I think I’m trying to point at a different issue altogether. The great Rationalists of history (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes) all left maps, with their own idiosyncracies. The ancient East left a variety of different maps. The Greeks left a few different versions too.
Our current map, seems to have redundant features. For example. Is there a significant difference between mind and consciousness? Hypothetically, if we came to fully understood mind, what would be left to know about consciousness?
I’m not sure what you mean by “mind” or “consciousness.” I usually think of a mind as the content of a consciousness. I don’t know yet if that is an artificial distinction.
Couldn’t one equally suggest that consciousness is content of a mind?
I could be missing something, but I guess the approach I’m saying is identify certain concepts and then label them.
And so far, I haven’t seen much in the way of a standard distinction between consciousness and mind and experience and qualia and phenomenal reality, ect.
I think the most honest thing to say is that as of right now, there isn’t a material, or spatial, or temporal description of how these things are related. Which comes first temporally, which is larger spatially, which is more complex materially. None of those questions have answers.
I think we can say with a pretty straight face that we all have subjective experiences. How that involves minds creating consciousness or consciousness creating minds is something of which I’m skeptical.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/nw/fallacies_of_compression/
to start.
I think I’m trying to point at a different issue altogether. The great Rationalists of history (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes) all left maps, with their own idiosyncracies. The ancient East left a variety of different maps. The Greeks left a few different versions too.
Our current map, seems to have redundant features. For example. Is there a significant difference between mind and consciousness? Hypothetically, if we came to fully understood mind, what would be left to know about consciousness?
I’m not sure what you mean by “mind” or “consciousness.” I usually think of a mind as the content of a consciousness. I don’t know yet if that is an artificial distinction.
Couldn’t one equally suggest that consciousness is content of a mind?
I could be missing something, but I guess the approach I’m saying is identify certain concepts and then label them.
And so far, I haven’t seen much in the way of a standard distinction between consciousness and mind and experience and qualia and phenomenal reality, ect.
You have a point.
“Minds are made of thoughts.”
Is that a coherent thing to say?
Does having a thought make something a mind?
Or does having a mind make something think?
I think the most honest thing to say is that as of right now, there isn’t a material, or spatial, or temporal description of how these things are related. Which comes first temporally, which is larger spatially, which is more complex materially. None of those questions have answers.
I think we can say with a pretty straight face that we all have subjective experiences. How that involves minds creating consciousness or consciousness creating minds is something of which I’m skeptical.