Consciousnessandstuff – ideas about mind and matter
This blog is about a theory of mind and consciousness as a super-complex information processing model of reality which includes a model of itself.
The theory features some core ideas of which the most important are probably:
- Model within a model: the “whole universe” mind-model features a recursive relationship with a sub-model of the self which itself interacts with other sub-models of people, objects, concepts and symbols, expressed as a self-aware subjective narrative about the internal and external world.
- Complexity and emergent evolution: the idea that if a system is sufficiently large and sufficiently complex then it becomes self-organising so that new and surprising properties and behaviours emerge despite the information exchanges between the lowest level elements (neurones in the case of a brain; chips in the case of computers) being relatively simple. The best example of this is Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand as applied to free markets, and elaborated by Friedrich Hayek; accordingly, the ideas in this blog can be extended to other human systems such as economies or societies.
- Information as a fundamental building block: clearly, the other two core ideas involve information as the fundamental “stuff” of which mind is composed, analogous to software in a computer simulation with the models in one case running on a network of neurons and in the other on computer hardware. This idea is extended through the “its from bits” formulation which postulates that all matter is, at a deep level, “just” information, and can then be extended further into an evolution since the big bang, starting with “0=1-1” – the idea that out of nothing a “something” and an “anti-something” emerges, through, progressively, mathematics, elementary particles, the physical universe, biological life, then consciousness and ultimately the “Mind of God”.
consciousnessandstuff 