Comment to TA-32 HFJ Müller 11-28-00: Concept-Dynamics and the Mind-Brain Question by John Mikes (1) INTRODUCTION My comments - solicited by the author - pertain to my thoughts "around" the target topic, since I feel evaluating and examining HM's writing is above me. I am viewing the concepts from a natural science angle and try to absorb the latest trends in understanding the world - through a filter of a reasonable (human) way of thinking - with an awe for the earlier great thinkers, who constructed their views in ages of less information than is available at our PRESENT level of epistemic evolution. "He said so" is no argument I would accept. Even natural sciences were struggling with phenomena more involved than the then available experience and tried with agony to build a quantitative edifice of "balanced" theories. It shows in the history of science all over. I question the validity of old explanations. I accept, however, - and do - speculation, provided that it leads to (better?) solutions in open questions of science and its philosophy. I sometimes modify terms and identifications if newer thoughts put the 'classical' in limbo. Then try to make sense out of it - within my terminology. The reader may find mistakes in the ideas of this "neophyte young revolutionist", I will appreciate such remarks - with no promise to accept them. However I change my stance continually as newer thoughts arise and warrant a modification of it. I will include some hints of the world view which I work with. (2) SUMMARY With the introduction of a "Plenitude" view a dynamic world view allows a dynamic MIR which does not stifle newer ideas. There are suggestions to re-evaluate objective and subjective since whatever is "in the mind" has been interpreted by the subjective mind. The mind-brain relation is principally negated for two reasons: they belong into qualitatively different domains and the functions are not comparable (transmutable), necessary for a 'relation' development. The mental aspect of the complexity human is a complexity by itself and not accessible either by reductionist analysis in its complex qualia, nor by physical measurements on material compositions. No causal connection has been established between the brain function and the mind function so far. (3) Remarks to the [original] article. [2]: "A belief in (structured) MIR blocks the access to the question... experience is not identical with brain functions or a publicly accessible "self" - it implies an erroneous assumption of a primary (ontological) subject/object split." I will elaborate below on the MIR term, the variant which I use, by which such objection may be irrelevant. I consider "The relationship between mind and brain", mentioned in [3] as: the mind an *aspect* of the complexity human (mental that is) and a tool (brain). It will be briefly detailed how unrelated the two concepts are (a quale and a tool). In the following points ( [4] and later) a useful teaching compendium of terms helps the reader, even those, favoring different explanations. I found it educative. In [13] "we do not perceive them directly" standing for ultrasound (U-S) and ultraviolet (U-V) may be questionable, since our instruments which are 'perceiving' them are indeed extensions to our senses. So they are within "objectively described conceptual formations". (I had earlier ramblings about the "objectively" which still lies within our subjective interpretation of the mind - within (my) MIR (see further below). This is in no contradiction, rather an extension of the "subjective side" [14]. One contradiction though there: U-V and U-S are put in the subjectively observable items, while there are ways (called here objective) to sense them: U-S in the 'shaping' of the sound of musical instruments, (the 'taste' of the tune) by harmonics, while U-V is observable in tanning or blinding effects directly. To the [17] quote of P.M.Doria ("...mathematica...") continued by "one may add that this does not concern only mathematics, but concepts in general..." I would like to venture to include our human logic as well, as specifically not only a human "self-made tool", but also a tool made by our ongoing culture proper. (Cf. other logics of other cultures, e.g. Native Americans, the Aborigines, etc.). In [19] abstraction calls for transcendence. I like to use it as also a generalization of a "(word-)concept" - as the good old noumenon, as used at toddler-level (a "cat" for a piece of candy). I wonder if HM's "different sense of transcendence" may refer to metaphorically used concepts as well? In [20] "words are only used by humans" may be extended to animals 'who' *understand* words (a form of usage, however passive) like "heel" or other word-commands by tamers even without the use of body language. The active use of words has anatomical barriers, although a parrot produces understandable words, (and according to latest news, there is a kind of African parrot that even comprehends the meaning of some words it said). [24] - [28] builds up a negation of the usability of (conventional) MIR. I will return to this point later on after introducing (my) MIR(1) and (my) MIR(2). [30]: I agree with the failure of a TOE as an equational system. One cannot compose quantitative correlations to all-natural (complexity) systems. Quantizing is restricted to the already known parts, known by a reductionist analysis. The buildup (emergence?) of complex qualia includes more, with interconnections, influences and modifications unknown. (see below about Aristotle's 'total'). [31] calls for "an MIR-belief...as...a barrier against ideas and means to try something else" which is the reason for my trying to ease up on the concept, facilitating the subjective end of it and specifying two MIRs. [33] - [35] are so all-encompassing in constitutionalist explanations that one is trapped into not detecting the "static" restriction for MIR. [36] is the real beginning of the paper. When reading with [37] I was wondering how will all this lead us to transcend the bankrupt (yet in both technical and scientific sense so highly efficient) reductionist thinking? In [37]: "concepts can grasp experience to any desired degree, but never completely" is the big step into complexity-thinking: the natural systems, not categorizable fully and not buildable up from their (so far discovered, mainly physical) components. I refer here to the Aristotelian 'total': "more" - than the sum of such. I try to step up from the classic "more" (material ingredients) into today's sense (complex group-qualia). In [19] we met Abstraction, in [42] it comes again (as ab(s)trahere) as being enriched. I would view this capability as understanding the qualia-features without a 'specific carrier'. The "blue" (anything) or a "dog" (any kind). Such capability - developed with growing complexity of the human mind - constitutes IMO the fundament of thinking vs. sensing, the first step in "complexifying" the mind-aspect. In [43] about "Already fixed formations" - as e.g. quantized formalism, is said: "Rational systems [are] always incomplete". In many cases they are stifling further epistemic enrichment. Account is also given about assumed and believed concepts pointing to paradoxical overtones in some cases (God). at [50] (Thinking and Brain Function) HM gives a short statement: "thinking does not come from the brain, the brain comes from thinking." I had to look closer into the second part: "for our objective knowledge of the world, INCLUDING THE BRAIN and its functions, we are exclusively dependent on our structures of thinking and these can only arise within momentary overall (i.e.. self- and nature-) experience. But the same also applies to subject structures like "self", "I", "soul". This implies that neither objects of any type, nor the subject in one or another formulation can be identical with ongoing experience." I found the first part obvious: physiological, physical, chemical functions cannot be transferred from the "movement of matter" (Engels) into another quale - the mental domain of thought, emotion, decision - the non-cgs describable movements. However... In further speculation, as Mark Hubey indicated (1996) in a private exchange with me: the multitude of neurons in cooperation can transcend quality barriers. I would now rephrase this and Lenin's maxim of "quantity going into quality" as: the multifold connectivity may assemble into a complexity of its own, maybe including more, not yet observed factors and develop new qualia. So far such additional functions did not show up in laboratory experiments, we still did not find causal connection between the material tool (brain) and the mental gestalt - or vice versa. I deem the first part of HM's statement (together with my consenting opinion) a fictional belief, supported only by the present imperfection of our epistemic evolution. So is the opposite opinion [51]. The second part impressed me more, - maybe due to its novelty for me. It has to sink in first. In the [50s] HM sweeps through MIR and mid-brain topics, less impressive for me, since I consider the mind as just an aspect of the 'complexity human' (which in turn is part of the interconnected complex system of our 'existence ') with a MIR to which we have always just a partial access through the interpretations of our (subjective) mind always at the appropriate epistemic level . Although brain and mind are part of the (static) MIR, the aspect of the direct interpretations has been concentrated outward: instead of a real 'first person' observance of the mind it was done 'third person' way, i.e.. by experience collected in secondary information from processes and consequences both from our own person and from others. I feel this is a reason why the directly observable neurological (brain function) data are so impressive as being integrated for mind function (in a believe system rather than with proven causal connection). [56] states: "To talk about mind-independent reality can help in thinking, but one ought to acknowledge that it is fiction" just as are lots of accepted basic concepts in science, mostly identified by their consequences (energy, etc.). My proof is in the historical view of the natural scientific epistemology, e.g. 110 years ago the nuclear fission was not included in the human mind's "reality", although it was there in the then-MIR. Copernicus did not construct the planetary system with the Earth as part of it: it was within the MIR also before him, without our access to it. Allow me to skip the other 37,328 examples. Fiction? yes. We do not directly sense a molecule and it is NOT the composition of those atoms we assign to them: a water molecule does not contain H or O atoms, only their (supposed) remnants, multiples, dis/associations, etc. in described peculiarities of 'special' systems. The [58] statement about the "impossibility of explaining the mind by something else" is a perfect expression for its complexity, pointing to the inability of reductionist thinking to explain complex qualia ('emerged'(?) by complexification). A "mind-brain relation", - Köhler's gestalt, is IMO irresolvable because of its unrelated categories and transcending domains, - unless (and THAT is fiction) - some thought machines are constructed that work on a non-physical basis to produce nonlocal, atemporal terms, quality changes in mental processes, or a sense of "reading mind" in a pure 3rd person objectivity, scientifically, reproducibly in its full complexity. (I hope that last thing will never happen). If we then connect the functions of such 'machine' with a physical system, THEN we can speak about brain-mind relations. That wood supersede the bootstrap. (4) (My) MIR - (as MIR(1) and MIR(2) -) It is all a fictional speculation. The goal is a 'followable' working hypothesis for a construct of the world with the now paradoxical findings included, without an involvement of 'supernatural' help. I am aware that the supernaturalists will retort: "easy to exclude an extra supernatural, if you make it part of the natural" - but so be it. As a eliminary remark: the world in my view is not a 'construct', but a process. A 'static' metaphysics does not fit into the accessible (or inaccessible) *process* of the world. A "dynamic" ontology may be strange in the eyes of many. I have to start with the Plenitude, a zero-information infinite dynamic invariance of the all-interchanging everything. More than what we would include into a TOE and without the quantized equational restrictions of such. It is a total symmetry of a dynamic *process* in nonlocal and atemporal freedom - hard to visualize within the usual terminology of the physics-impaired. Not a static construct. Since it includes everything, the infinite system occasionally ends up with some asymmetry as well, (if not otherwise: by grouping together similar elements) which, however, dynamically transcend back into the symmetrical invariance. Such asymmetric elements - symmetry breaks - are the Big Bangs and the resulting observable construct (complexity) is called a universe. The fulguration is atemporal and returns into the Plenitude-symmetry from which it formed. This is *"the Plenitude View".* I would not assign a MIR to the Plenitude: with its zero-information dynamics it is different from our concept of a "reality". However, it is 'MI' (= mind independent). IN such (Big Bang) fulguration, however, the observable complexity builds and dissipates and from its *inside* view it can develop into complexity-systems, into diverse and unlimited qualities in an unlimited amount of such fulgurations, ie. in the 'universes'. In the case of OUR universe it is a space-time-causality system. * " The Universe-View" * - as seen from the inside - is subject to the structure of the appropriate universe. Our view includes aeons (or picoseconds) of time, parsec-billions (or nanometers) of space, a causality-sense, which is in our culture quantitative (as in our human mathematics). We have no access from this universe to other universes which may have totally different structure (physics?) and sensing/acting (mental?) capabilities. This 'universe view' expands the plenitudinal-view symmetry break and restoration into a (long) time-expansion, a zero-sum process which we call evolution. (Darwin only considered a select part of life *buildup* phenomena in our terrestrial biosphere). This process of the universe-view is MIR(1), the 'reality' of our universe. It includes the development of higher complexity ingredients, where the response to information turned 'sensing', subsequently into 'thinking' (see above "Abstraction") as in such complexities as called the human animal. (My apologies to other thinking animals). It is MIR in the sense that the development of the mind is only passively included in the evolutionary process. It exists independently of (but including) the mind and its activity. It also includes the decline-branch, leading to the final dissipation intothe Plenitude. To keep order, we include a second term, MIR(2), which is characterized from the starting point of the human mind. It contains the view of the universe and its evolution, as principally accessible by the mind, into which during the epistemic evolution, more and more of MIR(1) filters in. Accordingly MIR(1) includes the mind as ingredient, while MIR(2) concentrates on the mind's search, enrichment, for more access to complexities of the world and their interpretation "in(to) human terms". It does not include many features of MIR(1) with such qualities that are principally inaccessible to the human mind, neither, of course, the final dissipation. If research concentrates on the study of the MIND, the objective of such study would be part of MIR(1) - a research done by that same objective, a situation which does not promise too much success. It is the basic difficulty of such studies (as HM pointed out in other words). Maybe, after all, the inclusion of MIR(2) can be eliminated after we considered it. In conclusion MIR is a dynamic term, the process of the universe we live in: an evolution (up and down) of its complexities. The mind searches for access to more and more of it, interprets the findings in human terms in a subjective process into 'objective knowledge'. So our 'objective' reality is a 'subjective' truth of the mind. Indeed it may be called a phenomenal reality (see: Addendum). (I tried to carefully exclude the word 'memory' in this comment). (4) REFERENCES Web site essays (2000): "http://pages.prodigy.net/jamikes/ followed by: evol2000.html" dyn.symm.html" SciRel525.html.htm" Skin00July.html" John Mikes ADDENDUM In his discussion-posting in the list "JCS-Online@egroups.com", Dec. 07. 2000 Max Velman writes (Re: [jcs-online] Some notes on Understanding Consciousness) (an excerpt): ">Greg Nixon reminds us that he also wrote "The world as experienced is intersubjectively verified and it is this we accept as reality. This world is not the thing-in-itself, as Kant forever made clear. It is not knowable in itself." Those statements should have made it absolutely certain that I understood you to mean *phenomenal reality* and not *reality-in-itself*." MV: I think this clears things up - phenomenal reality is observer-dependent. But it can represent autonomously existing events and entities whose existence need not be dependent on the experiences of those observers.<"