How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

[BigBango]

Before I attend your post, I will try to blow your mind back based on
some thoughts in bed last night
Everything has a maximum speed. So a black hole is where the gravity
is faster than light speed. A sonic black hole occurs when inwards air
pressure is greater than the speed of sound.
So I wondered about our mind's have processing speed, the reason why
we can never perceive the exact present, always being at least a
matter of milliseconds behind. What would a consciousness black hole
be like? So I imagined a brain and nervous system that's hauling in
information too quickly for conscious processing ... sound familiar?
What happens to that leftover information? All of the
information's disparate qualities are mashed up and compressed into an
effective mental black box that we refer to as "general impressions",
"instinct" or "intuition".

Check out the latest detection of gravity waves. I think(not sure)
they determined that their speed is the same as light speed. Sure is
something weird going on in a black hole. Hard to figure it out but I
would surmise that any ecosystems sucked past the event horizon would
destroy any meaning consciously felt by that ecosystem. That is not
the same thing as information loss so I don't think meaning loss has
been addressed by science.

Yes, panvitalism - that the universe is a living system containing
living systems - makes more sense to me than panpsychism (with its
competition problem).
My impression at present is that it's not earlier forms of life that
will be pertinent so much as what will come. It seems very possible
that over billions of years ever more advanced civilisations will
emerge and once they start swapping information and connecting, the
galaxy itself develops a kind of nervous system, just as humans have
effectively added significantly to the Earth's "nervous system" - its
capacity to notice its environment. Basically the kind of merging you
spoke about above.
Now consider the challenges advanced organisms (or post-organisms)
must face as the universe ages - asteroids and comets, stellar storms,
the death of their star, rogue planets, stars and black holes,
supernovae, black hole and neutron star blasts. The capacity to
travel interstellar distances is critical. Then consider possible
unknown risks that may lurk in the dense and intense centres of
galaxies. Then there are the monstrous effects when galaxies collide.
Any entities capable of surviving all that would seemingly be able to
tolerate any conditions, including being able to live off the energy
of space itself in some bizarre (to us) immaterial manner and may even
find a safe way of negotiating collapses in space or another big bang
- or they might be the trigger.

I like your ideas on -pan-vitalism. Might we have a Gaia Galaxy and/or
a Gaia Universe!. While this is attractive to me I think it has little
hope of scientific verification other than as a default explanation
about keeping our planets orbit in a goldilocks track despite normal
orbital forces to the contrary. I don't know if that has happened but
if so we all know it was Gaia watching out for us!

If one goes back to earlier forms of life it may not seem to tell us
much about the future, as you say. However, if one could go back to
before the Big Bang it should tells us all those things you wonder
about in own on future. That is because it is it would be very much
the same because it is that fractal replica of us only on a smaller
scale.

Thanks for bringing those ideas up!

[Sy Borg]

Yes, panvitalism - that the universe is a living system containing living systems - makes more sense to me than panpsychism (with its competition problem). My impression at present is that it's not earlier forms of life that
will be pertinent so much as what will come.

It seems very possible that over billions of years ever more advanced civilisations will emerge and once they start swapping information and connecting, the galaxy itself develops a kind of nervous system, just as humans have effectively added significantly to the Earth's "nervous system" - its capacity to notice its environment. Basically the kind of merging you spoke about above.

Now consider the challenges advanced organisms (or post-organisms) must face as the universe ages - asteroids and comets, stellar storms, the death of their star, rogue planets, stars and black holes, supernovae, black hole and neutron star blasts. The capacity to travel interstellar distances is critical. Then consider possible unknown risks that may lurk in the dense and intense centres of galaxies. Then there are the monstrous effects when galaxies collide.

Any entities capable of surviving all that would seemingly be able to tolerate any conditions, including being able to live off the energy
of space itself in some bizarre (to us) immaterial manner and may even find a safe way of negotiating collapses in space or another big bang
- or they might be the trigger.

I like your ideas on pan-vitalism. Might we have a Gaia Galaxy and/or a Gaia Universe!. While this is attractive to me I think it has little hope of scientific verification other than as a default explanation about keeping our planets orbit in a goldilocks track despite normal orbital forces to the contrary. I don't know if that has happened but if so we all know it was Gaia watching out for us!

I think of it as a fractal-style repetition of prior evolution of brains.

In the beginning there was a metabolism. Stuff came into the first organisms and it was used by them to provide the energy needed from dissipating. There was no nervous system or brain. So, these things would have been attracted and repelled from things based on chemical interactions (clearly illustrated here in nonliving chemicals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySwrhMQdX4). That is rather an issue if they are attracted to something that will destroy them or if they fail to be attracted to nearby resources. So, over time, with numerous mutations, senses emerged because the microbe colony that is mindlessly repulsed from a potential threat will probably outlast those without that self-protective mechanism.

The (simplified) levels of integration I see emerge in nature and perhaps human society are:
• Small groups - eg. dogs, lions, hyenas, primates
• Large groups - bird flocks, fish schools, insect swarms, kangaroo mobs
• Colonies - bats, rats, corals
• Eusocial colonies - ants, bees, humans (many dispute this - as they are permitted :)
• Colonial integration - sponges, pyrosomes
• Nerve net - jellyfish, comb jellies, starfish
• Nervous system.

Humans have effectively been building a nervous system for the Earth (amongst other things), which senses the Earth's environment in numerous and complex ways. These "senses" - telescopes, spacecraft, sonic and magnetism detectors, particles detectors, weather forecasting equipment, geology, and so forth - are becoming increasingly integrated through growing global connectivity.

However, given the current playing out of tragedies of the commons - our inability to overcome local competition to global benefit - it appears that an equivalent to a brain for the Earth has not yet been developed by humanity, which should surprise no one! To put on my Nostradamus hat, China appears to see itself as best equipped to become such a "brain" - a central hub of the world - with its command economy and capacity to quash divisions.

If one goes back to earlier forms of life it may not seem to tell us much about the future, as you say. However, if one could go back to before the Big Bang it should tells us all those things you wonder about in own on future. That is because it is it would be very much
the same because it is that fractal replica of us only on a smaller scale.

When considering fractal layers, I don't doubt that the ultrahot ultrapressurised stuff of the big bang shares some qualities with us, but it's pretty subtle because an awful lot of plasma has flowed under the bridge since that time! I would posit the one remaining similarity between today's entities and the infant universe are the atomic nuclei. In context with what exists today, quarks would seem to be one of the more similar entities in existence to the ultra hot and high density stuff of the early universe.

[Sy Borg]

Everything has a maximum speed. So a black hole is where the gravity is faster than light speed. A sonic black hole occurs when inwards air pressure is greater than the speed of sound.

So I wondered about our mind's have processing speed, the reason why we can never perceive the exact present, always being at least a matter of milliseconds behind. What would a consciousness black hole be like? So I imagined a brain and nervous system that's hauling in information too quickly for conscious processing ... sound familiar? :) What happens to that leftover information? All of the information's disparate qualities are mashed up and compressed into an effective mental black box that we refer to as "general impressions", "instinct" or "intuition".

Check out the latest detection of gravity waves. I think(not sure) they determined that their speed is the same as light speed. Sure is something weird going on in a black hole. Hard to figure it out but I would surmise that any ecosystems sucked past the event horizon would destroy any meaning consciously felt by that ecosystem. That is not the same thing as information loss so I don't think meaning loss has been addressed by science.

My understanding is that the speed of space is not bound by light speed as is matter. So the speed of the black hole's core's gravity is faster than light speed, thus anything that falls in cannot travel quickly enough to fly out again. The mass of the stuff that is sucked into the black hole results in a tiny increase in the surface area of the BH's event horizon, in its overall size. Basically the same thing that happens to us after Christmas dinner.

[Justintruth]

There's simply no good reason to believe that the mind is something different than the body, just as much as it would sound absurd to say that blood circulation is something different than the heart. Mind is what the brain does with what the sense organs perceive.

This is a false analogy. Take the heart, the liver, the stomach, and the brain. The medievals had something called "motion" that meant roughly "change". There was a type of change called "loco-motion that was change of position.

The heart, liver, stomach all perform funcions that mean a class loco-motion. The heart "pumps blood", which means "a type of locomotion of the muscle and resulting locomotion of the blood", liver "filters" and "secretes". "Filtering" means "a kind of locomotion of the particles filtered out" and "secretion" means a "locomotion of what is passed out". "Digestion" means "a locomotion of nutrients into the blood".

The brain also performs such functions. For example a neural signal has to do with action potentials that mean "a class of the the loco-motion of charged particles". Ok you may say a "potential" is not "loco motion" but check out its definition first . It means "a number associated with the loco motion of a test charge". A class of loco motion defines both potential and kinetic energy. (F*change of position means energy. F=ma. m means the relative locomotion with a standard mass, Acceleration means the rate of change of the rate of change of position again locomotion.) The "chemistry" of a synapse means "a type loco-motion of the atoms". The "formation of a new neural connection" means the "loco-motion of the material of a neuron". The "difusion of ATP" from the blood, "cellular respiration" - all mean "loco-motion of material in the brain".

But the brain also "sees". Seeing does not mean "a part of it 'locomotates" or "changes position". By "seeing" I mean "a type of experiencing" not just "change of position" in the brain.

Logically, Something can "see" and "change position in some way", not "see" and "change position in that same way" (zombie), "see" and "not change position at all", ghost), or "not see" and not "change position".

A good hypothesis is that zombies and ghosts don't exist. But that does not mean that a predicate whose meaning has nothing to do with loco-motion has been assigned to the locomotion of the brain while no such predicate is assigned for any other organ of the body. Muscles, locomotion. Circulation, locomotion. Hormone formation and secretion, locomotion.

Name an organ funcion outside the brain which is not a form of locomotion.

Because of this you have the *logical* structure of a false analogy.
The alternative is that by seeing you mean only a certain class of locomotion in the brain. Fine. But then we need another word for the experiencing that also occurs and we have the same problem with the new predicate.

This is a logical failure.

Its like saying. I walk to school or (exclusive) go on the bus. He carries his lunch. Therefore he does not go on the bus..

What?

And you say "'Carrying a lunch' is just 'walking to school'".

Ok so what word do we use for when my mom hands me something to eat and i bring it to school.

I say "You can carry your lunch and walk to scool, not carry your lunch and walk to scool, carry your lunch and not walk to scool or not carry your lunch and not walk to school.

Its logical independence of the terms.

Can a heart pump without moving blood through the veins. Can a heart muscle contract without moving its cells?

[Count Lucanor]

There's simply no good reason to believe that the mind is something different than the body, just as much as it would sound absurd to say that blood circulation is something different than the heart. Mind is what the brain does with what the sense organs perceive.

This is a false analogy. the heart, the liver, the stomach, and the brain. The medievals had something called "motion" that meant roughly "change". There was a type of change called "loco-motion that was change of position.

I never mentioned the medievals, nor I made any analogy with locomotion. That's entirely your own invention and it's pure nonsense anyway, so I think we can easily dismiss it as a failed attempt of an argument.

The heart is a key component of the circulatory system, just as the brain is a key component of the nervous system. They both operate in relation with other components to perform bodily processes, as it is the case of blood circulation (which involves several other biochemical processes). The processes in which the brain is involved are of a different nature than those of the heart or the liver, but they are still bodily processes, related to the other physical components of the nervous system and the organs of perception. The emergence of higher abstract functions and how they exactly operate is not fully understood, but one thing is for sure: nothing happens if a living physical body is absent.

[Gertie]

Count Lucanor

Mind is what the brain does with what the sense organs perceive.

Care to explain in more detail what that means?

[Gertie]

What does a soul without a body do? If my body dies but my soul lives on, does it perceive things in the physical world? Does it linger where my body has died or does it travel? As it no longer inhabits a body it does not have access to eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or nerves. Is it therefore blind and deaf? Or are there other, non physical ways of sensing the world? How would they work? People often say of someone who has died that they are "looking down" on their loved ones? If this is not to be taken literally, how is it to be taken? What could figuratively looking down be? We generally know, I think, what figurative uses of words are meant to connote, but here - what?

I realize (and don't deny) there is a note of sarcasm to the above, but my point and my questions are at least somewhat sincere. There are those who are not necessarily religious who believe that the body and mind have separate existences, which operate on their own and could each potentially carry on without the other. But what is a mind without a body? A common answer is to describe it as an awareness or a consciousness. But is not awareness determined by sensing, and is not sensing facilitated by sense organs? Does one need to be embodied first for some period of time before one can exist as an awareness without the body? Does the awareness have to first learn through the sense organs and the functioning of the brain what it is to be aware, before it can live on its own? How does it continue to be aware - that is continue to be an awareness in anything but name - without the body (including brain)? Does it live on memories? Can memories be generated without a brain? How? Does calling it "consciousness" change anything? Would not such consciousness still require at least an apprenticeship in a body?

Such questions are not to be shoved off as trite and immaterial (pardon the pun). If a mind cannot exist, function, operate, without a body, what is the point in saying they are separate, that they exist on different plains? Why even talk about them as both needing to be accounted for? Why this need to bifurcate? We can talk of the mind causing the body to act. But why put it that way when we could just say that a person decides to act?

Such questions arise because although we can say it looks like the mind and body are one at some fundamental level, we don't know for sure, and don't know what that more fundamental level might be. And we have no model for a monism which describes the same one thing in entirely different and contradictory ways (eg my brain is grey but my thoughts might be of green, my brain weighs so many grams, my thoughts don't, my brain is located in my skull, my thoughts and perceptions extend beyond my body, etc).

So we don't have a neat answer based in our current explanatory models for the mind/body problem. And we don't know if experiential states (mind) can exist in some form independant of bodies, because we're missing that underlying theory. What we do have are observations, and they lean towards bodily death meaning mind/soul death. Some people report experiences which contradict this, but they haven't proven to be testable, and so haven't made it into our scientific model of how the world works - and other explanations of such experiences seem more likely to me.

[Wayne92587]

Count Lucanor;

There's simply no good reason to believe that the mind is something different than the body.

Not True!

Justintruth;

A mind could exist without a body but it just seems they don’t. A ball dropped on earth moves down. It could move up but they just don’t.

Not true!

Wayne wrote;

The mind and body are the dual qualities, of the same Reality, Singularity; two sides of the same coin.

The Mind and body are separate ans distinct one from the other, however the mind and body are one, function as a Single Reality
The body is simply aware, makes sense of the physical, material World of Reality, Reality as seen, experienced, in the Light of Day, “Ultimate Reality”.

The mind has a dual quality, purpose, has the ability to make sense of the Dark World of Reality, that exists as a mere reflection of the Reality as experienced by the Flesh Body and the Rationalizations that have been generated, created, that exist in the darkest corners of the Mind.

When the Light was separated from the Darkness a second Great Light was Created, separated out from in between Night and Day, Twice Light.

The Twilight Zone; Twilight being the Light unto the Rational Mind.

Though I walk through the valley and shadow of Darkness I fear no Evil for I am a Rational Being, “Amen”.

If thin single eye, all seeing eye, Rational Mind, be filled with Darkness, how great then is the “Evil” within.

Think of the Mind and Body as a fractal, Fraction, having a Numerator and a Denominator; as being a real but not a whole number.
If the numerator becomes greater than the denominator, said fraction becomes an Irrational number.

[Count Lucanor]

Count Lucanor

Mind is what the brain does with what the sense organs perceive.

Care to explain in more detail what that means?

It means we are immersed in experience, which is constituted by acts of perceptions and the unifying process in the brain. Everything involved (sense organs, brain, nervous system, environment) is of a physical nature and as such it is a continuum of material entities. It is not necessary to add new dimensions or ethereal substances and separate the processes from the material elements that make them possible. Mind, soul, are names we use to describe these processes, they are not independent substances.

[Justintruth]

If the numerator becomes greater than the denominator, said fraction becomes an Irrational number.

You are not quite ready for meraphysics but maybe you can learn some math:

7=7/1

The numerator is 7 and denominator 1 so the numerator is greater than the denominator. But 7 is not irrational because both 7 and 1 are integers and 7/1=7.

An irrational number is a number that cannot be represented by the ratio of two integers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number

Philosophy is best if we think as carefully as possible

[Gertie]

Count Lucanor



Care to explain in more detail what that means?

It means we are immersed in experience, which is constituted by acts of perceptions and the unifying process in the brain. Everything involved (sense organs, brain, nervous system, environment) is of a physical nature and as such it is a continuum of material entities. It is not necessary to add new dimensions or ethereal substances and separate the processes from the material elements that make them possible. Mind, soul, are names we use to describe these processes, they are not independent substances.

I was trying to dig deeper into what you mean by 'mind is what the brain does'.

The reason we think that way is owing to our observations, minds (experiential states) correlate with bodies (certain complex organic interactive systems) which we have good materialist scientific models for. We haven't reliably observed otherwise, supernatural ghosty claims don't generally fit with our materialist world view and haven't had substantive independent verification. But... we don't have an underlying explanation/theory for the mind/body correlation, their relationship. And all the hypotheses we come up with are not only problematic, they're not amenable to our usual methodologies of scientific testing.

So to assert that 'mind is what the brain does' requires unpacking imo, as to what theory of the relationship between mind and body you're basing the claim on, and how you know this hypothesis is the correct one. Because our usual ways of describing what the brain does, as you say, is a physical description of electro-chemical activity, physical cause and effect and so on, which simply doesn't include this extra something which is phenomenological experiential states. Hence the need for further elaboration of that specific claim.

[Wayne92587]

Justintruth;

What would 9/7 be?

[Halc]

What would 9/7 be?

What it would be is a rational number, being a ratio between two integers 9 and 7. See the definition of a rational number (which is hyperlinked in the page Justintruth linked), which precludes a denominator of zero, but no other restrictions. 9/0 for instance is not a rational number, despite both 9 and 0 being integers.

You're not big on being open to correction, are you?

[Halc]

I think you are confusing 'rational number' with 'proper fraction', which is a different thing.
Neither 7/1 nor 9/7 is a proper fraction, but they're both rational numbers.

[BigBango]

I think of it as a fractal-style repetition of prior evolution of brains.

In the beginning there was a metabolism. Stuff came into the first organisms and it was used by them to provide the energy needed from dissipating. There was no nervous system or brain. So, these things would have been attracted and repelled from things based on chemical interactions (clearly illustrated here in nonliving chemicals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySwrhMQdX4). That is rather an issue if they are attracted to something that will destroy them or if they fail to be attracted to nearby resources. So, over time, with numerous mutations, senses emerged because the microbe colony that is mindlessly repulsed from a potential threat will probably outlast those without that self-protective mechanism.

The (simplified) levels of integration I see emerge in nature and perhaps human society are:
• Small groups - eg. dogs, lions, hyenas, primates
• Large groups - bird flocks, fish schools, insect swarms, kangaroo mobs
• Colonies - bats, rats, corals
• Eusocial colonies - ants, bees, humans (many dispute this - as they are permitted
• Colonial integration - sponges, pyrosomes
• Nerve net - jellyfish, comb jellies, starfish
• Nervous system.

Humans have effectively been building a nervous system for the Earth (amongst other things), which senses the Earth's environment in numerous and complex ways. These "senses" - telescopes, spacecraft, sonic and magnetism detectors, particles detectors, weather forecasting equipment, geology, and so forth - are becoming increasingly integrated through growing global connectivity.

However, given the current playing out of tragedies of the commons - our inability to overcome local competition to global benefit - it appears that an equivalent to a brain for the Earth has not yet been developed by humanity, which should surprise no one! To put on my Nostradamus hat, China appears to see itself as best equipped to become such a "brain" - a central hub of the world - with its command economy and capacity to quash divisions.

If one goes back to earlier forms of life it may not seem to tell us much about the future, as you say. However, if one could go back to before the Big Bang it should tells us all those things you wonder about in own on future. That is because it is it would be very much
the same because it is that fractal replica of us only on a smaller scale.

When considering fractal layers, I don't doubt that the ultrahot ultrapressurised stuff of the big bang shares some qualities with us, but it's pretty subtle because an awful lot of plasma has flowed under the bridge since that time! I would posit the one remaining similarity between today's entities and the infant universe are the atomic nuclei. In context with what exists today, quarks would seem to be one of the more similar entities in existence to the ultra hot and high density stuff of the early universe.

Let me extend some of your ideas on the growth of the vitalism of our planet that pushes it toward qualifying as an entity in its own right (Gaia Earth).

Nikollai Kardashev categorized civilizations as Type I, Type II or III based on the power source that it could leverage to its advantage. Type I uses the power of the whole planet, Type II uses that of a star and Type III that of an entire galaxy. To quote Michio Kaku's interpretation of this classification from his popular book "Hyperspace":

"A Type I civilization is one that controls the energy resources of an entire planet. This civilization can control the weather, prevent earthquakes, mine deep in the earth's crust and harvest the oceans. This civilization is one that has already completed the exploration of the solar system.
A Type II civilization is one that controls the power of the sun itself. This does not mean passively harnessing solar energy, this civilization mines the sun. The energy needs of this civilization are so large that it directly consumes the power of the sun to drive its machines. This civilization will begin the colonization of local star systems.
A Type III civilization is one that controls the power of an entire galaxy. For a power source, it harnesses the power of billions of star systems. It has probably mastered Einstein's equations and can manipulate space-time at will."

I would add to those levels that a Type IV civilization would be able to harness energy sources that could move its treasured ecosystems to safety when threatened by the pull of large black holes, an inevitable collision with another galaxy or a big crunch of a large number of galaxies resulting in a Big Bang.

As you say, we have yet to see any escape from the "Tragedy of the Commons" which appeals to the greed of our currently reigning politicians lapping up the short term benefits from continuing our exploitation of cheap coal and oil while extricating us from the Paris accords.