Mind-Stuff

Our thoughts and feelings, our sensations and memories, are the only medium we have for knowing the world. But what is it that we know? Is it the world? Or is it our thoughts and feelings, sensations and memories of the world?

It is the latter.

How we know is what we know.

Therein lies a problem. For it means that we never actually know the world. We know only mind-stuff which simulates the world via sensations and meanings. These stand in for the world. They are not actually the world.

The arm of my wooden chair feels hard. But hardness is an experience my body/brain creates; it is of me, not of the chair.

Again, I see the wooden arm of the chair. But vision is something my body/brain creates, it is not something of the chair.

Even the photons my body samples in order to construct my vision of the chair, they are not of the chair. The photons are particles striking my retina after “bouncing off” the chair; they are not the chair that I see.

This tells us that the chair I see is a construction created by my brain from a sampling of photons.

So what does the “real” chair look like?

Answer: it doesn’t have a look.

Is the wooden arm of the chair “hard” in reality?

Answer: it doesn’t have a hardness or softness or any such property. Hardness and softness and all like properties are creations of a brain.

All sensations created by the brain are computational in nature, composed of objects with properties and information which can be sliced and diced. Thus our brains provide us with a simulation of the world which is “knowable.”

Indeed, we can’t “know” anything which is not simulation for this precise reason.

As soon as we try to say what the physical world is, we can’t avoid talking about it as we understand it. And understanding is mind-stuff.

If we use terms like matter-energy, or talk about atoms and molecules, or resort to mathematical formulas like E=MC2, we are talking about our understandings, our meanings and thoughts about it, not it.

The supernatural worldview is based precisely on this conflation of our understanding of the world with the world. It tricks us into thinking that our understanding of the world—or rather, some future perfect understanding of the world—unveils the nature of the world.

In other words, the nature of the world is the same as an understanding of the world; thus behind all is mind-stuff. This is the key assumption of supernaturalism.

It is also a prime example of the naive observer fallacy.1

This confusion between what we know or experience, and the subject of that knowledge and experience, pervades everything—if we are not careful—including physics. For example, it’s common in physics to conflate light and photons. It’s also common to conflate time and change. But light and time require an observer; that is, they require us. Or something like us—God—to be present as an observer.

Behind the error of conflating photons and light lies the supernatural myth that physical stuff is inherently experienceable. That, for example, photons and light are two sides of the same coin. But this can only be true if observers have always existed—i.e., if supernaturalism is true.

If we can’t clarify our thoughts and disentangle these common conflations, then we will be incapable of imagining a viable alternative to supernaturalism. As long as we remain naive observers, confusing our mind-stuff with the world, we will remain naive and blind supernaturalists.

But why should we suspect that mind-stuff belongs on a separate side of the ledger from physical stuff? Why should we think that conflating our experiences and knowings of the world with the world is somehow a mistake?

The answer goes back to Darwin and natural selection as a driver for the origin of species. If organisms have a history over which they gradually develop, it suggests the possibility that at some time in the past, before organisms had brains, they did not have minds. It suggests the possibility, in other words, that once upon a time mind-stuff did not exist; it suggests that at some later date mind-stuff came into existence as more complex organisms developed and evolved.

Suddenly we have the possibility of naturalism rather than supernaturalism.

Now, we could close our eyes and cover our ears and refuse to consider this possibility. Or we could investigate it and try to figure out whether or not it’s feasible.

If we are brave enough to engage in this second option, the very first thing we must do is carefully separate mind-stuff from non-mind stuff (the stuff that was before mind stuff evolved into existence). If this can’t be done coherently, there is a problem with the entire proposition.

Turns out, it can be done coherently. That’s what this is about.

What is non-mind stuff, if our understanding of it isn’t it. Perhaps we can’t say what it is, but we can say what it’s not.

It’s not mind-stuff.

It’s not what we know or understand it to be.

It’s not whatever we conceive it to be.

It’s not our experiences of it. Not what we see or hear or smell or taste or touch. Or think.

Yet it is out there, an observer-independent reality. All around us, which we live within. And are part of.

It’s distinct from our perceptions, conceptions and thoughts of it.

Not mind-stuff.

The common term we use for it is physical. But all this really means is that it’s not mind-stuff.

Immediately this raises a concern. How can science be successful if scientific knowledge is just a stand-in for the physical not-mind-stuff reality?

The answer is empiricism.

We find ourselves constantly testing our perceptions, conceptions and thoughts about it against it. And then we modify our perceptions, conceptions and thoughts. We modify the experiential/mental stand-in to better fit the physical not-mind-stuff reality next time.

This is the scientific method, but it’s also pretty much a method all of us have had to adopt from birth onward. We learn as we go, modifying our understanding of the world so we’ll have better results next time.

Because we are organisms living within this physical whatever-it-is, we can readily test as we go about our lives.

And we do.