Group Minds
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2005
This entry was motivated by an entry in psychocandy's journal that lead to an interesting discussion.
This is about the nature of 'mind'. This is an issue to which I've given a lot of thought and about which I've done a lot of reading. My contention is that there is more to 'minds' than could be discovered by just studying nerve cells, or studying human behaviour from the outside. I do *not* say that we cannot learn anything important by studying nerve cells or the workings of the brain, or by studying human behaviour from the outside. I *do* believe there is *also* much we can discover by means of introspection - trying to 'probe' our own minds from the inside, the *subjective* method, and trying to connect that with what we learn about minds from more supposedly *objective* methods.
My core beliefs about the nature of 'Mind' is based upon my own inner probing of my mind. But also, I've read a lot about similar things other people did. If it was just me, if these experiences were unique to myself, I would have given less credence to them. But I've come to realise that many other people also have similar experiences. This, to my view, is a way of 'corroborating' evidence: if other people, doing similar things, obtained similar results, it goes some way towards supporting those results.
Straight off the bat, here is an example:
http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/articlesN81+/N83Trasi_I.htm
I've read similar things many, many times. The 'Enlightenment' sought by very large numbers of people is the issue here. This 'enlightenment' consists in recognising the 'self' as nothing more than a temporary construct. However, simultaneously, there is a recognition of the 'deeper level' of awareness, the substrate upon which the 'self', the momentary 'I' is built. This to me is the 'Universal' mind, or the universal Mind-Field.
Please note I do *not* agree with everything for instance written in the link given above, or with the stuff said by many people who talk about 'Enlightenment'. There is a lot of nonsense said and I'm not now going to criticise everything and give reasons for my criticism ... rather I want to talk about the possibility of a Universal mind, or a Universal field of mind.
The term 'Field' denotes a phenomenon well known in physics. A 'field' is something that extends in space and that is a carrier of forces and/or qualities. The universal gravitational field, for instance, is a single field encompassing all of space, and is the sum total of the individual gravitational fields of all objects consisting of matter. We can talk about the gravitational field of the Earth, and the gravitational field of the Moon, for instance. But on Earth, every object has its own gravitational field as well. You and I each have tiny gravitational fields of our own, though these are very, very much smaller than that of the Earth! These fields can be calculated. They can be conceived as if they really exist. But in reality, they do not exist in isolation. What exists is the Universal Gravitational Field and this is a single field - one, not many. Fields can do that - many fields can overlap with another and 'merge' to form a single field. Fields are 'holistic'. This 'holism' of fields is important when we come to minds.
Why talk about 'fields' of Mind at all? Cannot mental phenomena be adequately described and explained without making any reference to 'fields'?
To me there is first and foremost a single - but enormously compelling - reason for postulating fields, and that is the *holistic nature* of the human mind and of mental experiences. I experience my own mind as being a *single* mind and in many experiences there is a kind of 'singleness' of the experience. When I look at a picture, for instance, I see a single picture, even though it can be analysed into many different elements. These elements are connected together in a way that is inexplicable without the concept of a field. We talk about a field of vision after all. When we look at what happens in the brain and nervous system, we see that there is a lot of processing going on at a lot of different levels. The light coming into the eyes gets recorded and analysed in the cells of the eye already and from there on this processed content is sent to various groups of cells in the brain, and in fact a lot of *separate* representations of 'what is seen' are formed. Yet, all of these seperate representations are somehow combined into just a single 'image' that somehow appears before the 'mind's eye'. We do not see the separate elements constituting this image in isolation from each other - they are all connected in a way that their relations to each other can be seen as well. Despite the fact that our eyes only see two-dimensional images, the 'reality' that we see appears to be three-dimensional, just the way that we suppose 'reality' itself really is. If we conceive of a specific 'field' that includes the various visual elements, we have a solution to the problem: this 'field' can be extended in the manner of a space, and the visual elements can be arranged over this space to form a pattern corresponding to what is seen. This pattern needs not correspond exactly to what is in front of the viewer's eyes. We do not in fact 'see' everything that is registered by our eyes. What we see depends on what we are looking for and what sort of things we're paying attention to. But the *nature* of what we see - irrespective of what we may be seeing - is that of an 'image' with two-dimensional and three-dimensional components, and that can be taken in by the 'mind's eye' at a single glance.
I am fairly certain that any kind of experience where there is a sense of place, or space, would need to be based on the existence of some sort of field, representing a kind of space within which elements can have a specific place, that can be 'found' by comparing its location relative to other locations in the 'space'. The spatial relationships of elements can then form an 'image', or a 'pattern'.
Just to make it very clear, consider the image on a computer monitor. My own monitor has a screen with 1024 lines of pixels each 1280 pixels wide. All in all there are about 1.3 million pixels. These form a two-dimensional 'field' which right now is displaying a pattern of mainly black-and-white pixels mainly constituting a large part of the document I'm writing. This image is perceived *not* as 1.3 million distinct pixels ... instead, they are perceived as constituting meaningful wholes within wholes ... arrangements of black (actually, unlit) and white pixels that form black letters on a white background; the letters form words, the words form sentences, the sentences form a rather large and complex document, and the visual system of the mind extracts meanings from these at various different levels. If these 1.3 million pixels were taken out of their two-dimensional configuration and displayed to me as a single line, they would no longer constitute this image, and would convey no visual information to me any more. As it is the computer monitor arranges these pixels into a two-dimensional field within which the relationships of the pixels are such that they form a pattern/patterns that is meaningful and conveys visual information to me. (Interestingly, because the 'picture' I see is in the form of written words, it conveys a lot of non-visual information as well!)
(This example is actually quite complex since the image displayed on my computer screen right now can actually not be 'seen' in its entirety in an instant ... in every instant only a part of it can be seen, but nevertheless my mind can seamlessly combine the various momentary 'partial' images into the 'visual concept' that the computer screen is displaying an image of what I'm writing.)
A field would also be needed for any kind of experience where several separate 'elements' are combined into a single kind of experience. The sense of being a single conscious 'self' is an example. When a person is aware and attentive to what is happening around him or her, lots of stimuli are coming into that person's consciousness. Also that person might be simultaneously having thoughts and desires, and performing actions. Without great difficulty the person might be simultaneously aware of all these different experiences - seeing things, hearing things, smellin/tasting things, hearing things, thinking things, desiring things, and doing things - and yet, all of these experiences are experienced as if they were experienced by a *single* awareness, a single self, single mind, single person, that is aware of *all* of them, *all* of them being simultaneously there in the awareness, a single awareness being aware of them all.
Once again a field can be used as a device for clarifying this. The conscious awareness of a person can be seen as a single field, a kind of space with different regions or subspaces comprising it. There can be a space for sensory input, another space for thoughts and contemplations, another space for needs and desires, another space for deliberate actions. So, different things can be happening in these different subspaces, but there will be a single field of awareness that encompasses all of them, binds them together into a singleness or wholeness of experience.
To briefly summarise these two elements of a field:
1) It forms or extends into a kind of space, so that each element in this space each has a certain spatial relationship to each other element.
2) Its parts are connected or related to each other, or combine or overlap with each other, to form wholes.
In talking of a field as forming a 'space' I want to mention two things: this concept of 'space' can be literal physical space, or it can be a kind of 'conceptual' space. The 'field of vision' may be a literal region in physical space, where concrete elements are arranged in a phyisical spatial pattern. Or otherwise it may be a 'conceptual' region, with elements with relationships that *correspond* in some way to elements with relationships in physical space. Right now I cannot say for sure whether the various 'fields' I'm talking about are actuall physical fields in some real space, or whether they belong to a different, conceptual realm. It doesn't actually matter with regard to the concept of a 'field', though, since in either case, the 'field' is necessary as being the whole that connects the pieces together so that there could be a kind of literal or conceptual relationship of the various parts with each other. Otherwise there will only be a sequence of elements, not an image or a pattern.
Fields other than the visual field, may or may not have the attribute of extension in physical space. Apart from space, time may also be involved: fields can relate events in time as well as space. There may be some fields that are somehow unconnected to physical time and physical space, but, instead, relate things in a kind of conceptual space. They still have the attribute of relating and connecting things.
One more property of a field is that it 'carries' something, or 'mediates' something. Gravitational, or electromagnetic fields, are fields of forces: at every spatial point in such a field there will be found a force with a certain strength operating in a certain direction. Gravitational fields mediate the gravitational force, and electromagnetic fields mediate electromagnetic forces. Fields are also associated with the small-scale weak and strong nuclear forces. Even particles of matter can also be seen as fields - 'matter' fields, of quantum probability waves. These same fields can also be said to carry or contain energy. (According to Einstein, matter and energy are indeed equivalent, or two manifestations of the same thing.) When talking of mind fields, these fields will mostly be seen as carrying not forces, but information, and/or 'qualities'. These 'qualities' are usually attached to bits of information to give them meaning. These 'qualities' are usually called 'qualia' and I'll have a lot more to say about them. I intend to do that in a separate entry headed 'Qualia' though. So mental fields carry information and qualia. I will argue at some point that they can also carry something corresponding to forces - 'influences' - and a certain kind of 'energy'. Yet these 'forces' and 'energies' may not at all be the same sort of thing as physical forces and energies as conceived in physics and chemistry. Many people use the word 'energy' much too freely, in my view, when it comes to these matters.
This is about the nature of 'mind'. This is an issue to which I've given a lot of thought and about which I've done a lot of reading. My contention is that there is more to 'minds' than could be discovered by just studying nerve cells, or studying human behaviour from the outside. I do *not* say that we cannot learn anything important by studying nerve cells or the workings of the brain, or by studying human behaviour from the outside. I *do* believe there is *also* much we can discover by means of introspection - trying to 'probe' our own minds from the inside, the *subjective* method, and trying to connect that with what we learn about minds from more supposedly *objective* methods.
My core beliefs about the nature of 'Mind' is based upon my own inner probing of my mind. But also, I've read a lot about similar things other people did. If it was just me, if these experiences were unique to myself, I would have given less credence to them. But I've come to realise that many other people also have similar experiences. This, to my view, is a way of 'corroborating' evidence: if other people, doing similar things, obtained similar results, it goes some way towards supporting those results.
Straight off the bat, here is an example:
http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/articlesN81+/N83Trasi_I.htm
I've read similar things many, many times. The 'Enlightenment' sought by very large numbers of people is the issue here. This 'enlightenment' consists in recognising the 'self' as nothing more than a temporary construct. However, simultaneously, there is a recognition of the 'deeper level' of awareness, the substrate upon which the 'self', the momentary 'I' is built. This to me is the 'Universal' mind, or the universal Mind-Field.
Please note I do *not* agree with everything for instance written in the link given above, or with the stuff said by many people who talk about 'Enlightenment'. There is a lot of nonsense said and I'm not now going to criticise everything and give reasons for my criticism ... rather I want to talk about the possibility of a Universal mind, or a Universal field of mind.
The term 'Field' denotes a phenomenon well known in physics. A 'field' is something that extends in space and that is a carrier of forces and/or qualities. The universal gravitational field, for instance, is a single field encompassing all of space, and is the sum total of the individual gravitational fields of all objects consisting of matter. We can talk about the gravitational field of the Earth, and the gravitational field of the Moon, for instance. But on Earth, every object has its own gravitational field as well. You and I each have tiny gravitational fields of our own, though these are very, very much smaller than that of the Earth! These fields can be calculated. They can be conceived as if they really exist. But in reality, they do not exist in isolation. What exists is the Universal Gravitational Field and this is a single field - one, not many. Fields can do that - many fields can overlap with another and 'merge' to form a single field. Fields are 'holistic'. This 'holism' of fields is important when we come to minds.
Why talk about 'fields' of Mind at all? Cannot mental phenomena be adequately described and explained without making any reference to 'fields'?
To me there is first and foremost a single - but enormously compelling - reason for postulating fields, and that is the *holistic nature* of the human mind and of mental experiences. I experience my own mind as being a *single* mind and in many experiences there is a kind of 'singleness' of the experience. When I look at a picture, for instance, I see a single picture, even though it can be analysed into many different elements. These elements are connected together in a way that is inexplicable without the concept of a field. We talk about a field of vision after all. When we look at what happens in the brain and nervous system, we see that there is a lot of processing going on at a lot of different levels. The light coming into the eyes gets recorded and analysed in the cells of the eye already and from there on this processed content is sent to various groups of cells in the brain, and in fact a lot of *separate* representations of 'what is seen' are formed. Yet, all of these seperate representations are somehow combined into just a single 'image' that somehow appears before the 'mind's eye'. We do not see the separate elements constituting this image in isolation from each other - they are all connected in a way that their relations to each other can be seen as well. Despite the fact that our eyes only see two-dimensional images, the 'reality' that we see appears to be three-dimensional, just the way that we suppose 'reality' itself really is. If we conceive of a specific 'field' that includes the various visual elements, we have a solution to the problem: this 'field' can be extended in the manner of a space, and the visual elements can be arranged over this space to form a pattern corresponding to what is seen. This pattern needs not correspond exactly to what is in front of the viewer's eyes. We do not in fact 'see' everything that is registered by our eyes. What we see depends on what we are looking for and what sort of things we're paying attention to. But the *nature* of what we see - irrespective of what we may be seeing - is that of an 'image' with two-dimensional and three-dimensional components, and that can be taken in by the 'mind's eye' at a single glance.
I am fairly certain that any kind of experience where there is a sense of place, or space, would need to be based on the existence of some sort of field, representing a kind of space within which elements can have a specific place, that can be 'found' by comparing its location relative to other locations in the 'space'. The spatial relationships of elements can then form an 'image', or a 'pattern'.
Just to make it very clear, consider the image on a computer monitor. My own monitor has a screen with 1024 lines of pixels each 1280 pixels wide. All in all there are about 1.3 million pixels. These form a two-dimensional 'field' which right now is displaying a pattern of mainly black-and-white pixels mainly constituting a large part of the document I'm writing. This image is perceived *not* as 1.3 million distinct pixels ... instead, they are perceived as constituting meaningful wholes within wholes ... arrangements of black (actually, unlit) and white pixels that form black letters on a white background; the letters form words, the words form sentences, the sentences form a rather large and complex document, and the visual system of the mind extracts meanings from these at various different levels. If these 1.3 million pixels were taken out of their two-dimensional configuration and displayed to me as a single line, they would no longer constitute this image, and would convey no visual information to me any more. As it is the computer monitor arranges these pixels into a two-dimensional field within which the relationships of the pixels are such that they form a pattern/patterns that is meaningful and conveys visual information to me. (Interestingly, because the 'picture' I see is in the form of written words, it conveys a lot of non-visual information as well!)
(This example is actually quite complex since the image displayed on my computer screen right now can actually not be 'seen' in its entirety in an instant ... in every instant only a part of it can be seen, but nevertheless my mind can seamlessly combine the various momentary 'partial' images into the 'visual concept' that the computer screen is displaying an image of what I'm writing.)
A field would also be needed for any kind of experience where several separate 'elements' are combined into a single kind of experience. The sense of being a single conscious 'self' is an example. When a person is aware and attentive to what is happening around him or her, lots of stimuli are coming into that person's consciousness. Also that person might be simultaneously having thoughts and desires, and performing actions. Without great difficulty the person might be simultaneously aware of all these different experiences - seeing things, hearing things, smellin/tasting things, hearing things, thinking things, desiring things, and doing things - and yet, all of these experiences are experienced as if they were experienced by a *single* awareness, a single self, single mind, single person, that is aware of *all* of them, *all* of them being simultaneously there in the awareness, a single awareness being aware of them all.
Once again a field can be used as a device for clarifying this. The conscious awareness of a person can be seen as a single field, a kind of space with different regions or subspaces comprising it. There can be a space for sensory input, another space for thoughts and contemplations, another space for needs and desires, another space for deliberate actions. So, different things can be happening in these different subspaces, but there will be a single field of awareness that encompasses all of them, binds them together into a singleness or wholeness of experience.
To briefly summarise these two elements of a field:
1) It forms or extends into a kind of space, so that each element in this space each has a certain spatial relationship to each other element.
2) Its parts are connected or related to each other, or combine or overlap with each other, to form wholes.
In talking of a field as forming a 'space' I want to mention two things: this concept of 'space' can be literal physical space, or it can be a kind of 'conceptual' space. The 'field of vision' may be a literal region in physical space, where concrete elements are arranged in a phyisical spatial pattern. Or otherwise it may be a 'conceptual' region, with elements with relationships that *correspond* in some way to elements with relationships in physical space. Right now I cannot say for sure whether the various 'fields' I'm talking about are actuall physical fields in some real space, or whether they belong to a different, conceptual realm. It doesn't actually matter with regard to the concept of a 'field', though, since in either case, the 'field' is necessary as being the whole that connects the pieces together so that there could be a kind of literal or conceptual relationship of the various parts with each other. Otherwise there will only be a sequence of elements, not an image or a pattern.
Fields other than the visual field, may or may not have the attribute of extension in physical space. Apart from space, time may also be involved: fields can relate events in time as well as space. There may be some fields that are somehow unconnected to physical time and physical space, but, instead, relate things in a kind of conceptual space. They still have the attribute of relating and connecting things.
One more property of a field is that it 'carries' something, or 'mediates' something. Gravitational, or electromagnetic fields, are fields of forces: at every spatial point in such a field there will be found a force with a certain strength operating in a certain direction. Gravitational fields mediate the gravitational force, and electromagnetic fields mediate electromagnetic forces. Fields are also associated with the small-scale weak and strong nuclear forces. Even particles of matter can also be seen as fields - 'matter' fields, of quantum probability waves. These same fields can also be said to carry or contain energy. (According to Einstein, matter and energy are indeed equivalent, or two manifestations of the same thing.) When talking of mind fields, these fields will mostly be seen as carrying not forces, but information, and/or 'qualities'. These 'qualities' are usually attached to bits of information to give them meaning. These 'qualities' are usually called 'qualia' and I'll have a lot more to say about them. I intend to do that in a separate entry headed 'Qualia' though. So mental fields carry information and qualia. I will argue at some point that they can also carry something corresponding to forces - 'influences' - and a certain kind of 'energy'. Yet these 'forces' and 'energies' may not at all be the same sort of thing as physical forces and energies as conceived in physics and chemistry. Many people use the word 'energy' much too freely, in my view, when it comes to these matters.
