Ryan Williams
Qualia & Natural Selection: Formal Constraints on the Evolution of Consciousness
Structure & Quality: Conceptual and Formal Foundations for the Mind-Body Problem
Metadata
Econaut: Ryan Williams
AlphabeticalOrder: Williams, Ryan
DeepestValue: Appreciating every moment of life
RelationshipWithTruth: Truth as relationship between our mental structures and the world
InvestigatoryQuestion: What is the relationship between physical and mental systems?
MoreInvestigatoryQuestions:
Commitment: Yes
Discussion
Andrius: Ryan, I am listening to your first video, Evolution of Consciousness: A Conceptual & Mathematical Approach and am finding it relevant for my own thoughts on the three minds. If there is a correlation between a domain of "what is" and a domain of "what is not" (like hands and gloves) then you are saying there will be a selective pressure relating them. So that implies a wide ranging selective pressure for the first two minds. And then the third mind can be actively standing in for that selective pressure, pre-evolving or accelerating evolution or even creatively preempting evolution.
Andrius: It is also interesting that you also point out the significance of hierarchically grained system. Entropy is a curious concept in that defining it, I think, assumes a fine-grained level and a coarse-grained meta level. It assumes a carving up of phase space. But who is carving it up? I have written an abstract, Combinatorial Interpretations Which Distinguish Observer and Observed, and made a video about that carving up implying an observer: Binomial Theorem Is a Portal to Your Mind
2025.06.28 Andrius: I read in your conceptual paper: ''The fourth relationship we will call mixed-determination or just mixed. Picture a world where the red particles go up, and the blue particles go down; it is part of their intrinsic nature as red and blue particles that they behave structurally as they do. In practice, the behavior of most qualitatively-determined systems is partly-determined by structure and partly determined by quality.''
- I think an example more to the point would be a system where: If a particle is red, it goes up. And if a particle goes down, it must be blue. In that case, there may be nonred particles which go up. And there may be blue particles which don't go down. But the quality (red) may determine the action (up). And the action (down) may determine the color (blue). Which is I think what you mean by mixed-determination.