A: Ethical & Religious perspective re the nonMinded

Conjecture re the underlying reason for atheism: those who are philosophically trained and yet deny Mind are actually not possesed of one, and thus are convinced of materialism in various forms and tend to atheism, and discussion with them about religion or spirituality or Mind is a waste of time**. In contrast, the majority of those who are open to spiritual, religious, transcendent, etc notions, are those who do possess Mind and profess it to be 'self-evidently true'.

Debate: Discussing religion and values etc between religious people and many atheists often turns out to be a waste of time since the two are so fundamentally different, that both sides may feel that it is like arguing whether song a or b is more beautiful, with someone - who it later turns out - considers all music to be noise.

Compassion: The tricky question arises as to whether non-conscious entities such as insects actually 'experience' anything including pain and pleasure etc. Perhaps they are aware just not self-aware, but do have sensations of pain and pleasure.

However it would certainly be wrong to consider them not ‘truly human’, especially from the religious perspective which perhaps insists that all 'biological humans' should be considered to have souls. Can it be that perhaps even those with soul do not necessarily possess minds? Or is what is lacking only the awareness of having a mind, ie 'self-awareness'?

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To the mindless, the claim for direct knowledge of the existence of the mental realm though its existence is unprovable scientifically, sounds exactly like the religious claim for the existence of a spiritual realm, or of a soul which grants a human direct awareness of the existence of the spiritual realm, or of "God" whose existence is unprovable scientifically.

Indeed the two claims are very similar, however certainly many who directly feel the existence of their awareness do not feel the existence of God; one would suppose that such a direct awareness-of-God necessitates yet another realm, which religion calls "the spiritual realm" (connecting via 'the soul') in contrast to "the mental realm" (connnecting via 'the mind'). And ironically many of the minded would mirror re claims for a spiritual realm the skepticism of the unminded about the mental realm.

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B: "Absolute morality" and "moral responsibility"; Meaning, Purpose, Free Will; "the significance of humanity", and "Self-evident truths" **

Conjecture to be tested: Absolute Morality: Belief in this requires a belief in some sort of "Transcendent" realm, which is far more likely for the Minded, so I would expect a correlation between Mindedness and belief in absolute morality.

Mind and 'True Free Will': Mind is a level above physical nature, more like the level where 'laws' come from - it may have associated to it 'acausal' phenomena like:

• the ‘measurement problem’ ('collapse of the wave function') in quantum physics;

• the acausality of the emergence of the universe into existence;

• perhaps even the ultimate acausality of true creativity, and of the true free will which enfranchises true moral responsibility.

Of course if mind exists, it does not necessarily imply the existence of free will. However a true objective morality and moral responsibility for one’s free actions (to whatever extent there is real freedom, however miniscule it may be), is possible only if there is a true free will. A true free will may or may not be sufficient to support the notion of true moral responsibility, which presupposes some Absolute standards.

An entirely different level is proposed by those who also believe in a ‘soul’, and/or a ground of being or source of existence, or Mind, and this leads to ‘religion’, however it may well be that most of what religions believe can be encompassed within – or explained by – a certain type of mind-infused universe.

It is likely that only those with a mind can even consider the possibility that there is a 'true free will', the bane of all mechanistic materialists. [See my website-article regarding cosmology, acausality & true free will in the context of 'objective morality'.]

True FreeWill makes no sense philsophically and logically and physically, so for the nonMinded for whom these latter are the standard, the former group of concepts are rejected; for the Minded, for whom physics/cosmology are limited in that they deliberatly exclude Mind and possible transcendence etc, the incompatibility is not a fatal flaw.

In general, being 'unscientific" is not a disqualification since the most fundamnatal truth about our existence, about 'the universe" (meaning "everything") is "unscientific".

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"We hold these Truths to be self-evident": Who can make a statement about self-evident truths - do we not need to prove they are true?

Answer: Those who are Minded know that there is one fundamental self-evident truth - I exist.

The unMinded do not know this, and so they also may perhaps cast doubt on the validity of some absolute standard on which one can hang truths so that they are impervious to demands for proof.

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Moral responsibility: What about higher animals? What about humans who do not possess Mind? Of course without Mind there cannot be 'experience', whether of coior, or music, or of thoughts etc. Nor could the minded really consider them morally responsible for their actions since clearly there cannot be free willed choice without a physically-independent mind. This is problematic from an ethical perspective in both directions - the ethics of causing damage to an entity which does not experience pain, and conversely the ethics of considering them not morally responsible for their actions.

What about from the persepctive not of fellow-humans but of the divine? True free will presumably can exist only when awareness exists, and thus for the creator of a being to consider it to have moral responsibility for its actions presumably that being must have a mind, and so if religion considers all biological humans to have moral responsibility for their actions, then all humans would need do possess at least some aspect of mind.

Those religions which believe in predetermination and no free will would not need to require that all or any humans possess mind.

Alternately, perhaps what is lacking is just the self-awareness of Mind.

Dr Avi Rabinowitz

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** Example: Health care debate between two presidential candidates: Barack Obama vs John McCain: NYT: "The candidates’ health positions reflect the wide gulf between Senator John McCain’s devotion to free markets and Senator Barack Obama’s embrace of a larger government role. But the campaign also has revealed common ground on priorities like reducing health spending by reconfiguring the Medicare payment."

Even more importantly, both candidates agreed the US should finally have basically universal health coverage, which was a contentious issue in itself not long before that. So though they differed completely, the debate was useful. But imagine the futility of arguing whether McCain's proposal re Medicare restructuring was preferable with someone who you do not realize is actually a philosophical Marxist and doesn't share any of your basic notions of the relevant facts, or arguing about whether the US should increase funding for NATO with someone who you think is a US patriot who is Euro-sceptic, but is actually an ISIS supporter. A waste of time.

** I have written extensively on these topics, including the relation between Mind, Free WIll and the creation account in Genesis; much is present on my site - the material here is a very brief excerpt. See eg Einstein's views .

*** useful review: DUALISM: History, from Plato, via Aristotle, Descartes and modern: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

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See also site-pages "survey", physics & mind, and My Own Journey (all on the menu)