Ah ha! I see what you're getting at
The clue you're referring to is that the terms "inside" and "outside" imply that what is being referred is whats going inside as opposed outside of the brain, right? That's pretty much what I inferred to start with but I've been thinking and reading on the subject for a while and I'm beginning to suspect that the clue may be hinting at something a bit more subtle than that. First, I'm going to try and explain my reasoning for this.
Its been pointed out before that when studying the brain one finds that there is no discernible observer or "master center" of the brain. This has been interpreted in some school of thought to imply that the "I"/self/mind [whatever one wants to call it] is simply an illusion created by neural activity and brain chemistry. At first glance this is a very sensible conclusion until one stops and realizes that even invoking the word 'illusion' inherently implies an observer of some sort; how can there be an illusion of anything unless there's is someone to perceive it? Since one cannot pinpoint the location of an observer, and to claim that there is
no observer is paradoxical one must infer that the observer is
nonlocal.
This is a long paragraph, so forgive me for breaking it up into smaller sections to reply to.
I disagree here that invoking the word "illusion" implies a separate observer for several reason.
Firstly, invoking any word does not imply anything. A word is simply that, a word, and using a semantic argument to imply reality seems, to me at least, hopeless.
Secondly, illusions exist without someone to view them. Take a rainbow, for example. This is an illusion - there is not actually a physical ribbon of colour in the sky - and it exists whether you are around to view it or not.
Finally, our inability to evoke the concept of consciousness without invoking some form of "self" or separate entity could entirely be simply that: our inability. It does not follow that simply because we tend to think that way that it must be so.
I contend that no such separate "self" exists, and that our continued use of dualistic language is simply a linguistic and cognitive limitation. Further, I contend that a mind which forms an informational network which is self aware, and thus "experiences itself" in the form of thoughts, feelings, etc, is indistinguishable from a mind which has a separate entity which "does the experiencing". Why invoke an unnecessary, and unprovable (by definition) entity?
So when I say "inside", I don't necessarily mean literally inside the brain I mean a literal subjective side of reality. I propose that Descartes's duality isn't so much describing two independent realms but two complementary sides of reality. In this view there is no interaction paradox because the mind/body are simply two dialectical aspects of the whole of reality.
But if they are two "sides" of reality, which both affect and interact with each other, how is that distinguishable from both things being the "same" reality? You are introducing an unnecessary concept, i.e. that of a dualistic reality.
I know that QM tends to be used to support a lot of mistaken claims or downright "woo" but invoking some aspects of it seems unavoidable in the case of the mind. Aside from the implied nonlocality of the 'self', there is also the
observer effect, where simply
observing a phenomenon affects what kind of outcome will result from it (for example, the famous double slit experiment). This also implies something special about sentience; namely, that is not merely an incidental phenomenon but based upon something fundamental in nature.
The observer effect does not imply anything, yet. We simply do not know enough about it (or even if it is a real phenomenon). The beauty here is that we are allowed to say "what the hell, the universe is really weird" without elevating sentience to a special place. For example, we do not know if a person observing an event has the same effect as a robot observing the even. What about a robot which perfect mimics sentience and consciousness? Would that 'trigger' the observer effect? Simply put, we have no idea, but I cannot see any reason to assume
a priori that human consciousness is special.
I would say even tho sentience has a material nature, there can still be a distinction between appearance and actual sentience.
Of course you would; you seem to be a Dualist, and this is somewhat vital to their argument. But what is your argument for thinking this? I cannot think of any reason why there should be a distinction. It seems you are making this assertion to complement the rest of your theory.
Well, one can look at the same problem and come to the opposite conclusion. An idealist would argue that since the subjective is the only aspect of reality that we experience directly, and that the "outside" material world is perceived only indirectly then the fundamental nature of reality is mental and "matter" is just an illusory part of it.
Do you see what you did there? You immediately introduced dualistic concepts into the argument as if they were a given. "We experience the subjective". This already assumes there is some "thing", separate from our brains, which is "doing the experiencing". In other words, you are already positing a ghost in the machine before you even begin your argument!
Take, for example, the basic dualist argument, the
cogito. It can be rightly argued (and I won't go into it here, as its covered far better by actual philosophers) that the only conclusion we can rightly make from the
cogito is not that "we" exist, nor anything along the lines of "here I am, I directly experience thoughts, therefore I exist". The only thing which we can conclude is "there are thoughts, therefore there is existence". Notice how this does not introduce any concept of "I" or "self"?
Mind you, I don't fully accept this claim but I also don't fully accept the conventional interpretation of materialism either. I suspect that neither aspects are more fundamental than the other; I would argue that mind and matter are themselves simply emergent aspects of a deeper reality that we don't fully understand. In this sense mind and matter aren't so much mutually exclusive realities but emergent categories of reality.
This is an interesting thought. If matter is an emergent property, and so is your "mind" concept, and if they are both emergent properties of the same "stuff", then how are they any different? They are both the same phenomenon (an emergent property), both are caused by the same thing, so it is unfounded to conclude that they are different. Further, if what we call "matter" is an emergent property of something else, I would argue that by definition this "something else" would become defined as "matter". For example, if string theory is correct, the super strings it posits become the fundamental thing from which particles are an emergent property. All this really does is shift the "base material" one 'layer' down. If you follow.
In a previous discussion on a related topic someone pointed out to me that my position resembles some variety of neutral monism. After reading up on the subject a bit more, I would say that I've found my views to fall more specifically in line with dialectical monism which states that while reality is one ontological whole it can only be perceived in dualistic terms [i.e. not limited to Cartesian dualism].
It still appears dualistic to me. *shrug* Call it what you will.
That fact that ideas are part of a feedback system is only incidental. The fact that an idea and the
object the idea represents are two different things is what I was referring to. If thoughts and ideas were necessarily identical to external reality then there would be no such things as errors or misconceptions.
Incorrect. An idea is blatantly not the same as the physical object it represents, but this does not mean that it is not material. If, as I have suggested, thoughts are an emergent property of certain arrangements of matter, then an idea can simply be the result of a particular pattern. A single pattern in any emergent system can have more then one cause.
Well, I'm not a Q-physicist myself either but I don't think you've got any of the physics wrong at all [ I just happen to obsessively read up on scientific literature -- a hobby of mine since I was little ^_^].
Like I said, I'm not certain of how deep the analogy goes. I'm not certain whether mind/brain complementarity is identical to the wave/particle relationship or if its indicative of some other relation that hasn't fully been considered yet; I'll have to do a lot more reading and thinking on the topic before I can personally settle on a conclusion.
It's probably not a very good analogy, I was only trying to point out that your interpretation is not the only one which can be formed. I'm more then happy to drop the analogy, though.
I have a friend who's a bio major (what I'm working on, atm
) and also has a lot of exposure to QM. He and I have discussed an idea of his that we exist in "conceptual space" which is in some way analogous (or identical) to probability space as described in QM. Basically his idea is that our thoughts and concepts exist as wave functions in a kind of mental probability space. The
idea or plan of a car doesn't physically exist as such but one can physically manifest it based upon a conceptual schema of how to make it. I suppose conceptual space is the private mini-universe that a self exists "in" where it can generate, manipulate, accumulate, and interpret information and concepts. I can't really elaborate on it much more than that since it's just the barest beginnings of an idea and hasn't really been developed yet.
All you have done here is introduced an unnecessary concept. Why suppose a separate "universe" for the mind when a simple emergent manifestation of matter explains the same phenomenon? Sure, the "idea" of a car isn't a car. But a data file of a picture isn't a physical picture either, is it? Information can be stored in an emergent property without supposing a special "information space".
Since we first started discussing this idea I've stumbled across some literature on something called holonomic brain theory. Basically the theory proposes that memories and thoughts are distributed across the brain in a manner similar to the way information and images can be stored onna holographic film. It seems from what I've read that there doesn't seem to be any reason to preclude the possibility that the entire body could, infact, store certain kinds of information this way (like in the case of morphogenesis or particular patterns of gene expression). Ack! I'm digressing o.<
Yep, there isn't any reason to suppose that
some information is stored in the body. In fact, we know it is. DNA stores information. So does the particular pattern of cells in your arm.
However, we might start needing a definition of "information", and that isn't a particular road I'd like to go down unless I have to!
Anyways, when I say 'matter' I go with the conventional definition of anything that has mass
and volume. Since mind, thoughts, and feelings don't not meet this criteria I consider them, for ontological reasons, to be
non-material [not synonymous with supernatural, mind you
].
Of course. They are information. Information does not exist as a physical object. Information does not exist
at all as a separate entity. It is purely an emergent property of matter.
All I want to say on the subject is "you cannot have information without matter"...