What is mentality?

[entropy]

I ask what mentality is rather than what consciousness is or what awareness is because I think those are "fuzzier" concepts to deal with. I think someone who we say is unconscious has mental activity - it just isn't mental activity of the conscious kind. (The term, "aware", seems to be used pretty much as a synonym for "conscious".) I think a person who is having a severe epileptic seizure has mentality.

So what do I mean by the word "mentality"? I mean that activity that empirical evidence seems to pretty conclusively show happens as a result of neural activity in the brain. I think EEG's (and similar technologies) can detect at least some of the neural activity that is associated with mentality - the kind of thing that is missing from someone who has suffered extreme brain damage and we say is brain "dead".

In the most intimate sense, though, mentality for most of us is thought of mostly in terms of the phenomenon of personal experience of being. It is the locus of "me". It seems to "flow" from moment to moment in mostly predictable ways when we experience mentality in its conscious/aware form. In its conscious/aware form, mentality seems to have a perspective with respect to a reality beyond direct information of senses (which are part of conscious/aware mentality). That makes up much of the experiential aspect of mentality.

I don't think, though, that mentality has to be coherent like the experience of listening to music that evokes strong feelings. When someone is unfortunate enough to have an epileptic seizure I think there is mentality without much coherence - though hopefully neural pathways can readily reestablish coherence.  

So, to the question - what is mentality? In some very important respects, I haven't actually said what I think mentality is. Is it a physical substance? Is it a non-physical thing? If it is a non-physical thing, then why does it appear to interact so closely with physical substances? If it isn't a physical substance and it isn't a non-physical substance, then what is it? How would you answer those questions?

[entropy]

drunkenshoe, I am well aware that mind-body dualism is one general way of looking at the issues I raised but there is the contrasting position of monism and both mind-body dualism and monism have many variations. For example, there is idealist monism that posits that consciousness or mental activity is the only truly existent thing and there is no material reality and then there is materialistic monism that says that mental activity is a physical phenomenon - that all things are material in nature.

Do you think that some kind of mind-body dualism is true? How would you answer these questions about what consciousness (or whatever term you prefer) is: Is it a physical substance? Is it a non-physical thing? If it is a non-physical thing, then why does it appear to interact so closely with physical substances? If it isn't a physical substance and it isn't a non-physical substance, then what is it? How would you answer those questions? (These are ontological questions - though epistemological issues may play a key role in formulating answers to these questions, it is the ontological issues that I am most interested in, in asking the questions.)

I said that mentality is more than "me" - that there is mentality even when there is no sense of "me":

I don't think, though, that mentality has to be coherent like the experience of listening to music that evokes strong feelings. When someone is unfortunate enough to have an epileptic seizure I think there is mentality without much coherence - though hopefully neural pathways can readily reestablish coherence.

I tried to differentiate between coherent mentality (e.g., having a sense of "me") and incoherent mentality (e.g., epileptic seizure). And I did imply that mentality is constantly changing - I said that it "flows" through time (and we are aware of time because of things changing).

[entropy]

The questions I asked can be answered without resort to any talk of dualism at all. I simply asked the questions after trying to explain what I meant by the term "mentality" that I used in the questions. You are the one who brought up dualism. I only asked how you felt about dualism in my reply because you were the one that framed the issue as though it was about dualism. If you thought the my questions necessarily implied something about dualism then that is not the case. The questions can be answered in the context of dualism and/or monism but they can be answered without those being the context. I don't care about dualism or monism particularly unless they are something you want to talk about as a way of giving your answers to my questions.

I take it from your response that you are basically materialist/physicalist in your orientation, but you didn't actually directly answer my question about whether or not you think mentality/consciousness/awareness (whatever you prefer) is a physical substance. I meant the term "substance" in its 1a. dictionary definition sense: "That which has mass and occupies space; matter." So when I asked if mentality/consciousness/awareness is a substance, I was asking if mentality is matter. Or is mentality energy? If you are basically materialist/physicalist in orientation, since everything is matter or energy, then mentality/consciousness/awareness must also be matter or energy. Which one is it? Or is it both?

If you are not basically materialist/physicalist oriented and if you would say mentality/consciousness/awareness is not matter and it is not energy, then what is it?

[Solitary]

Why is it assumed there is dualism? There is absolutely no reliable evidence of a soul without a body. We are greater than the some of our parts because our egos (consciousness, whatever.) emerge from our physical body brain functioning. When the body brain no longer functions we don't exist. If we had a souls, or whatever, that existed without a body, how could a blow to the head, anesthesia, or drugs effect it? It's true that energy cannot be created nor destroyed and the energy that makes up the mass of our bodies will exist after we are dead, it doesn't mean we would. We are a function of a physical body and nothing more. Our purpose in life is to perpetuate our species by the cosmic imperative. After that we have to give our lives meaning when that is no longer a possibility. Solitary

[entropy]

Why is it assumed there is dualism?

I do not and did not assume there is dualism and if I understand drunkenshoe correctly, he definitely doesn't assume dualism either. Who is assuming dualism?

I will say that given that this is an atheism forum, that when I crafted the first post in this thread, I assumed that pretty much everyone would not believe in dualism (not that you have to be a theist to believe in dualism - just that atheists tend not to be dualists).

[entropy]

It's true that energy cannot be created nor destroyed and the energy that makes up the mass of our bodies will exist after we are dead, it doesn't mean we would. We are a function of a physical body and nothing more.

Is mentality matter or energy or both? Does all matter have mentality? Does all energy have mentality?

[Plu]

I'd say that the proces of mentality is comparable to the proces of machines running software; a proces so incredibly complicated that we are unable to fathom the entire workings (by definition) and so are forced to short-circuit a lot of stuff in order to be able to comprehend our own existance.

Understanding exactly how your own brain works is like trying to use a camera to take a picture of itself; it doesn't work. You need large parts of your brain structure in order to generate the ability to have consciousness, and that brain structure cannot be used to observe itself because it already has another function that it cannot stop doing without effectively killing you.

[entropy]

So, to the question - what is mentality? In some very important respects, I haven't actually said what I think mentality is. Is it a physical substance? Is it a non-physical thing? If it is a non-physical thing, then why does it appear to interact so closely with physical substances? If it isn't a physical substance and it isn't a non-physical substance, then what is it? How would you answer those questions?

This led me to bring up dualism in the first place. This is what you are talking about. You think you are asking/discussing something different than dualism, but you are not. I am saying it doesn't exist and all mental activity is matter, physical. If you assume the possibility of something nonphysical relating human consciousness or its sub concepts you are discussing dualism. There is no difference between asking if we have a soul or not and if our mental activity is a result of something nonphysical or not. It's exactly the same idea.

And how did we get to energy from here? This has nothing to do with energy or its relation to matter. :-s

I think you think I was assuming dualism somehow by the nature of the questions I asked, but I asked the questions I did to sort out the dualists from the non-dualists that might respond. I wasn't assuming dualism at all - I was trying to find out amongst the responses who was a dualist and who wasn't. Of course if I am going to figure out who is a dualist and who isn't, I need to ask questions that will make the distinction.

From your earlier response, I took it that you are a materialist. Are you not a materialist? If you are, then you believe that everything is matter or energy. Since mentality is part of everything, then it follows that it, too, must be matter or energy or both. Are you saying that mentality is only matter, and that energy has nothing to do with mentality?

[entropy]

I'd say that the proces of mentality is comparable to the proces of machines running software; a proces so incredibly complicated that we are unable to fathom the entire workings (by definition) and so are forced to short-circuit a lot of stuff in order to be able to comprehend our own existance.

Understanding exactly how your own brain works is like trying to use a camera to take a picture of itself; it doesn't work. You need large parts of your brain structure in order to generate the ability to have consciousness, and that brain structure cannot be used to observe itself because it already has another function that it cannot stop doing without effectively killing you.

I think there is the physical possibility of understanding more than that (by using technology, for example), but even if it is as you say, what that implies is that we can't know the answer to HOW specific brain function leads to mentality. One of the things I'm wondering about, though, is WHAT mentality is. WHAT is the feeling of experiencing reality - is it matter or energy or both?

[Plu]

I'd say that the proces of mentality is comparable to the proces of machines running software; a proces so incredibly complicated that we are unable to fathom the entire workings (by definition) and so are forced to short-circuit a lot of stuff in order to be able to comprehend our own existance.

Understanding exactly how your own brain works is like trying to use a camera to take a picture of itself; it doesn't work. You need large parts of your brain structure in order to generate the ability to have consciousness, and that brain structure cannot be used to observe itself because it already has another function that it cannot stop doing without effectively killing you.

I think there is the physical possibility of understanding more than that (by using technology, for example), but even if it is as you say, what that implies is that we can't know the answer to HOW specific brain function leads to mentality. One of the things I'm wondering about, though, is WHAT mentality is. WHAT is the feeling of experiencing reality - is it matter or energy or both?

Just think of computers. It's basically the same thing. Electrical energy being guided through a complicated network of small interacting components. The "feeling" is just trillions of atoms interacting in an incredibly complicated network. There are so many components that it becomes infeasible to really explain how it works for the time being. But what we experience is simply a result of all these components working together.

[entropy]

I think you think I was assuming dualism somehow by the nature of the questions I asked, but I asked the questions I did to sort out the dualists from the non-dualists that might respond. I wasn't assuming dualism at all - I was trying to find out amongst the responses who was a dualist and who wasn't. Of course if I am going to figure out who is a dualist and who isn't, I need to ask questions that will make the distinction.

OK, either you just realised what you are asking or not really sure what you want to ask. You asked what is mental activity. And I told you that with the way you asked it you are actually repeating dualism. And however you put it, it opens the same door.

In answering the questions, if a person who responded to the questions was not a dualist, there is nothing in the questions that implies anything about dualism, so they can just say, "no", to the appropriate questions and answer the other questions directed to the non-dualists. Yes, the structure of the questions does shift out dualists, non-dualists, but that does not at all imply that the answers or the conversation based on the answers have to be within a dualistic perspective. The whole conversation can avoid dualism altogether. I guess you are talking about how the questions function and I'm talking about that there is nothing inherently in the questions that implies that the conversation has to involve dualism at all. It's probably not a point worth continuing to go on about.  

From your earlier response, I took it that you are a materialist. Are you not a materialist?

Yes, but if I am not mistaken it is now called physicalism and you'll find most people here fit in a posteriori physicalism in general. Meaning, they do not accept dualism or anything metaphysically possible under any circumstances. What physics says goes.  

If you are, then you believe that everything is matter or energy.

Yes. If physics decided to define something different than in traditional sense that would be included too.

Since mentality is part of everything,

See, what does 'mentality is a part of everything' mean? It doesn't mean anything. It's a word salad.

...then it follows that it, too,

No, it doesn't. We don't have something to follow.

must be matter or energy or both. Are you saying that mentality is only matter, and that energy has nothing to do with mentality?

I said what has energy got to do with it, because you sound like you are defining it as if it is some measurable but mystical building block of mental activity. When put it that way all I hear is gibberish and I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something like "Quantum physics shows positive mind energy, mind power...etc in the end.  

Because the question is meaningless in this sense to arrive a definitive answer or even just to a wild guess on what is mental activity made of. As long as we can't measure and define all the set of conditions of what is mental activity made of it's just closer to asking 'do we have a soul?'. Or we can all gather around and vote for it. Make a poll and find out what the majority's guess would be. But there is no real healthy answer to this.

I think your take on the soundness of my argument is wrong, but I think our issues go much deeper than that particular disagreement. Maybe we need to reboot this conversation. If I understand you correctly, you say that you are a physicalist. If so, what does that mean? If not, how would you describe your views about the nature of reality? (I know you have been saying some of that, but how would you summarize it?)

Edit: Never mind. I reread your last paragraph and that pretty much answers my curiosity about how you feel about the question of what mental activity is. Not much more to say to each other on this I guess.

[entropy]

Hmmm. I guess I do have more to say.

I'm fine with your view about basic nature of mentality. It is unknowable. That's cool. Okay, I can take that as a given for further conversation. If the basic nature of mentality is unknowable, then on what basis can we assume that mentality is no more or less deterministic than that which isn't mentality? Or should we not assume that mentality is as deterministic as anything else?

[entropy]

entropy, I just read this in your intro thread. You wrote it as an answer to solitary.

I prefer to use the term "physicalist" rather than "materialist", but they are usually taken to mean the same thing. I am pretty much a physicalist.

Why did you ask about it?

Well, it turns out that I needed an updating on my conception of materialism/physicalism, too. The matter-energy version of materialism I was presenting is too simplistic. I had not really appreciated how nuanced the responses to these kinds of questions can be. Here's an interesting article I found:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... alism.html


The thing I can't get over, though, is the notion that if you believe that there is no more to reality than matter and energy, then isn't mental activity matter and/or energy? It's like a Venn diagram - there is a big circle that is labeled "reality". Not touching or overlapping the "reality" circle is another circle or circles of things that are "not matter" and "not energy". The "matter" and "energy" circles are wholly within the "reality" circle. Now where do we put the "mentality" circle? I think it's a given that mentality is real so we know we are going to put it in the "real" circle. Does it go within the "matter" circle or the "energy" circle or overlap both. Is there a region or regions of the "reality" circle that is/are not within the domains of the "matter" circle or the "energy" circle? If so what is the nature of those regions? What is it that is real but is not matter and not energy? Where does the mentality circle go?

[entropy]

Just think of computers. It's basically the same thing. Electrical energy being guided through a complicated network of small interacting components. The "feeling" is just trillions of atoms interacting in an incredibly complicated network. There are so many components that it becomes infeasible to really explain how it works for the time being. But what we experience is simply a result of all these components working together.

You might like this from the same site I noted in my post to drunkenshoe:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... alism.html

In what sense is the brain a "multi-dimensional" computer? At bottom, the brain evidently works on the same on-off, binary principle that governs all linear computers: like them, its basic language is either "on" or "off" -- either spike/fire or not spike/fire. When a neuron spikes or fires, it does so in mechanical, all-or-nothing fashion like a spark plug, entirely as a result of having reached just the level of electrical excitation in its synapses it needs to make it suddenly depolarize. By themselves, neurons are nothing but stupid, mechanically controlled switches.

But when they are joined in networks whose signals parallel those of billions of other networks and interact at critical points, the result is human consciousness. From a countless plethora of dumb, electrical relay switches and settings emerges the amazing phenomenon we call human consciousness and intentionality -- the ability to think about things, to feel a range of emotions, and to realize one's self as a subjective entity distinct from the rest of the world.

How can this happen? How can something oblivious of the world become conscious of the world? Though theoretical neuroscience is still in its infancy, furiously boiling with new ideas, some likely answers are emerging from the steam. One promising theory is that networks of neurons in the brain consist of subsidiary groups of neurons or even individual neurons that serve as the axes of a multi-dimensional system of coordinates that can mathematically translate one kind of value to another kind of value. For example, someone sees an apple hanging from a tree. His brain locates the apple in an abstract visual space calculated in terms of how many degrees above a distant horizon the apple is, how close to him the focusing of his eyes tells him the apple is, and so on. But in order to pick the apple, his brain must translate its abstract visual calculation of the apple's location into an abstract motor-muscular space which will tell the muscles of his arm at which angle they will have to set themselves in order to approach the apple. What happens here, it is theorized, is that an array of neuronal networks transforms the values of his visual space into those of his motor space by means of a mathematical tensor, or formula, that translates the multi-dimensional coordinates, or vectors, of visual space into the vectors of motor space -- all the angles of sight are translated into angles of arm-bending. Although it does not seem so to the person reaching for the apple, his behavior is the result of a vast number of mathematical computations in his brain, which, because of its parallel computing capacity, it is able to carry out almost instantly.

Moreover, one of the brain's most impressive powers is that it is incredibly plastic and capable of learning, especially in infancy and childhood. It may well learn by adjusting the synaptic openings, or weightings, as they are called, of neurons individually and in networks so that the signals reaching them must produce just the right polarity from just the right dendrites to fire. This could explain, for example, why we recognize faces and other hard-to-distinguish sense experiences so quickly. Our brain has so many neuronal networks available for use -- one researcher has calculated them as totaling more than 10 to the 80th power -- that every single thing we learn may have its own network set at just the right synaptic weightings to be activated only by that bit of learning. This means that impulses coming into the brain from the senses are blocked from activating all but the relevant network, which almost instantly verifies that it's granny's face at the door. And synaptic weightings are flexible enough to readjust to changing circumstances if necessary.

The bottom line of this theoretical approach, of course, is that the mind is reducible to natural processes that can be translated into the language of math and physics. Neuronal networks are computing mechanisms that effortlessly transform multi-dimensional vectors of one kind of mathematical value into other vectors of mathematical value. Visual space being changed into motor space has been mentioned, but a great deal of work has already also been done along these lines on how we see and hear. Images from the eyes' retinas are translated into neuronal signals and processed through countless neural networks simultaneously so quickly that it seems to the viewer she is seeing the external world on a mirror in her mind, whereas in fact her brain is recreating and re-representing everything "out there" from, as it were, scratch. So too with sound. Varying air pressures entering the ear are translated into electrical impulses which are then massively and instantly parallel-processed into noises that seem to be coming to us, direct and unmediated, from the external world. But in fact they too, like our vision, are the result of incredibly complex processes of vector transformation among multi-dimensional coordinate systems performed by the countless neural networks of our brain.

I think there may be some interesting implications for what our experience of ourselves in the world means to us if we realize that our experience of the world and ourselves in the world is a model created from information from our senses about ourselves and the world. The model is created using preprogrammed modeling inclinations and learned pattern recognition and recollection to synthesize a gestalt. I wonder if when some Eastern mysticism talks about the "illusion" of reality this may sometimes be what they mean. That we experience a model but feel ourselves impelled along as though we are experiencing reality directly. Or is that wrong? Is what we experience the raw connection of ourselves to the reality of our bodies in the world, or is what we experience a model of the reality of our bodies in the world? Does it depend on where our attention lies?


But still, all those interesting conjectures still don't quite get to the nub of the question in this thread, "What is mentality?" That is more about how it might arise, but not really exactly what mentality is. I have my conjecture on the matter, but I am interested in hearing others. I will admit that earlier I hadn't prepared for the response to be so strongly that it's essentially an unanswerable question. I should have because it is a very reasonable response. When I first was thinking of starting this thread, I had actually thought what it would mean in terms of some of the other questions I have if someone didn't think the question is answerable. It occurred to me that such a response would actually create an opportunity to play the skeptic with the assumption that even though we don't know what the basic nature of mentality is, it is often assumed that mentality is bound to whatever determinism applies to anything else. What is the justification for that assumption?

[mykcob4]

I ask what mentality is rather than what consciousness is or what awareness is because I think those are "fuzzier" concepts to deal with. I think someone who we say is unconscious has mental activity - it just isn't mental activity of the conscious kind. (The term, "aware", seems to be used pretty much as a synonym for "conscious".) I think a person who is having a severe epileptic seizure has mentality.

So what do I mean by the word "mentality"? I mean that activity that empirical evidence seems to pretty conclusively show happens as a result of neural activity in the brain. I think EEG's (and similar technologies) can detect at least some of the neural activity that is associated with mentality - the kind of thing that is missing from someone who has suffered extreme brain damage and we say is brain "dead".

In the most intimate sense, though, mentality for most of us is thought of mostly in terms of the phenomenon of personal experience of being. It is the locus of "me". It seems to "flow" from moment to moment in mostly predictable ways when we experience mentality in its conscious/aware form. In its conscious/aware form, mentality seems to have a perspective with respect to a reality beyond direct information of senses (which are part of conscious/aware mentality). That makes up much of the experiential aspect of mentality.

I don't think, though, that mentality has to be coherent like the experience of listening to music that evokes strong feelings. When someone is unfortunate enough to have an epileptic seizure I think there is mentality without much coherence - though hopefully neural pathways can readily reestablish coherence.  

So, to the question - what is mentality? In some very important respects, I haven't actually said what I think mentality is. Is it a physical substance? Is it a non-physical thing? If it is a non-physical thing, then why does it appear to interact so closely with physical substances? If it isn't a physical substance and it isn't a non-physical substance, then what is it? How would you answer those questions?

Quite simply "mentality" is a mind set. Consciousness is just awareness.
"Mentality" is a development, consciousness is a natural state.