{"id":45,"date":"2025-08-11T11:32:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/08\/11\/spread-mind\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T11:32:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:32:27","slug":"spread-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/08\/11\/spread-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Spread Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reader Matteo sends us here<\/a>, where we read:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

So let me tell you why the Spread Mind<\/a> promises to solve one of the most difficult problems in the history of science and philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, allow me to be clear about the terminology. First, all my efforts are based on a straightforward empirical hypothesis, the so called Mind-Object Identity <\/em>hypothesis<\/strong> (MOI), namely the hypothesis that<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The experience of X is one and the same as X<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

This should not come as a surprise to anybody. If our conscious experience is real, it must be something! And since the world is made only of physical stuff, there has to be something physical that is one and the same as our experience. I know, I know, many people have been looking for consciousness inside the brain. Have they succeeded? No. So let\u2019s start looking for consciousness elsewhere. Where? In the very external objects around our body.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At this point I stopped reading. (Well, I did skim the rest, but it got no better.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, conscious experience is real. My present visual experiencing of a tree (or as of<\/em> a tree to be precise) is undoubtedly real. And so the experiencing is, not just something, but something that exists. What the experiencing is of or about is, let us assume, also real.  Now we cannot just assume that "the world is made up only of physical stuff," but suppose that that is true. Still, the act and its object are two, not one: the experiencing and the tree experienced cannot be numerically identical even if both are physical. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On the face of it, then, MOI is simply absurd.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This quickie response does not, of course, put paid to every theory of extended mind<\/a>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Am I being fair, Matteo?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reader Matteo sends us here, where we read: So let me tell you why the Spread Mind promises to solve one of the most difficult problems in the history of science and philosophy. First, allow me to be clear about the terminology. First, all my efforts are based on a straightforward empirical hypothesis, the so called Mind-Object Identity hypothesis (MOI), … Continue reading “Spread Mind”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-externalism","category-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}