1
Animate vs. inanimate. A mind discovers mind and tries to fit this form to the things within and without its self. How and why?
2
What is the lowest class of mind that can discover, use and make a minimal mind? What is the simplest model of the simplest mind? How does it differ from models of mindless patterns?
The simplest model of mind is that if mind m has a goal to x. Then you know:
If y, then m will (try to) cause x.
If x, then m will not cause x.
If x then not y.
If y then not x.
Specifically, in the case of a thermostat, you know that:
If cold, the thermostat will act to turn the furnace on, likely causing heat.
If hot, the thermostat will act to turn the furnace off.
If hot then not cold.
If cold then not hot.
This quartet of inferences, two positive and two negative, is the simplest model of mind.
An observing mind needs inference two because the first alone fits an always running furnace.
The same mind ought to have the last, negative pair of inferences because not sensing differs from sensing cold. Without the two, a mind blind to temperature would infer that the furnace is on when it should first act to add a sense of temperature. Technically, a mind could get away without that exclusion if it has an inference from an inference from hot to a goal to a sense of temperature, but this is a poor design because, until the temperature sense appears, the mind would again badly infer that the furnace is on.
In the second half of the second inference, I mean not-act in the sense of sensation of inaction, not blindness. Is it necessary to perceive that the object mind acted to cause x, not that x merely becomes so? The difference: there being a mind somewhere vs. some particular thing being a mind. How is that believed? At the simplest, by conditioning the inferences on some other belief that corresponds to the object mind's body.
Now what use? How do I use other minds differently from mindless things? How can an act on an intelligent thing differ from an act on a mindless thing?
In a sense, both can reach ends for me without my knowing how. I can cause a mind to make something that I don't know how to make. But I can also “tell” a light switch to turn a light on, though I do not understand its operation below some level.
Consider thermostat plus furnace vs. a furnace alone. The thermostat is economical, it reduces my acts because I know it will take the acts I would have made, while a furnace would blindly reach my end only briefly, then sail past it. How would a simple mind see and prefer this? When cold, it can turn on the furnace directly or use the thermostat? How would a mind know to prefer the latter? A poorly engineered answer: a mind could learn to favor means with more persistent effects.
Ignoring how to choose between intelligent and mindless means, how precisely does a mind use a mind? In simple cases, the same as any other act. Flipping a switch mediates turning a light on. Saying turn the light on to a mind mediates the same. Just as the effect of a switch may be conditioned on the state of another object, the meaning of a statement for another mind may depend on the state of its other beliefs.
How to add subjectivity: that a mind doesn't act on your x but its perception of x? Likely just by complicating the inferences with another layer.
What is the lowest class of mind that can discover mind for itself, not gaining these inferences through injection or training?
How is this model applied to one's self? Humans contain many minds, complicating the problem. How would a simple single mind use it towards itself?
3
A deep mind makes models of its environment, this environment including what an observer might consider the mind's self. The mind, in defining mind, is trying to model model-making.
Can an eye see an eye? Can a mind define mind when any such definition is entirely the effect of a mind? How legitimate is it to define minds in terms of a particular mind's terms?
A mind that believes in things finds itself imagining minds out of parts that the made mind must, at bottom, not believe real. In our case, molecules, neurons, brains.
Our minds are the greatest obstacles to entirely understanding them. Minds are useful so far as they conceal their brush strokes. They present such a convincing canvas of reality that we can hardly help but to define mind in terms of a mind's results. The distinction: imagining a mind as made of your inventions about reality vs. imagining a mind that is forced to ultimately believe in them. Example error: forcing a mind to believe that objects exist instead of being a useful but uncertain fiction.
When we strive to define mind, we merely pursue the same old ends but now with such depth that we insist on knowing only the means that ease all ends: laws of mind.
4
A scientist: Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain. What we know with more certainty than any other belief is an effect of an effect of it?
5
Subjective vs objective. This split presumes belief in mind. Subjective: a belief conditioned on a mind. Objective: a belief not imagined to depend on the believing mind being a particular mind.
6
When primitive humans discovered mind, they called it spirit or soul, and in their enthusiasm imagined many things as having one: plants, rocks, volcanoes. Modern man erred in the opposite direction. Many old books make much more sense when you replace soul and spirit with mind.
7
How can a mind recognize another mind without peering inside it?
Persists in preserving itself or another thing.
Sees futile loops in its own behavior. If you can see a pattern that it doesn't, you consider yourself more intelligent.
Speed compared to the judging mind.
Robust: doesn't easily die or lose beliefs.
Social intelligence: knowledge of the judging mind as a mind, its language, and interests.
8
Every ambitious philosopher or physicist had his one presumption, purified into one word. He interpreted everything in the Universe, every human word and interest, as forms of that word and enjoyed the self-made monument to his brilliance. Water, fire, atom, number, will, power, gene. In my case, mind.
What's lost when you reduce all to one word? How much gained by making the Universe thinkable? Why might mind be as good or better? Are the others well read as only cases of it? Mind at least has the honesty to admit that these words are all inventions of mind, including mind itself.
9
Conscious, sentient, aware—words largely wasted as synonyms for intelligent, for having a mind in the common vague anthropocentric sense. Does their writer mean that a thing has conscious experience? Or that it behaves intelligently? Does he know the difference? How can you know what he meant? What if he doesn't know? Neither sense entails the other.
Philosophers gave this distinction the poetic but obscure name qualia. I can't tolerate jargon for what separates us most intimately from minds seen as machines. It deserves a clear simple word: feeling.
We have no reason to imagine that a special arrangement of metal or code should feel. A thermostat is aware of the temperature. A computer can act intelligently—have an idea of its self, including its self's thoughts, and act on that knowledge of knowledge—without any reason to assume that it experiences anything. A simulation of a model of mind is no more likely to feel than a video of a fire is to cause heat.
Scientists try to explain the feeling of red using thinner secondary ideas: brain, neuron, photon, law. Red is red. Red alone is real. Anything more is useful fiction. The personal redness of red is supposed to be odd, while physical models are not. This is upside down. Your red is most real. Explanations of red must be more complex, less certain, less real. Physical models are just the redness problem disguised by inessential complications.
Set aside the reality of other feeling minds. How does your behavior differ if you mark a mind as feeling? How to empirically distinguish behavior towards things believed to feel from behavior towards humans when we seem to imagine all humans as feeling?
Ignore unfriendly minds. If I imagine that a mind feels, then I tend to treat its pains as if they were mine. Friendly minds believe in feeling to cause them to cooperate? Is to say that another mind feels, the same as saying that it is a kindred mind?
10
Immortality and continuity of feeling. A transhumanist: I will upload my mind into a machine and live forever. Is the new mind you? If you tried to move your brain, neuron by neuron to electronic neuron simulators, how would you ensure consciousness was preserved or if you became a robot?
How to prove the conditions of feeling? In science, you prove the conditions of a thing by removing one at a time. Does a flame need air? Seal it in an airtight container. Does a plant need sun? Put it in a box. We can see a flame die and a plant wilt but we can't see feeling in any mind but our own. Will self-experiments even work? If you stopped feeling, would you notice? Could you tell anyone else? Is feeling by degrees? If so, would you notice changes of degree?
Is it logically possible to ensure a feeling mind is moved to another medium without losing feeling? Is it at least possible but without guarantee? The question for anyone who wants to live forever, especially by having a backup. You could preserve neurons indefinitely, so the concern is with medium changes and continuity.
As far as any other mind is concerned, a functional simulation of you is you, but that does you little good, except to the extent that the desires to continue yourself are content with that image.
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