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So there's this supposedly an 'interaction' problem for substance dualism, that isn't there for physicalism or idealism. I've never understood this.

So as Hume pointed out, we see event a followed by event b. We don't see a link connecting event a and event b. We impute a cause-effect relationship to the two events. All we have are datapoints with event a followed by event b. That's it. Based on that, we create equations that model what happens in the physical world, and we try to falsify those models We don't have an "explanation" of physical causation. We have models/equations... and data fit those equations or don't. We don't ask for further explanations. Why is it problematic if event a has a different ontology from event b?

Imo, we should simply do the same thing we do with physical-physical interactions... take the datapoints of mental events followed by physical events or vice versa... create models and try to falsify them.

There may be other valid arguments against mind-matter interaction, but what I'm attacking here is the kind of a-priori incredulity that's presented in these discussions, as if there is absolutely no mystery as to how matter should interact with matter... but mind interacting with matter is some kind of unbridgeable gulf.

It would be similar to someone asking "How is it that massless photons can have momentum?" I'm not sure what kind of answer would be expected... the laws of physics allow it?

eclipz905
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Ameet Sharma
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    According to [Descartes](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#MinRel) they interact. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Feb 07 '23 at 12:03
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    Descartes’ disciples, like Malebranche, did conclude that causality is inexplicable as such and uniformly requires divine intervention. Not an appealing idea in the face of all discovered physical causal laws with no mental-physical ones. The "mental datapoints" aren't forthcoming either due to absence of mental measurements beyond vague introspection (hence Kant's "psychology can never be a science"). And the biggest [problems of interactionism](https://iep.utm.edu/mental-c/#SH1ci) are spatial localization and causal closure of the physical (including energy conservation), not incredulity. – Conifold Feb 07 '23 at 13:30
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA: And, he was strongly criticised in his lifetime for how woolly & unsatisfying his account of that was, for instance by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia in her correspondence with him. – CriglCragl Feb 07 '23 at 16:31
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    The main problem, with some dualist approaches, is that mind and matter are assumed to belong to different categories thus their interaction is almost by definition problematic. For approaches like neutral monism where mind and matter are simply aspects of the exact same thing, their interaction is almost common sense as it is almost inconceivable that the same thing cannot interact and relate to itself – Nikos M. Feb 07 '23 at 18:58
  • Current physical laws are mostly compatibility conditions upon processes and potential transformations (eg conservation laws) rather than causality laws (this is explicit in quantum mechanics). In this sense there is ample room for mind to interact with what is currently called the "physical" without violating known compatibility conditions. So I would not worry so much about that. – Nikos M. Feb 07 '23 at 19:09
  • For example, the Copenhagen interpretation asserted that mind's interaction with the "physical" is that it collapses the wavefunction. This type of mind-matter interaction is compatible with all of current physics. – Nikos M. Feb 07 '23 at 19:21
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    There is no difference between mind and matter. Even E Ilyenko preserved an ideal. He especially did this. We are blocked from communicating with matter until we bring matter up to mind. We raise up matter. Our mission. – Gordon Feb 07 '23 at 21:53
  • If we could easily communicate and be matter then we would have no impetus to complete our mission. The first to reach self-consciousness has the duty. Thinkers of interest. Spinoza Hegel. Evald Ilyenkov, David Bohm. Marx too probably. – Gordon Feb 07 '23 at 22:00
  • Basically it’s all Bildung but at some point we must “stand over”creation. Hence idealism. To bring the very stones to life. – Gordon Feb 07 '23 at 22:04
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    I should mention that on an every day level, doctors know that the placebo effect is real. – Gordon Feb 08 '23 at 12:24
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    *"There may be other valid arguments against mind-matter interaction, but what I'm attacking here is the kind of a-priori incredulity that's presented in these discussions,"* <<< This "incredulity" may sound contrary to Cartesian doubt, but it's simply the result of studying physics for thousands of years and observing lots of data in favour of "I can lift an object with my hand" and no data in favour of "I can lift an object with my mind". If you start claiming you can lift objects with your mind, you're of course met with incredulity. – Stef Feb 08 '23 at 12:52
  • "All we have are datapoints with event a followed by event b." You may be interested in how a [zero-knowledge proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof) works. It's an IT security thing but it's based on exactly what you're scratching at. – candied_orange Feb 08 '23 at 17:01
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    Photons have energy, and so they have mass. Where are we, 19th century? – Karl Feb 09 '23 at 09:02
  • @Karl, fine. Not massless, but zero rest-mass then. It's hardly the point here. – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 11:05

16 Answers16

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Mainly because we have no idea how mind and matter are supposed to interact

Causation is understood by many in a way that makes that problematic. This post gives a perfectly neutral definition which would play into your hands:

C causes E if and only if C increases the probability of E in every situation which is otherwise causally homogeneous with respect to E. (Causal Laws and Effective Strategies, 423)

Many authors, including the working group on causality in Kent which I had the honour to attend some talks of years ago, would not consider this a sufficient condition for causation proper as opposed to a figure of speech, though. The main puzzle piece missing for mind-matter-interaction is a plausible mechanism linking C and E.

And that is why many have problems with mind-matter-interaction: just how, following which laws, is this supposed to happen? How to differentiate properly between correlation and causation? There are, of course, also those who just presume physicalism (explicitly or unconsciously) and thus reject the idea of mind as entity proper in the first place. The strongest argument in their favour, though, is that we have yet to find proper empirical ways to get hold of other people's minds.

These questions are centuries old and yet to receive a proper answer, hence it is problematic to assume mind-matter-interaction.

Edit: It is true that we do not have a satisfactory model/theory/mechanism/explanation for every kind of matter-matter-interaction. That does not invalidate the argument, though: We have them for quite a few kinds and we can measure, in a time-sequence, both supposed cause and effect. We have a hard time (read: no idea how) to measure a decision. And we should be careful to muddle mind-talk with brain activity since it basically presumes physicalism.

Philip Klöcking
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    ". The main puzzle piece missing for mind-matter-interaction is a plausible mechanism linking C and E." So in the case of matter-matter interaction, what is this mechanism? – Ameet Sharma Feb 07 '23 at 15:36
  • @AmeetSharma Example? The microwave causes the food to heat up by accelerating the molecules in the food when high-energy photons transfer some kinetic energy on interaction when they meet. We have a pretty good picture of what happens there. But the mechanisms are manifold. There is no single mechanism. When billard balls hit each other, there is some pretty complex deformation and repulsion between atomic structures involved. We can explain how currents flow through metal conductors. We can explain why water evaporates at particular pressure-temperature combinations. – Philip Klöcking Feb 07 '23 at 15:46
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    so ultimately all those explanations come down to a set of laws of physics according to which matter behaves. We find the simplest set of laws that cover all our datapoints. We don't ask what is the mechanism by which the laws of physics operate. When newton found the inverse-square law of gravitation, had he found a mechanism? – Ameet Sharma Feb 07 '23 at 16:14
  • @PhilipKlöcking Is there even a good definition or consensus about what "mind" itself is? – Frank Feb 07 '23 at 17:04
  • @AmeetSharma Laws od nature only describe behaviour of matter, they do not involve causal mechanisms. You are confounding two completely different things here. – Philip Klöcking Feb 07 '23 at 17:05
  • @PhilipKlöcking, so the causal mechanisms you described for microwave heating up food... aren't they reducible to the laws of physics? – Ameet Sharma Feb 07 '23 at 17:08
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    @Frank I am afraid not. That is another thing adding to the problems we have describing. We not even know what we are dealing with, just that there is some subjective/ideal/phenomenal reality *for us* that seems to be different from the physical world. – Philip Klöcking Feb 07 '23 at 17:09
  • @PhilipKlöcking To me, that would be enough of a blocker that subsequent discussion would fall into purely speculative territory. – Frank Feb 07 '23 at 17:13
  • @AmeetSharma No. Laws of physics are there to calculate certain variables given certain measurements. They are mathematical tools to provide predictions. That which involves actual mechanisms are the fully-fledged physical theories and explanations behind those laws. And yes, we actually do not have a proper theory of gravity as of yet. We basically do not have an actual idea of how gravity works. We think it involves some deformation of space-time but how and why, no idea. – Philip Klöcking Feb 07 '23 at 17:19
  • @PhilipKlöcking, "That which involves actual mechanisms are the fully-fledged physical theories and explanations behind those laws." Can you give an example? – Ameet Sharma Feb 07 '23 at 17:23
  • @AmeetSharma [This paper](https://medcraveonline.com/PAIJ/PAIJ-03-00182.pdf) tries to establish a quantum theoretical explanation for electrical current flow in conductors. You can try to find any physical laws for electrical currents in there, you won't find one. – Philip Klöcking Feb 07 '23 at 17:30
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    @PhilipKlöcking -- Ameet Sharma's point is that we don't have a causal mechanism for matter on matter interaction either. This makes your objection to the lack of such a mechanism for mind on matter (and vice versa) far less compelling than your answer implies. As a pragmatist myself, I tend to look at causal explanations as only complete to degrees. And matter/matter explanations, while not 100% complete, have considerably more substance than mind/matter explanations. Recasting your answer into relative degree of understanding could address this objection. – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:18
  • @Dcleve I perfectly well understood his point and state that this is *wrong*. We got stories to tell in terms of mechanisms in matter-matter-interaction. See the paper I linked. Yes, not in any case, so what? For mind-matter-interaction, on the other side, we got no idea whatsoever. That is a serious, decisive difference. – Philip Klöcking Feb 09 '23 at 06:20
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    @PhilipKlöcking -- Why THIS theory matches observed physics, while THAT logically coherent theory does not -- is itself still a mystery. What "puts fire in the equations"? Logically, matter-matter interaction is still a mystery. Yes, we have made steps toward that mystery for matter-matter interaction, but Munchausen says steps will never get us to a logic solution. An alternative to "problematic" could be "the investigation of mind-matter interaction has not yet advanced, unlike the incremental progress made on matter-matter interaction". – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 16:22
  • @Dcleve The criterion is having a plausible mechanism, it is not having an arbitrarily high epistemic certainty about it actually being the correct one. Logic does have nothing to do with it. Why should the world obey our restricted abilities to think coherently? This is a whole different problem. What beyond "it fits our observations perfectly" is needed for justification? Science is all about the best explanation, yet we have *no plausible explanation at all* with regards to mind-matter-interaction. Also, as written earlier, physical theory is not to be confused with equations. – Philip Klöcking Feb 09 '23 at 17:21
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    @PhilipKlöcking Eccles dualist model of mind triggering a few dozen synapses IS a “plausible mechanism”. Our nervous system is basically designed to massively leverage tiny energy inputs. There are multiple idealist models, including Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance. There is no lack of possible mechanisms. What there is, is less fruitful progress in investigating them. – Dcleve Feb 10 '23 at 11:12
  • @Dcleve How are these "plausible mechanisms"? They would mean the mind was able to produce electric potentials of *at least* +20 mV out of thin air or by moving ions in a very specific locus. How? By magic? Telekinesis? Where does "the mind" get the energy for that from? There probably is no progress in investigation because they are not really plausible in the first place. Mind, I'm not a physicalist. I'd just state that neither mind talk nor science talk should claim anything beyond that they are pragmatically useful, mutually exclusive descriptions of or viewpoints on reality. – Philip Klöcking Feb 10 '23 at 15:12
  • @PhilipKlöcking -- this discussion I had with Steve Gubkin on psychokinesis, causal closure and energy conservation is relevant, in showing how interaction mechanisms can fit into current science. https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142739/discussion-between-steven-gubkin-and-dcleve Note empiricism operates with accepting as real, processes that we do not yet know the mechanism for -- the most obvious example is gravity. That dualists and idealists can propose/speculate about mechanisms, like Eccles and Sheldrake have, is what good science principles ask for. – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 16:52
  • German hermeticism. Hermetics. Meister Eckhart , Nicholas of Cusa. Etc. They had the answer – Gordon Feb 11 '23 at 18:13
  • @PhilipKlöcking Example: M Buber wrote his dissertation on Nicholas of Cusa. Internal relations. Everything related to everything. Physicist David Bohm extends to to entanglement/spooky action at a distance. Or David Bohm could have been influence by Hermetic in Hegel, Schelling. – Gordon Feb 11 '23 at 18:23
  • @PhilipKlocking Meister Eckhart has even better reflections on the topic of this question. – Gordon Feb 11 '23 at 18:25
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The key difference between matter-matter interactions and mind-matter interactions is that we have been able to discover governing relationships (eg Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, General Relativity etc) in connection with the former but not the latter, which as a consequence remains more baffling. We have also been able to reduce matter to a relatively small number of common building blocks, but we have yet to achieve the same kind of breakthrough in understanding the mind. More specifically, we cannot yet figure out exactly how mental processes are linked to physical ones in the brain, although we have plenty of evidence to show that they are linked in some way.

Marco Ocram
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    Is there even a consensus on what "mind" actually is? – Frank Feb 07 '23 at 17:03
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    @frank, no, if the answers on this site are to be believed! – Marco Ocram Feb 07 '23 at 20:03
  • I would say that the mind is the brain's ability to process *information*. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 06:33
  • @Frank: If you assume physicalism, the answer is "yes, but..." (type vs. token physicalism, functionalism, etc.). If you assume substance dualism, the answers get even weirder (epiphenomenalism vs. Cartesian dualism, for example). Property dualism takes the easy way out by reducing the "mind" to a mere property of the brain, but IMHO that's still unsatisfactory as a definition. I'm less familiar with idealism, but I would imagine that their definition is all-encompassing and doesn't need to be very elaborate, so maybe they have reached consensus at least? – Kevin Feb 09 '23 at 08:48
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Not everyone has an "inner monologue" or ability to vividly imagine things: this is known as aphantasia. At an imaginary-angled diagonal from that, there are also people who are pain-asymbolic, conscious of the raw qualia of pain but not its prescriptive "illocutionary force" (this would be like perceiving a patch of color, but not the patch-as-extended, but only the pure "quale" of the color, perhaps).

There is an epistemic possibility, then, that some people relate to their own minds in a primarily discursive rather than perceptual manner, as it were. This could inspire philosophical intuitions about the difficulty of harmonizing mind and matter in either direction: people with vivid phantasia/symbolia conditions might note yet that they seem able to cause inner representations at will, while external matter is more recalcitrant; on the flip side, some aphantasians might get the impression that their minds "just are" discursive/nonperceptual forces, and the lack of perceptual integration between the "faculty" of discursion and the faculty of material perception would seem to them as though it were an "unbridgeable gulf."

Of course, even more obversely, some phantasians/aphantasians might come to other conclusions based on the relevant strains of introspection (I personally, as a phantasian with a stereotypical "overactive imagination," find myself wondering how the mind couldn't be a form of matter, rather than how it could be).

But now there are options in cosmology/physics and related metaphysics where the interaction between types of matter "proper" is either noncausal-in-the-commonsense-manner (because the common concept of causation is suspect/suppressed), or "holographic", etc., so from the perspective of these options, either the question of one type of matter interacting with another isn't well-formed in the first place, or is perhaps just as mystifying as the question of a mental type of substance (as matter, maybe, e.g. as a "Rusakov field", though note that that hypothesis is actually a piece of a fictional setting) interacting with matter. In terms of quantum field theory, maybe the issue could be framed as a comparison/contrast between explaining how a primarily mental field couples to/decouples from the other fields, and explaining how those other fields couple/decouple to/from each other; we have some mathematical sense of how the hypothetical inflaton field dissolved in stages to become the multitude of elementary fields we now believe in, but so far no theory, really, of an elementary consciousness field, much less how such a thing might have "broken off" from the others at this date.

Addendum

In light of neurodiversity more broadly, consider the "argument from queerness" against "moral realism" (in a Platonic/Moorean sense). Mackie said that "objectively prescriptive realities" are too weird to be real in the "world as we know it" (although then Christine Korsgaard pointed out that the objective side of any human being's existence is tantamount to the existence of objectively prescriptive entities). But anything can seem weird if you're paranoid enough (just think of the epidemic in America of people being manipulated by a global death cult into fearing vaccines because "isn't it weird how people are dying suddenly?"; and they say many other things, mere coincidences betimes, are too weird to be coincidences (while they ignore, deliberately or not, the fact that the description "died suddenly" has been in operation for years and years on end, e.g. think of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

So one person might think it's weird that particles can be entangled, weird enough that the phenomenon merits being compared to something "spooky" no less. Another person might think the concept of God is really weird (and it can be), and wonder about how God can interact with a world so different from It. Another person might think the Big Bang was weird, or that the accelerating expansion of the universe is weird, or so on and on.

Kristian Berry
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    An autistic that have aphantasia said that his mind looks like bulbs system, when a bulb turn to light he understand what is this feel. But he can't to remember image of his wife - voice, face features. He never have inner vois monologue. Some people can have inner and have like kids out of loud monologue, some have dialogue, and more categories. But imagination and fantasia not same abilities. i thought about it and i found some cognitive 'limits', and yesterday i read in Plato's Timaeus close same: 35-36 about the soul creating - the soul structure can be it perception 'limits' – άνθρωπος Feb 08 '23 at 06:54
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So there's this supposedly an 'interaction' problem for substance dualism, that isn't there for physicalism or idealism. I've never understood this.

So as Hume pointed out, we see event a followed by event b. We don't see a link connecting event a and event b. We impute a cause-effect relationship to the two events.

Strict idealism and materialism, that is eliminative materialism and subjective idealism simply eliminate one of the categories so that interaction isn't a concern. There simply isn't the opposite to interact with. Interactionism, which starts with the two categories runs into the potential to run afoul of post hoc logic.

Mental Event 1 occurs. I think I should raise my hand.
Physical Event occurs. I raise my hand.
Mental Event 2 occurs. I think I have raised my hand.

One simply says, see, Mental Event 1 precedes Physical Event which precedes Mental Event 2. That's proof of cause! Except it isn't, because just because an event occurs before another event doesn't mean it causes it. This is the source of the reminder "Correlation isn't causation", and why mental causation (SEP) is controversial.

So, all one has to do is show that Mental Event 1 causes the Physical Event. This is the problem Descartes bumped up against, because brain events are not mind events, it's not possible to lump them in the same category. Even with the modern notion of neural correlates of consciousness, it's not possible to say that brain events cause mind events. The question is one of metaphysical necessity, and everyone and their brother has a proposed solution. Note, that it's a metaphysical problem, because tightly construed, the relationship is about the relationship of the physical to the non-physical.

And that is why many have problems with mind-matter-interaction: just how, following which laws, is this supposed to happen? How to differentiate properly between correlation and causation? - Philip Klöcking

This is why Philip K. is offering that there is no model for interaction. Unlike a physical-physical event, where we can say atoms do this or electromagnetic energy does that or the ribosome causes such and such, there's no consensus on how a thought which is intangible interacts with the hand. The reasonable thinker cannot deny the brain and mind are very strongly linked, but no one has yet garnered wide-spread support for how. Rene Descartes famously and simply said it happens in the pineal gland because God wills it, and was done. Modern philosophers, following Gilbert Ryle, tend to just proclaim it as a mistake of language use, that is, a category mistake. David Chalmers puts forward naturalistic dualism which leads to philosophical zombies. And most people on this board are probably capable of elaborating and defending their own take on the matter.

J D
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    "Mental Event 1 precedes Physical Event which precedes Mental Event 2. That's proof of cause! Except it isn't, because just because an event occurs before another event doesn't mean it causes it." So in the physical-physical case, how do we overcome this issue? – Ameet Sharma Feb 07 '23 at 19:26
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    Well, today, much physical causation is inferred from very strong cases of correlation, particularly with the use of [linear regression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression). As correlation approaches +1, correlation is taken to be causation. There are a number of techniques, and Judea Pearl has a [book on the statistical basis for inferring causation](https://books.google.com/books?id=f4nuexsNVZIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=judea+pearl+causation&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUirT3o4T9AhUZlIkEHQI5C9QQ6AF6BAgGEAI#v=onepage&q=judea%20pearl%20causation&f=false). – J D Feb 07 '23 at 20:47
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    So, 'correlation isn't causation' is cautionary, not absolute; the nature of physical causation itself. See both [The Metaphysics of Causation (SEP)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/) and [Probabilistic Causation (SEP)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-probabilistic/) for a good start. – J D Feb 07 '23 at 20:49
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    There is a massive correlative relation between my intention to move my hand, and my moving it. Wrist ties, sleep paralysis -- the rare exceptions generally require an explanation themselves. The correlation argument does not justify ANY questioning of mental causation. – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:23
  • @Dcleve The distinction between any correlation and causation is an argument to question any proclaimed relationship labeled as either. Mental causation may simply be folk psychology if epiphenomenalism holds true. Whatever your metaphilosophical preferences are, they don't dispel the general debate, and more importantly need for debate on mental causation, which is clearly not settled among the best and brightest philosophical thinkers. ; ) – J D Feb 11 '23 at 18:43
  • @JD I agree this is not settled among philosophers, who in the west at any rate have a plurality of physicalists It is also not settled among the small cadre of physicalist scientists who realize that physicalism is not compatible with mental causation. However, I submit that outside these two very small subsets of humanity, there is no question about the effectiveness of mental causation. That a particular minority ideological view is incompatible with experienced reality, is bad news for that ideology .... – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 19:14
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    I explored mental causation in more depth i a side discussion on another answer, and the discussion may be of interest to you: https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142739/discussion-between-steven-gubkin-and-dcleve – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 19:39
  • @Dcleve "I submit that outside these two very small subsets of humanity, there is no question about the effectiveness of mental causation." As it once was that slavery was right, the earth was flat, Euclidian geometry was objective fact about space, and time is independent of thought, none of which were actually settled by the popularity contest. But I'll read your thread. – J D Feb 11 '23 at 19:53
  • @JD -- How questions are "settled" is itself not settled... The best method we have for empirical questions is the consensus of the relevant experts in a subject. I suggest that pretty much every one of us is an expert in the causative power of our minds, hence the consensus of the rest of us, except for those devotees of one particular ideology who wish things were otherwise, is about as settled as we can get... ;-> – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 22:39
  • @Dcleve Sounds like you have a generous definition of expertise. Your definition of expertise seems either too broad to be a useful label. Expertise usually presumes some degree of conscious awareness, and if you've had conversation with people outside of this forum lately, you'd be aware that people as a general rule largely choose to remain unaware. If the knowledge-how and the knowledge-that of mental causation can be gauged by a metric provided by an operational definition (and it can), many people would flunk the exam. To master mental causation would seem to entail mastering choices. – J D Feb 11 '23 at 22:48
  • @JD -- The nature of expertise for any question is highly variable. For the color of grass, pretty much any adult who is not color blind is an expert. For anthropogenic global warming, only a tiny subset of climatologists are. Basically, we need reasonable people of good faith to be able to discuss the question, and then use their judgement. As you note, finding reasonable people of good faith may be a nonstarter out of the gate. – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 22:53
  • @Dcleve I'd argue that there is a superficial domain-specific element to informal reason in the same vein as Toulmin argued it in his *Uses of Argument* and Malcom Gladwell demonstrated by gather modern science in favor of the subconscious mind in *Blink*; but to conflate domain-specific expertise with a variable essence of expertise may be misplaced. All expertise has necessary conditions such as experience, knowledge-how, knowledge-that, a mastery of logical consequence, and an adequate vocabulary for instance. I taught for ten years, and all expertise can be measured in the same way. – J D Feb 11 '23 at 23:19
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    Someone who claims an expertise in mental causation and can't at least postulate what the mental is or what causation isn't, isn't an expert in mental causation. Insofar as people can behave successfully in a teleological capacity shouldn't count as evidence of expertise. Turtles cause change in the environment, and some people aren't that much more sophisticated than turtles. – J D Feb 11 '23 at 23:21
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I agree, the interaction problem is not unique to mind/body questions. For example, the original materialism posited everything was atoms colliding. However, now we know nothing collides, all particles interact via field effects. We have many very precise measurements of these fields, but what they actually are is a mystery. Same with gravity and quantum entanglement. It seems to me that interaction problems permeate the sciences, and that hasn't held back scientific progress in those areas. No reason then that the interaction problem should hold back using the concept of an irreducible mind, since it is so much easier to make sense of our reality by assuming the mind is a real thing and not an epiphenomenon of the brain.

yters
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    Yes, this is how empiricism works. We accept realities based on the success of the assumption. We THEN try to explore and puzzle out the "why" behind the reality, which we have not been able to make progress with so far with relative to mental causation. But the reality of mental causation is basically undeniable. – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 17:43
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Mind is software, the brain hardware. Back in 1973, when I used to write drivers for hardware on an HP2100 minicomputer, we had hardware instructions that wrote to devices and read from them (I/O operations): this was the basis of hardware/software interaction (hardware/hardware interaction was done by electric circuits).

We have no idea what the brain's I/O look like.

Simon Crase
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  • I think your analogy is slightly misleading. I see the mind as the *programmer* who decides everything that the hardware does. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 06:36
  • @PerttiRuismäki I don't see this as an analogy: the mind is _literally_ software. Moreover the programmer doesn't usually interact with the hardware, except in a trivial way: she presses keys on the keyboard, but there are many layers of software in between. – Simon Crase Feb 08 '23 at 07:18
  • What is the thing that decides what the human hardware does? It is the human mind. What is the thing that decides what the computer hardware does? It is the human mind again. Computers cannot write their programming by themselves. Human-written instructions are needed. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 07:59
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    "What is the thing that decides what the computer hardware does?" You must be more successful that me when it comes to staring at at a computer an willing it to do something. In my experience it all comes down to having the right software. – Simon Crase Feb 08 '23 at 08:10
  • Of course the human mind does not directly control the computer. The human mind only decides what the computer should do and writes these decisions in the software. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 08:31
  • "The human mind only decides what the computer should do and writes these decisions in the software." So how does the mind control the body IYHO? It writes these decisions in software? How does it achieve this magic, pray? And what is the software of the brain, if the mind is something different? – Simon Crase Feb 08 '23 at 08:38
  • The mind controls the body directly by controlling the muscle movements. Business as usual, nothing magical about that. There is no software to write when we control the muscles directly. However, there are subroutines (=skills) we can "write" (=learn), like walking and talking. Later, we don't have to decide every muscle move separately, we can just decide where to go and what to say. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 09:48
  • "The mind controls the body directly by controlling the muscle movements. " So the answer to "how" is "directly" IYHO? – Simon Crase Feb 08 '23 at 17:35
  • "Directly" does not tell us anything about how an idea is converted to an action. But we do control our muscles directly as opposed to how we control computers, indirectly by writing software. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 08 '23 at 18:17
  • @PerttiRuismäki "... does not tell us anything about how an idea is converted to an action" Precisely; it does not tell us anything. " But we do control our muscles directly..." Who is "we"? I (whoever that is) control my voluntary muscles, but only through my nervous system. When humans are born, they spend my first months learning to use their voluntary muscles, i.e. somehow their software writes itself. I am interested in understanding how this process works, not in mystical word play. – Simon Crase Feb 08 '23 at 20:48
  • Finally an empirically driven thought, @Simon I agree with you, and the "we human" part is the mystical aspect of consciousness, that is just humble to assume numinous. By the concepts of the materialistic viewpoint, we can only describe the mind-matter interaction through an exponential increase of complexity, that turns rapidly impracticable to our self-reflexive thoughts, hence the intellectual feeling of separation. – Alexandre Feb 24 '23 at 01:25
  • Isn't supervenience a thing to deal with the paradoxes resulting from causal mechanisms? But no ontological separation, really, between physical motion, organic life and spiritual consciousness. Just a continuous spectrum of the fabric "we" are made of. – Alexandre Feb 24 '23 at 01:34
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I am not sure if I have an answer as much as some considerations you can make about this topic.

Who saw the event A?

First I want to talk about what it means to observe events A and B. If the sun rises after a cold morning, the white frost on grass will start melting, like it does outside my window now. You'd infer that the warmth melts the ice. A person could make a claim that it was perhaps their thought of warmth that melts the ice, but is that something you have observed? You need to observe the events to investigate their relationship. I'd find it difficult to argue that one can be sure to be observing events in their own mind, let alone any other.

Does mind cause anything?

Another thing to consider is what you consider mind to matter interaction. If I chose to pick an apple, that was an event that my mind was very much involved in. And there is for sure very no inherent incredulity to it. Yet is not generally what you probably mean by mind to matter interaction. So clearly, the notion is not that there is inherent reason to think mind cannot cause things to happen.

Again, the incredulity is only present when there is no way to observe that anything within ones mind is even the cause of another event - or that it happened at all.

What even is a cause?

And with that, I will leave you with a puzzle of sorts.

A car is driving down a road. There is a stop sign at a crossroad and the car stops. Was it the sole of the driver's shoe, the drivers mind or perhaps the stop sign itself that stopped the car?

Tomáš Zato
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The interaction problem was brought to René Descartes' attention by his pupil, Princess Elisabeth. Her argument is that of all material phenomena heretofore observed, it has always been matter on matter and so how does mind and matter interact? HRH Elisabeth's point was that no one had ever seen mind affect matter and no, me being able to move my body is not an instance of mind-matter interaction because that would be beggin' the question - there's no solid proof that mind is immaterial.

A few centuries later ...

The law of conservation of energy aka The first law of thermodynamics becomes really, really important. All brain activity (thinking/feeling) can be fully explained within a physical framework i.e. there's no unexplained energy that needs to be accounted for, one way of doing that would be hypothesizing another nonphysical/immaterial source of the energy excess.

Agent Smith
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    Princess Elizabeth was a sharp cookie. BUT, her (and Descartes, and Leibniz's) model of causation requiring contact between solids -- has long been refuted by physics. We don't have a good replacement, so there is a degree of incoherence in our understanding of "cause", but the princess's objection is no longer valid physics. – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:38
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    Relative to conservation of energy, cosmologists have not been constrained by that for most of the last century. Both Inflation and the Steady State model violated it. See this PSE question and answer: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/494408/the-zero-energy-hypothesis-and-its-consequences-for-particle-creation-and-dualis – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:39
  • @Dcleve, I'm surprised to hear that. I'll need to update me files. Gracias. – Agent Smith Feb 09 '23 at 05:29
  • @AgentSmith, we don't need to change the energy content of a physical system to change it. A physical system can have an infinite number of possible configurations with the same total energy. So a mental event could just change the configuration of a physical system without any change in its energy content. We'd still have a violation of causal closure, but the energy conservation objection doesn't make much sense to me... Also QM leaves physical events underdetermined. This leaves room for mental causation without violating causal closure. I don't know if this is how it happens. – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 11:51
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The issue with trying to use science as described to tease out the rules of mind-matter interaction is collecting the data points of the mind. We have no measurement devices to take data like we do for matter. So we have no input for any equations. To cannot attempt to analyze and determine what the rules for interactions are. We have ? -> something we can measure.

Phycologists and neurobiologists are trying to use FMRIs to measure brain activity, and using people's own descriptions of what's going on in their mind to try to understand the potential mechanism of the arrow. So their studies will look like unverifiable description of what's going on in the mind -> measured brain activity

This is probably as close as anyone has gotten to analyzing how the mind can affect matter. However, these studies can only go off of the descriptions of what's going on in the mind, and as such cannot (yet) answer questions like "Is the mind separate from the brain?".

Eventually, it may be possible to have studied the brain so thoroughly that the mind can be fully explained via matter interactions. Or conversely, we may discover new "physics" that point to something that is not currently considered matter influencing what is currently considered matter. When physicists find systematic differences from the expected behavior, they will create new models and theories to explain those differences. At that point, the definition of what's "real" tends to expand. For example dark matter and dark energy are now considered real. So, it's possible that through advances in science, we'll add soul particles or something to our list of fundamental particles. For now however, there's insufficient data representing a deviation from the expected behavior to justify including soul particles as anything but a hypothetical.

Rick
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Put aside "how" matter influences matter.

The question is whether the laws of physics (as we know them) leave any room for "mind" to influence matter.

If you believe that mind can influence matter, then you should be able to devise an experiment where the act of willing something creates an effect which is currently unexplainable using physical laws.

For example, in a comment you speculate "QM leaves physical events underdetermined. This leaves room for mental causation without violating causal closure". While QM does leave physical events underdetermined, if "mind" is going to be able to selectively bias the statistical results in favor of one option over another, then we should be able to devise an experiment where we can see this statistical difference.

Everything we observe so far indicates that the laws we have discovered explain why things move the way they do with astounding levels of precision. The effect of the "mind" must be so minuscule as to cause changes which are so small that they fall below our current measurement capabilities. This seems like a "mind of the gaps".

If your version of the mind is compatible with physical laws, so that you do not believe that a mind will ever have an effect on matter which cannot already be explained using the physical laws, then I do not think you believe that mind can influence matter.

Steven Gubkin
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  • I'm not a physicist, so don't know the details. But why should an effect of mind "bias the statistical results" ? I mean it seems like there'd be an infinite number of ways to have a set of events that maintain the same statistics. I'll give a contrived example. Say someone is throwing a random die. The probability is 1/6 that he gets any particular number. He maintains the 1/6 statistics... however we see one or more patterns that indicate the guy is controlling which die comes up. Now this would be detectable if we knew what to look for, but a mere statistical analysis wouldn't be enough. – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 13:29
  • eg: Someone rolls out the digits of pi in sequence. This is obviously detectable, but a mere statistical analysis of the digits doesn't give you that information. – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 14:16
  • Another example... public key cryptography... again, I'm not expert... but I assume the data that is transmitted from sender to receiver appears pseudorandom on a statistical analysis. But obviously the data is meaningful. – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 14:33
  • @AmeetSharma If a person is controlling a die to make the output appear random while still ensuring that the outcome of the game moves in their favor, then we can certainly notice that and develop a test (especially if we have the cooperation of the person) to confirm it or deny it. Similarly if the mind is able to subtly influence the outcome of quantum observations so that they appear random, but in fact ensure particular outcomes (like your hand pushing a button) we have reason to suspect the game is rigged and can develop a test to confirm or deny that. – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 14:53
  • Say that we do this and find that mind IS able to influence matter. This will be a revolutionary discovery in physics, but then we will devote our attention to uncovering the underlying laws which govern minds and their influence over other forms of matter. For me the definition of "physical" is "anything which can interact with matter", which ultimately boils down to "we can rig things up to have this thing move a small dial which we can read a number off of". The laws predict how the numbers will come out. If the mind can influence matter, we can figure out how to make it move dials. – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 14:55
  • sure we can set up tests to detect that. But my point is... does this kind of influence violate current physical laws? QM states that certain statistics have to happen in experiments, but this kind of influence doesn't violate those statistics. This was a response to your claim that if mind is compatible with physical law "then I do not think you believe that mind can influence matter." – Ameet Sharma Feb 09 '23 at 15:02
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    @AmeetSharma I am not aware of any physical laws which your proposed mechanism would violate (but I am also mostly ignorant of QM). So, if you would like, set up such an experiment and see what results you get. My own strong hunch is that you will not get positive results. However, if you do it could be revolutionary: it would mean that we need new physical laws to explain a new observable phenomenon. – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 15:46
  • @StevenGubkin -- The experiments you suggest have been being conducted for nearly a century, and show statistically significant phenomenon can be reproduced. Here is a summary of the state of the evidence from the AAAS member society dedicated to the study of these possible phenomena. https://parapsych.org/articles/36/55/what_is_the_stateoftheevidence.aspx – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 17:04
  • @Dcleve I am sure I will not be able to convince you otherwise, but I strongly suspect that this research is bogus. If you can convince a researcher from outside the community to confirm these results that would be big news. However, I will note that "natural experiments" on telepathy are (in fact) built in to every other physics experiment. If people can telepathically move objects then every physics experiment would see measurements being influenced by the desires of the experimenter. In other words, no measurements would be reproducible. However, we do not see this. – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 17:15
  • For instance, different physicists had very different hopes with respect to the outcome of gravitational wave laser interferometer experiments. If the experimenter applied even a tiny psychic force to the mirrors this would produce gigantic errors. We do not see these mirrors ever moving spontaneously in a way which is inconsistent with known physics. – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 17:18
  • @StevenGubkin -- minor terminology correction -- telekinesis is treated as different from telepathy. In general, the parapsychic community uses better procedures than their peers in biology, medicine, and psychology, based on out-community skepticism and motivated experimental criticism. Parapsych for instance addressed publication bias and p-hacking in the 1980s, by their journals accepting replications, and non-significant results. This is best practice, and not yet present in any other science community. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 17:40
  • A sheep/goats effect, where skeptics get below null effects, and believers get above null, has been repeatedly found. One noteworthy experiment on "sense of being stared at" done collaboratively by two lead experimenters produced dramatically different results for each starer dependent on skepticism. In other fields -- all experimental education methods look great in trial programs. Is this experimenter effect psi skewing results? Possibly. Psi brings up a lot of peculiar possibilities. I don't know how this matrixes into your delicate setups in physics experiments. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 17:47
  • There is an organized skeptics movement, which in general rejects any psi or non-physicalist results. These organized skeptics have a history of deceit, and fudging of experiments, so take any of their claims with a bucket of salt: https://discord.org/lippard/kammann.html – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 17:50
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142739/discussion-between-steven-gubkin-and-dcleve). – Steven Gubkin Feb 09 '23 at 17:52
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I can see no problem with matter affecting mind. Our senses read and input information about the physical things around us. In our minds we build a mental model of our physical surroundings and deal with that.

But mind affecting matter is a little problematic. We know it happens, our minds do control our muscles, but we have no explanation or even a description for how this happens. Psychology tells us how we make decisions to act. Physiology tells us how the brain makes the muscles act. But we have no idea how the idea about an action is converted into neural signals controlling the muscles, how the mind changes the configuration of matter in the brain.

Pertti Ruismäki
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  • Both directions o mind/matter interaction are mysteries. The "hard problem of consciousness" is that even materialists face this interaction problem, and are currently stumped by it. – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:26
  • What is the problem with information input? – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 09 '23 at 04:49
  • How does inert matter create information, and then how is information accessed by mind? You now have added a matter/abstract interaction, then an abstract/mind interaction. How do any of them work? – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 06:01
  • @Dcleve Inert matter does not *create* information. Only minds can create information and that is the mind-to-matter problem. I have added nothing. You added the "abstract". I don't know why and I still don't know what is the problem with sensory input. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 09 '23 at 07:54
  • Information is not matter, so minds creating information is not a mind to matter issue. And "they just do it" is not a mechanism. I agree it is the case that "they just do it", but that is a different question. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 08:44
  • @Dcleve Information created in the mind is "written" on physical matter or energy. That makes it a mind-to-matter process where information shapes the physical reality. How this happens, we don't know. But the matter-to-mind process, where information is "read" from the physical world, I don't see any problem with that. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 09 '23 at 09:32
  • This remains within the unsolved hard problem of consciousness. Your intuitive "I don't see any problem" is not a mechanism. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 14:18
  • @Dcleve What mechanism are you talking about? You're supposed to tell me what is the problem? I cannot see any problem with the mind reading the information that senses bring in. – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 09 '23 at 15:45
  • The problem is: "How do things that are fundamentally different interact?" Good science seeks a mechanism, an explanation. "They just do" is true in this case, but still leaves the process a mystery. "I don't have any intuitive problem with that mystery" is not an answer to the mystery, but just appears to be a failure of imagination. I note you have asserted both that our sensory apparatus compile information, AND that our minds create it, which at first blush appear to be contradictory/confused -- which one could expect for an unexamined and invalid intuition. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 15:56
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142749/discussion-between-pertti-ruismaki-and-dcleve). – Pertti Ruismäki Feb 10 '23 at 04:44
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I was driving a car down the road and there was some crowd aside the road. Light reached my eyes at speed c, a matter-matter interaction. I 'saw' the crowd, analysed the situation in an instant of subconscious, matter-mind interaction. I applied brake and stopped, mind-matter interaction.

Human mind is fully inclusive of physical reality. And everything we can imagine is real as Picasso said. I think, therefore I am.

undead cat
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    Your brain did all the work. The mind just took credit. That doesnt seem fair. : ( – J D Feb 07 '23 at 23:54
  • That our minds interact with matter, in both directions, is basically undeniable for an empiricist. The only thing that is "problematic" is that physicalists assert a dogma "the causal closure of the physical" which does not allow what we experience to actually happen. Hence, for ideological reasons, they deny the obvious. – Dcleve Feb 08 '23 at 23:29
  • @Dcleve While some physicalists are dogmatic, others are merely skeptical of the ontologic distinction: as the mind seems to be interacting with and participating in the physical world, what does it even mean to say it is not a physical phenomenon? I feel this issue is driving the current enthusiasm, among those opposed to physicalism, for panpsychism, but it is not clear that it preserves the distinction. – sdenham Feb 10 '23 at 13:47
  • @sdenham, "what does it even mean to say it is not a physical phenomenon?" It means that mind cannot be described with the standard vocabulary of physics... descriptions of particles fields, mass, charge angular momentum. How can something like "understanding the pythagorean theorem" be reduced to physical events... or "seeing red". That's what's meant when philosophers say we can't reduce mental states to physical states. Now if the word "physical" is expanded to include new vocabulary that could adequately describe mental states, then it might make sense to say mental states are physical. – Ameet Sharma Feb 10 '23 at 16:07
  • @AmeetSharma This is the sort of thing that feeds into the skepticism of the ontologic distinction. You begin by defining physical phenomena as those that can be described with the _current_ vocabulary of physics, but you end by proposing that this vocabulary could change in the future, and perhaps in a way that would appear to both do away with the ontologic distinction and quite possibly establish that the mind presents no counterexample to the causal closure of the physical. – sdenham Feb 10 '23 at 21:43
  • @sdenham, I really don't understand. Are you saying that we should define anything that interacts with physical objects with the word "physical" ? That's fine with me. And then obviously by that definition everyone will say mental phenomena are physical except the epiphenomenalist. But that's just a semantic game. Words can mean whatever we want them to mean. – Ameet Sharma Feb 11 '23 at 01:00
  • @AmeetSharma Well, if, per Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty, words mean whatever we want them to mean, then we still have to come to an agreement about what they mean or else we cannot discuss anything. With that understood, we seem to be in agreement here - but note that my first comment here was in reply to one by Dcleve, which alleged that physicalism is founded on a particular dogma. Insofar as your latest reply seems to support what I was saying in that initial comment of mine, It is not clear to me that it is what Dcleve would say - though it would be fine if it was! – sdenham Feb 11 '23 at 01:44
  • @sdenham I had an extended discussion with Steve Gubkin about psychokinesis, and the causal closure of the physical, in which I made arguments in favor of the plausibility of psychokinesis, and against causal closure. Steve dropped out, but if you are interested, in dialog, please follow this link: https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142739/discussion-between-steven-gubkin-and-dcleve Note your extension of "physical" to include spiritual dualism is part of why Hempel's Dilemma is such a challenge for physicalists. There is no non-false way to define physical that excludes the spiritual. – Dcleve Feb 11 '23 at 16:58
  • @Dcleve This is somewhat tangential to what you were discussing there, but I have done so. – sdenham Feb 15 '23 at 21:05
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To enlarge upon the argument that there is no plausible mechanism for mind influencing matter, the study of the workings of the physical universe have placed extremely rigid constraints upon the dynamical form that any such mechanism might possibly take.

Those physical constraints definitively rule out whole realms of possible mechanisms, in the sense that if such a mechanism did indeed exist, that existence would necessarily require the breaking of physical and mathematical laws long known to be true and accurate.

niels nielsen
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  • Your claim that physics laws are unbreakable is very false. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.93.25.14256 All "laws" in physics are just descriptions of symmetry, and all symmetries spontaneously break. Physics laws are only regularities. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 05:58
  • @Dcleve, are you a physicist? Try breaking Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism. – niels nielsen Feb 09 '23 at 06:41
  • If you are certain that symmetries do not spontaneously break, and the gauge symmetry theory is incorrect, you are welcome to publish your insights. I will go with David Gross and his PNAS paper until then. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 07:15
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    @Dcleve You're off-topic, or in other words: balderdash. Physical laws "break" when you push them into areas where they couldn't be tested before. If "mind" was anything else than matter, that would mean that in your brain, reality diverts from those laws by orders of magnitude above our current error limit in an area where they have been thoroughly tested. In any area relevant to OP's questions, we know our physics to be correct == unbreakable. – Karl Feb 09 '23 at 08:54
  • @Karl Your claim is refuted by section 5 of the SEP article on scientific reduction: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/ Global reductionism has failed in many applications and is now rejected by all but a small minority in philosophy of science. Your belief that physics excludes mental agency was shared by all the contributors to "The Myth of an Afterlife" except for one, the editor, who consulted two physicists who both said "no". https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R10Z02T2ZEYPFY/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00UV3VFW8 – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 14:59
  • Niels -- regularities cannot be "broken at will", they are regularities. False dichotomy rationalizations, that "laws" must be absolute, or never apply, are fallacious thinking. – Dcleve Feb 09 '23 at 15:28
  • @Dcleve So you say that scientists shouldn't draw conclusions from their knowledge, because one of the principles of science is that current knowledge is not absolute eternal truth? ;) Well, that principle certainly looks cumbersome to some people, but not to scientist: we simply accept a fact when it presents itself, and in the meantime are content with sticking to what's reasonable. – Karl Feb 12 '23 at 11:45
  • @Karl -- Karl Popper noted that all empirical conclusions should be held tentatively, with the knowledge that further discoveries, (which might be insights in how to better interpret data, not just new data) could lead to overturning them. This is not an argument against drawing conclusions, nor against our having knowledge. But in favor of treating conclusions and knowledge as tentative rather than absolute. This is a radically pragmatic rather than analytical mindset. – Dcleve Feb 12 '23 at 16:41
  • @Karl If you want to engage in a discussion about whether dualist interaction is prohibited by physics principles, I have been arguing the "no" side on this comment's discussion: https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/142739/discussion-between-steven-gubkin-and-dcleve – Dcleve Feb 12 '23 at 16:44
  • @Dcleve This discussion is nonsense. There is no "dualism", there is physics we know, and some physics we don't know (dark matter et al. and a few arcane subatomic particles), but that area is generally regarded as irrelevant for the topic in question. And then there is Occams razor, which dictates that you should NOT wilfully invent new principles, and especially not *vague* principles like "mind interacts with matter", just because nature is slightly more complex than we would like it to be. (I'm totally fine with the complexity, but that's probably a matter of taste.) – Karl Feb 13 '23 at 21:39
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Thy mind hast cognitive limits, because psyhe serves as his (not an act or examine) but art tool. Plato in Timeus a part about psyhe structure.

We represent the world as a reflection picture, where thy mind is an artist, and psyhe is thy brush tool.

People have different psyches; it can be separated by an inner voice peculiar properties. All people have a different inner voice (or haven't) you can ask your familiars and friends - many have not the same as thine.

And it is not falsity - it is reflection, but thou must distinguish whose this reflection, thine or not thine. If it is not thy reflection and you make reflection at already reflected something - that mean thou hast falsified. But the real world is not false: it cannot lie, for the liar is only thyself.

All the false borders are inside thy mind, not in the real world.

J D
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άνθρωπος
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    No one uses them. But thy is your, thou is you, and thine is yours. 'Must' was used regularly in place of 'Have to', and 'hast' is second-person, not 'havest' Hochdeustch still uses 'hast' and 'mussen' – J D Feb 08 '23 at 14:38
  • thanks, i use and do mistakes) – άνθρωπος Feb 08 '23 at 14:48
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I feel this question tends to be too abstract. If I am interpreting it well, sounds as if Psychology was more engaging than Physics as the former implies sort of double-focusing.

In recent times, Psychology is leaving place to Neuropsychology which is a more fact-based science -- as the VERY weird fact is how ever we could accept a science that did not take in account its main Object!

To reply short, the main point is not really if Mind and the Universe were things apart. The main point (for a human being) is how much Mind is free to have insights on this Universe. Hope to touch your question.

user15249015
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    Welcome to SE. You raise some interesting points. But. It is very important to answer the question. It is perfectly OK to criticize it in a helpful way, but your critique is far too brief to be helpful. You need to explain why it is too abstract and why it is unimportant. But you seem to use that criticism to substitute your own question for the point that is under discussion. There may well be a good point here, but it needs a separate question. – Ludwig V Feb 11 '23 at 09:46
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I think the key thing here is that nothing is given easily to Mankind. There must be an Other. An opposition. A struggle. See: Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Glenn Alexander Magee. Free download at Internet Archive Community Texts. The book is about far more than Hegel.

See Nicholas of Cusa in book above. God creates with his mind alone. Whereas we create only images or ideas of things. God creates an actual world, we create a mental world, a world of ideas. We can, however, through physical labor, bring our ideas to fruition in reality with exactitude, through our use of mathematics. See book above.

I think Gauss, for one, would agree with this, as he literally labored in the physical world. He also possessed innate Gestalt. Sudden insight into the problem as a whole.

This idea of internal relations can also be seen in Nicholas of Cusa. Everything is related to everything else, as a Whole. This then can be extended much later to entanglement/spooky action at a distance. Here see perhaps David Bohm.

Gordon
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