This is about mind. [fn1]

Talking philosophically about fundamental things like mind and reality is difficult, because the process of thinking and talking involved in doing so is part of what you are trying to think and talk about. Words and ideas that you can normally use in a casual way become very critical and what precisely you mean by them becomes very important.

Two words which are particularly important to the idea of mind are "objective" and "subjective".

I think most people reading this would have at least a general idea what these words mean, but it will be helpful to me later to establish in a clear and simple way what I mean by them.

Say you walk into a room and see a pen lying on a table. You could point the pen out to somebody else and they would see it too. The pen is, therefore, objective. A thing which can be observed by two or more people is objective.

So what would something be which was not objective? Let's say I walk into a room and see a woman sitting at a table and I say "that is a nice lady". Like seeing a pen on a table, it's something I can "see", in a sense, but you might not see it the same way. You might dislike this particular lady and so you could "see" something different.

The observation is subjective. It's reality is dependent on a condition in my mind, a feeling, which you don't have access to.

What is mind?

Most definitions historically of what we are, of what our mind or "being" are, have been in terms which are not objective and so have always been based to some extent on faith. If you're religious you can say you are some kind of "spirit", but "spirit" isn't objectifiable. We can't walk into a room and see it lying on the table.

In the extreme opposite, the most objective case, mind is defined as being something like an "epiphenomenon of brain". In other words, mind doesn't really exist at all, it is just a word referring to the working of the brain. The brain experiences it's own activity as "mind".

In my opinion, the clearest strictly objective definition of mind is inherent in the science of artificial intelligence, the attempt to make machines (or whatever kind of man-made system) which think like people.

Really to talk about artificial intelligence, especially in this context, I think you have to acknowledge that there is an underlying debate, a very old debate between spiritual beliefs and science (or maybe between materialism and idealism). I don't want to take a side or stoke the fires of this old debate, but I think pretending the debate doesn't exist in some spirit of objectivity just confuses it all. Artificial intelligence has been motivated to at least some significant extent by people trying to make clear that "mind" is nothing but brain, that it is a physical system with no supernatural elements. If we can make a man-made system which has a mind like a person, then it seems impossible to argue that there is anything in a person which is not mechanical, nothing beyond the physical brain. No supernatural "soul" which floats out of the body after death or whatever. So in trying to define or build a system which is the same as a mind, the field of artificial intelligence is at the same time defining in strictly objective terms what mind is.

The best definition of mind in a strictly objective sense is, I think, the Turing Test, which comes from the science of artificial intelligence. In a nutshell, the Turing Test states that if you can interact with a system and can't distinguish it from an intelligent system (that is, a person), then it is intelligent.

In other words, say I can write a computer program which will respond to emails. You send emails to the program, and emails to a human being, but you don't know in advance which is the human being and which is the computer. You can ask them questions and try to decide which is intelligent based on their responses. If you can't tell them apart, according to the Turing test, the computer system is intelligent.

This then in effect is an objective definition of what intelligence actually is.

Something seems to be glaringly missing here. OK, the program is by definition intelligent, but how do we know it's actually, well, alive?

But the question can't be objectified. Somebody who holds a strictly scientific, objectivist viewpoint would ask "what objective quality of the AI system are you asking about?"

Seen that way the Turing test, on the surface counter-intuitive, seems inevitable. The only way we can know a system objectively is to interact with it from the outside, as we see the pen on the table from the outside. There is no objective meaning to being the pen. If a system behaves, in all ways that can be observed and are therefore objective, like a living system, objectively it is a living system.

My brother did a kind of practical experiment once. He recorded an answering machine message which was half a conversation. It went like this:

"Hello?" (pause a few seconds)
"Pretty good, how're you?" (slightly longer pause)
"Oh nothing, just watching the game on TV" (etc)

In other words, it was a fairly accurate recording of his half of a typical conversation. Almost everybody who called him when he had this fell for it, and talked to his answering machine, at least through the first couple sentences.

For a few seconds, his answering machine passed the Turing test.

It really makes the Turing test seem absurd. I don't think anybody would conclude that the answering machine was alive, or intelligent in the sense that you or I are. But if we can only define "intelligent" in objective terms, we no longer have a word to describe what we have which the answering machine does not.

Or which we assume the answering machine does not. How do we really know that the answering machine is not alive the way we are? I for one am certain it isn't, but how can I demonstrate that to somebody else, how can I make it objective?

For that matter, how do I actually know anybody else in the world is alive the way I am? I used to wonder that when I was a kid, and the thought used to scare the hell out of me. (I was a strange kid.) What if everybody else in the world is a kind of robot, except me? I assume that because they look like me and act like me they must be alive like me, but how do I know? Maybe they are just more sophisticated versions of my brother's answering machine, capable of a more complicated and less predictable set of responses, but not really ALIVE at all?

And yet the one thing which I know for certain is that I, for one, am alive. I have seen it argued that even that isn't true, that our own consciousness is, in one sense or another, an illusion. And it might be, but if so it remains true that I experience that illusion. Regardless of the nature of my consciousness or the real nature of the world, I am experiencing something.

One might even speculate that the whole world is an illusion, a dream, and that you are in some timeless place but that nothing really exists. I don't mean to argue that point seriously, but I do think there is no way to absolutely argue that it could not be true. Any proof that the world is "real" could potentially be an illusion, a part of the dream. [fn2] I don't really believe that (I would like to think that if the world were all a dream of mine I could dream something where I get laid more), but I think there is a point, that there is nothing that I can say with 100 % certainty is real, EXCEPT for the fact that, whatever it is, I am experiencing it.

This really puts me in a strange position. While I accept objectivity as being a valid test for determining what is real, the one and only thing which I can be absolutely certain of, can't be objectified.

What's more, that one thing is not only the most important thing there is to me, it is really the only thing to me. It is me. Nothing can really matter more to me than the nature and existence of that "thing".

It seems almost like a paradox. At first I found it tempting to conclude from this that the whole idea of objectivity, the objectivist, positivist philosophy, must be wrong.

But I don't think of objectivism as a philosophy so much as a basic characteristic of the physical world. It seems to me impossible to question that what we call "the physical world" is all those things we experience objectively taken together. That which is physical is objective, and that which is objective is physical. [fn5] And yet this one thing, which is certainly part of the physical world in some sense, can't be made objective.

I can only conclude then that mind; what we are, our being; transcends the physical world. It is beyond it. Mind is something which exists but is not physical. We can't explain the world adequately with our existing concepts. [fn4]

That is supposed to be accompanied by the overture to Also Sprach Zarathustra but in developing the idea it has lost a little momentum. To restate my assumptions so far:

1. The physical world exists, or seems to exist.

Which of the two is the case is moot. I could say "the seeming physical world exists", and that would be a little more precise, but I think it is a little unclear. Certainly there is this thing we experience, and think of as the physical world. And regardless of it's nature, that is what "the physical world" is.

2. Everything which is of the physical world is objective [fn3].

3. Mind exists.

Mind in the sense of "that which experiences"; which is to say, your self.

4. Mind is not objectifiable.

Therefore, I conclude that what we are is real, but not of the physical world [fn3].

This is a strange situation, because if the mind is not a part of the objective world in this sense, then anything we try to say about it is shaky at best, because our ideas are based on the objective world. Conclusions we reach based on treating the self as an objective thing are meaningless.

For instance, the idea that "when you're dead, that's it, you're gone", seems very sensible. If you don't buy religious ideas, in the sense of ideas based on "faith" to the exclusion of reason, all that is objective of the self is the body. So it is sensible to say "when the body is gone, the self is gone". But if the self is not objective, that makes no sense. It's like saying "if I cut my fingernails, I cease to exist". Certainly my fingernails are, in a sense, a part of "me", but obviously it's a different sense of "me".

Who, exactly, are you?

If I asked you that question, the most natural answer would be to tell me your name. But you could change that name and you would still be you. So your name isn't who you are, or what you are.

Who are you? You could get plastic surgery and a sex change in addition to changing your name, move to Buttleenaps, South Dakota and become somebody completely different. And yet you would still be you. The part of you that actually exists, the only part that matters, would be exactly the same. You could lose all your memories completely, but you would still BE you.

Indeed any characteristic of you which you can identify is essentially something you experience, and so can't be the you which experiences them.

In the context of what I said earlier, that the self can't be objectified, this seems in a way inevitable. If you can't objectify what somebody actually is, it seems inevitable that you can't identify any characteristics of the self, since after all an identifiable characteristic would be practically the definition of objective.

Even your thoughts are not what you are, but what you do.

Nothing which can be made objective can be what you are.

And so what is left? Not "nothing" ... indeed, what is left is everything, at least it's everything to you, it is you.

And yet it can't be expressed except in this weird way, as a kind of positive negative.

It's actually a very old idea in religion, you see it for instance very prominently in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and even more so in mystical religious stuff (e.g. "Thunder, perfect mind" in the Nag Hammadi library).

It can only be expressed in these very esoteric, confusing, and seemingly mystical ways ... but what it actually is is quite simple. I mean, it's what you are, now. It's quite simple and not at all mystical. It's just hard to say.

You are "being", and no characteristic which you can talk about of you actually is you.

So if you take that idea further ... who you ARE, and who I am, are exactly the same. You and I, objectively, are different people living different lives, but who we are is the same. You and I are identical.

This too is a strange situation. There is nothing else in existence that compares to the situation, there is no other case where two things which are different can't be differentiated in any way. We experience different points in time and space, but one tree can have different branches in different points in space; in any event, that doesn't serve to differentiate what we are.

So I can only conclude that, with respect to objective reality, all mind is one. To say that two things which are identical in all ways are not the same isn't rational.

You and I are not only like each other, the part of us which is the heart of us, the indescribable unobjectifiable part which we actually are, is the same.

___________

Now I am done making my point and I am rambling on and talking from personal opinion.

To me the idea that the part of myself which is the inmost part, the part you can't say anything about, the part which is beyond even my thoughts, could be "connected to" ... the same as ... that part in other people seems perfectly natural. I spent years practicing zen meditation and other forms of active silence and I have frequently seemed to have experiences which seem to me to imply some kind of transcendental connectedness to others, even to ... everything.

Synchronicity is the popular word people use now for these kinds of magical experiences, a coincidence with a sense of meaningfulness that seems purposive, seems beyond chance coincidence. Myself I have found they seem inevitably to occur at times I am in this "silent place", or close to it, that part of me which is beyond change.

Most people I have known, if I get to know them well enough and talk about this kind of thing, have had experiences similarly which seem to point at some level of reality which is intimately related to the self, the soul, but is in some sense beyond reality as we normally know it.

I think though people reject these experiences because they seem to be impossible, beyond what can happen in an objective world.

And they are, but still I think, based on what I've said until now, that they are possible to what we are.

[footnotes]

[fn1]

Don't read this.

Not yet, anyway. These footnotes are mostly going into greater detail or addressing points of debate that I think are likely to come up, but I suggest reading the main body without the footnotes first, and afterwards if you are interested go back and read the footnotes and links out in context.

I am intentionally avoiding going into depth with most of what I say here. This is on purpose; I have read other books which say, in effect, the same things I am saying here, but they are difficult to read and not really accessible to the general reader. I've seen religious and mystical works which I think are saying the same thing, but it takes years of reading libraries-full of books to get the idea, if you ever do. I've seen contemporary philosophical works which I also think were coming to the same conclusion, but they were at least large books and fairly technical. Knowing, as they did, that their conclusions would be controversial, I think they tried especially hard to be thorough and rigorous, and so the result requires a high level of knowledge of formal philosophy and is, in any event, very thick and difficult to read. But my main goal is to wind up with something short and succinct enough to be accessible to a large number of people.

I am pretty sure though, as a result, that a lot of people wanting to criticize this will attack things that don't really matter. As I say above, this is a perennial debate, in one form or another this same debate has been going on for ages. I am hoping for critical examination, but from having this same kind of debate on the Internet I know it is the kind of argument which can open a whole can of worms.

For example, at one point I describe the Turing test, and I do so in extremely simple terms. Overly-simply, in a lot of ways. It's the kind of thing I would, based on past experiences, expect to see attacked. Specifically, I say that an answering machine passed the Turing test, at least for a time.

Now I know somebody could argue that "passing the Turing test for a short time" is a misleading idea, and could argue that unless the person interacting with the machine does so for a substantial length of time, the machine hasn't really "passed".

I don't really know if that's a valid argument, in and of itself, or not. But really, it just doesn't matter. As I establish within the next couple of paragraphs, my point is that the situation is an inevitable result of an objective test of intelligence or mind. And the problematic relation between objectivity and mind is the point.

All of this went through my mind, anyway, while writing this. This couple of pages represents months of direct work and decades of my own study and thinking about things. And of course I could have included the above, defending my representation of the Turing test, within the body of the article. But it would have defeated my purpose of keeping this as short as possible, and I think the point works out to be moot anyway.

Which is just one example, I could come up with dozens or hundreds of similar cases where I have presented an idea very briefly, knowing that it could seem that I have left a huge hole. But where I am doing so, I think the logic is sound and there isn't really a hole, as in the example of the Turing test above.

So I would be grateful, if you are reading this critically and think you see something insufficiently or inaccurately represented, if you would really look at the overall point involved and ask if what you are seeing really changes anything, before you consider it a hole.

I have spent years reading about this kind of thing and am aware of the different concepts and so the hole you think you see, it's very likely that I am aware of it, as with the example of the Turing test above, but didn't think there was any relevance in going into greater detail, and that the underlying logic was anyway sound.

I don't mean to discourage criticism, but just, as I say, to ask that you try to view criticisms in the overall context of what I'm saying. From debating subjects about which people get very heated in the past, I know there is a tendency, where an idea offends one or seems just stupid or "woo-woo", to attack it in a detailed way which misses the overall point. It's something I've seen everywhere from debates on religion and skepticism to computer programming languages to politics. I can even sympathize, I know I have seen ideas presented which struck me as so utterly and completely stupid that they were nothing but a blanket woven of errors, and it was difficult to do anything but go through and list the errors of which the mess was composed.

I don't think this article is anything like that wrong-headed though.

[fn2]

I read about the "brain in a vat" thought experiment while I was writing this ... which is a little more succinct way of saying the same thing, but if I used it instead it would ruin my joke.

OK go back and read the rest. Hopefully you aren't one of those people who interrupts what you are reading to read footnotes. If you are, you've completely lost your train of thought, haven't you?

[fn3]

It is a little vague what I mean exactly by "of" the physical world.

This is best thought of in terms of set theory. Where I say that a thing which is objective is "of" the physical world, I mean that neither set A, all objective things, nor set B, all things in the physical world, contain any element which is not in the other.

So where I say mind is not "of" the physical world, that is to say that while mind is "in" the physical world, it's nature is such that it has characteristics which are not in the physical world. So the set, "what the mind is" (not really a set per se) intersects the set of the world, but is not completely contained within it.

[fn4]

I've read a lot of philosophy so at least in this footnote I want to make clear: I don't want to use the word "supernatural" here. Indeed I consider "supernatural" kind of an oxymoron, like "really unreal" would be. I do though think "metaphysical" would not be inappropriate, or "paraphysical".

Can I copyright that word? I could use the royalties, if it catches on.

[fn5]

This is not to reject the philosophy of idealism. Even within a purely idealist philosophy, there is this class of things or perceived things which we call "physical". Whether you agree that they have some ultimate reality or not, they have certain definite characteristics of behavior which identifies physical things.

Whether you argue that physical things are ultimately illusory or not, the category of experience we describe as objective remains, and what we at least refer to with the word "physical" behaves objectively.