Metaphysics / Philosophy of Mind

Discussion of the Interconnection of the Mind, Body & Universe
On How our Mind can Sense the Motion of Matter in the Universe

Philosophy of the Mind Quotes, Mind Puzzles, Infinite Mind / Collective Consciousness

Our Essence of Mind is intrinsically pure. All things are only its manifestations, and good deeds and evil deeds are only the result of good thoughts and evil thoughts respectively. Imagination, thought and will make deeds, and by our deeds we make ourselves. All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, made up of our thoughts. (The Patriarch Hui-neng)

Introduction to Metaphysics / Philosophy of Mind

The most fundamental puzzle of the mind is the connection between Mind, Matter and Space. Despite the fame of Descartes and the duality of mind and matter, this is an incomplete conception given that we always experience matter existing in Space. Thus the obvious extension of Descartes "I think therefore I exist" is to state that "I think I exist as matter in space" which is a common experience of all humans.

In philosophy there is a strong movement that argues that the mind is primary, all other things illusions of the mind (Idealism). This is where my interest mainly lies, in showing that the physical reality of space around us is primary, the mind a structure of waves in space.
There are two main arguments for this that arise from the evolutionary philosophy of the mind;

1. Evolution - Our ancestors must have existed (without minds) for us to have evolved, and evolution clearly requires the earth and sun to exist (e.g. our instinct to sleep, which is a state of the mind). Thus the mind cannot be primary. Further, the mind exhibits many traits that only evolution in our physical bodies can explain. e.g. hunger, sexual lust, etc.

2. Science (Occam's Razor) and Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality). The most simple science theory must be founded on one thing existing. Given mind matter and space are the three fundamentals that we all experience, only space is one common thing, matter and mind are many things. This relates to metaphysics where we seek the hidden causal connection between things we sense (effects), and which requires one thing to exist to cause and connect the many things we experience.

Further, science is founded on two sources of knowledge, logic from principles, and evidence from senses. The Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) clearly explains how both of these can exist - waves behave logically due to the properties of space, and the spherical In Waves flow in through other matter waves in space around us explaining how we can see and interact with these 'external things' (effectively WSM unites subject and object).

The one central thing that the Wave Structure of Matter does not explain is how our mind represents our senses. While we can understand how mind, matter and space are interconnected, (by waves in space) it is difficult to imagine how we can then represent these wave interaction as ideas of color, pain, love, hunger, etc.

The Buddha described everything as made from mind and matter. Both mind (citta) and matter (rupa) are not conceived as static things, but as a moving process.

The entire phenomenon of mind and matter is understood as vibrations, of a continuously ephemeral nature, arising and passing away. This is the ultimate truth (paramattha saccaparamattha sacca) of mind and matter - permanently impermanent; nothing but a mass of tiny bubbles or ripples, disintegrating as soon as they arise (sabbo loko pakampitosabbo loko pakampito). (Vipassana Research Institute)

As you experience the reality of matter to be vibration, you also start experiencing the reality of the mind: vinnana (consciousness), sanna (perception), vedana (sensation) and sankhara (reaction). (S N Goenka, 1995)

The Metaphysics of Space and Motion and the Wave Structure of Matter explains the buddhist conception of vibration as the vibration of Space (spherical standing waves - see links to articles at top of page) which form matter and mind.

The Eastern Philosophers further express the importance of controlling the mind, (as does Michel de Montaigne);

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good is it to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness. ... It is the mind which gives things their quality, their foundation and being. Whoever speaks or acts with impure mind, him sorrow follows, as the wheel follows the steps of the ox that draws the cart. (Dhammapada - Ancient Indian Text)

Just as fallow lands, when rich and fertile, are seen to abound in hundreds and thousands of different kinds of useless weeds so that, if we would make them do their duty, we must subdue them and keep them busy with seeds specifically sown for our service; so too with our minds. If we do not keep them busy with some particular subject which can serve as a bridle to reign them in, they charge ungovernably about, ranging to and from over the wastelands of our thoughts. (de Montaigne, The Essays)

The Wave Structure of Matter demonstrates how the mind, body and universe (mind, matter, space) are interconnected and how matter can store knowledge through interconnected repeating wave motions. Further, it is likely that our minds, as resonant structures, are subtly interconnected with other minds. To what extent we influence one anothers thoughts is not clear, but when we think, we move matter (e.g. I am thinking to move my fingers to type these letters) and due to the wave structure of matter (matter is large, as a structure of Space) this must affect other matter and thus minds in the Space around us.

As Chomsky writes;

The possibility of affecting objects without touching them just exploded physicalism and materialism. It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's 'ghost in the machine' in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there. And the mind has mystical properties. (Noam Chomsky on Newton's discovery of gravity and Action-at-a-Distance)

Please see below for some interesting philosophy quotes on the mind.

Geoff Haselhurst

Mind Puzzles - Matter & Mind

By Dr Milo Wolff (Mathematical Physicist - Discovered the Wave Structure of Matter in 1986)

I don't actually 'see' things in my mind. What I mean is I can often correctly find the correct mechanism of an unknown phenomenon which involves 3D geometric data. Somehow my mind unravels the details of the data describing the phenomenon and hits upon the mechanism which produces it. It is more like solving jig-saw puzzles or playing the GO game. You search all the pieces and the ones which fit suddenly pop into view. As the Japanese describe GO, there is a sense of 'shape' for the correct stone placement.

This process often involves mathematics which describe physical processes. However knowing math alone is useless for me. I MUST know the physical situations described by math - and I MUST visualize the physical or mechanical details of the math process - without that I can rarely use math successfully.

In other words, I use math differently than the textbooks explain it. I don't go through analysis procedures to find a result, or to prove something true. Instead math is a just another tool to find the pieces of the puzzles that fit together. If I find a correct fit, for example, an explanation of the de Broglie Wavelength, only then do I attempt to prove it. Proof always comes last. Geoff Haselhurst in Australia, thinks the same way I do, except that he uses philosophical logic where I use math. Most of what I know of the Wave Structure of Matter and cosmology, he independently found himself. We are cosmic twins on opposite sides of the Earth.

Most of the physics work I have done which has been successful falls into this class. I have a permanent reputation in space navigation and planetary physics for interpretation of light scattering. But in fact, I am a poor math-physicist. Instead, there is an unconscious search mechanism at work in my mind but I don't control it or sense it. It just happens after I think and worry a while. Of course, everything has to be proven before final acceptance.

I have a long memory for data of science puzzles so that, as an important example, it is now glaringly obvious to me that the charge and mass substance model of old physics is wrong, and the Wave Structure of Matter is an almost perfect and very simple description of the natural laws. I genuinely cannot understand why this is not immediately obvious to any scientist. The greatest puzzle of physics for me, is the failure of scientists to understand it.

The old physics clearly produces many paradoxes, whereas the Wave Structure of Matter has none. The old physics is a set of rules and procedures which are obeyed, like a religion, without understanding the origins. The Wave Structure begins with the simplicity of only three principles from which all else follows mathematically and logically. Philosophically it is very satisfying. Statistically, it is true.

Despite the teachings of the scientific methods, it appears that most scientists do NOT seek to understand. Instead their personal satisfaction comes from learning and following rules. Again, this oddly resembles the practice of religion which most scientists deny. Old physics is Catholic, Wave Structure of Matter is more Buddhist.

Milo Wolff, 2003

Knowledge, Memory & Mind Quotations from Famous Philosophers

Mind undoubtedly is the mechanism of the past and it keeps us firmly bound to the past. Mind is the arch creator of bondages. Whatever we think about becomes our bondage. (Sudharta S.D. I Am All)

If we take away the subject (Humans), or our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear ... they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. (Immanuel Kant, 1781)

Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, 1921. (1872-1970)

The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor. (Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind p. 11, 1921)

Russell said that his original interest in philosophy had two sources:
On the one hand I was anxious to discover whether philosophy would provide any defence for anything that could be called religious belief, however vague; on the other hand, I wished to persuade myself that something could be known, in pure mathematics if not elsewhere. (1959)

'the whole of what we perceive without inference belongs to our private world. In this respect, I agree with Berkeley. The starry heaven that we know in visual sensation is inside us. The external starry heaven that we believe is inferred.' (Russell)

Understanding words does not consist in knowing their dictionary definitions, or in able to specify the objects to which they are appropriate. Understanding language is more like understanding cricket: it is a matter of habits, acquired in oneself and rightly presumed in others. To say that a word has a meaning is not to say that those who use the word correctly have ever thought out what the meaning is: the use of the word comes first, and the meaning is to be distilled out of it by observation and analysis. Moreover, the meaning of a word is not absolutely definite: there is always a greater or less degree of vagueness. (Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind p. 197-8, 1921)

.. He came to the view that inductive inference cannot be enough for 'science', and moved towards a surprisingly Kantian position that some 'principles of inference' must be presupposed: 'And whatever these principles of inference may be, they certainly cannot be logically deduced from fact of experience. Either, therefore, we know something independently of experience, or science is moonshine.' (Russell, Human Knowledge 1948)

such inadequacies as we have seemed to find in empiricism have been discovered by strict adherence to a doctrine by which empiricist philosophy has been inspired: that all human knowledge is uncertain, inexact, and partial. To this doctrine we have not found any limitation whatever. (Russell, closing words, Human Knowledge 1948)

Philosophy proper deals with matters of interest to the general educated public, and loses much of its value if only a few professionals can understand what is said. (Russell, 1948)

One Hundred Twentieth Century Philosophers, Stewart Brown, Diane Collinson, Robert Wilkinson. Routledge 1998

Plato Quotations On the Mind

'Do we learn with one part of us, feel angry with another, and desire the pleasures of eating and sex with another? Or do we employ our mind as a whole when our energies are employed in any of these ways?'

'We can call the reflective element in the mind the reason, and the element with which it feels hunger and thirst, and the agitations of sex and other desires, the irrational appetite - an element closely connected with pleasure and satisfaction.'

'So the reason ought to rule, having the ability and foresight to act for the whole, and the spirit ought to obey and support it. And this concord between them is effected, as we said, by a combination of intellectual and physical training, which tunes up the reason by intellectual training and tones down the crudeness of natural high spirits by harmony and rhythm.'

'Certainly'

'When these two elements have been brought up and trained to their proper function, they must be put in charge of appetite, which forms the greater part of each man's make-up and is naturally insatiable. They must prevent taking its fill of the so-called physical pleasures, for otherwise it will get too large and strong to mind its own business and will try to subject and control the other elements, which it has no right to do, and so wreck life entirely.'

'Then let us be content with the terms we used earlier on for the four divisions of our line - knowledge, reason, belief and illusion. The last two we class together as opinion, the first two as intelligence, opinion being concerned with the world of becoming, knowledge with the world of reality. Knowledge stands to opinion as the world of reality does to that of becoming, and intelligence stands to belief and reason to illusion as knowledge stands to opinion.' (Plato, Republic)

Plotkin, On Epistemology

... knowledge, in its most common meaning, denotes a mental state that bears a specific relationship to some feature of the world. (Plotkin)

... memory, some kind of enduring brain state, must exist in the case of knowing by the mind, and is responsible for the bridging of that time gap between when the events occurred and any claim to know about them. (Plotkin)

Buddhism and Mind (Positive Control of Mind)

The whole thrust of Buddha's teaching is to master the mind. If you master the mind, you will have mastery over body and speech ... Mastery of the mind is achieved through constant awareness of all your thoughts and actions ... Maintaining this constant mindfulness in the practice of tranquility and insight, you will eventually be able to sustain the recognition of wisdom even in the midst of ordinary activities and distractions. Mindfulness is thus the very basis, the cure for all samsaric afflictions.
(Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Journey To Enlightenment)

In the Yogasutras, Patanjali lays down that man should control the ramifications of his mind. In the Bhagavad-Gita, while Lord Krishna enlightens Arjuna about the Yoga of equanimity, Arjuna makes a very pertinent objection. How can the turbulent ocean of the mind, in which mighty waves arise, be made waveless - he asks. The mind is restless; impetuous, strong and obstinate. Lord Krishna admits the force of Arjuna’s argument and says: 'Doubtless, it is hard to control the mind but by practice of non-attachment control can be acquired.'

We can eliminate negative characteristics by developing beneficial ones: in the words of the Yoga Sutras, 'Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.' (Yoga sutras)

The Words of Truth - Quotations from the Dhammapada
(Ancient Indian Text, Translated by Radhakrishnan)

All (mental) states have mind as their forerunner, mind is their chief, and they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with a defiled mind, then suffering follows ..

All (mental) states have mind as their forerunner, mind is their chief, and they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts, with a pure mind, happiness follows one as one’s shadow that does not leave one.

This fickle, unsteady mind; difficult to guard, difficult to control, the wise man makes straight, as the fletcher the arrow.

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good is it to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness.

He whose mind is unsteady, he who knows not the Good Teaching, he whose confidence wavers, the wisdom of such a person does not attain fullness

Whatever harm a foe may do to a foe, or a hater to another hater, a wrongly-directed mind may do one harm far exceeding these.

Neither mother, nor father, nor any other relative, can do a man such good as is wrought by a rightly-directed mind.

Make haste in doing good; restrain your mind from evil.

Watchful of speech, well restrained in mind, let him do no evil with the body; let him purify these three ways of action, and attain the Path made known by the Sages.

Excerpts from the discourses of Shri S N Goenka and Sayagyi U BA Khin on Vipassana

Observing, observing you will reach the stage when you experience that the entire physical structure is nothing but subatomic particles: throughout the body, nothing but kalapas (subatomic particles). And even these tiniest subatomic particles are not solid. They are mere vibration, just wavelets.
The Buddha's words become clear by experience: Sabbo pajjalito loko, sabbo loko pakampito. The entire universe is nothing but combustion and vibration.

As you experience it yourself you experience that the entire material world is nothing but vibration. We have to experience the ocean of infinite waves surging within, the river of inner sensations flowing within, the eternal dance of the countless vibrations within every atom of the body. We have to witness our continuously changing nature. All of this is happening at an extremely subtle level. These kalapas (subatomic particles) according to the Buddha, are in a state of perpetual change or flux. They are nothing but a stream of energies, just like the light of a candle or an electric bulb. The body (as we call it), is not an entity as it seems to be, but is a continuum of matter and life-force coexisting.

As you experience the reality of matter to be vibration, you also start experiencing the reality of the mind: vinnana (consciousness), sanna (perception), vedana (sensation) and sankhara (reaction). If you experience them properly with Vipassana, it will become clear how they work.

Buddha discovered the way: whenever you experience any sensation, due to any reason, you simply observe it. Every sensation arises and passes away. Nothing is eternal. When you practice Vipassana you start experiencing this.
However unpleasant a sensation may be - look, it arises only to pass away. However pleasant a sensation may be, it is just a vibration-arising and passing. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, the characteristic of impermanence remains the same. You are now experiencing the reality of anicca. You are not believing it because Buddha said so, or some scripture or tradition says so, or even because your intellect says so. You accept the truth of anicca because you directly experience it. This is how your received wisdom and intellectual understanding turn into personally experienced wisdom.

Only this experience of anicca (impermanent) will change the habit pattern of the mind. Feeling sensation in the body and understanding that everything is impermanent, you don't react with craving or aversion; you are equanimous.
Practising this continually changes the habit of reacting at the deepest level. By observing reality as it is, you become free from all your conditioning of craving and aversion.

http://www.buddhanet.net/bvk_study/bvk21d.htm
(Sourced from ''Buddha's path is to experience reality'' by S N Goenka. OCT 95 Vipassana english news letter, ''Samma Samadhi'' April 95 hindi Vipassana patrika, discourses of Sayagyi U Ba Khin-Sayagyi U Ba Khin Journal-VRI Igatpuri)

Buddha on Mind and Matter

The Buddha described everything as made from mind and matter. He described the parts of the mind and the qualities of matter. These are called "elements" which is confusing today when we use the same word for chemical elements and I prefer the translation to be "properties". The 4 properties he described were likened to earth, air, fire and water .. but are to be understood as the qualities of hardness, cohesion, vibration and expansiveness. These are a correct description for a tensile aether, just like Maxwell arrived at later and which I was also convinced lay behind the structure of cycles and of the wave nature of matter. (Ray Tomes, WSM Group)

The Abhidhamma Pitaka investigates and analyses Mind (citta) and Matter (Rupa), the two composite factors of the so-called a being.(Pali term 'Abhidhamma' is composed of two words 'Abhi' and 'Dhamma'. Abhi means subtle, higher, ultimate, profound, sublime and transcendental, and Dhamma means Truth Reality or Doctrine)

PRIMARY ELEMENTS / PROPERTIES

According to the Buddhist conception, all inanimate objects are aggregates of the following five inherent elements, namely:

(1) The Element of Solidity (Pathavi),
(2) The Element of Fluidity (Apo),
(3) The Element of Heat (Tejo),
(4) The Element of Vibration (Vaya)
and (5) The Element of Space (Akasa) .

In the case of animate objects, all living beings are also aggregates of six inherent elements, i. e. , the above five with addition of mind.

By taking the whole view of the physical phenomena to one-pointedness, one should understand, discern and realize that the body composed of hairs,bones, teeth, blood, sweat, wind etc, is nothing, but the particles or atoms of these four primary phenomenal element which are for ever and ever arising and passing away without any stop even a very short moment.
Being so, the so-called body named such and such with a conventional term is, in the sense of ultimate reality merely proton, neutron and electron of physical phenomena, but not infinite soul; nor mine; nor am I, nor my personality nor ego or self.

Regarding the mind, there is no place where mind can be located. Evidently mind is not static thing, but a moving phenomenon. It is therefore, in reality, the process of consciousness arisen between sense organs and objects. When mind comes in contact with an object through any one of six sense-doors, a new mental phenomenon or consciousness arises and immediately it passes away. Even during such a very short moment of consciousness, the mental process has happened many times very swiftly.

So the comprehensive discernment of physical and mental phenomena in its real nature is called (Vipassana Ñ ana) Insight knowledge.

DHAMMA - The Noble Doctrine of The Buddha - Sayadaw Bhaddanta Pañña Dipa
http://www.erowid.org/spirit/traditions/buddhism/buddhism_dhamma.shtml

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP)

The mind's extended reach remains to be fully defined in scientific terms, but research on human consciousness suggests that we may have direct communication links with each other, and that our intentions can have effects in the world despite physical barriers and separations. We are compelled by good evidence to accept correlations that we cannot yet explain. It appears that consciousness may sometimes produce something that resembles, at least metaphorically, a nonlocal field of meaningful information.

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) takes this possibility as a starting point for a speculation that such fields generated by individual consciousness would interact and combine, and ultimately have a global presence. Usually, because we are busy with individual lives, there is little to produce structure in the field, so it is random and not detectable. But occasionally there are global-scale events that bring great numbers of us to a common focus and an unusual coherence of thought and feeling. To study the effects of a possible global consciousness, we have created a world-spanning network of devices sensitive to coherence and resonance in the mental domain. Continuous streams of data are sent over the internet to be archived and correlated with events that may evoke a world-wide consciousness. Examples that appear to have done so include both peaceful gatherings and disasters: a few minutes around midnight on any New Years Eve, the first hour of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, the Papal visit to Israel, a variety of global meditations, several major earthquakes, and September 11 2001.

The GCP began recording data in August, 1998. It has grown to more than 50 sites around the world, each generating and reporting second-by-second data.
Please accept references to "global consciousness" as a convenient metaphor. It is a label for a possible source for effects and correlations that remain essentially mysterious. All this is subtle, and we can at this point only report the data, hoping to understand its meaning better as we go along.

Links Metaphysics Physics Philosophy of the Mind

Metaphysics: Problem of One and the Many - Brief History of Metaphysics and Solutions to the Fundamental Problems of Uniting the; One and the Many, Infinite and the Finite, Eternal and the Temporal, Absolute and Relative, Continuous and Discrete, Simple and Complex, Matter and Universe.

Philosophy: Education - Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Albert Einstein and Jean Jacques Rousseau on Philosophy of Education, both for the Individual and their Responsibility to Society. On True Knowledge of Reality as Necessary for Education of Critical Thinking.

Philosophy: Realism Idealism - The Rise of Absolute Truth and Realism, the End of Post Modern Relative Idealism. Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Einstein. 'The more plebeian illusion of naive realism, according to which things 'are' as they are perceived by us through our senses ... dominates the daily life of men and of animals; it is also the point of departure in all of the sciences, especially of the natural sciences.' (Albert Einstein)

Berkeley, George - Explaining Berkeley's Idealism from Realism of Wave Structure of Matter in Space. On how our Mind is Interconnected to our Body and all other Matter in the Universe.

Freud, Sigmund - Discussion of the Famous Psychologist Freud's 'Society and its Discontents' on our Conflicts between Cultural and Biological Evolution.

Jung, Carl - Quotations from Psychoanalyst Carl Jung's Undiscovered Self and Synchronicity analysed from the Wave Structure of Matter.