“You damage a part of the brain, and the mind suffers in corresponding ways.”
This poses a lovely challenge to the idea which says your mind is an abstract entity which should continue to function properly outside of the space-time of a damaged brain. Our mind, whether physicalist or abstract, continuously reveals the condition of itself through its s/t manifestation, our personality, with its spoken report and bodily gesturing, a personality which functions anything but properly under certain types of brain damage like, for example, a dementia. According to the idea, the sufferer’s damaged personality does not necessarily support a physicalist s/t, brain-centered mind. Rather, the working of a fully abstract mind (its thoughts, cognition) is the result of a two-stage process of rational and irrational meanings where the second stage makes use of your body to provide significance (the emotion) for the earlier rational meaning. So, in the case of a damaged brain, structurally altered through dementia, here’s what would initially happen: Once the sufferer’s mind has acquired the first, or rational meaning from the background for some initial simulation (such as, let’s say, the visit of a friend or loved one), the Vi of their MTN blends, as only it can, with the most likely grains whose measured properties then collapse to the brain whose emergent activity reflects the rational meaning of the stimulation. This activity works its way down into the body where it brings about motions. If the brain has been damaged, the path of activity could be abnormal, incorrect, or inaccurate, bringing about the wrong physical feelings (motions). These bodily motions, as usual, further alter the brain’s activity but, again, inaccurately. The compounded abnormal brain activity for the original stimulation is now updated to the Vi and its mind will resonate, as only it can, with an irrational meaning for the wrong motions! This second meaning is the significance, normally an emotion of pleasure upon our visitor’s presence. But now it is the wrong significance. The sufferer behaves in an unexpectedly inappropriate manner and the trajectory of their cognition devolves as the completed thought now becomes the stimulation for further thoughts and ill expressions of the sufferer’s personality which will seem increasingly inapt to others. This is just a hunch as to how a damaged brain/mind correspondence might work in an abstract mind model.
The work of Benjamin Libet is another example, but of healthy physical brain/abstract mind correspondence. The experiments record a delayed conscious acknowledgement of a previous decision to move your hand by 2 or 3 tenths of a second which seems, about right to be efficient yet unnoticeable to our cognition. My idea would explain the subject’s delayed acknowledgement of their decision to move (the completed thought) as having been completed, as described, only after the acquisition of an emotion, or significance for the unconscious, rational decision to move. According to the idea, no matter the insignificance of such an event, every thought needs significance to be complete and, strangely, while the significance of an emotion is purely abstract, your material body is required for its acquisition. Without it, rational meaning alone will not yield an experience.
I’m curious if some types of anesthesia (of which I know nothing) employ a method which supports the rational/irrational process of an abstract mind whereby such anesthesia allows the conscious rational perception of, for example, a painful surgical stimulation but prohibits the resultant MTN activity to work its way back into the body, as described, to bring about the irrational significance of a painful stimulation and complete the thought of pain—that is, this particular mechanism alternative to other anesthesia which simply puts you to sleep.
Somewhat unrelated but interesting is a further phenomena explained by this idea. A puzzling connection can exist between fully separated objects and their unitary behavior with unseen intercommunication in cases where the group of objects forms one coherent object which evolves, according to the idea, by means of its own Vi. Examples of such objects include the individual bees of a community, or hive, the ants of a colony, the inter-communicative roots of separated trees, certain fields of inter-communicative mushrooms, and my favorite, entangled particles. An entangled particle pair is a the coherent object with its own Vi, of course; an abstraction throughout the background which can only but collapse both particles simultaneously, effortlessly, despite any s/t separation.
“What’s the difference between an immaterial background and nothing at all? What would make this background conscious?”
I don’t think there is a difference (immaterial = nothing), and I’m not sure that anything would make “nothing” conscious. But the “immaterial reality of an abstract background” . . . that’s different. I think that’s a “something.” But, perhaps, there’s some confusion:
“How can anything leave an “impression" on an abstract, immaterial background?”
Okay, what do you think of the logic here:
1.) True abstraction is immaterial. Certainly, abstraction is not a thing, but it is “something” in the abstract sense. My thinking is that abstraction, if it exists at all, is always an idea, and an idea, any idea, is always an awareness.
2.) A quantized space-time requires a non-spacial background between its grains, and a non-temporal pause between its moments.
3.) Although it could just as well be nothing and honor Occam’s razor, I think that our background is abstract because abstraction exists: We can’t rely upon the assumed abstraction of personal experience as evidence of an extant abstraction since it is the subject of ongoing investigation but, mercifully!, we do have the impersonal abstraction of math, physics, particle prosperities, and laws of nature. That is, we have ideas which truly exist and which have nothing to do with brained creatures. The moon, for example, has been orbiting Earth according to real-yet-immaterial ideas since long before anyone was here to experience or describe them. Abstraction (awareness) cannot exist in s/t so the the perfect “place,” the only place, is the background of a QS.
4.) This means that discrete objects which evolve in grains of a QS exist within a background of awareness . . . and that means an inevitable idea of their states (a “vibrational” idea) must exist for each object.
That is, if quantized space and the reality of abstraction do not exist, this idea, with its brain/mind mechanism, must be wrong.
“How could immaterial consciousness work out probabilities?” “Would this background have a personality?”
I don’t think of consciousness as some entity with a personality who works things out. I think probability, for example, is just an idea, an awareness of how things should evolve in s/t. As an idea, it’s contained within the Vi of every object including that of your MTN. It’s the Vi “who” works it out, whose abstraction blends with that of the most likely grains based upon the probability it contains. As a result, the properties of those grains get measured values and collapse.
“Is it male or female?”
It’s a girl. Um, no, it’s probably beyond gender. (?)
“Are all of its thoughts bound by its interactions with quantized states and brains? If so, . . . ”
Yes, and I think that’s how “it” came about (much more on this…). But that word, “consciousness,” it can give us a wrong notion. I think of “its” thoughts as our collected thoughts, and I think of the collection simply as an aware property or state of the background itself, a non-spacial realm of awareness between grains of potential s/t. I do not think of consciousness as a person-like entity with its own aspirations, regrets, ability to set wrongs right, or any other agency than to evolve s/t, to collapse grains down to discrete bits of matter and energy . . . although, well, here’s a problem: It does seem to have a conscience simply because I see that in us. Where would that come from? Now we need a theologian !
