A
Anonymous05/11/26, 21:06No.16974444
What is the evolutionary purpose of mental states? If a certain sequence of neural events in brain causes another set of neural events, why does there need to be a mental event at all to accompany those physical events?
5
Replies
A
Anon05/11/26, 21:22No.16974449
define mental state before this becomes a semantic fracas
A
Anon05/11/26, 21:23No.16974450
Internal and external viewpoints of the same process.
A
Anon05/12/26, 01:29No.16974561
It's easier to commit to a course of action if it's congruent with your mental state (or inversely, to reject a course of action if it's incongruent)
Think of mental states as nature's gear stick or something
A
Anon05/15/26, 11:18No.16976449
Potentially the potentiality of the purposes of mental states could be that which makes self reference possible and completes a self referential idea ellipse? As an example having mental states would potentially be useful to the context of a globe where all is justifiable or could be justifiable according to something like cause or evolutionary purposes, this in the context of making use of a word like ‘cause’, the idea of which is a concrete idea or abstraction that is arguably material as a word that has relationality to the material globe, the material globe which needs to be hypostasized partly as an idea of a sphere in order for the idea of the material globe to be perceived, and from there to have the idea of something like the idea of ‘efficient cause’ ‘operating on the globe’ as an idea and also furthermore that the ‘having’ of mental states does not seem entirely separate from the having the ‘having of ideas’. Which is just to make the thread argument that if ‘purposes’ are going to get lexicographically referenced then what ought to get recognized as partly phenomenologically significant is that slippage between mental and physical descriptions and inscriptions, mind and state and evolution are all ideas, partly the claim is that a potential evolutionary purposes of mental states the being able to hypothesize about mental states, but that as a description of purpose seems partly unsatisfying without further hypothesizing further about mental states