Chapter 8.                    Part F 

Bayesianism can talk in a coherent way about what minds do, if first we accept that such things as minds exist. In the Bayesian view, the mind is a system of programs capable of data processing, storage, and manipulation, running on a constantly active, probability-calculating platform system, deciding second by second which applications to use and which files to open, always aimed at prime objectives of self and species perpetuation. It manifests itself in the material world, namely in the chemistry of my brain, whenever I physically see, hear, feel, smell, or taste a bunch of sense data and then spot a pattern in them. Sometimes, in events around me, I even see a new pattern, what is usually called a "causal connection". This brain chemistry pattern change is experienced subjectively as an "Aha!" moment. It is a trait of life, and most especially, human life. No computer program, so far, can imitate it. 

However, Bayesianism does not pretend to say in any more precise detail what a mind is.

The mind ultimately is its own greatest mystery. The word "mind" is a rough term that names a property of certain complex living systems. It can be reliably identified and dealt with ...usually ...as long as we are dealing with other "sane" humans. But how a person can lose his mind without losing any of his brain, we don't understand very well yet. And whether dolphins or apes or aliens may have something that fits our term "mind", we are a long way from deciding. 

As nearly as our minds presently can make out, the mind is one of the most successful manifestations of that greater mystery, life itself. In other words, it is an entity whose precursors are built into the human genome. Once the basic neurological structure is built, once the baby is born, the structure is stocked with culture-programming by the older members of that human's society. The being that results is then driven by its very nature to seek a healthy direction, from the molecular level on up to cells, organs, the individual, her family, her society, and her (or his) species. To learn and grow. Why? We don't know. Life’s love of itself is an unanalyzable given.

A miracle by definition is an event which seems incorrigibly to defy all scientific, empirical explanation. For us today, old style miracles likely are over. I'm not waiting for the parting of the Red, or any other, Sea. But the most amazing phenomenon that a modern human mind will ever encounter, but never "know", is itself. You are your own greatest wonder.

 

                         

For our goal of constructing a moral code that is founded on our best understanding of reality, these last three chapters have served only one purpose. They have left us with a model of the mind - and what it does as it “thinks” and “knows” - called "Bayesianism". A mind is an odds-weighing program that has as its prime directive the preservation of all material conditions necessary for transmitting the program itself forward through time. I think in order to better design and implement my actions in ways that will raise the odds that I, my kids, my tribe, and my species will keep on being able to think.