Qualities as the Bridge Between Mind and Matter

(The following thought is under development.)

One of main ideas explored on this site is that the "building blocks" of reality are not objects and their movements, but qualities—qualities that originate in, or are made possible by, Quality.

Closely related to that claim is another possibility: that what we call matter may not be wholly separate from mind, but may instead be better understood as a form of information, or as a mode of perception.

If that is true, then qualities may be the point of contact between what are usually called the physical and mental worlds.

Ordinarily, we think of material things as possessing qualities, and then imagine that those qualities are somehow codified as symbols (electro-chemical bits and structures) stored in the mind. But this explanation is unsatisfying in many ways. If physical properties are one thing and the bits that represent them another, how do they interface, or get translated into each other?

Consider a yellow flower. Its yellowness corresponds to a certain wavelength of light, which we ordinarily describe as a physical property. But that same light also functions as information: it is transmitted, received, and interpreted by living beings that respond to it. In that sense, the quality is not merely "out there" in the flower, nor merely "in here" in the mind. It is expressed in one mode physically and in another mode mentally.

This suggests, at least provisionally, that the physical and mental may not be two utterly different kinds of reality joined by an impossible bridge, but translated at the level of quality.

Much more work remains to be done:

• to define more precisely what is meant by a quality
• to clarify the relation between Quality and qualities
• to explain in what sense matter could be understood informationally
• to distinguish this view from standard materialism, idealism, or dualism
• and to show whether this framework can be made coherent in a rigorous way

For now, this page should be read as a marker: a first statement of a possible bridge concept that may turn out to be structurally important to the whole project.

Related pages

• About — Qualities as primary in the site's starting picture of science and experience
• Two Definitions of Quality — Characteristic and evaluative senses of quality
• Motives and the Direction of Quality — Direction and value within a field of qualities
• Writings — Longer essays in layered sections
• Quality and Reality — This branch of the Core Framework