"creation of the universe" suggests that, apparently, if you have nothing for a long enough period of time...something happens.

DavidRain wrote:The existence of patterns and their expression and realization in matter is not all that there is. The possibilities of patterns are just as real as their existence.

This is similar to saying that the future is as real as the past. That both can be considered as real as the forward and rear landscape when driving down the road in a car. They exist, but our experience is only in the present. Where there is indeterminacy in quantum physics, I believe it is a limit of us as observers.

Do you believe the mind exists as something more than an emergent phenomenon?

How real is the past now? It is recorded in the present by virtue of the track of evolving states that can be deduced from the state of the present, though the past is no longer a physical state itself. The image on the video is stable in relation to the states it went through and will remain so if the medium it is stored on is not physically disrupted. It contains information about the past, but the actual medium and any information that can be deduced from it is present absolutely. All that information given enough time will not last. The past becomes grainier and grainier with time in most systems that are not perfectly crystalline, so our ability to determine it decreases due to entropy.
The future is the set of all the states that the present could evolve into. The future is therefore a includes things that wont happen but could. As to whether previously realized patterns are the same as unrealized, but possible patterns being the same in nature, that is true, however the probabilities differ. What is going to happen is always what is most probable in proportion to that probability. The electron tunnels through the barrier because it probably will, but not much, giving a stream that is limited and tuneable. The information wave that is the electrons real existence is partially on the other side of the barrier. Weird perhaps, but real technology.
Determinacy is a result of context and what occurs is whatever is easiest to occur. This is just saying entropy another way. Things only actually occur at all through interaction or "measurement" This is also weird, because as mind is the the ultimate "measurer" of patterns, this places mind as a fundamental part of nature rather than an emergent phenomena like consciousness. Mind changes, by virtue of its presence, interacting waves of probability into their most likely outcomes. Mind is therefore neither personal or limited to conscious beings.
Our little window on mind in conscious process provides some amazing utilities, mostly for knowing what things and processes are not, hence an enhanced capacity to make clear distinctions about boundaries in patterns. Its like mathematics,; so much easier to do with zero to stand in for nothing and not. There is an interesting thing in mathematics called the empty set, that has some similar properties to mind.
Presence is a funny thing, when it is not about anything. Its not really something, but its not nothing either. No wonder it gets so confusing and sends us down the philosophical rabbit hole looking for itself.

Creation of the universe.... space AND TIME, did not exist before spacetime (aka the universe), so "before time" makes no sense at all, because before and after are features of time.
Presence does not require time, a bit like how from the frame of reference of light no time passes. For light there is just its presence in space. It is us outside of lights reference frame that give it time, due to our reference frame.
There just is no waiting when you have no time

David Rain wrote:How real is the past now?

The past isn't real now. That's why it's the past. But it is still real. Or at least, there are models which describe it as real.

What is going to happen is always what is most probable in proportion to that probability.

This is true in an epistemic sense, but not so true in the ontic sense. The exception would depend on where you stand in quantum mechanics. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Mind changes, by virtue of its presence, interacting waves of probability into their most likely outcomes. Mind is therefore neither personal or limited to conscious beings.

The mind itself collapses wave functions into a single eigenstate?

If the mind is not limited to conscious beings, do you mean, in the simplest interpretation, that other unconscious organisms have minds?


Thanks for the interesting conversation.

Interbane wrote:The mind itself collapses wave functions into a single eigenstate?

If the mind is not limited to conscious beings, do you mean, in the simplest interpretation, that other unconscious organisms have minds?


Thank you for the interesting conversation.

It’s a pleasure. Its nice to chat with someone with a good understanding of the underlying topics. Generally I think quantum mechanics can make the mind seem confusing, although it is so simple. However as mind exists as in relationship with the physical world, talking about that relationship in terms of quantum mechanics can help if you have the background. To begin with the mind is not quantum by nature. Being pure continuity it has no internal distinctions or separate states. Mind is just presence without subject or object.

The collapse of the wave function has never been found to have a mechanism, which is why the many worlds theory has become so strong amongst theoretical physicists. Mind is the function that produces apparent collapse and creates presence or physical actualization. As mind is continuity by nature it cannot be mathematically modelled without making it discrete and thereby losing the property that its continuity possesses. That property is presence. Mind imparts and receives presence in a single non act. Mind is also a coherent function. Coherence is the property of perfect interrelatedness found in entanglement in the quantum realm and in lesser forms up the levels of pattern interaction. Mind is naturally coherent because of its continuity. Each part is the same part so it is only one mind.
We get the illusion of having separate minds because we have separate consciousness’s, each built from discrete processes that have attained a state of coherence that allows the window on mind to emerge.

On the physical level without life processes, mind is still present, in that these “things” are still emerging into existence from the patterns that make their existence possible. What makes them present is mind, constantly crystalizing out of possibility or the ensemble of states that they could evolve into. Mind is everywhere behind the scenes and in us, in the middle of the scene.

Mysticism is an inevitable part of human experience and thinking, due to us having a fundamental part of nature at the centre of our experience of ourselves that cannot be expressed in the discrete terms of experience of the external world. Flow experiences are always good simply because they are more mind like experiences. Pain and suffering is the loss of flow.

There is a very interesting project called the Global Consciousness Project. It has been showing for years that humans in group coherent states have effects on random number generators. There is decades of research showing there is a small but statistically un-removable effect of human intention for high or low numbers on random number generators. It’s weird if you don’t get mind and its relationship with patterns and the physical world. An intention is a pattern that can be carried by the mind in a tenuous way into the physical world. Within our bodies these intention and belief patterns are more profound, hence the amazing diverse range of the placebo effects and their robustness. People in the western world are so convinced by modern medications (which I am definitely not knocking!) that marginally effective placebos are being tested more in the developed world where the placebo component is significantly lower in double blind trials, making the margin of effectiveness greater for the substance.

So yes, the mind does have an effect on the collapse process if it is carrying a pattern in its continuity, held there for a moment or more by consciousness. This makes it seem like a force, but that’s not it. It is a medium of continuity that can carry information, which by nature is discontinuous. It’s a connecting context and an basic part of existence.

This is probably seeming all too mystical for you given your grasp of the topics around these things.
Philosophical argument has the pitfall that it can use any pattern it likes regardless of its relationship to actuality. This was mastered by the sophists of ancient Greece. Science’s great advance was to anchor philosophy to the observable world in a rigorous way.
Consider Schrodinger’s cat. Unobserved states are just patterns. Till the mind is involved there is just variations of how these states of information are entangled or not by contact (measurement) or lack thereof. This just shows that thinking about how existence comes into being for an entity with a mind quite circularly requires a mind to collapse the states.

Consider quantum computers. The super-positions and correlations are all very fragile because once they interact with anything, the coherence disappears and the information held in the coherence collapses. These correlations are possibilities held at arms length, preventing them from becoming physical and discrete. Knowing what they are is antithetical to their continued presence as possibilities. They are in a not removed or condensed or collapsed from the set of patterns that they could be, so they remain all these patterns. You only need 300 atoms in this state together to have more simultaneous states or possibilities than there are atoms in the known universe. To usefully exploit this crazy from an entropy perspective unless you realize that they are still at the stage prior to full physical existence. Mind has no access to this pattern world without condensing this possibility into actuality. Quantum computers are the ultimate pattern machines if they can ever be wrestled with incredible delicacy into use.
More to think about anyway…

David Rain wrote:On the physical level without life processes, mind is still present, in that these “things” are still emerging into existence from the patterns that make their existence possible. What makes them present is mind, constantly crystalizing out of possibility or the ensemble of states that they could evolve into. Mind is everywhere behind the scenes and in us, in the middle of the scene.

Panpsychism? Do you believe the mind is a primary or secondary characteristic of other things? Or do you believe the mind has existence that is not supervenient on physical brains?

David wrote:So yes, the mind does have an effect on the collapse process if it is carrying a pattern in its continuity

How could the mind affect the wave function when it is a phenomenon that emerges from such quantum effects? Do you have any links to studies I could read? The abstracts or articles themselves, not a rehashing.

Also, when you use the word "continuity", are you using it in a way that is different from the normal definition? There is causal continuity in how the brain operates, giving a seemless subjective experience to the agent. Or are you coining a new term? I would ask to you give me the conceptual definition rather than just use it as if it's mainstream. Otherwise I simply don't know what you're referring to.

Not panpsychism as such. That gives psychological or mental properties to material objects, like Shinto. Mind is not a psychological property, although it appears in the center of the psychological process. But mind allows all processes and things (which are really just processes) to occur by giving them an actual presence from the wave functions of possibilities. Mind is observable by/in the psychological process, but that is not so surprising given that the psychological process is also given presence by mind. Mind is a primary state of existence, along with possibility as patterns. That mind would appear in a coherent pattern detecting device seems inevitable as the the device is for detecting presence, and the presence of "presence" even though it has no detectable characteristics beyond its continuity, is still a pattern (null pattern) to notice. There is only one null set.

Supervenience typically makes the arrow one way. so that cause and effect has a determined direction. Biology is organised by matter, but biology also organizes matter. The limited patterns of chemical interaction determine what can occur, but from that biology can organise back down within those limitations as to what will occur.

The view that consciousness emerges from quantum effects is gaining support. But mind is not consciousness. I totally get that to separate mind from consciousness, is a leap that you probably wont ever make, because of your very well developed sense of patterns and processes and their discrete inter-relations. Quantum phenomena are discrete by nature (quanta) Consciousness is discrete also, being produced by discrete processes it can be no other way. You are right about the term continuity. I am not talking about continuous for all practical purposes, or continuous behavior, or as parts or processes connected in a continuous way. I am using the term to describe absolute continuity. Completely without any internal discrete steps, brakes or changes of any sort. The sort of continuity that can not be expressed mathematically, because mathematics can only approximate such a state with discrete models.
Discrete or Continuous? The Quest for Fundamental Length in Modern Physics is a paper that struggles philosophically with modelling the continuous, admitting right at the start the absolute limitations mathematically of such a thing.
http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/review/disc ... rn-physics

To consider absolute continuity you need to consider context. The context in which the discrete resides (time space and all its events) cant be more discreteness. Ultimately there has to be a domain of continuity for the discrete to "be" in. That context does not cease to be because of the presence of its inhabitant. That context is not a location or process because location and processes are the features of discrete existence.

this place has some interesting articles
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpintro.html
and a documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrKVQVr3p04


Science can not work on what can not be modeled. The properties of absolute continuity can only be described and then grasped intuitively. Its interesting that even children can get the idea. Continuity is not complex, not even possibly.
The infinite divisibility of numbers but not space and matter points back towards the apprehension device. Infinity is the nature of patterns not the physical world. The mind is neither infinite or finite. Absolute continuity is "Non Finite". I think that may be a new concept, but it would seem extremely unlikely given how much thinking goes on out there..

What I am purveying here is not science, though your own experience of mind is certainly observable and you can experiment with that experience and verify and deny it based on repetitions. I am trained in and have read and researched science for nearly twenty years, so I do know the difference, and am sure this is not science. It could be philosophy, in that it seeks to assert an ontology of things informed by what science and mathematics has achieved, and failed to find, but it is too simple for philosophy, and seeks no great justification or proof beyond experience. I certainly don't care either way. The relation to the quantum stuff is only the result of allowing the tenets of The Continuous and The Patterns giving rise to The Discrete room to move in that dialogue. It certainly works in an explanatory way for many things, which is cool, but good models generally do.

Sorry to disappoint you but it is just Taoism re-expressed. There is not really much point digging around in it.

On a positive note, I find the experience of the continuity at the center of me, a nice way to relax. I guess if there is anything of lasting worth you might get from this conversation, perhaps it could be to ponder on what true absolute continuity might or might not be, and whether it is an element of your experience.

Hope you enjoyed the thinking anyway, even if you hate the outcome
All The Best
David

David Rain wrote:But mind allows all processes and things (which are really just processes) to occur by giving them an actual presence from the wave functions of possibilities.

What is the mechanism by which the mind is able to “give presence”?

The way I understand the mind is that it is a word that could be unpacked into an entire book, so it easily subsumes more mystical connotations. If you’re to propose that the mind alters the world by inducing wave function collapse in a manner that is not merely a measurement problem, then I would ask for evidence. The global consciousness problem is not at all convincing, as there are many issues with interpretation of the data that is always, in every case, suggestive of bias. I'm not discounting it, I'm merely suspending judgement. I would need something else.

Supervenience typically makes the arrow one way. so that cause and effect has a determined direction. Biology is organised by matter, but biology also organizes matter. The limited patterns of chemical interaction determine what can occur, but from that biology can organise back down within those limitations as to whatwill occur.

Of course biology can influence matter. There is no restriction here when you think of the mind in terms of being supervenient upon the brain. All that supervenience suggests is that the two are inseparable in that their states are causally integrated. There cannot be an A change without a B change. B can change at the request of A, but that would in turn change A. Such is the logic of the many feedback systems that are present in the mind.

The view that consciousness emerges from quantum effects is gaining support.

Everything emerges from quantum effects. It is the substrate to reality. There is a missing step in what you’re suggesting, however. The mind emerges from the operation of neurons, the functioning of which emerges from quantum effects. Or are you suggesting that the mind does not supervene on the operation of neurons, meanwhile it does supervene on quantum effects? Somehow, the functioning of the mind skips the neural layer and is instead supervenient upon quantum effects directly? Whyfore all the neurons?!

Completely without any internal discrete steps, brakes or changes of any sort. The sort of continuity that can not be expressed mathematically, because mathematics can only approximate such a state with discrete models.

You’re right when you suggest this is philosophy. But even philosophy should be an exploration that is based on evidence. What benefit does it give you to think that the mind has some Platonically perfect form of continuity? Is there another belief you hold that requires this to be true? Or was it a conclusion?

If it is a conclusion, metaphorically the top of a pyramid of reasoning, what evidence rests at the bottom? In other words, what science do you use to inform your philosophy?

Ultimately there has to be a domain of continuity for the discrete to "be" in. That context does not cease to be because of the presence of its inhabitant.

I see two problems with this. If continuity is a domain, then the mind cannot be equivalent to it without involving some sort of hyper-panpsychism. The mind would have to be ‘within’ this domain as well. And if it is within this domain, you would then need to show that it isn't the same as everything else in this domain - ie the aggregate of some discrete substrate.

The other problem is that your reasoning doesn’t appear to be a logical requirement. If it is the functioning of reality that things operate in a discrete fashion, no context is required. “Context” is a concept required by people, used in education to understand new information. Perhaps you mean that there is a continuous substrate, but that is a scientific rather than philosophical proposition, which requires evidence before logic is applied.

Sorry to disappoint you but it is just Taoism re-expressed. There is not really much point digging around in it.

I dig for fun, to bedrock if possible. Sorry if it's irritating. If I dig a bit deep and hit a nerve, we can drop the topic. Over-analysis of things that relax us can have the unfortunate side effect of taking away the palliative properties.

This a top to bottom vs bottom to top thing. I have a coherent schema that has the bottom. The evidence of that bottom is not just reason, it is informed by experience.
When you look at all the difficulties about the measurement problem, and the elaborate measures that have been gone to, to eradicate the observer, it is simpler to assume that apprehension on our part is significant for us. This leads to the tree in the forest falling and all that. It is reasonable to accept that it does, but a lack of collapse mechanism to a single coherent state is still a problem. In some ways the consistent histories (plural!) approach is a neat resolve as it doesn’t interfere with outcomes being according to and in measure with their probabilities, but still allows the effect of multiple possible patterns of information a way to “exist”. But the trouble is always going to be about mechanism, because the very concept implies a discretely modelled arrangement, not continuity. Only discrete processes can have mechanisms. Absolute continuity is absolutely without mechanism by virtue of the nature of having no internal differentiation. In the physical world the closest analogue is light. Light does not have time from its own internal clock ie there is not time differentiations within it. Nothing happens to light from within it because time has absolute continuity within light. This continuity provides the spooky part of “spooky action at a distance” There is no “action” at a distance because signals can’t move between these not really separate states. The information (pattern) is the primary (real) part of this state and changing it changes the state of this non time separated state phenomena. Entangled photons don’t have separate times, because time is a process for the observer, not the photon. So light has continuity in its time domain. You can see in this situation, continuity is a lack of something, not a thing in itself. Time equals zero.
If there is a context of absolute continuity for all that is discrete, you can see that it can’t be separated from all that is discrete. Absolute continuity still has the property of presence, but presence can be without process. Working from the bottom, the reality of processes (which includes things) is actually the information, as EPR shows. As the only other element of existence from here is the context of absolute continuity, then in the absence of a collapsing process, the presence of information as possible configuration in the context can only interact with its context. Why does it collapse at all? Well maybe it doesn’t, but this does not have to end up with multiple universes. There is an excellent google tech talk by a guy called Ron Garrett called The Quantum Conspiracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
It outlines through the math of quantum mechanics why the classical universe is unnecessary. It does not lead to quantum consciousness or anything like that. I highly recommend this one.
An experience of mind doesn’t require any thinking at all, and absolute continuity is its property. The collapse thing is a big misnomer to reconcile the informational reality of existence with the lumpy processes we appear to interact with. To say that mind “does it” actually makes no sense, because mind does not “do” anything. It is better to say that the consistency and coherence of the patterns of physics “allows” them to crystalize into a state of presence, or emerge coherently from the context. The whole thing gets really circular!
Until your paradigm of mind being consciousness is broken, there will always be a disconnect between what I am saying and what you are thinking. Neurons create consciousness, not mind. Nothing creates mind. Consciousness can have an experience OF mind, but it doesn’t have to.
How did I come to this mind view? It’s a product of my history of martial arts, Taoist philosophy, and science. Evidence, especially in science is based on experience. We take the recorded observed experiences of others experiments to work with as evidence because we have an agreed system so we can hopefully rely on these recorded observations, and the thinking around them. It is not a conclusion at the top of a pyramid of reason. It’s an experience that I have realized into language. I have drawn on my years of exploration and search into the nature of things, not just with thought but also with action and intuition. Science despite all its rigor still fundamentally relies on intuition and in practice in the labs, the expressed formality of reason driving the process is often upside down and intuitions drive the process, for which reasons are found. This is inevitable because the brain can process orders of magnitude greater amounts of information, than the conscious stream can handle. When you have experienced the continuity of mind without thought, there is no real going back. Explaining it to others (writing the book) in terms of its relation to things only became a thing for me because it is an insight that has social significance in a world fractured by beliefs. Whilst we have different consciousness’s and beliefs, whatever experience of mind we have is of the same mind. It is a bridge out of isolation.
Do you have to believe something you are experiencing? Beliefs can filter, and inform experience, but experience does not need to be believed to be had. Coming up with some conclusive belief about the world, is not my agenda at all. Experiencing the nature of my existence without belief is what I am about. Acceptable explanations that are coherent and broadly explanatory are great, but just like science, the explanations are a map, not the territory. I love science because it is an adventure of mapping the discrete world, which is very interesting, and fun to engage in. This does not make science the means for everything. Science cannot make a map of absolute continuity, and if it did it would be very very boring. {}
You said
“The mind would have to be ‘within’ this domain as well. And if it is within this domain, you would then need to show that it isn't the same as everything else in this domain - ie the aggregate of some discrete substrate”
It is the same as everything else in this domain! There are no distinctions in this domain. That is actually the point.

“If it is the functioning of reality that things operate in a discrete fashion, no context is required”
Discrete creates “between”, and “on”, and “in” and all the opposites etc. The discrete implies its own context of not discrete, in the same way that in implies out. Logically it’s an inevitability, as are the remaining contexts to the undifferentiated absolute of the Tao. Using old terms that have all sorts of embedded assumptions and social connotations from their history of usage are better to avoid though.

I don’t mind the digging, I have spent so long digging, I totally get it, and that its fun. I love the term “palliative properties” that’s funny, it’s certainly true too, but this is not like religious belief where the possibility of some information interrupting it is something to defend yourself from. There is a great security in living in experience rather than belief in general, which is ironic as so much belief is constructed as a form of security. Life is actually beautiful, when the lumps are removed… like custard, and engines that run perfectly, and fast downhill activities, and well written songs, and lounges, and days without dickheads, and pretty much everything. Continuity is an end in itself, as life’s struggle to survive would suggest. I am also fond of logic, so I like a bit of crunch too.. only so many carrots and crisps, till I am ready for something smooth. In martial art, the pinnacle of achievement is being able to deal with the angular difficult heavy and emotionally fractured, with smoothness, lightness, minimum effort, and calm poise. This is why martial arts embraced mediation and working towards the experience of mind many years ago. It provides the perfect context for action. It also provides the perfect context for thinking.