Tangled Up in Mind

I'm trying to develop a way of thinking about the physical world in which it is understood as the 'entanglement' of minds. This isn't meant to be some claim for idealism or solipsism; more that some of the contents of my mind (particularly perceptions) are likely to also be in your mind (if you are near me), so if we were to tabular the contents of our minds, or perhaps draw a Venn diagram, there would be some content that would appear in the overlap; the space in which our minds entangle. This entanglement would be the shared world of lived experience, completely normal, completely physical, nothing funny about it at all.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• entangled
• mind
• Silversoul7
• Dean
• Radin
• brain
• consciousness
• Max
• Velmans
• cognition
• perception
• imagination
• fantasy
• memory
• image
• sense
• space
• entanglement
• quantum

[anakarina1011]

you remind me of sean connery

[conferencereport]

@anakarina1011

I cannot begin to tell you how flattered I am right now

[SpacingAstronut]

Start off by thinking that there is only physical reality and nothing else. Physical reality is the same for everyone. Everything that ever happens is a physical process and this includes consiousness.

By using our senses and brain, we can try to reproduce what physical reality must be like. We'll never fully succees in this, because we are limited in what we can sense and process. However, we can express our understanding of reality to others through language. These processes are physical too.

[conferencereport]

@SpacingAstronut

The problem I have is not with thinking there is only physical reality, but in the sense that our 'reproduction' of this reality has a very different quality to the reality itself.

[QualiaSoup]

I think you're absolutely right: that external reality as we perceive it is best placed within the contents of consciousness, along with dreams, memories etc. and that 'intersubjective tangling' of the contents of our consciousness is exactly what we're engaged in when we practice science, compare experience, model reality etc.

I think this approach more accurately marks the division between 'representation' (mental) and 'represented' (underlying physical reality).

[conferencereport]

@QualiaSoup

The question I would have is about the representation/represented schema you suggest and what you call the 'underlying physical reality'. What process would assign the status of physical reality to the category of the represented rather than the representation?

[demonicrubberducky]

Holy craaaap, dude, I've been searching for you forever after you got formatted off my iPod (the damn thing,) and what do you know, my google chrome decided to randomly link me to you again! Nice ^^

[anakarina1011]

@conferencereport

oh my gosh you replied!!!!! I didn't think you would notice a comment like that, but you have such a nice accent and seem very intelligent so thats why I wrote that. I just recently subscribed to you so keep up the good work!

[SpacingAstronut]

Maybe here's an interesting video for you conference: watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y&NR=1

(Richard Feynman - Ways of thinking)

[vls174]

I wish I could be so lonely as you can (judging by your video records). This atmosphere option surely must gives you a plain contact with God.

[pirbird14]

No problem. Unlike the New Age woo woo queens, I believe that modern physics has proven materialist monism, not spiritual monism. The basic "stuff" of the universe is matter. The physiology of consciousness and perception is also matter. But this matter produces some very peculiar "stuff", which can only be known subjectively. The interplay between subjective and objective is the basis of dialectic logic. You can take the buddhist, intuitionist approach or the Hegelian rational approach.

[SouthernContrarian]

I see where you coming from now. Just trying to get clarity for myself, thanks.