I think the idea that the operating system of mind is language is a misleading one, myself -- a great deal of what we think of as reasoning is not linguistic. Which shouldn't surprise us -- animals seem to perform a large number of mental tasks without language. And essentially, I think memetics is a fancy metaphor with delusions of grandeur about being a science
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The operating system of *culture* is language, but people are not wholly defined by their culture.
I guess I'm making a distinction between parts of what might be termed "the mind". I have a sense that when you say "a great deal of what we think of as reasoning is not linguistic" you're referring to things I'm not including when I talk of "mind", such as instinct, unconscious reaction, learned response etc.-which I see as tropic, albeit complex.
In low entropy, stable systems, small differences are forced back into the stable status quo. In high entropy systems, small differences are swamped by the statistical effect of many other small differences, ultimately evening out to be effectively quite predictable. It is the systems in between where the interesting, complex and chaotic behaviour, lies.My argument is that the tendency for entropy to increase somehow drives the generation of complexity. I'm not attempting to formulate a mechanism to explain this (I lack the physics and the math, and probably the ontological clarity) but
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Yes, I think you are conveniently excluding anything that doesn't fit into your theory from being part of the mind. possibly just because it doesn't fit into your theory :-) why shouldn't unconscious reactions, learned responses, etc be part of the mind?
Fundamentally, most of your memory and learning about the world is non-linguistic, and most of what your mind does is performed in a fundamentally non-linguistic way. We have quite a lot of interesting evidence for it, too. If memory is fundamentally non-linguistic (as surely it must be, given non-linguistic animals have memory), it would seem to be a bit of a blow, unless you are equally happy to reject memory as a necessary part of the mind as well. As a hard core computationalist, you seem to reject connectionist approaches (which would have more associationist models of memory than linguistic almost always) - but I think you are on the losing side of a debate that was fought and lost in the scientific arena about a decade ago.
My argument is that the tendency for entropy to
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I think you are conveniently excluding anything that doesn't fit into your theory from being part of the mind.
No; my theory is specifically about consciousness. It may well be that the mysterious interaction between the "conscious mind" and the brain occurs via the "unconscious mind", which is the part of the brain in "closest contact" with the mind, but that doesn't make the unconscious part of the mind.
unless you are equally happy to reject memory as a necessary part of the mind as well
I am indeed.
Look, it's really not a difficult analogy: brain is hardware; mind is software. Memory is clearly in the hardware bit, although information (ie. "mind stuff") can be retrieved/derived from the memory to be manipulated in the symbol-spaces of the mind.
[Changes in entropy drive complexification:] it becomes wrong after a given point
I'm not sure I understand. I think you're interpreting me to be saying that absolute levels of entropy are related to absolute levels of complexity, which I'm not.
I think the important word in my comment is separate.
Define it philosophically how you want, but any brief experimentation with psychotropic drugs should quickly convince you that mind and brain are inextricably linked.
I'm not claiming mind and brain aren't "linked"; in fact, I open my post with by stating that the mind is what the brain does. What I'm arguing is that they are fundamentally different kinds of things, that they are composed of different stuff.
Are you suggesting this doesn't constitute dualism?
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I guess I'm making a distinction between parts of what might be termed "the mind". I have a sense that when you say "a great deal of what we think of as reasoning is not linguistic" you're referring to things I'm not including when I talk of "mind", such as instinct, unconscious reaction, learned response etc.-which I see as tropic, albeit complex.
In low entropy, stable systems, small differences are forced back into the stable status quo. In high entropy systems, small differences are swamped by the statistical effect of many other small differences, ultimately evening out to be effectively quite predictable. It is the systems in between where the interesting, complex and chaotic behaviour, lies.My argument is that the tendency for entropy to increase somehow drives the generation of complexity. I'm not attempting to formulate a mechanism to explain this (I lack the physics and the math, and probably the ontological clarity) but ( ... )
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Fundamentally, most of your memory and learning about the world is non-linguistic, and most of what your mind does is performed in a fundamentally non-linguistic way. We have quite a lot of interesting evidence for it, too. If memory is fundamentally non-linguistic (as surely it must be, given non-linguistic animals have memory), it would seem to be a bit of a blow, unless you are equally happy to reject memory as a necessary part of the mind as well. As a hard core computationalist, you seem to reject connectionist approaches (which would have more associationist models of memory than linguistic almost always) - but I think you are on the losing side of a debate that was fought and lost in the scientific arena about a decade ago.
My argument is that the tendency for entropy to ( ... )
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No; my theory is specifically about consciousness. It may well be that the mysterious interaction between the "conscious mind" and the brain occurs via the "unconscious mind", which is the part of the brain in "closest contact" with the mind, but that doesn't make the unconscious part of the mind.
unless you are equally happy to reject memory as a necessary part of the mind as well
I am indeed.
Look, it's really not a difficult analogy: brain is hardware; mind is software. Memory is clearly in the hardware bit, although information (ie. "mind stuff") can be retrieved/derived from the memory to be manipulated in the symbol-spaces of the mind.
[Changes in entropy drive complexification:]
it becomes wrong after a given point
I'm not sure I understand. I think you're interpreting me to be saying that absolute levels of entropy are related to absolute levels of complexity, which I'm not.
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I'm sure you know that 1 (2?) of them later became Underworld?
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So I will contribute nothing to this discussion ;)
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Because a dualist is, pretty much by definition, arguing that the mind is separate from the brain in a way that it, you know, isn't.
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I claim that the mind is ontologically different from the brain, and have tried to explain why I see it that way. Why do you claim otherwise?
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Define it philosophically how you want, but any brief experimentation with psychotropic drugs should quickly convince you that mind and brain are inextricably linked.
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Are you suggesting this doesn't constitute dualism?
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