Minds! Vast Minds! (we need)

An exploration and expansion of the concept of vastness in the context of Mind.

Imagine being a cloud of interstellar gas; imagine your widespread-ness, your enormousness, how thin your tendrils, how intimate your radiation, how cataclysmic the nearby supernova, how dark the moving black holes, how minuscule those little points of light they call stars…

Imagine your immensity.

You feel vast, yet on the grand cosmic scale, you realize how infinitesimal you are.

Imagine a human, a mind just like you, looking at the stars, imagining being an interstellar gas cloud, imagining its own vastness.

How insignificant! How magnificent!

Inspiring? Depressing? Both? None? Indifference?

To my mind, the very fact that we can even envisage such a vision is an inspiring fact and an indication of the potential vastness of the mind.

We came from the Savannah and are headed for the stars!

We came from little warring tribes and are headed for an enlightened star civilization.

For that to happen, we need vast minds.

An exploration and expansion of the concept of vastness in the context of Mind.

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

And so, taking my cue from Adams. I think of the Mind in a similar fashion: The mind is vast — vast in so many ways that we cannot begin to grasp how endlessly, profoundly, and bewilderingly expansive it is or can be.

We may reflect that wandering through a day of thought or solving a dilemma feels like a journey, but that is akin to a grain of sand on the shore of an infinite ocean. The mind stretches farther than any horizon of reason, deeper than any well of wonder, with no edges to its imagination — just limitless skies of possibility, probabilities, interests, and intelligence.

I have explored the concept of mind before (here and here ), and it is time and (also) interesting for me to move forward, expand the idea, and examine its main desired attribute, namely vastness.

It is my firm belief that a vast mind is a foundational approach to the well-being of a person and society (and largely to human civilization in general) and one of the most critical issues facing humanity in its evolutionary path into the future.

In short, a ‘vast mind’ is the atom of description I find necessary for the unfoldment of human potential into the future.

I believe we need vast minds to contain the vicissitudes of time, the immense knowledge at our fingertips, and the fickle nature of humans.We need vast minds if only because space is vast, thoughts are immeasurable, intelligence is many, and interests are infinite. We need vastness to expand understanding and knowledge, to rewire ourselves to be beings of immense complexity and experience, and to contain the infinite meanings we can create.

At this point in time, with the freshly emerging artificial minds and synthetic sentience being on the horizon, we have the privilege and opportunity to redefine our status as conscious-aware, embodied, and embedded systems. We need to clarify for ourselves the futures that we desire and create a road map to reach that future state.

It is my view that to accomplish these visions, we need vast minds.

But what is a vast mind? And in what context should we explore such an idea?

As a first approximation, the meta-context must be Evolution in its widest (and wildest) possible sense. In this sense, we will also need to understand the possible limits of the human mind, which is a point we have not yet reached — if indeed such a point exists.

What makes a mind vast?

A mind is vast when the continuous level of interest and intelligence in the system outpaces the level of cogitation of the given.

Vastness — Expansion:

Vastness is an attribute (metaphorical) of the mind and refers to a given mind’s scale, depth, and farsightedness of sense, thought, ideation, envisioning, and insight. It involves the concepts of immensity, immeasurability, profundity, complexity, and intensity.

Moreover, a Mind is said to be vast ‘if and only if ‘its level of interest outgrows its immediate curiosity — the given.

I refer here to the cognitive and intellectual capacity of said mind, though eventually, the focus of the expansion moves into emotional intelligence and interest and will, at peak moments of intensity, involve the totality of beingness.

Though vastness originates as a description of physical systems, in the context of the mind, vastness takes on a more metaphorical meaning.

In this context, vastness becomes a qualitative descriptor of mental capability and potential rather than a quantitative size measure. It expresses the mind’s capacity to encompass, understand, and engage with the world’s complexity profoundly and expansively.

Vastness is a quality of size that intensifies the breaking of boundaries of both contextual and conceptual aspects of the mind’s limits, including its perceptions of times and spaces.

Mental vastness, therefore, is more qualitative than quantitative.

It’s not about the “size” of memories or knowledge stored but the quality of thinking and engagement. And so, the vastness of the mind is better understood in terms of dimensions rather than size.

It refers to the breadth, range, variety, and diversity of subjects and subject matters or issues one can engage with, the depth of understanding, and the complexity of thoughts one can handle. Including, and maybe more importantly, the capacity to contain paradoxes, ambiguities, and fuzzy systems — uncertainties, apparent inconsistencies, and possible temporary contradictions, entering and embracing states of liminality into motion.

Life is much too vast to be coherent in simplicity, and reality is much too inaccurate to allow for certainty.

In cognitive terms, vastness refers to the richness of connections between ideas.

A “vast” mind has more intricate and numerous pathways (neural and otherwise?) to reach desired goals, and its interplay creates an inherent state of interconnectivity.

However, though it is true that neuroscience doesn’t measure cognitive capacity in terms of size but efficiency, plasticity, and connectivity, to my mind, the metaphor descriptor of vastness is a more appropriate term.

The conceivable vastness of the human mind — our ceaseless curiosity, boundless creativity, and (possible) infinite capacity for understanding — is not merely an individual trait; it is the essential catalyst for weaving a rich and engaging tapestry of and for our collective future. As we cultivate this vastness in ourselves and recognize it in others, we unlock the potential to address challenges, embrace diversity, and explore new frontiers of knowledge and experience, ensuring a vibrant and evolving human narrative.

“Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
― Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

soon to be continued.

Thank you for reading