Research Program / Claims / intellect-12

The most important tool is the mind, not the brain; the mind is the meeting point of inner and outer senses.

最重要的工具是心智而非大脑，心智是内在感官与外在感官的交汇点。

Concept intellect · Domain Intuitive–Rational Cognitive Integration · mechanism · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable

This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.

Seth sources (book §session)
  • dreams-projections §2
Adjudicating experiment
First distinguish whether inner senses refer to interoception, imagination, or information sources without conventional channels; for the first two, recruit approximately 180 participants in a factorial experiment involving respiratory resistance discrimination, visual evidence, and imagery cues, with simultaneous EEG, respiration, ECG, and trial-by-trial experience reports; 80 participants undergo repeated fMRI, over approximately 12 months. Compare out-of-sample predictions of an embodied-brain integration model versus a model using only external inputs; if the claim is that the mind is independent of the brain, then alternative predictions that can distinguish the two models when neural conditions are controlled must be provided; this experiment alone cannot adjudicate.
Suggested paper title
Integration of Interoceptive, Imagined, and Visual Signals in Perceptual Decisions
What it would overturn
If it is demonstrated that information integration persists without corresponding neural implementation, this would revise the hypothesis that human sensory integration depends on neural implementation.
Candidate labs / funders
Sahib S. Khalsa; Hugo D. Critchley; Sarah N. Garfinkel; Joel Pearson
Specificity of Seth's formulation
The meeting point is a functional metaphor without location, processing rules, or intervention predictions; when the mind is regarded as a functional hierarchy, this is compatible with existing research; when regarded as an independent entity, direct evidence is lacking.
Note
'The most important tool' is a value judgment that cannot be adjudicated by neuroimaging; if all so-called mental effects are implemented through the brain and body, using mental terminology alone does not constitute a new mechanism competing with neuroscience.
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)
  • Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap — Sahib S. Khalsa 等 (2018), Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
    支持神经系统感知、解释和整合体内信号的研究框架，不支持存在独立于大脑的非物理交汇器。[论文](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.12.004)
  • The human imagination: the cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery — Joel Pearson (2019), Nature Reviews Neuroscience
    综述想象的认知与脑机制，为内部生成内容和感官加工的交互提供研究基础，未确立心智可脱离大脑运作。[论文](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-019-0202-9)

Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim intellect-12, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/intellect-12