Is the mind a fiction of the mind?
Edit: I just realised the title should be “Is the mind a fiction?”
We know the brain operates the legs. And we know the brain doesn’t only function in that way, that there are other things going on. We know the mind exerts itself through the brain. But we can only comprehend the mind in abstract terms, in the same way as we try to comprehend an idea.
Everything we know springs from the mind. Democracy is no more or less an idea, or fiction, than the idea of God and heaven. That’s what we do, create fictions. That’s what the mind does. Although in science the mind claims to work from immutable laws that work when repeated and so are not random and become what we call fact. That which doesn’t gell is cast away. The human mind takes the science/technology and applies it with ideas. So a combination of technologies is applied to the development of a mobile phone, a plane or a ship.
Of course you could say about science that it’s just some of the fictions that fit together well. So we create and develop a mobile phone from our fictions, but do we know if that’s all we created? The phone is the sum of the fictions we put together, but we don’t know what we’ve created outside of the fictions by conjoining those fictions. In reality we might have created more than a phone. We might do that with all the fictions we throw around.
If we apply that to bigger ideas, like democracy, a fiction made up of other fiction, then is democracy all we’ve created, or are there other aspects attached to the idea that the mind created? And if so isn’t it possible that in creating fictions that fit together we’ve created something we can’t see or conceive of, something that might even be at war with itself, that might even be to our detriment.
In fact it’s like there’s nothing there in the human mind at all. The idea, the fiction, is not the mind it’s a creation of the mind. So even the mind is a creation of the mind, another fiction.
What exactly is going on here?
Comments (43)
Not sure how that follows from in anything written above. Even if the outside world is merely a collection of fictions that happens to fit together, the same isn't necessarily true for the inside world, the self. And the obvious question is how something can create a fiction of itself. That seems contradictory.
Applying terms like "fiction" or "illusion" to epistemic problems is often little more than rhetoric. What does it mean for the mind to be a "fiction"? What reality are we referencing to apply that label?
Quoting Echarmion
That’s not quite what I said. The collection of fictions refers to my thoughts on technology.
I never used the term “illusion” which is not the same as “fiction”.
Quoting Echarmion
That’s my point. All things we think of are fictions. What else could they be? So where is the fiction of the mind coming from?
Edit: the idea of the mind being what it is is no more a fact than the idea of God, or democracy or equality.
Technology is just a part of the outside world. I don't quite see the distinction.
Quoting Brett
What does that even mean? It's not enough to call it a fiction. What reality are you comparing it to? If there is fiction, there has to be fact as well.
Quoting Brett
I just added that to my previous post.
How can technology be part of the outside world? The perception and truth of the outside world has changed with our mind’s perception of things. Technology is an idea.
What is an idea? Is every name given to some category - tree, rock, cat, computer, an idea?
Would an idea disappear if two things happened: humans disappeared, or we no longer collectively believed in the idea. So the US Constituition exists because we all agree to accept it as fact, though it is obviously not a fact. It’s an agreed upon fiction.
An idea is a fiction.
Very thought-provoking essay.
I do not believe the mind can be a creation of the mind. The mind is the only thing that can NOT be a creation of the mind. I believe Descartes made that point in his Meditations of 1641. He said even if everything I experience is nothing more than an illusion created by a supremely clever Deceiver; even so, there is me, asking the question. Everything may be an illusion; but not my own self. Not my own mind.
This is something I believe. It's fashionable these days to claim the opposite, that we're programs running in a cosmic computer that has figured out how to implement an actual mind. Something we have no idea how to do because by definition, mind is subjective and is by definition not subject to science!
Even if I'm a brain in a vat; what is the "I" that thinks I'm typing on my laptop? I have sum suck-assed vat programmers if that's the case. "Ok, let's write the script for 2020." Thanks guys.
The "I" remains a mystery. Nobody knows how to create an "I", or even how to know if anyone else besides them has got one.
But that's an even worse scenario. If solipsism is true and I'm the only one here, then I'm the one who cooked up 2020. This is all my fault!
tl;dr: I believe that the mind transcends anything and everything else. I do not believe a mind can create a mind. We don't even know what a mind is or have any idea how to study it, since technically mind lies outside the realm of science, being entirely subjective. So it's the height of nonsense to say that a mind could create a mind. A lot of people believe it, but it's a category error.
Quoting Brett
I wanted to mention that Searle calls this kind of thing socially constructed reality. That is, there are things that are real only by virtue of everyone agreeing that they're real. Money, cities, laws, real estate, nations, commerce. All of civilization. The Construction of Social Reality.
Things like real estate or political parties are real. Nobody would say they're not real. But they're not real like a brick wall is real. A brick wall is a "brute fact," as Searle calls it. Democracy is a social fact. But a fact nonetheless.
Quoting fishfry
Thanks for your post. I made a mistake asking if the mind is a fiction of the mind, and should have asked “Is the mind a fiction?”. And a fiction of what?
Quoting fishfry
By this I guess you’re suggesting that the mind is the source, or core, of what we are. But that doesn’t do it for me because the mind is still an idea. You equate “self” and “mind” in your quote by Descartes. Are they both the same thing?
Quoting fishfry
I agree that this is hard to take. You could just as easily substitute God in there.
Quoting fishfry
My problem is that science is an idea, a fiction, of the mind. So many ideas coalesce that add up to science. Therefore it cannot be subject to science.
Quoting fishfry
Yes, so there cannot be an “I”, true?
There is another angle which is that our behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapsis, rather than free will. So there is no “I” except the one created, the fictional “I”. But that seems as random to me as the idea that science is ideas that coalesce into accepted workable patterns. It’s just like the genes, hormones and synapsis coalescing into an acceptable pattern that is not random but consistently human.
I’m pushing thoughts around here.
Ideas must have evolved over time. What an idea is itself must have evolved.
The origins of ideas may lie in early, primitive emotions or responses. Ideas evolve in sophistication but still carry the residue of the early emotions and responses. These make our ideas unstable. But we still review the world through that instability. When we, in that unstable state, think of the mind it’s an inherently unstable idea, but we still act on it because it springs from the mind.
These ideas are still primitive responses and unreliable fictions. But if enough of us agree on it then it’s a truth, but a fictional, unstable truth and therefore barely workable. The idea that what we think comes from the mind helps in creating a sense of stability, but it’s neither true or stable. The mind’s reflection on itself is inherently unstable and so too the ideas as a result.
I find this bit bleak and rather a partial view - and I am no expert on the science of cognition, but I have always found the idea quite intriguing.
But then would technology disappear if all humans either disappeared or stopped believing in technology? A spear would still be a spear, at least in the latter case. A spear is technology. Does it stop being technology if we stop using the word?
Quoting Brett
Must they? Isn't evolution just another idea? If all ideas are fiction, then so is evolution, and the idea that ideas evolve...
Quoting Brett
Yet if what we think doesn't come from the mind, where does it come from?
Quoting Brett
I think the self is the fiction. The self isn't stable or monolithic. But the mind is real. It's the most real thing there is, since even doubt requires the mind. That's what remains of Descartes: I think, therefore something thinks thoughts that appear as mine. That something we call "mind".
Quoting Echarmion
Yes evolution is another idea. That animals have mutated overtime is not an idea. But putting these things together such that they add up to evolution is an idea.
You might be confused by my use of fiction. If I used concept it might help. I use fiction because it better explains the idea that ideas are agreed on to become “fact”. ‘All men are equal“ is not a fact. It’s an agreed on idea, a fiction.
You would disagree that ideas can evolve?
Yes, Mind is a fiction that we take to be true. The Mind that we imagine is not a physical Thing, but the name for a metaphysical process --- it's what the brain does. And one creation of the brain is a symbolic concept (idea) to represent brain function as-if it were a tangible object --- a stable thing.
So the Mind concept is a self-reference. And if self-reference is itself reflected in thought, it becomes a hall-of-mirrors --- a paradox. Therefore, you are literally correct that "there's nothing there", it's only an intangible mental image. Ideas are not real things, but conceptual symbols about things and their operations. Oooops! This is beginning to sound like a hall-of-mirrors. :joke:
Aboutness : Information Philosopher on Terrence Deacon's notion of "aboutness" --- " He variously defines reference as "aboutness" or "re-presentation," the semiotic or semantic relation between a sign-vehicle and its object."
https://informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/
The Case Against Reality : http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Ok, that I understand.
Quoting Brett
A difficult question. The term "evolution" is thrown around a lot, and it's not always clear what is meant. If we mean an essentially unguided process by which one idea gradually turns into another based on the circumstances the people holding the idea are exposed to, then I suppose that happens. But ideas are also often "sticky", meaning that old ideas will be re-discovered again and again.
Quoting Gnomon
Brains are physical. If the mind is metaphysical, then how is it "what the brain does"? Is there a metaphysical brain?
Quoting Gnomon
But isn't the brain itself just a construction of the mind? Which would mean that the mind is basic, not the brain.
In this context "metaphysical" simply means "non-physical". A process or function is not a tangible object, but a mental image of change over time. If you think of the Brain as a machine, the Mind is its product, its output. For example : a physical automobile produces non-physical Transportation. If the Brain is a physical computer, the information it produces is its function, its output, its reason for being. Ideas are not physical objects, but metaphysical symbols that represent things (nouns) and actions (verbs) that we experience in the world. So, you could say that the Mind concept is a metaphysical (unreal, ideal) brain. :nerd:
Function : the kind of action or activity proper to a person, thing, or institution; the purpose for which something is designed or exists; role.
Metaphysics : 4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
Quoting Echarmion
Yes. I view Metaphysics (mind, consciousness, ideas) as more fundamental than Physics (things, objects, particles). That's the point of Panpsychism (all is mind). But that's a whole other thread. :joke:
Panpsychism : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/433522
That's pretty odd usage of words. People don't usually refer to automobiles as "machines that produce metaphysical transportation". Really what you're doing is describing what the automobile does in terms of how it is used. What an automobile produces, in the ordinary sense of the word, is heat and energy. It's a process, but it's still physical.
And of course the whole "brain produces mind" problem runs into the hard problem.
Quoting Gnomon
Function, Output and reason for being are very different terms. Only one refers to the phenomenon of the brain. The other two contain additional interpretation.
Quoting Gnomon
What's specifically meta-physical about ideas? Aren't you just equating the terms "non-physical", "metaphysical" and "mental"?
Quoting Gnomon
I don't like this definition. It seems identical to mental. Metaphysics refers to physics and meta. The usage should reflect those component words to avoid confusion.
I had similar thoughts on the issue of mind being some kind of fiction. Take Descartes's cogito ergo sum argument which, reportedly, proves the existence of minds: I think, therefore I am. I approached the issue from a linguistic perspective and came to the realization that a verb implies the existence of the subject to which the verb is applied to. For instance, the verb speaking means there's a subject, the speaker. This simple fact when applied to the cogito ergo sum argument reveals that the verb think bespeaks the existence of a thinker.
Searching for a verb that doesn't imply the existence of a subject to which it's applied drew a blank. I thought of the concept of superluminal velocities - in fiction there are objects that travel faster than light and this would be an example of a verb phrase, if there's such a thing, traveling at superluminal velocities, whose subject isn't real and is pure fiction.
However, the mind can't be fiction as such because fiction springs from the imagination and Descartes' argument would take the form: I imagine, therefore I am.
It seems to me that at this point we generally reach the limits of our reason, that we have knowledge because the human mind imposes conditions that make it true, which is all Kantian. From there we chose our philosopher of choice to look into the transendental which then flies off in all sorts of directions.
Edit: this sort of suggests that it’s the things we don’t know that are the truest.
The "odd usage" is intentional, because it derives from an unconventional worldview. So it's true, that I am using the term "Metaphysical" in a sense closer to what Aristotle had in mind, not how it is commonly used today, to refer to ghosts, magic & spooky stuff. Like Information, Transportation is not a physical object, but an idea in a mind referring to the function of a thing that transports. It's like the difference between a noun and a verb.
In Vol 1 Physics, Ari was talking about things you know via physical senses, but in Vol 2 Metaphysics he was discussing our intangible ideas about those objects and experiences. So, yes, we sometimes refer to an automobile in terms of what it does for us instead of the material it is made of. (e.g. a truck is sometimes call a "transport") You know "transportation" when you experience it, not with your senses, but with your reason.
Metaphysical : referring to an idea, doctrine, or posited reality outside of human sense perception. In modern philosophical terminology, metaphysics refers to the studies of what cannot be reached through objective studies of material reality.
https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/metaph-body.html
Aboutness : Aboutness and function, says Deacon, is not something added on top of things, but something that emerges from constraints on matter and process.
http://somatosphere.net/2014/terrence-deacons-incomplete-nature.html/
Quoting Echarmion
Actually, my theory is intended to be a solution to the "hard problem". It's obvious that what we call "Mind" or "Thought" are functions of physical brain processes. But the functions themselves are not material objects. Instead, Mind, Body, & Brain are all various forms of "Generic Information", which I call EnFormAction. When I said that "brain produces mind", my meaning was similar to the subtitle of Terrence Deacon's book : How Mind Emerged From Matter. But Matter, in turn, emerged from "Generic Information", which is mind-stuff.
Panpsychism : Another article in the Philosophy Now magazine attempts to find “a balance between two extreme views of consciousness. . . . Physicalism and panpsychism sit either end of a metaphysical seesaw, and when one is in the ascendancy it is only by bringing the other unduly low.” The author, Dr. Sam Coleman, proposes a different kind of stuff (essence) that is “neither mental nor physical in itself, but which possesses properties capable of generating both the mental and the physical.” The “one fundamental stuff” he's referring to is Consciousness, but for technical purposes I think that the scientific term “Information” fits the description better.
EnFormAction : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html
Quoting Echarmion
Yes. In the Enformationism worldview they are all metaphysical & Ideal : (Forms (ideas, concepts, definitions, designs).
Forms : The metaphysical notion of form (eidos, morphe, Gr.; idea, forma, species, Lat.), as it emerged in the works of Plato, must be carefully distinguished from the everyday notion from which it derived, namely, the shape or outer appearance of a thing as it presents itself to the eyes.
https://science.jrank.org/pages/7706/Form-Metaphysical-in-Ancient-Medieval-Thought.html
Quoting Echarmion
My usage does reflect both "Physics" (nature) and "Meta" (beyond). Literally, it means "super-natural". But in my theory, I try to avid the typical otherworldly connotations of that term. Instead, Metaphysics is the foundation & source of both Physics (matter, energy) and Mind (consciousness, information) as we know them in Nature. The Enformationism worldview turns the ancient incompatible worldviews of Materialism and Spiritualism into an integrated whole. If you find that hard to believe, we can explore further. :joke:
My unconventional definition of Information : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
I can already see that my own idea is pulling me into consequences I don't agree with. If the mind is the only thing that can NOT be simulated, the mind is the only thing that's inarguably real. Yes it must be the source. Or "It's all in my mind." In which case, what is the role of the outside world? None at all. I'm a Berkeley idealist. Which is a bit extreme.
So I guess my belief in the primacy of mind may lead me to problems. But if the mind can be an effect, then we might all be machines after all. I find that idea distasteful which is why I always argue against it strenuously.
This is an issue I've wondered about when people talk about simulation theory. Are they simulating my reality as in Descartes' deceiver? If so, then my "I" is still separate from my vat programmers. Do the simulationists instead mean that the computer not only creates my reality, but also somehow creates my "I"? So that my I is an illusion too? And Descartes was wrong? That's the argument for simulating a mind. That Descartes was wrong about the primacy of his I.
Quoting Brett
Yes, some people have noted that the trendy "singularity" theorists who are into mind uploading and such are actually expressing ancient religious ideas in a modern technological guise. We'll be uploaded into a glorious heaven with angel subroutines, and the Great Programmer will care for us.
What happens if you have yourself uploaded by some company that hires a sadistic programmer who tortures the uploaded minds every night behind his employers' back? I'm not sure I'd want to take that chance. Like going to a bad dentist, but forever. There's a sci fi story in here.
Quoting Brett
It's a fiction inspired by nature. And it seems to work very well. At the end of the day if we are physicalists, we must admit that if humans are made of atoms and humans are conscious, then piles of atoms may be conscious. There's a lot we don't know about how this works!
Quoting Brett
Well ... I have an I and you have an I. But didn't Jung talk about the collective unconscious? Many of the world's great religions see each I as a manifestation of a much larger universal I. We're all thoughts in the mind of God. Programs running in the Great Computer. Temporal manifestations of the Eteneral I, or the Eternal Eye as symbolized in occult symbology as on the familiar US dollar bill.
Quoting Brett
In other words: A bowling ball dropped from the top of a tall building has no free will in what it does. And if not, then how could we? We're just following physical law.
As far as hormones etc. that's just kind of a levels issue. The quarks make up the protons and neutrons which make up the atoms which make up the molecules up to the organs and hormones and complex emotional and physical regulatory mechanisms of the brain ... really it's all quite mysterious.
I disagree with anyone who says they have a clear and certain idea about how all this works! I distrust all of the clever thinkers of the day who think they've got this nut cracked. This nut ain't cracked.
Quoting Brett
My I is not a fiction! But I have no proof; and if I assert the primacy of my mind then I'm halfway to idealism. I'm back with Descartes in 1641. Me and my vat programmers. Which is pretty much what I believe anyway. I think that I'm a Boltzmann brain, a momentary and highly statistically unlikely local coherence in an otherwise formless and random universe. It's just a question of time till I blink out and take the rest of you with me. Must idealism lead to solipsism? Could Descartes get out of his predicament without invoking God? Berkeley too, he invoked God as the reason we experience a coherent outside world. We moderns have no such rhetorical tactic at our disposal. We must think our way through this dilemma without God. Is that what Nietsche meant? That for modern man, God is dead. We have to figure this thing out for ourselves.
Philosophy takes us to the limits of our knowledge, once there we’re alone. But then how do we comprehend the unknowable, how do we communicate with it or know it?
Shamans, witch doctors, priests have all suggested they’ve made the connection. But none of them said they did it by adding one plus one. They did it with, among other things, dance, song, drugs and rituals. Whether they did actually achieve it we’ll never really know. Many have been conned by spiritualists and gurus who claimed to know.
Maybe certain poetry attempts, like the symbolist poetry, or the Dadaists, to address the unknowable in such a way that it’s not actually confronted head on, not actually named, but addressed obliquely, because once our mind pounces on it then it’s defining it according to our limited knowledge. Maybe koans work like this as well.
The only way to encounter the unknowable is to quieten the mind, to not ask the question. I can only see two ways of doing this: action, which shuts down the cognitive mind, or sleeping, when the mind ceases to think and what we get instead are dreams, almost an unconscious language, which of course we don’t understand.
I have many dreams I don't understand. Plots, characters, situations, dialog, dilemmas for me (always the protagonist) to solve. I had one this morning. Perhaps it's a nonphysical realm trying to tell me something, if only I could understand.
It seems to me that all of us can think our way right up to the limits of knowledge and are then forced to turn back and reconsider or reexamine things. It also seems logical that we can never know the unknowable, that once we identify it we then begin labelling and creating fictions about it, which takes us back to the beginning. But we still have this desire to find it. And we can’t use logic, or even our own minds, to find it. Why do we seek this, is it a compulsion, is it logical to want to know, do we expect something from it? And what do we suspect will come from it?
So is this just psychology?
Edit: but then again isn’t the “unknown” another fiction?
A caterpillar has a metaphysics.
Quoting fishfry
What do you mean?
I posted this on some other thread recently.
There's a forest somewhere, and in that forest are trees, and one of those trees has branches and leaves, and on one of those leaves there's a caterpillar. The caterpillar knows when it's night and when it's day. It knows to go toward what it likes to eat; and away from what likes to eat it. It knows, deep in its DNA, that someday it will ascend to become a beautiful butterfly.
In short: That caterpillar has a metaphysics.
Meaning: That whatever level of reality or the intelligence hierarchy you're at; you have a theory about what's going on. Our nervous system supports a certain level of cognitive activity and we conceptualize reality to that level. There's no reason to believe we're nature's ultimate design. Not if you follow the news. Just as the earth turned out not to be the center of the universe; and man turned out to be one of the animals; there may well be forms of intelligence we can't conceive of.
I know it leads into a hall of mirrors. But what else would you expect?
Some thoughts on knowledge/reality/the unknown.
The unknown is another fiction. Somehow we choose to believe it’s out there. We’ve tried to find it through rituals, religion and drugs.
There’s the idea that we need to be in another state to experience it. That state can’t be the same as our cognitive state. It’s more like a derangement of the senses, or a suspension of logical thought.
Schizophrenia: mental instability. (Isn’t that a loss of the subjective self?).
Sanity: mental stability by definition, which is, what, being able to function among others?
No one would want to be schizophrenic and plenty of people went that way on drugs.
Is there a reason for the unknown to be constructed in this way, as unreachable? Why construct a fiction about something that can’t be known? Or is it just the whole binary thing in action? Which means it just response. But what does “the known” mean, what are we responding to?
Is it necessary to know the unknown? Is there a benefit to its fictional existence? And if it’s a fiction then why try to find it?
Even if it’s to prove objective truths exist how is that going to work? What do we want from it?
In fact if we crossed the abyss would be be human any longer?
Quoting fishfry
It’s interesting that we want to understand. Why aren’t we content with the experience? Why believe dreams refer to something? I’m not saying it’s pointless, but why do we believe there’s something there?
What you wrote seemed interesting but a little off my beaten path so I will leave this as it is.
Messages from the collective unconscious. Dreams are mysterious. Why think they mean something. Why think they DON'T mean anything? It's an arbitrary hypothesis either way.
I'm sure our primitive ancestors must have felt dreams to be real.
Not necessarily. The idea that the Earth orbits the Sun is true, so it's not a fiction. An idea, belief, proposition, is a product of the mind, but if such a product of the mind is true to the facts, then it isn't a fiction.
The earth orbiting the sun is not an idea.
You can't know what is fiction without knowing what is fact. So what is fact? If there are none, how can we be sure fiction even exists?
Safe word here is 'perception'. Either backed up by enough to compartmentalize it where the at this point theoretical 'fact' goes or just you calling it as you see it.
Oddly solipsistic if you ask me. Which may or may not be detrimental to advancing the philosophical thought process.
Quoting Outlander
I don’t know if I’ve ever said that. The earth orbiting the sun is a fact, what we think is happening is a fiction.
Do you think the earth is orbiting the sun?
Simulation theory runs into the same problems materialism does wrt consciousness: how does opening and closing switches (or q-bits) in some special order produce conscious experience?
In my opinion opening and closing switches can never implement consciousness; for the reason that opening and closing switches essentially defines the capabilities and limits of a Turing machine (TM); and TMs can not implement consciousness. Searle and Penrose agree with me.
Materialism does not necessarily have that problem. Consciousness could be material but not computable. That's a great description of my viewpoint. Something about meat is special. Computer scientist and blogger Scott Aaronson would call that meat chauvinism. Turing would also. Turing said that since subjective experience is not accessible to others, the question's pointless. All we can see is behavior; hence a behavioral standard like the Turing test.
That's very ad hoc. It's much simpler to avoid the special pleading and just go with idealism.
I agree with you that consciousness isn't computable. That would be another case of special pleading: series XY...Z of switching actions/q-bit whatevers produces a conscious experience but series AB...C doesn't? That makes no sense. What's so special about XY...Z? Why should the order in which switches are pulled have anything to do with consciousness?
I am the first to admit that believing meat is special is obviously false; in the sense that looking back, believing the earth is the center of the universe was obviously false. Though at the time, it was perfectly sensible. So I agree with you that the entire history of science argues the opposite of my premise. If we're special. why are we special? It's statistically unlikely for any organization of stuff to be conscious. Why should meat be capable of consciousness and nothing else?
Well I sure as hell don't know. I just believe what I believe but I can see that I can't defend it with logic. Therefore my position must be classified as religion.
Quoting RogueAI
Perhaps it's something we're not ever meant to know. There is actually a name for this philosophical viewpoint, New Mysterianism. Wiki calls it "a philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of consciousness cannot be resolved by humans."
That's what I think, too.
Mind is a sense-experience using a sensory-limb array and body, made possible with internal organs(who's root is in the universe).
The unutilized mind is mind-fiction, but it's utilization is a matter-of-fact.
I am entangled in mind-fact for periods of time, but I know a time will come where I'm blue estranged as the city in midnight. This will be at a time where I'm not employing the mind, but rather, where my brain is using my energy to exist.