Mind Space

The term Explanatory Gap is a modern philosophical term which is well described by John Horgan in his 1999 book The Undiscovered Mind: The term (explanatory gap) was coined by Joseph Levine, a philosopher at North Carolina State University in "Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap" published in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly in 1983.  "Levine addressed the puzzling inability of physiological theories to account for psychological phenomena.  Levine’s main focus was on consciousness, or “qualia,” our subjective sensations of the world.  But the explanatory gap could also refer to mental functions such as perception, memory, reasoning, and emotion—and to human behavior.”  

Within this broad context of describing consciousness (from basic feelings to sophisticated thoughts) that the following pages refer to the term "explanatory gap" and to the qualities (qualia) of human private and public thoughts and related behaviors.  

The term “explanatory gap” infers that there is a gap of coherent meaningful information describing and accounting for qualities and characteristics of consciousness content that is explainable to a logical level of understanding. 

Human consciousness/mind (individual mental identity, intentions etc.) and the brain's neural network with its related nervous system appear to be interdependent and interactive processes and states that to this day are virtually unexplored and unexplained as to their relationships, functions and processes, creating a gap of misunderstanding and verification.  

If, and how physical neuronal biochemical substances and processes (bottom upward causation) create coherent informational processes that become emergent conscious experiences, mental characteristics, intentions etc. and how, in reverse direction (top downward causation), conscious informational processes and states (beliefs, intentions, free will, placebo response, fear, stress etc), affect the biochemical substance of the physical body is not fully understood.  Information, although not always seemingly meaningful, can be causal as to intention and intension. 

The correlations of biochemical brain substance activity verifies mental processes but does not explain the emergence or reason for qualities of abstract conscious experience.  It is highly doubtful that the experience of seeing a beautiful sunset, the creation of a mathematical algorithm, the sensation of a particular quality of feeling, is a specific biochemical or electro chemical formula that can be replicated in a petrie dish.  This gives rise to many questions as to the how, or if thoughts and feelings are separately abstract or merely caused physical effects or even illusions of brain functions. www.explanatorygap.com

Mathematics remains a natural human mental phenomenal principle to comprehend and partially fill the 'explanatory gap'.  

“What is the metaphysical status of numbers and other entities in which mathematics deals?”—D.M. Armstrong. 

 Just as the physical universe (macro and micro) is an instantiation of mathematics, counter-intuitively, the abstract complex subjective universe of human consciousness content is an instantiation of mathematics and its extended representational characters and symbols that manifest as language.  Intelligence is exemplified by cognitive capacity of natural sequence as in number order which gives relational and functional meaning.  Categorized and classified human attributes of consciousness arranged in their natural order give meaning to the qualitative characteristics of that relative numerical position.  

Patterns and sequences of symbols that comprise numerical order and language, are in turn, instantiations of abstract universal mathematics (universal relational order) and are inextricably linked to the qualitative expressions of human consciousness by way of the intelligent natural order (natural categorical boundaries) of nonphysical discrete categories of mind dependent characteristics and qualities (including the qualities of time). Numerical symbols, along with their relational functions, as in the basic entities of numbers, appear to be explicitly correlated to qualitative mental attributes and properties. Innate human pattern and sequence recognition along with the capacity to self organize and manipulate those same patterns to create order are the basis of the cognition of categories and relations.  

What can best be referred to as abstract "forces of human intelligence" are aspects of information that take the form of mental characteristics (qualities) of human mental behavioral phenomena. Individual human embodied minds are instantiations of human constructed languages, which influence the quality of desires, attitudes, and expressions of the individual human "self" consciousness (experience, awareness etc.).  

Similarly DNA and RNA are biochemical physical instantiations of mathematics and symbols that define physical characteristics (Including basic instinctive sensory and motor activity).   

What appear to be analog qualities of human characteristics are categorically subliminally discrete individuated intensional mental qualities.  Related example: Hearing (ears) is (are) erroneously thought to be analog; in fact sound waves are interpreted digitally (the ear's cochlear hairs).

The fundamental characteristics that express through human embodied irreducible consciousness in the form of both individual private and public thoughts are natural instantiate discrete categorical qualitative sets (natural kinds). These categorical universal qualitative primary innate essences (categorical perceptions) of desires, attitudes, and expressions (characteristics and qualities beyond the sensory) are instantiations of irreducible mathematics, pre-formal language, and language ordered symbols which represent and filter (or bundle) that part of consciousness content that is the personal identity or profile referred to as individual mind.  They are irreducible universal pre-mathematical relational qualities of varying intensity.

Universals translated to bundles of individuated conscious minds (feelings, experience, intentions, desires, attitudes, capacity to understand, expressed behaviors etc.) are explicit abstract mental qualities and characteristics interacting with physical bodies (brains, nervous system).  Universals translate into particulars of individuals through the identification of personhood through manipulating symbols of language with explicit rules (syntax of names). "Traditionally, one of the major arguments for universals has been a semantic one.  It has been noted that only a small number of terms in a natural language, can be construed as referring to particular individuals which can be placed and dated. Proper names, demonstratives, pronouns, and definite descriptions plausibly refer to individuals." ---Bigelow. (Proper nouns name. Pronouns name without identifying.)  Referent proper names (rigid designators) assigned to the physical and mental referent personality (explicit designatee) by other human conscious entities attaches meaningful non-reducible numerically classified qualitative characteristics to that particular concrete biophysical individual.  

These environmental assigned rigid designators (proper names) convey the qualities of the forces of intelligence (abstract properties) that influence the mental phenomena referred to and cognitively recognized by that particular individual human entity.  The qualities of sophisticated human consciousness manipulated with the vehicles of universal sequential order as used in language symbols have a subtly but obvious affect on the expression of the characteristics of consciousness content of individual minds. Just as the keys struck on a piano create harmony or discord, assigned referent proper names (explicit rigid designators) will have unintended consequences of discord or harmony as to the relational qualities influencing the desires, expressions etc. of the referent individual. Seemingly meaningless non-descriptive proper names convey innate intentional meaning with variance of intension.

 Beyond immediate sensory and motor activity, the fundamental "forces of intelligence", over time, mold and influence mental identity, and qualitative (im) balance and (dis) harmony may be knowingly or unknowingly created or manipulated.  

Balance, harmony, natural order, discord and chaos are all instantiations of mathematics; and universal basic abstract phenomenal mathematics is the pathway to bridging the gap leading to an objective understanding of that part of human qualitative consciousness content defined as individualized mind.  www.explanatorygap.com