There's no indication that there is an overarching mentality which pervades the cosmos,
Do you mean that there are no indications that mind is not a special property exclusively characteristic of complex biological organisms? Actually, there are plenty indications of it, you just have to remove some of the assumptions you look at this with.
For example, one makes the assumption that the anatomical structure of a brain possessed organism is prerequisite to mind, but there is a hidden cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in that assumption that is rarely (well never, really) contested. We don't know that biological anatomy causes mind, it may be simply that our experience of mind-like real phenomena is shaped by biological anatomy, that is, the brain doesn't create mind - it is a way of using it, and mind not unlike physical matter, is composed of smaller atoms which directly share it's properties.
When you remove this assumption it follows that this condition of special-ness, which we perceive concerning our mind, is nothing more than the product of our physical configuration, the mind atoms of us express through sensory organisms and animate limbs, therefore they must necessarily have a distinct character compared to 'mind' atoms expressed through a heap of sand and the distinct character is simply physical.
So you may say it is absurd to suppose that tiny pieces of glass possess any kind of mentality, no matter how rudimentary, yet there is no basis on which to say that it is absurd beyond the assumption that they do not physically do anything which betrays the presence of mind in terms which we can cursorily relate to our physical anatomy. This is not enough. We can't just presuppose a basis for human vanity and use it to infer the nature of everything.
The fact is that they exist, as it has come to our attention that existence is conjoined to measurement, they, therefore, measure, and this is easily half of the requirements for atoms of 'mentality' fulfilled.
Magilum wrote:
nor that the minds we're familiar with here on our own planet are, by some undiscovered means, connected.
There are rather strong indications, in physical science, that individuation is wholly arbitrary. It's real, of course, but arbitrary. You need go no further than some of the simplest components of atomic theory in the Bohr model to see how arbitrary it is. There simply is no fundamental outer limit of anything.
We explain molecular individuation using the Pauli exclusion principle, the polarisation effect of electron states in a cloud of probable states, if these electrons can be said to have a real objective polarisation then individuation is a deterministic function of Pauli Exclusion, chances are, however, that they do not. That is, in other words, you must redefine your finger as a finger at every instance of existence or it will electromagnetically become part of your keyboard, if you must necessarily do this then a grain of sand must necessarily do this and thus Matter must necessarily be self aware in a world without objective realism. In the universe where neither matter=awareness nor objective realism, we cannot exist. If we lose objective realism, we must assume in turn that matter is self aware. If matter is self aware then the conglomerate body of all minds is one mind individuated.
Magilum wrote:
What we forget is that the sum of all thought that's influenced our respective cultures thus far has been limited to a single species, over the course of a (cosmically, or biologically) short time.
This is as much my contention as it is yours, actually. Millions of other species known to us visibly possess mind to which we can relate, and our concept of it is based only on our species, we've anthropomorphised it beyond nature's recognition. Consider an ant, with a body and mind and life totally devoted to shifting and moving things, we realise that the ant makes a summary contribution to the environment which sustains it, without ants (and other bugs), the environment becomes hostile, filthy and uninhabitable to the ants sources of food, without ants, no food for ants, without food for ants, no ants. Does the ant reference this loop in abstract like we do? And if it doesn't, does that mean it has no mind?
-- wearing a blue shirt and pouting must be a closet atheist.
"Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
magilum wrote: There's no
Do you mean that there are no indications that mind is not a special property exclusively characteristic of complex biological organisms? Actually, there are plenty indications of it, you just have to remove some of the assumptions you look at this with.
For example, one makes the assumption that the anatomical structure of a brain possessed organism is prerequisite to mind, but there is a hidden cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in that assumption that is rarely (well never, really) contested. We don't know that biological anatomy causes mind, it may be simply that our experience of mind-like real phenomena is shaped by biological anatomy, that is, the brain doesn't create mind - it is a way of using it, and mind not unlike physical matter, is composed of smaller atoms which directly share it's properties.
When you remove this assumption it follows that this condition of special-ness, which we perceive concerning our mind, is nothing more than the product of our physical configuration, the mind atoms of us express through sensory organisms and animate limbs, therefore they must necessarily have a distinct character compared to 'mind' atoms expressed through a heap of sand and the distinct character is simply physical.
So you may say it is absurd to suppose that tiny pieces of glass possess any kind of mentality, no matter how rudimentary, yet there is no basis on which to say that it is absurd beyond the assumption that they do not physically do anything which betrays the presence of mind in terms which we can cursorily relate to our physical anatomy. This is not enough. We can't just presuppose a basis for human vanity and use it to infer the nature of everything.
The fact is that they exist, as it has come to our attention that existence is conjoined to measurement, they, therefore, measure, and this is easily half of the requirements for atoms of 'mentality' fulfilled.
There are rather strong indications, in physical science, that individuation is wholly arbitrary. It's real, of course, but arbitrary. You need go no further than some of the simplest components of atomic theory in the Bohr model to see how arbitrary it is. There simply is no fundamental outer limit of anything.
We explain molecular individuation using the Pauli exclusion principle, the polarisation effect of electron states in a cloud of probable states, if these electrons can be said to have a real objective polarisation then individuation is a deterministic function of Pauli Exclusion, chances are, however, that they do not. That is, in other words, you must redefine your finger as a finger at every instance of existence or it will electromagnetically become part of your keyboard, if you must necessarily do this then a grain of sand must necessarily do this and thus Matter must necessarily be self aware in a world without objective realism. In the universe where neither matter=awareness nor objective realism, we cannot exist. If we lose objective realism, we must assume in turn that matter is self aware. If matter is self aware then the conglomerate body of all minds is one mind individuated.
This is as much my contention as it is yours, actually. Millions of other species known to us visibly possess mind to which we can relate, and our concept of it is based only on our species, we've anthropomorphised it beyond nature's recognition. Consider an ant, with a body and mind and life totally devoted to shifting and moving things, we realise that the ant makes a summary contribution to the environment which sustains it, without ants (and other bugs), the environment becomes hostile, filthy and uninhabitable to the ants sources of food, without ants, no food for ants, without food for ants, no ants. Does the ant reference this loop in abstract like we do? And if it doesn't, does that mean it has no mind?
-- wearing a blue shirt and pouting must be a closet atheist.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
"Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five