#substrate
Ideas cannot exist only “in the mind”
There is no sense in which an idea can exist only “in the mind.” To come to understand and consider any idea is the outcome of actions such as learning and thinking, which require the employment of a substrate called the physical person. And to bring a given idea to mind from storage is also an action with specific costs.
Thinking of philosophy means that one is unable to also play football, at least not well. There is a choice and act involved in considering any given concept as opposed to any other, or to engaging in some other less abstract activity altogether. The mind does not exist without the substrate of body/brain. Nor is it reducible to such substrate.
Consciousness is an emergent layer of complexity that has evolved out of, and along with, biological structures. Those are scarce resources, which when used in one way cannot also be used in another incompatible way.
On the other hand, no idea exists outside the mind either. Ideas only register within active human understandings within each person. The external markers for ideas, such as books, or instantiations of ideas in the form of physical structures and systems, are, without the ongoing individual human activities of deriving and imputing meaning to them, merely so many rearranged atoms with no significance.
Significance comes about when living people relate to them as being meaningful. Just as the mind is emergent from and with the biological layer, ideas and meanings are emergent from and with the mind layer.
Will be switching a lot of the ball pythons over to ReptiChip! Will post later on our first impressions of this substrate, as well as a few cleaning shots of some of the critters.
I just switched my ball pythons to ReptiChips. So far, it’s worked very well for me.
