So after reading all that, I still don't understand the difference between recursion and self-reference in the context of minds. (But at least I know of them in computer programming.)
Here's a bit that chafed with me, maybe it'll help to examine:
"Minds get this backwards all the time: they think that people are objectively real, and that their models of others are approximations of those people. But that’s not how reality works. There’s an enormous mystery in what our minds tag as “another person”, but the idea that this mystery ultimately is “a person” roughly the way the mind thinks about people is the mind confusing its interface for the real thing."
Would it be more accurate to say that the other person is a person in roughly the same way the mind thinks about itself? (Allowing some room for variation as distinct minds can mind distinctly.)
Also, people are objectively real, and so are cats and birds and bugs and airplanes. I'm not really sure how the mind can be said to be making a mistake here.
Ah, I think you haven't grokked emptiness (sunyata). There are no true things. There's just interface-ness. Kind of like how there are no actual icons or programs in your computer despite how it appears on your screen, but it's still a helpful interface to treat it as though they're "really there".
I do think I misspoke in the original though. "Objectively real" means something, and in that meaning, people are obviously objectively real. Er, or at least humans are. *People* are more complicated, because what defines a person is subjectivity, and it gets very difficult to say whether a *specific subjectivity* is objective. I don't think we have a coherent enough theory of subjectivities to say whether that's true or even sensible as a claim.
But part of the background point is, "real" doesn't mean "objective", and the fact that something is objective doesn't mean that the form it presents to you is its true form, or even that it *has* a true form. Like the icons on your computer desktop: there's no "true form" of what those "really are", because they're literally *made of* interface.
RE recursion vs. self-reference in the context of the mind: no function of the mind can point directly at *itself* (as far as I know). That's the recurring issue. The mind, as a whole, cannot think about *itself*; what it does instead is create an icon or model that it labels as "the mind" and points at *that icon or model*.
But yes, there's an analogous thing happening where the mind has a model of "itself", and it has a model of other people, and there's actually a profound mystery underneath all of that as to what's *really there* underneath the models.
I doubt that clarifies the recursion vs. self-reference thing in the context of minds. But hopefully that answers the rest of your questions.
But there are actual icons and programs in the computer. There are icon files, shortcut files, executable files. The icons, at least historically in Windows, were teensy little bitmap grids, sometimes as separate .ico files and sometimes actually bundled into the executable.
Probably "sunyata" isn't for me. I know quarks don't care about whether they're part of me or the chair I'm sitting on, and the division of the allthing into distinct things is a logistical convenience. But they have real meat to them, they're not just a constellation of labels.
So after reading all that, I still don't understand the difference between recursion and self-reference in the context of minds. (But at least I know of them in computer programming.)
Here's a bit that chafed with me, maybe it'll help to examine:
"Minds get this backwards all the time: they think that people are objectively real, and that their models of others are approximations of those people. But that’s not how reality works. There’s an enormous mystery in what our minds tag as “another person”, but the idea that this mystery ultimately is “a person” roughly the way the mind thinks about people is the mind confusing its interface for the real thing."
Would it be more accurate to say that the other person is a person in roughly the same way the mind thinks about itself? (Allowing some room for variation as distinct minds can mind distinctly.)
Also, people are objectively real, and so are cats and birds and bugs and airplanes. I'm not really sure how the mind can be said to be making a mistake here.
Ah, I think you haven't grokked emptiness (sunyata). There are no true things. There's just interface-ness. Kind of like how there are no actual icons or programs in your computer despite how it appears on your screen, but it's still a helpful interface to treat it as though they're "really there".
I do think I misspoke in the original though. "Objectively real" means something, and in that meaning, people are obviously objectively real. Er, or at least humans are. *People* are more complicated, because what defines a person is subjectivity, and it gets very difficult to say whether a *specific subjectivity* is objective. I don't think we have a coherent enough theory of subjectivities to say whether that's true or even sensible as a claim.
But part of the background point is, "real" doesn't mean "objective", and the fact that something is objective doesn't mean that the form it presents to you is its true form, or even that it *has* a true form. Like the icons on your computer desktop: there's no "true form" of what those "really are", because they're literally *made of* interface.
RE recursion vs. self-reference in the context of the mind: no function of the mind can point directly at *itself* (as far as I know). That's the recurring issue. The mind, as a whole, cannot think about *itself*; what it does instead is create an icon or model that it labels as "the mind" and points at *that icon or model*.
But yes, there's an analogous thing happening where the mind has a model of "itself", and it has a model of other people, and there's actually a profound mystery underneath all of that as to what's *really there* underneath the models.
I doubt that clarifies the recursion vs. self-reference thing in the context of minds. But hopefully that answers the rest of your questions.
But there are actual icons and programs in the computer. There are icon files, shortcut files, executable files. The icons, at least historically in Windows, were teensy little bitmap grids, sometimes as separate .ico files and sometimes actually bundled into the executable.
Probably "sunyata" isn't for me. I know quarks don't care about whether they're part of me or the chair I'm sitting on, and the division of the allthing into distinct things is a logistical convenience. But they have real meat to them, they're not just a constellation of labels.