Mind the gap

[Magical Realist]

“There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You’ll regret it if you don't.”
― Jerry A. Fodor

Last nite I was wondering if I was a dualist or a neutral monist. A dualist takes there to be two irreducible substances---matter and mind. A neutral monist otoh takes there to be only one irreducible substance of which matter and mind are two instantiations. I have for some time tried to reconcile the gap between matter and mind with some third unified state of being. Something along the line of Tao or spirit or soul. But I am at a lost trying to neatly express this in anything but a paradoxical or paralogical form. Matter and mind do somehow meet, but the gap is still obstinately there. How do we live with this gap of compehension between what is experienced and the experience itself? How is that I can be aware, from inside my own mind, of a world that is fundamentally beyond my own consciousness? The mind represents the world and its objects. But how does it do this? How does the thought of my apartment refer to the physical apartment that sits out there apart from my mind and brain?

[Yazata]

“There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You’ll regret it if you don't.”
― Jerry A. Fodor

What does Fodor mean when he says "there is a gap between the mind and the world"? What does he mean by "mind" and by "world"?

Was Fodor (a philosopher I have long respected) proclaiming his conversion to a full-fledged substance dualism or was he talking about something else?

As for me, I persist in thinking that minds are part of the world. I believe that minds are natural and even physicalistic in the broadest sense, not spiritual and divine.

The physical universe as I conceive of it includes abstract things like numbers and relations. It includes information such as is found in the light that reflects off objects and transmits information about those objects to distant eyes. I conceive of minds as physical systems (brains in our case) that can process this information in complex and as-yet poorly understood ways, identifying distant objects so as to form a mental representation of the surrounding environment, generating goals and purposes, and initiating actions.

So as for me, I don't imagine any tremendous gaps. Certainly not any gaps that might justify a Cartesian-style substance dualism. (There may indeed be an epistemological gap of some sort between our understanding of the world and the world that we seek to understand. We make mistakes. There are gaps in our understanding.)

Last nite I was wondering if I was a dualist or a neutral monist.

I'm a physical monist I guess, at least tentatively.

A dualist takes there to be two irreducible substances---matter and mind. A neutral monist otoh takes there to be only one irreducible substance of which matter and mind are two instantiations. I have for some time tried to reconcile the gap between matter and mind with some third unified state of being. Something along the line of Tao or spirit or soul. But I am at a lost trying to neatly express this in anything but a paradoxical or paralogical form. Matter and mind do somehow meet, but the gap is still obstinately there. How do we live with this gap of compehension between what is experienced and the experience itself? How is that I can be aware, from inside my own mind, of a world that is fundamentally beyond my own consciousness?

You can't, unless you acquire some information about it. That requires senses and some physical way the information was transmitted to the senses.

The mind represents the world and its objects.

I think that consciousness is ultimately causation. The simplest organisms, single-celled protozoa for example, seem to operate entirely causally, with some stimuli (pH gradients for example) inducing them to swim away. I doubt very much that these single cells have any conscious awareness as we phenomenologically intuit it in ourselves, they just behave like little biological machines, reacting to pH like a light switch reacts to your finger's pressure. But like the switch they are showing some awareness of their environment and the ability to respond appropriately in the simplest case.

As we ascend through the animal phyla, we observe animals (worms, starfish, insects, octopuses, lizards, dogs, humans) able to extract and process more and more information from the environment, using all kinds of sense modalities such as light, sound and smell (one that humans often underestimate but dogs don't). Higher organisms don't just react like little light-switches, they orient themselves within their environment, they remember, they navigate, they form purposes, plans and goals that aren't just hard-wired in, and they behave socially. At some point they seem to begin to be able to identify and respond to not only fine details of the surrounding external environment, but to their own inner states as well, and they start to develop self-awareness.

I'm guessing that probably starts to arise as organisms start to be able to form plans and form purposes in response to their understanding of transient environmental situations. They would be reacting not just to the environment like the light switch does, but to their understanding of the environment. Then some animals acquire the additional ability to critique their own plans and their effectiveness and learn from their mistakes. Most mammals can do this and octopuses (the smartest invertebrates and evolutionarily speaking the closest thing to space-aliens on Earth) probably can. So I have no problem imagining that an octopus has some crude and non-verbal sense of "me" and "I", a sense of self in other words, an awareness of itself as an agent within its environment.

But how does it do this? How does the thought of my apartment refer to the physical apartment that sits out there apart from my mind and brain?

I don't think that anyone really knows the details of that at this point.

[C C]

[...] Last nite I was wondering if I was a dualist or a neutral monist. [...]

If not dualism as the rival metaphysical game, then the "duality" (of physical and mental) might at least be considered an upper, heterogeneous level of neutral monism before it bottomed-out into the uniformity of a single so-called "substance" or principle underlying both.

"Physical affairs" are abstracted from the extrospective half of experience (external world) that is actually inter-subjectively (publicly) available to everyone (who is fully functional). Whereas the introspective or purely personal accessible events (private occurrences) receive the label of "mental affairs". Both territories are a combination of "qualitative showings" and understandings (linguistic thoughts, concepts, and reasonings about them) that disappear if the experiences cease.

So should the monism belief imply an ultimate source that has nothing whatsoever to do with a phenomenal continuum (mind, conscious flow or agency, etc) -- neither manifestations and intellectual products classified as "physical" nor manifestations and intellectual products classified as "mental" -- then the neutral "stuff" both spring from would be just that: Something transcendent or prior in rank to both. Plato or the ancient Greeks' "intelligible world" doesn't really qualify as that (it only strips away the sensible / specific characteristics while leaving the abstract / general affairs of reason). "Noumenal" has the same limitation of etymologically referring to what can only be apprehended by intellect rather than sense.

Thus the placeholder in the "neutral monism" game shouldn't be filled by anything, should it want to completely avoid metaphysical speculation which is minus any inhabitant or trait or invention of a phenomenal continuum (i.e.: mind, conscious flow or agency, etc).