended or not extended?

To riff off that querulous comment of yours: to say that experience is extended is to make a category error; experience is not in the category of phenomena that could be extended (just like it can't be odorous, flavourful, numerical, nor shaped; only its sensual content or, respectively, its object can be).

Can you now answer "Yes" to question #2?

Question #3: Does our agreement here implicitly rule out immaterial extension?

You responded with:

I think this depends on if we say the quality of Extension has to imply that a Mind [h]as a Structure. Maybe if the Mind is finite in its Extension, but we need not assume that.

Let's break this down. Our agreement to which I've linked affirmed that no mere "arrangement of structure" is intrinsically "about" anything, and therefore that the "“immaterial” in a strong sense" is no mere arrangement of structure.

You now seem to be arguing that this agreement doesn't implicitly rule out immaterial extension because extension needn't entail structure, and that, in particular, an infinitely extended immaterial entity (a Mind) need not be structured.

This seems to me, though, to be a sketchy argument, because the context of the post containing our agreement was a discussion involving considerations of extension (or, rather, lack thereof, with respect to Monads), and so "arrangement of structure", it seems to me, was in that context a shorthand/synonym for "extension", even though our agreement didn't explicitly reference extension. This is further bolstered by your phrase in that agreement, "whatever the afterlife realms are made of", which seems to connote some sort of extended compositional "stuff".

While it's true that our agreement also referenced as examples "ectoplasm", "subtle-matter", and "spiritual matter", such that it's not totally clear that these "field" minds of yours (or Rupert's) would also count (especially in the sense of being composed of some sort of "stuff"), you also haven't explained exactly what you do mean by these "field" minds - what their nature actually is - so it's hard to then grant you the benefit of the doubt here.

Setting all of that aside, it otherwise seems to me that your argument only succeeds when the infinitely extended (field) mind is homogeneous, because heterogeneity would, it seems to me, entail structure regardless of the field-mind's infinitude or otherwise.

Are you, then, saying that each (field) mind is an infinitely extended homogeneity?

Moving on from my questions to yours:

I'm not sure you can have an experience of extension without being extended in some way?

I don't see why not, but even if not, a person can "be" extended via their identification with their (extended) physical body.

I am not even sure how this kind of causation would work where one takes in the experience of the extended world + the experience of embodiment while somehow being...where exactly?

Is it akin to a game engine where your PoV Camera is a just a point demarcated in the 3D environment, that can optionally be attached to a body bound by the game's physics?

Fair questions. Two possibilities come to mind, the first being that which you suggest: non-extended minds taking on extended avatars as in a game engine. In this case, being solely immaterial, they wouldn't have an actual location.

The second possibility is that non-extended (immaterial) minds could nevertheless have a (material) location in the locus of the body-brain in which they are embodied. I can't see an immediate logical problem with this. Maybe you can convince me that there is one.

But that would still be a kind of extension, even if one is supposedly an infinitely small point...

This doesn't seem to hold: by definition, a point has no extension. In any case, I'm inclined to the view that it's a category error to apply the concept of extension to experiencers (minds) as much as to their experiences. That's not, though, to deny that they are differentiated / contain differentiation: e.g., the faculty of sensory perception is differentiated from that of rational thought.

The other option would be that there is no real extension at all, which it seems some Idealisms suggest. Yet I am not sure if this is something that really makes sense, since it's not clear anyone can experience extensionless-ness so it remains merely an idea without a way to genuinely conceive of it.

I don't think we need to be extended to experience extension, so this argument doesn't work for me. That said, I do think that there is real extension (or, perhaps, at least an emergent extension out of some more primal mind-independent reality).

Is there a problem though, if there are only extended Minds?

Again, I think our earlier agreement ruled out extended minds. You'd have to first convince me given my above comments on this that it hadn't.

Another issue is not only how does PK work, but why someone with the ability doesn't have Omnipotence. How is an extensionless mind both capable of directly influencing the extended world AND being limited [in] said influence?

I don't think any particular explanation is required, just the observation that it seems logically possible for one to exist.

Also: isn't a version of this question equally applicable to the infinitely extended "field" mind(s) you're proposing? If they are infinite in extent, then what limits their own influence?

Sci...

My own answer to each of those four questions is identical: no, that would not be sensible; neither the sensual qualities of an experience nor the qualities of the object of an experience transfer to the experience itself...

I don't understand what it means for the qualities of the experience not transferring to the experience itself? 

This seems to be saying, for example, that the redness of the red experience is not part of the experience?

To be clear I don't ask out of some Socratic strategy, I really don't know what this means. 

[Laird]

I don't understand what it means for the qualities of the experience not transferring to the experience itself? 

This seems to be saying, for example, that the redness of the red experience is not part of the experience?

Let's take the first example I shared, of you in a room with incense, experiencing its strong scent. Could I put my nose up close to your experience, smell it, and conclude, "Sci's in a room where incense is burning, because that's what his experience smells like"?

Let's take the first example I shared, of you in a room with incense, experiencing its strong scent. Could I put my nose up close to your experience, smell it, and conclude, "Sci's in a room where incense is burning, because that's what his experience smells like"?

This might depend on how a particular ontology handles perception, but one *might* argue the smell itself is private (barring telepathy).

I guess what's tricky to me is it isn't clear *where* the smell is if it's not part of the experience? Is it in some extra place - or is that an automatic commitment to Idealism or at least Theism? Or just that smells/colors/etc are Universals?

[Laird]

Here's another way of putting it:

The smell (of incense) is a quality of experience as a subjective phenomenon. The experience as an objective - or, if you prefer, inter-subjective - phenomenon has no such quality. In fact, it seems defensible that experience is nothing but a subjective phenomenon, or at least that all of its qualities solely pertain to it as a subjective phenomenon.

It is in this (objective) sense, then, that I reject the proposition that experience could be extended. Extension can only be a subjective quality of experience; it is meaningless to talk of an experience in itself (i.e., as an objective - or inter-subjective - phenomenon) being extended.

Telepathy doesn't falsify this because it only grants subjective access to the subjective qualities of another's experience; it doesn't entail that the experience has objective qualities.

(I've chosen not to respond to your questions here and now so as not to lose focus).

Here's another way of putting it:

The smell (of incense) is a quality of experience as a subjective phenomenon. The experience as an objective - or, if you prefer, inter-subjective - phenomenon has no such quality. In fact, it seems defensible that experience is nothing but a subjective phenomenon, or at least that all of its qualities solely pertain to it as a subjective phenomenon.

It is in this (objective) sense, then, that I reject the proposition that experience could be extended. Extension can only be a subjective quality of experience; it is meaningless to talk of an experience in itself (i.e., as an objective - or inter-subjective - phenomenon) being extended.

Telepathy doesn't falsify this because it only grants subjective access to the subjective qualities of another's experience; it doesn't entail that the experience has objective qualities.

(I've chosen not to respond to your questions here and now so as not to lose focus).

What about the incense is objective then?

[Laird]

What about the incense is objective then?

That depends on one's ontology. On an idealist ontology, nothing about the incense is objective in the sense that I mean; it is only ever a subjective experience. On a dualist or materialist ontology, the incense exists objectively (independent of experience) as a physical object of some sort; a collection of sub-atomic particles or waves or fields or what have you.

The important thing to note is that whatever one's ontology, the subjective experience of the incense is not (cannot be) extended, as I've been contending. Only on dualism or materialism can the incense - as an objective entity - be extended.