Missing in action: Where is the mind?

Missing in action: Where is the mind? Confused

The mind is in you, and you are in the mind. Cool

1 Reply

@voiceindarkness,

voiceindarkness wrote:

Missing in action: Where is the mind?
The mind is in you, and you are in the mind.

You are a master of mindless statements.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

voiceindarkness wrote:

Missing in action: Where is the mind?
The mind is in you, and you are in the mind.

You are a master of mindless statements.

It is not allo that mindless... When people think of themselves it is not as objects, as matter; but as spiritual and immaterial, and that is what we call mind and opposed to brain...

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@Fido,

Mind (consciousness) is the most difficult of all concepts. We study "it" as an object of mind, as a process of mind-ing. Pure paradox.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Mind (consciousness) is the most difficult of all concepts. We study "it" as an object of mind, as a process of mind-ing. Pure paradox.

Mind is not a concept at all, and talking of it as though it is a concept only adds to the problem... Just for example... Concepts are those things in life which are conserved, whose identity does not change... Then, comparison has meaning... We can only compare the lengths of lines because the concept does not change no matter what the length... Same with volume, or weight... You do not change the concept of DOG by cutting its hair... But minds are changed all the time, and people's notions of mind change, and the mind can be segmented endlessly into ego and id and super ego, and etc... The mind is simply a moral form, and the brain is a physical form, and neither completely and alone explains why people are what the are...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

JLNobody wrote:

Mind (consciousness) is the most difficult of all concepts. We study "it" as an object of mind, as a process of mind-ing. Pure paradox.

Mind is not a concept at all, and talking of it as though it is a concept only adds to the problem... Just for example... Concepts are those things in life which are conserved, whose identity does not change... Then, comparison has meaning... We can only compare the lengths of lines because the concept does not change no matter what the length... Same with volume, or weight... You do not change the concept of DOG by cutting its hair... But minds are changed all the time, and people's notions of mind change, and the mind can be segmented endlessly into ego and id and super ego, and etc... The mind is simply a moral form, and the brain is a physical form, and neither completely and alone explains why people are what the are... The mind.

1 Reply

@Fido,

Quote:

Mind is not a concept at all

I have argued extensively elsewhere that every thing is a concept, but rather than recapitulate that argument, I will simply remark that Gilbert Ryle's (1949)book "The Concept of Mind" is considered to be a seminal work on the subject.

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@fresco,

I might add to Fresco's dictum that operationally "everything is ONLY a concept." We live in a world of concepts, a symbolic universe. I'm not saying that the world's ontology is only symbolic; I'm saying that we live in our conceived world. If I kick a rock it'll hurt regardless of my worldview, but I will probably describe the event only with reference to the solidity of the rock, without reference to what happened at any other (i.e., atomic or subatomic) level.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Mind is not a concept at all

I have argued extensively elsewhere that every thing is a concept, but rather than recapitulate that argument, I will simply remark that Gilbert Ryle's (1949)book "The Concept of Mind" is considered to be a seminal work on the subject.

So Ryle was an idiot... Most people cannot grasp concepts, what they are and how they work, and it is a big reason behind all the stupid and irrational conversations on many subject... I do what I can, but I don't even bother trying to save the world from stupidity...

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

I might add to Fresco's dictum that operationally "everything is ONLY a concept." We live in a world of concepts, a symbolic universe. I'm not saying that the world's ontology is only symbolic; I'm saying that we live in our conceived world. If I kick a rock it'll hurt regardless of my worldview, but I will probably describe the event only with reference to the solidity of the rock, without reference to what happened at any other (i.e., atomic or subatomic) level.

I know people try to conceive of everything they can experience... The fact is that most of these are transendent concepts, what I would call moral forms; but at best they are only quasi concepts, the approximtion of concepts, and if you removed the subjective element you would have only illusion, imagination, or phenomenon without substance... I will be happy to talk about justice and morality till the cows come home, and not because we have these qualities as objects which would make possible a true concept in relation to them, but because we seem to need these virtues in our lives as spiritual values, and to be honest; meanings, values without being are all they are... A gallon of water has more meaning and value than a cubic yard of justice, and more being... The true being of any moral form is our own, and it is our own meaning that we give to them... For people, the measure of moral forms is impossible because they are not real, and the conceptions of them are never valid... All we know, is whether we have enough of justice or any moral form, or whether we have not enough... With enough, we survive...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote

Quote:

So Ryle was an idiot

A google search gave

Quote:

Ryle was educated at Brighton College, and in 1919, he went up to Queen's College at Oxford, initially to study Classics but was quickly drawn to Philosophy. He would graduate with first class honours in 1924 and was appointed to a lectureship in Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford. A year later, he was to become a tutor. Ryle remained at Christ Church until World War II.
A capable linguist, he was recruited to intelligence work during World War II, after which he returned to Oxford and was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He published his principal work, The Concept of Mind in 1949. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1945 to 1946, and editor of the philosophical journal Mind from 1947 to 1971.

1 Reply

@fresco,

So; ... a formally educated idiot. People should not apply the word concept, form, idea, or notion un modified to infinites or non objective reality... To do so loads confusion on to mystery.

1 Reply

@voiceindarkness,

voiceindarkness wrote:

Quote:
Fido wrote:

JLNobody wrote:

Mind (consciousness) is the most difficult of all concepts. We study "it" as an object of mind, as a process of mind-ing. Pure paradox.

Mind is not a concept at all, and talking of it as though it is a concept only adds to the problem... Just for example... Concepts are those things in life which are conserved, whose identity does not change... Then, comparison has meaning... We can only compare the lengths of lines because the concept does not change no matter what the length... Same with volume, or weight... You do not change the concept of DOG by cutting its hair... But minds are changed all the time, and people's notions of mind change, and the mind can be segmented endlessly into ego and id and super ego, and etc... The mind is simply a moral form, and the brain is a physical form, and neither completely and alone explains why people are what the are... The mind.
What people are? on themselves.
Your looking for your mind? Did you loose it?

The mind has absorbed all of the information created in the darkness of space time, to be carried over to the light from which it came.

We are each just a bit of information, within the information that is absorbed by the mind.

You are conscience of consciousness, and the mind body experience. What you are conscious of, is created within your conscience, even your dreams.

You see reality on the subatomic level, but what of consciousness on the subconscious level?, and beyond

You are the center of your universe.

The singularity of your mind within, the mind within.

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@Fido,

Quote:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Lewis Carroll
English author & recreational mathematician (1832 - 1898)

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Lewis Carroll
English author & recreational mathematician (1832 - 1898)

You can get lost in questions such as: Do we make words, or are we made by them... Or; do we make culture, or are we made by culture.... Do we make history, or are we made by history???

The fact is, a Carrol certainly understood this: Number has so much more of a direct relationship to object, but of moral reality words can be filled with so much subjective meaning as to be useless... I doubt that anyone has done so much to give us a conception of Mind as Freud, and yet, what is it in the end??? Once you have the mind you can segment the mind, and what does that give you??? You can see Freud wrestling for years with certain conceptions of segments of mind for what??? Some of the great leaders of 19th and 20th century were simplfiers... What Feud gave us was a simplified mind; but was it in any sense accurate, of even honest??? It is not that models of human consciousness, behavior, or of the effects of experience upon development are not useful, to a point... The question must be asked: what is to be done with those who do not fit the model... Freud was among the many of his age to reject the rational notion of mankind, and to see the power of the irrational in our lives... Does his science, and he did try a scientific approach, allow doctors to understand the irrational with the rational mind???

Let me offer a quotation by Freud to illustrate my point: " The great question that has never be answered, and which I have not been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is: what does a woman want?"

What sort of science is it that cannot move with ease from the general to the specific??? The fact is, that in conceiving of mind as one thing, he was screwing up, and missing the point just as in conceiving of women as one thing he was missing the point... And that is true of all concepts, that they are one thing... It is not enough to show that my mind, if I have one is like your mind if you have one... One must show a commonality, a one-ness between all minds; and this is easily done with the physical structures of brain, but not so with mind...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Why bother coming up with a phrase like "moral form" instead of "concept" for what we call "mind". All you are saying is that we are more likely to agree on the meaning of some concepts vs others, but that agreement depends on contextual usage So if I ask you "what's on your mind ?" or "what do you have in mind ?", you know exactly what I mean. If, on the other hand, I ask "do dogs have minds ? ", we might attempt to negotiate the meaning of "mind" in this instance to our mutual satisfaction.

Now usage of your counter example of "brain" has exactly the same problem. The fact that we might agree on the brain's physical characteristics does not mean we can agree on its detailed functioning. Indeed, scientists agree on relatively little in that respect compared to say the functioning of a computer, so we can only guess at the salient characteristics of "brain".

And note that even the concept of "length" implies a covert context of "for what purpose" (hence the issue of tolerances).

Meaning is usage (Wittgenstein).
Words denote concepts and are not representational of an independent reality (Rorty, Quine).
The abstract persistence of a socially acquired "word" embodies our expectancies and assumptions about the persistence of our shared "reality" (fresco )

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

fresco wrote:

Why bother coming up with a phrase like "moral form" instead of "concept" for what we call "mind". All you are saying is that we are more likely to agree on the meaning of some concepts vs others, but that agreement depends on contextual usage So if I ask you "what's on your mind ?" or "what do you have in mind ?", you know exactly what I mean. If, on the other hand, I ask "do dogs have minds ? ", we might attempt to negotiate the meaning of "mind" in this instance to our mutual satisfaction.

If you consider the age that Freud grew out of, rational and mechanistic, and of his own experience with neurology and autopsy; you can sort of grasp what a pioneer he was with his conception of human behavior, though in line with others of his time like Doestoyevesky, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche... And yet, while brains can be laid upon a table and disected, minds cannot... We have some basis for mind in the brain, but no one to one coruspondence... What we are left with is a moral form, a meaning that is common, kinda sorta to people, and yet, since it cannot be compared or measured, one that is almost useless... The mind is an object of endless speculation because it is no object at all... What one person said of nature, that it is futile to look at nature for causes because nature was all effect is equally true of the mind... The mind causes nothing... When we say our minds have changed we are talking about an effect of many causes... I will say that perhaps the proper name of a moral form is a transendent concept, but a concept or form so modified is not form or concept... Each is a meaning without a specific being...

Quote:
Now usage of your counter example of "brain" has exactly the same problem. The fact that we might agree on the brain's physical characteristics does not mean we can agree on its detailed functioning. Indeed, scientists agree on relatively little in that respect compared to say the functioning of a computer, so we can only guess at the salient characteristics of "brain".

And note that even the concept of "length" implies a covert context of "for what purpose" (hence the issue of tolerances).

Meaning is usage (Wittgenstein).
Words denote concepts and are not representational of an independent reality (Rorty, Quine).
The abstract persistence of a socially acquired "word" embodies our expectancies and assumptions about the persistence of our shared "reality" (fresco )

I was listening to a neuroscientist on the public radio not long ago, and he expressed the opinion that science is perhaps only a short matter of time from proof of determinism for all human behavior against the notion of any free will at all... I would lean on the notion of free will, and say that with such notions of mind and consciousness as we have, that we have achieved free will since we can step aside from ourselves and see ourselves objectively and in time... We are all mirrored by our moral forms and are the mirror of our morals... Moral forms and Trasendent concepts are not useless only because they are unreal... We share our reality with them, and their existence allows us to consider reality from another perspective... If we are looking at a social situation; we may not know what to think about it... Then we can roll a moral form like justice in front of the scene and look at it with actions and characters arranged for us... Then we can bring out the moral form of law or equity or individual freedom, and in the process we can judge the behavior of others, and our own behavior in advance of action....

I do not disagree with the words of your experts... If a word has meaning, which is value -to you, and you are real, then the word has some reality... The problem is that since there is no object identical to the word, then there is no way of making certain my use of the word is equal to your use of the word, and so there is no true concept, no knowledge, no judgement of the object which does not exist; but only a meaning as variable as people vary...If you want to look at why people disagree and war, it is over the meaning of moral forms... Pick up the least old rock and humanity can agree about it and get on to more important things... There is nothing more important than justice because people cannot agree on it, and the same with all the multitude of moral forms...

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Science is still out to lunch on whether or not there is a 6th sense. Rolling Eyes

6 is the number for mans completeness. Neutral

If all you are is 5 senses, Smile

then you have no sense, Laughing

You are only a word processor. Cool

The 6th sense is consciousness. Wink

With out it there would be no point to the other 5. Cool

You would only be a robot of the mind. Confused

7 is the number for completeness, Cool

You are complete in God. Cool

0 Replies

@Fido,

From what I have read on "second generation cognitive science", your neuroscientist would certainly be called "an idiot", the least reason being that "determinism" even in physics is a problem area.

As far as I am concerned "truth" is negotiable, and consensus is accounted for by similarities of physiology and culture.

So we'll have to agree to disagree.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

From what I have read on "second generation cognitive science", your neuroscientist would certainly be called "an idiot", the least reason being that "determinism" even in physics is a problem area.

As far as I am concerned "truth" is negotiable, and consensus is accounted for by similarities of physiology and culture.

So we'll have to agree to disagree.

I agree that there is no truth in truth, that even the best of our knowledge is by way of forms that are little more than analogy... As complex as biology and chemistry are apart, it is possible given a possible higher understanding of each to predict behavior which is to say, it is determined by physical conditions that are anything but random...

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