How to Well Define "Mind"?

we appear to be here for no other reason than to experience consciousness and ponder on its purpose.

A non human entity, if invented by man, would or could be informed of its means and the purpose of its creation. It might ponder like us on our purpose and muse about our creator but its interest would not be personal . We have no such luxury, we appear to be here for no other reason than to experience consciousness and ponder on its purpose.

Hmmmm. That means I am doing lots of things that have nothing to do with my purpose in being here. Like eating and sleeping. Can it be that my purpose for existing is to ponder on my purpose for existing? Since we have the answer, why ponder?

If you have found the answer then im happy for you.

I assume you're implying that the non-human entity doesn't qualify as a 'mind' because it doesn't have a personal interest in knowing its purpose, or that this is at least a big distinction in mind.

What is the meaning and use of a mind asking "What is my purpose?" The only useful paraphrase I can think of for this question is "What acts will lead to sensations of pleasure?"

A mind, in my sense, only a few steps above a thermostat, is constantly implicitly asking by its actions, experiments and learning of associations - "What acts under what conditions will lead to some sensation?" That sounds like it covers the pleasure question in the previous paragraph.

So this personal-purpose-asking threshold for mind doesn't seem very high. It's a bit higher than a thermostat, but it still boils down to the process of discovering what acts lead to sensations that satisfy goals. Or have I glossed over something?

But the answer was just given to us. The purpose of life is to ponder the purpose of life. Wasn't that it? I didn't find it. It was handed to me on a silver platter. I would never, in a million years, thought of it. I still find it hard to grasp. But that is only to be expected I suppose.

If you think that a thermostat with the ability to ponder would be happy with his lot regulating your shower temperature , what can i say. Now if it could be just a bit evil and turn the heat up too high, like my bleeding shower, then that would be pleasurable and appear purposeful. What is this with your attention to a mechanical contraption.

---------- Post added 10-31-2009 at 03:18 PM ----------

Not exactly, we experience consciousness and ponder on our purpose, the purpose is not ponder but that is the result of not knowing our purpose.

Sorry. I was so excited at the prospect of finding out the purpose of life that I misread what you wrote. How do you know, though, that there is just one purpose? There may be a whole bunch of them. (And I might even ask how you know there are any at all).

What is this with your attention to a mechanical contraption.

Since there's probably a "what is the purpose of life" thread elsewhere, or you could start one, I'll try to steer this thread back to mind...



If you're going to deny me my example of what mind essentially is, do you, or anyone here, have a better metaphor or analogy to replace it? You must be able to point to at least a few deep patterns in your mind's activity.

I guess it to mean a thing that doesn't merely model what you would consider to be outside its self, or its physical self, but its own thinking process - presumably like I'm doing with this post. I can understand wanting to limit 'mind' to that threshold, but to me, intuitively, it seems unfair to not use the word for a thing just shy of that standard, a thing that has beliefs, doubts them, has means, knows it has them, experiments with them, retries, communicates with other minds, has at least a coarse sense of itself and seeks to preserve that self, but just doesn't happen to be capable of 2nd order cybernetics-style reflection.

Deep patterns, i dont think i have any patterns. I consider the mind to speculate on my brains activities and ask it why it nags me. I speculate on my animal urges that my brain signals me to carry out. I cant say it resembles anything like the pleasure of regulating my bath water. I think im missing something here, it must be me, sorry.

I certainly admit that there's much more to explain about a human mind than my minimal thermostat mind shows. I just think that all other features of mind are well imagined as only complications of that thermostat.

For example, I don't consider pleasure to be merely analogous to reaching a goal. So a mere thermostat wouldn't have anything like pleasure or pain.

If you're concerned about qualia, unless you can shed some uncommon light on that problem, then I prefer to concentrate on function.

Precisely what differences between a human mind and this thermostat bother you most? I wouldn't want to overlook anything.

To me, turning on the air conditioner if I'm hot, seems to only differ from a thermostat's work in the sense that I happen to also have many other things to think about.

It's very useful to imagine every act, including philosophy, as the work of a mind, but how best can you define mind? What precisely should distinguish an intelligent thing from a mindless one?

I'm fond of a distinction lifted from cybernetics: negative feedback loop with amplification. A thermostat is a simple example. I think this is a fundamental distinction, between a thing that's passive and a thing that preserves another thing, possibly itself.

I don't think we should reserve the word 'mind' for only human-like minds when artifacts little more complex than a thermostat can show ample intelligence and be immensely useful.