How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

[Consul]

I'm inclined to side with Tamminem regarding plant intelligence - especially after watching much high speed footage. Conscious processing operates at different tempos, and when an organism's tempo of thought is slow enough, it will appear to be mentally inert to any organism with much faster operations. By the same token, small enough organisms appear to be invisible to the naked eye.

Some of the more complex motile microbes display at least as sophisticated behaviour as some simple brained organisms, so it appears that organisms can have structures that are analogous to nervous systems.

"Can We Speak of 'Plant Intelligence'?
…
[W]hat is intelligence? Because this concept is so broad and difficult to circumscribe, naturally there are many different definitions (the drollest being that 'There seem to be almost as many definitions of 'intelligence' as there [are] experts asked to define it', from psychologist Robert Sternberg). So our first task is to choose the definition that fits our situation. For plants we could use a rather broad definition: 'Intelligence is the ability to solve problems.' There certainly are others that might work perfectly well, but let's stick with this one."

(Mancuso, Stefano, and Alessandra Viola. Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence. Translated by Joan Benham. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015. p. 126)

Plants are intelligent in the sense of being able to solve biological problems (of survival, nutrition, reproduction), but my point is that plant intelligence ≠ plant consciousness/experience, because there can be intelligent behaviour without consciousness/experience.

The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines "intelligence" as "cognitive ability", "cognitive" as "of, relating to, or involving cognition", and "cognition" as "the mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information". What exactly makes an activity or ability a mental one is a contentious issue; but even if "mental" or "cognitive" abilities and activities (defined in purely functional-informational terms) can meaningfully and truly be ascribed to plants too, this in no way means that they are subjects of consciousness/experience—that there is something it is like to be a plant from a subjective point of view. "Plant cognition" or "plant intelligence" is different from plant consciousness, which doesn't exist. The two former terms refer to nothing but purely physiological (chemical, electrical) information processes in plants. However sophisticated these may be, plants are nonconscious biomachines or biorobots.

[Sy Borg]

I'm inclined to side with Tamminem regarding plant intelligence - especially after watching much high speed footage. Conscious processing operates at different tempos, and when an organism's tempo of thought is slow enough, it will appear to be mentally inert to any organism with much faster operations. By the same token, small enough organisms appear to be invisible to the naked eye.

Some of the more complex motile microbes display at least as sophisticated behaviour as some simple brained organisms, so it appears that organisms can have structures that are analogous to nervous systems.

Plants are intelligent in the sense of being able to solve biological problems (of survival, nutrition, reproduction), but my point is that plant intelligence ≠ plant consciousness/experience, because there can be intelligent behaviour without consciousness/experience.

I agree. However, this does not counter the apparent situation that extremely slow processing will appear to be inert and insensate to an organism that processes much more quickly. I am not saying that plants are conscious because we all share Nagle's problem, but I am suggesting that they may be minimally conscious (by our standards).

It's well established that are equivalent mechanisms to neurons that produce seemingly intelligent or aware behaviour in simple organisms. Since we don't entirely understand the mechanism of consciousness - aka the hard problem - we cannot discount the possibility that seemingly entirely mindless organisms have some small sense of being, although that sense may seem insignificant enough to count as zero to our perception.

A common analogy is the idea that certain entities are "dark inside" - there is nothing going on. To illustrate the point via that analogy, there are numerous shades of black, and many of them will be too subtle for the human eye to tell the difference. The issue of consciousness may operate similarly.

I wouldn't disagree if you countered that that there are emergent qualities in the consciousness of brained organisms that were not present before. However, I would suggest that such emergences are still only matters of degree, but exponentially so, and these will tend to be perceived as absolute rather than relative difference.

What exactly makes an activity or ability a mental one is a contentious issue; but even if "mental" or "cognitive" abilities and activities (defined in purely functional-informational terms) can meaningfully and truly be ascribed to plants too, this in no way means that they are subjects of consciousness/experience—that there is something it is like to be a plant from a subjective point of view.

That's my point, it may feel like something to be a plant. If so, it would feel like nothing by our standards - the vegetative state. However, studies of consciousness in other species have consistently debunked prior - and very certainly stated - notions from leading thinkers that other animals are less conscious than they are. Many experts over the years have denied the consciousness of any non-human species.

Meanwhile, intelligent behaviour has been found in plants that, if reported a century ago, might have placed one at risk of being sent to an insane asylum. Put all of the above points together and I would not discount the possibility of minimal plant consciousness, odd as that may seem based on what we know today.

[CIN]

I would be inclined to dismiss the idea that plants are conscious, on the grounds that even the most complex plant is less complex than a living human brain that is in an unconscious state. If plants don't even make it to the level of complexity needed to support unconsciousness, how can they be conscious?

[Tamminen]

I'm inclined to side with Tamminem regarding plant intelligence

Just a little correction: I have said nothing about plant intelligence or consciousness. I think it was Karpel Tunnel.

[Sy Borg]

I'm inclined to side with Tamminem regarding plant intelligence

Just a little correction: I have said nothing about plant intelligence or consciousness. I think it was Karpel Tunnel.

I think you are right. Sorry Tamminem.

[Consul]

***The posts relating to plant consciousness are so off-topic in this thread that they should be separated from it and inserted into a new one (titled "Plant Consciousness")!***

[Consul]

To get on-topic again, here's my answer to the question as to how a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operates:

An immaterial/spiritual substance is a zero-dimensional object like a mathematical point. Of course, mathematical points are abstract objects without any physical or mental attributes, whereas "soul-points" are concrete objects without physical attributes but with mental ones. Note that, like mathematical points, soul-points in Descartes' sense don't exist anywhere in space/spacetime, and can be called abstract in this respect. However, other substance dualists think that they do exist somewhere in space/spacetime.

0D soul-points have no form (surface) and no structure. What is more and worse, owing to their lack of an inside or interior, there is no room in them where internal operations, activities, or processes could take place. And a soul-point seems equally incapable of external behaviour or action. For instance, how could a soul-point move in space (together with the body to which it is connected)?

Anyway, the whole concept of a mental/spiritual substance as a 0D object is incoherent. A soul-point is said to have nothing but mental properties; but since it is conceived as something which is not a bundle of mental properties but a substrate, ground or cause of mental properties that is different from these, it must have some nonmental nature in addition to its mental properties. But a mental substance with a nonmental essence that functions as a substrate of mental attributes is no different from a material/physical substance. Therefore, there is no coherent concept of a mental/spiritual substance: it collapses either into a nonsubstantial complex of mental attributes or into a material substance.

[Felix]

Consul said: "An immaterial/spiritual substance is a zero-dimensional object like a mathematical point."

We won't get very far trying to construct a viable metaphysical edifice on an empty plot of space so let's start instead by proposing that spirits are other-dimensional rather than nondimensional. This leads us to your second point: the possible means of interaction between immaterial (supradimensional) beings and material beings.

Consul: "And a soul-point seems equally incapable of external behaviour or action. For instance, how could a soul-point move in space (together with the body to which it is connected)?"

As immaterial beings, they presumably would be incapable of directly influencing physical matter with their spirit minds any more than we can do so with our physical brain-based minds (assuming that psychokinesis is not possible). Therefore their only avenue for material interaction would be communication with the inhabitants of the material world who are capable of receiving and translating their communiqués, which is apparently a tiny minority of the population, especially in a materialistic culture like ours where those who claim they can talk with spirits run the risk of being committed to a mental institution.

Consul: "But a mental substance with a nonmental essence that functions as a substrate of mental attributes is no different from a material/physical substance."

Even in our material world, "mental substance" or mind is markedly different enough to confound the physical scientists.

[Tamminen]

I think matter creates organisms but not subjects. Material organisms are the subject's organisms for being. The subject cannot exist concretely without the material basis of its body. But the subject is not a property of matter, it is something we cannot eliminate from the picture or reduce to anything if we think of the ontological structure of reality. The subject has its own inner logic that has something to do with the meaning of being in general. It may be, for instance, to make being transparent to itself. So the subject has enormous power: it is the primus motor of this amazing and mysterious universe that would look "superfluous" (to quote Sartre) without the reflective point of view that subjectivity gives for our understanding. It makes the world rational. And the world with no sense makes no sense.

Every individual subject is a manifestation of the subject in the ontological meaning of the term, or subjectivity, which is perhaps a better term because it does not as easily get confused with the empirical, individual subject identifiable by a proper name.

So there are no souls floating around in a spiritual universe. There is only matter of which the subject is conscious by being concretely in the material world, doing things with the environment, living where it happens to be "thrown in", with its body and intellect. There is nothing supernatural in our existence, we must only see the subject in us. It is so close that only few seem to find it. Which surprises me.

[Sy Borg]

***The posts relating to plant consciousness are so off-topic in this thread that they should be separated from it and inserted into a new one (titled "Plant Consciousness")!***

The topic is circular. I have seen people, including you, debating approximately this same topic in roughly the same way for years, saying more or less the same things, quoting similar sources based on the same ideologies - constantly butting heads fruitlessly against the "wall" that is the problem of other minds.

The topic about disembodied minds is a common one on these forums because most want to know what happens after death; they have faith in neither the religious nor materialist narratives, each claiming with unwarranted certainty that the objective and subjective are linked as either posited or perceived.

If plants are minimally conscious, and my argument above logically presented that possibility, then that has ramifications for the thread's subject matter. It has implications regarding the mechanisms of consciousness and different types of consciousness that may exist. If we are simply looking for a humanlike mind without a human body, then why bother? We might as well ask if an aardvark's personality can be replicated by an ocean. Yet if oceans have minds of any mind, they would not even be remotely like ours (luckily for both the ocean and us).

If a mind exists that could be referred to as "disembodied", then that mind would logically either:
- have a body comprised of unfamiliar or misunderstood materials, or
- have a body that we perceive as insufficiently systematised to house mentality, or
- be of a type that was not recognised by us as a mind.

The latter is where the idea of plant consciousness relates. If we accept that there may be very different kinds of minds, then that shifts the topic from beyond just the debunking of superstition. Given the nature of what we know, if I was to look for other minds anywhere, it would be complex entities that would be advantaged by having a mind. It is possible that what we perceive as mechanistic responses the machinations of larger minds. For instance, if cosmic or ecosystems have any kind of mentality, it would probably be perceived as either mechanical or disembodied by entities within the system.

[Wayne92587]

Felix;

We won't get very far trying to construct a viable metaphysical edifice on an empty plot of space

Not so Felix.

The emptiness of Space before the beginning moment of Creation was filled with an Omnipresent, unspoken of quantity, number, of Infinitely Finite Indivisible Singularities having no relative, numerical value, having a numerical value of Zero-0, Nada, Zip, Zilch; a State if Nothingness existing as the Omniscience of a State or Field of Singularities.

The omniscience of this state of Singularity existing as the Transcendental, metaphysical, Fully Random Quantum State of Singularity, as as Transcendental State of Singularities, having no relative, numerical value, each having a numerical value of Zero-0.

[Wayne92587]

Felix; read my post in the argument against substance duality.

[Karpel Tunnel]

I would be inclined to dismiss the idea that plants are conscious, on the grounds that even the most complex plant is less complex than a living human brain that is in an unconscious state. If plants don't even make it to the level of complexity needed to support unconsciousness, how can they be conscious?

It seems from the above that you would not grant consciousness to other mammals since their brains are less complex than human brains.

[Tamminen]

The existing subject is the absolute. There is nothing else. If it ceases to exist, there is nothing. But nothingness is a contradiction in terms. So the subject is eternal. It only changes its way of manifesting itself. The subject is the eternal present of subjective time. The content of its present is its consciousness of the world. It is always at some particular spot in physical spacetime, living physically and intellectually, in a relation to the world, consciouness being the subjective side of that relation, and the body being its objective, material side, located in spacetime.

But how can it be that the whole material world, starting with the big bang, belongs to the structure of the subject? On the other hand: how could it be otherwise? For the universe is the objective side of the basic subject-object relation, and if there were no subject, there would be no object either, no universe.

We forget who we are. We underestimate the meaning of our existence and do not see the absolute nature of the first person point of view. As Wittgenstein says in his Notebooks 1914-1916: "The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious." And in Tractatus he introduced the concept of metaphysical I. Which is roughly what I am proposing here.

[ThomasHobbes]

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?

Since there are no reasonable. empirical, logical or practical answers to these questions, it is, for the time being, reasonable to conclude as we must that the disembodied soul is a myth with no basis in fact.
Why we spend our precious times pondering the origin and validity of ancient myths is beyond my ken. But since I am a seeker of knowledge it is important to attack disabling myths that fester in our consciousness and belief.