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21

So Rick, your question seems to be

Mein Gott!! :slightly_smiling_face:

I agree with Douglas: this is not a clear question.

You seem to be asking two or more questions all at the same time, each of which contains certain presuppositions that haven’t been made clear yet.

The fact that you give so much weight to the word “process” implies something that is not explicit in the question. And yet your question also seems to be about the possibility or otherwise of mind-independent existence. On top of this, you are still unwilling apparently to distinguish between a mind that conceptualises (which is what I would call abstract thought), and a mind that perceives or is aware, or is sentient of objects and processes.

Unless we can separate these issues and be clear about them, I don’t know how we can proceed.

Wouldn’t it make sense to give attention to one aspect of the question, and unpack the assumptions that we already have about it?

22

According to Kant and Schopenhauer, the answer would be ‘no’.

But what they mean by ‘mind’ is not thought or abstract cognition. By ‘mind’ they mean the transcendental unity of apperception which makes any perception possible:

this implies a subject-object frame of reference, the sensible intuitions of physical time and physical space, causality, along with the boundary assumption of a noumenal ‘ground’ that underlies all appearances.

Without such a ‘mind’, there can be no perception of a series of causally related events that unfolds over time.

23

Why don’t we see what happens if we explore the wilderness without the maps others have drawn, without looking for the cairns that they have erected to show the way to a destination that doesn’t exist in time and space.

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24

Because we relate to understanding in terms of start and finish? question and conclusion?
Because we take knowledge to be the main tool for enquiry, and also the achievement - it is seen as the goal and the means. (bizarre, or not bizarre?)
And of course knowledge and know-how being cultural - thus inherited directly from those before (in time) and around (in space) us.

25

Sorry. My intent was ambiguous. Replace “why don’t we” with “let us”.

We have to look into the assumption that what we want to uncover underlying cause and effect can manifest through the understanding of start and finish.

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26

The confusion for me is that there’s no confusion for me! It all seems so clear:

Do processes exist independently of mind?

I assume you don’t find this question confusing: Does physical matter, the stuff of the universe, exist independently of mind? The answer, sure, but the question no. So what’s confusing about: Do processes exist independently of mind? Do you think of physical matter and processes as categorically different things? I don’t, not since I dipped my toe in process philosophy.

27

Ach du gruene Neune!

The question only got that ungainly because yas guys kept asking for further description! The original question still stands for me, with the substitution of mind for thought to avoid confusion:

Do processes exist independently of mind?

What if I asked you:

Does anything exist independently of mind?

Would you still need me to clarify the question before you could take it on? If not, the hitch is the term ‘process’ and I’d be glad to talk about this. If yes, tell me all the things you need to know before the question makes enough sense to work with and I’ll do my best to explain what I mean. :slight_smile:

28

This is a cairn I came upon which leads to an abyss.

“This means that we can no longer assume that the properties we measure necessarily reflect or represent the properties of the particles as they really are. These properties are like secondary qualities – they exist only in relation to our measuring devices. This does not mean that quantum particles are not real. What it does mean is that we can ascribe to them only an empirical reality, a reality that depends on our method of questioning.”

“Without a measuring device to record it, there is a sense in which the recognisable properties of quantum particles such as electrons do not exist, just as the falling tree makes no sound at all.

‘Reality is merely an illusion,’ Einstein once admitted, ‘albeit a very persistent one.’

From the following article:

29

Sounds good, the tabula rasa approach. :slight_smile:

30

How do we begin without a starting point.
Rick, do you want to try?

31

It really depends what is meant by that word ‘mind’.

If we mean the particular mind of Mr Smith who died in 1953, then the answer is ‘yes’ - because the world continues to exist despite the fact that Mr Smith’s mind passed out of existence many years ago.

If we mean more generally the mind of people or nonhuman animals, or even of plants - or of some kind of pan-psychic proto-‘mind’ that inheres in every particle of matter - then it is more difficult to say.

One can imagine a universe bereft of all sensing, sentient subjects - such as at the dawn of creation, in the first few infinitesimally small units of time after the big bang (or just before it) - but such an imagination can only take place in the mind of a living subject. The whole universe with its billions of galaxies, each populated with their billions of stars and planets, only exists in the mind of a subject who is aware and perceiving. There is no object without a subject.

So, it seems to me, you are really asking the question: what would this universe be if there were no sentient subjects - no mind at all, of whatever kind - to perceive it? Would it have any existence at all?

And if it did, what kind of existence would it have, what form? - if there were no senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste or smell? - no sensible intuitions of time or space? - no synthesis of the imagination to supply the relation of cause to effect?

Is there a mind that can be so equally bereft of all sentience and being that it might answer this question? Is there a mind so truly empty that the universe might reveal itself without being in any way, shape, or form shaped by it in terms of its appearance?

In certain forms of Buddhism it is suggested that this is the unconditioned mind. And what it reveals is equally unconditioned - is not dependent on any mind, or on anything: no-mind, no-thing.

So for that mind (if one can still call it a ‘mind’), there is only the unconditioned - because that mind is the unconditioned.

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32

Sure! How about let’s begin by agreeing on what a process is. For me: It’s a 1) stream of causally related micro-events that 2) form an overarching macro-event 3) over a certain period of time.

By “a stream of causally related micro-events” I mean a profusion-swarm of rapid causes and effects. By macro-event I mean an overarching direction or shape, the ‘heart’ of the story.

Take the example of the process of my responding to your posting. The stream of causally related micro-events is all the mental and physical events that occur in responding: I read your posting, I think about it, I type a response, I edit it, I finish it, I click Reply. The macro-event is: I respond to your posting. The ‘over a certain period of time’ means there’s a relatively clear beginning (I read your post) and relatively clear end (I click Reply) to the process.

Your turn. :slight_smile:

33

As you have probably noticed, the above take on process is a first stab work in progress kind of thing, I’m pretty much making this up as I go along! And (pats himself proudly on back) I resisted turning to an authority for help. (Which explains the, umm … eccentricity of the result. :wink: )

34

Rick:
“Sure! How about let’s begin by agreeing on what a process is. For me: It’s a 1) stream of causally related micro-events that 2) form an overarching macro-event 3) over a certain period of time.”

Right. The common way of viewing is necessary to have a rational coherent interchange.

“By “a stream of causally related micro-events” I mean a profusion-swarm of rapid causes and effects. By macro-event I mean an overarching direction or shape, the ‘heart’ of the story.”

Right. May I ask how the fragments give meaning to the story’s heart?

“Take the example of the process of my responding to your posting. The stream of causally related micro-events is all the mental and physical events that occur in responding: I read your posting, I think about it, I type a response, I edit it, I finish it, I click Reply. The macro-event is: I respond to your posting. The ‘over a certain period of time’ means there’s a relatively clear beginning (I read your post) and relatively clear end (I click Reply) to the process.”

Yes, the sequence is clear. The exchanges have parts, beginnings and ends and are generally labeled a process in time. Our habit is to separate continuity into time and pieces with boundaries. This is necessary for human survival.

I would like to propose that there may be another process moving in the background, one could say simultaneously. This process doesn’t begin or end, nor is it dependent on cause and effect. One could say there can be no time and no space that is part of this process. There is a synchronicity without time being the explanation.
The everyday process is not difficult to observe but a non existent background process can’t been seen through a time bound process.
So let’s proceed without dividing the two of us in half or limiting the exploration to the fragments that make up a macro process, and without reference to starting and finishing points. If you like, let us probe into the limitation of the known while being sensitive to any movement that may be on the periphery of thinking.

35

This is just science isn’t it?

We are already aware of micro-events that form “overarching” macro-events (which maintain themselves over time):

  1. these are quantum level events - such as the interactions of sub-atomic particles, electrons, etc, together with the electromagnetic, as well as strong and weak nuclear forces, that act on them;
  2. these combine to build up larger and more stable units of matter such as atoms, which combine to form still larger compounds like the table of elements, which combine to form yet larger units such as stars and planets and galaxies, and even whole universes
  3. that maintain themselves over time

The question you asked me was, does any of this exist independently of ‘mind’?

I have provided at least two responses - posts 22 and 31 - to this question (5 if you include my original replies, posts 6, 10 and 13, to your initial ‘mind-independent’ questions concerning noumena and hallucinations), and you haven’t responded substantially to any of them. So I assume that this question doesn’t interest you all that much after all.

You are apparently more interested in ‘processes’. So I responded to that question here.

36

From the blog entry you posted:

Applied to the domain of processes:

Without an observing mind, there is a sense in which the recognisable properties of processes do not exist, just as the falling tree makes no sound at all.

?

37

Sure, this sounds like great fun! I’m always up for questing the ground. But let’s not permanently shelve the more conventional approach I suggested, different pov’s shed light differently, and we need all the light we can get! A hybrid might also be worth exploring (later): an ‘eternal totality process’ that underlies all temporary (sub-)processes, different from your process in that it is causally determined.

38

Ja! It’s possible (and great fun) to see everyday reality as a grand set of overlapping and interconnected processes, micro-events coalescing into macro-events, “Events, events, everywhere!”

Yes, the question is: Do processes exist independently of mind?

I read your responses, which were clear and thorough like all your responses, but they didn’t really take. My sense is I was set to move at a snail’s pace (my default speed in these kinds of investigations) and you were sprinting like a cheetah! Or gazelle? Or at least an antelope. I’ll give it another go and see if I fare better than the first time.

39

From grasping at possible probabilities and misunderstandings we can go anywhere, which can be fun.

40

I don’t know what you find ‘not explicit.’ I wanted to explore whether processes are mind-dependent or mind-independent. I am interested in the nature of processes, have been for a long time but especially since I started reading about process philosophy.

And ‘anything’ and ‘exist’ and ‘independently.’ If we really wanted to be thorough and sure we’re talking about the same things, we’d need to agree on the meanings of all the potentially ambiguous terms.

If you take the universe to be a process (teeming with sub-processes), yes.