Russian Dolls and The Mind

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019, at 7:30 PM Len Bruton <...> wrote:

There seems little doubt that science looks for explanations by seeking out those physical objects within brains that may yield a closer appreciation of how minds function and maybe just where they are to be found!!  Following your very different approach, my thought experiment is to ask whether Earthly minds and whether Earthly consciousness existed 100 million years ago?  Is it then a valid question to ask whether reality existed prior to minds

This question can send us spiraling down an infinite regress. There seem to be two ways of stopping this. Either accept the reality of "mind" or accept the reality of "the world". Otherwise, you have a problem of reality being something in the mind, which is itself in reality, or a model of reality and so forth ...

Wayne Brown <chillyfinger@gmail.com>to Len
Given that we have a mind, it also makes sense if other living things have a mind or something like it. Such questions can provide insight into our own mind. It even makes sense to ask if Google has a mind. 

I have no doubt that my dog has a mind of sorts. However, she is stuck with a mind that she inherits through her genes (which is why it makes sense for her to circle around before lying down to sleep). Wolves share their minds when they hunt down a moose but within pretty sharp limits. I think neuroscience can provide a lot of insight into mammalian minds and we are mammals. 

Our minds are built up from birth by language, culture, becoming shared minds. Human minds can be fruitfully explored by the experience of sculpture, astronomy, photography and so much more. If our minds were "nothing more" than mammal brains we would not be interested in them at all. 

But your question was about reality, not minds. I think all life is deeply rooted in reality. Life sucks as much information from the real world as possible - information that can be turned to advantage in the struggle for survival. Information that can be stored within the physics and biology of the organism. As it happens, such information, once obtained, can be used for other purposes. 

Humans do even better by obtaining information from each other, through reason and through instruments. Still, it is information about reality and not reality itself. Some would argue that, since we cannot know reality directly, we can't really know that reality exists at all. This type of talk may be suitable to impress half drunk girls at a party, but can't be taken seriously. To follow Descarte's line of thinking just a bit further: to "know" reality implies a knower and the subject of knowledge (knowledge about ...). Our "model" of reality is not reality itself, but it is wonderful, endlessly expansive, explorable and shared. 

It's frustrating when we bump into fundamental limits of observation, such as we do in cosmology and quantum mechanics. In these areas, we must lay aside our tools of observation and rely on pure reason. At that point, it becomes painfully obvious that we are discussing ideas about reality rather than reality itself. In the "real" world, perhaps logic, space and time do not exist or exist in a way we cannot observe. Or perhaps we have the wrong idea of "existence" itself.  

In any case, exploring the model of reality the mind creates is more productive than attempting to create a model of mind in reality (or, more precisely, our mind within our model of reality.). We've been doing this for thousands of years and progress is being made steadily. 

Neuroscience will never discover art or physics in my brain, nor will it discover my model of reality. Building that model is the very purpose of the organ in question. To learn about my model of reality, it's best to explore reality itself.