sinribbon asked: As for the vegetative state, the brain cannot support the body, and the individual is put on life support. I don't think it can be deduced whether the mind remains or doesn't. Perhaps the vessel, i.e. the brain and body, the mind uses is simply too damaged to communicate. Perhaps the mind has left. Perhaps the mind has died. Is brain damage synonymous with death of the mind?

Why don’t you think it can be deduced?

I think it’s premature to say that it can’t — maybe not currently, maybe not with our technology or within our paradigm as is… but there’s no reason to believe it’s impossible.

Besides that, the idea of “the vessel” is one I deeply dislike — it falls under Cartesian Dualism. Now that we’re just barely beginning to have a better understanding of how we’re made and how we “work”, I don’t see the vessel idea as a useful one to proceed with, versus the “integrated system” idea, meaning that the body can be understood as one system, in which the mind is included.

The system idea comes [to me] from modern physics, foremost. From that science, we’re understanding that phenomena that are sensed by us are actually comprised of tiny somethings and the motions and patterns of those “things”. From the subatomic comes the atomic, the chemical, the biological, and the macroscopic world we “see” — basically in that order. In that model, all things are systems of interactions, and those interactions cause them to be.

Following that, not only are mind & brain synonymous, but mind and whole body. There are some futurist ideas about uploading the mind, but each of our minds is the manifestation of the particular arrangement of our body/brain which is a Whole… to try to put that “consciousness” into a different “shell” will, I think, change the “consciousness” itself. (Simply, and I could be wrong, I don’t think “you” would be “you” in a different body/shell/vessel/etc.)

A useful metaphor can be a computer — the physical state is the “body” and the OS & software are manifestations of those physical states into a mostly-visual experience. Without the physical materials there to organize a code of 0’s and 1’s, the OS is nonexistent.

Or even simpler: Lego bricks. If neurons, synapses, etc. — the brain — is like a set of Legos, then scattered they are “nothing”, a “mess”, etc. We don’t see any images until they’re arranged. The arrangement, then, (whatever that may be, abstract or a ship — it makes no difference), is the mind. I’d say that the vegetative mind is simply in a state of disorder (or, even abstract arrangement — what seems to be disorder for us who expect a certain kind of order for something to be recognized as a mind or alive, etc.). Not being a neurologist nor an expert on consciousness, I can’t say for sure… but for now I’d say yes, brain damage is synonymous with mind damage, regardless of whether that’s something we’d like to believe about our loved ones.

Similarly:

“We should remember that a picture — before being a war horse, a nude woman, or telling some story — is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a particular pattern.”
— { Maurice Denis: “Definition of Neo-Traditionalism” }.


It’s hard for me to explain this concisely — the best I can do for the moment is provide you with a bibliography of the sources that my ideas, about this topic and about the System in general, were inspired by. Many of those sources can be found here: { The Operating System } (v1) and { here }.

And this link:
{ The Mind and Brain: Synonymous or Dichotomized }

As Blake explains therein, it isn’t that anyone is entirely discounting the idea of Dichotomy or the incorporeal, etc. But again, certain givens come from scientific literacy, and for the moment, those are (at least for me) more interesting to explore. The argument about consciousness or mind or philosophy vs science vs supernatural isn’t one I want to spend time on, at least as part of the OS project. I’ll leave that to others who have done and are doing so.

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