the-mind
A definition-driven synthesis of mind (Bach framework)

the-mind

Man is a machine.
— Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L’Homme Machine (1748)

The soul is the first actuality of a natural body having life potentially within it.
— Aristotle, De Anima II.1

A dense, definition-driven synthesis of how the mind works according to Joscha Bach.

This repository collects public sources (talks, interviews, essays) and turns them into a clear, faithful exposition with tight provenance (links + timecodes where possible).

This repo specifies what to write (definitions + structure) from Joscha Bach’s public material so humans or LLMs can draft the prose and cross-check it. The intended meaning should be reproducible from the cited sources plus the repo’s high-level instructions (not word-for-word text).

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Joscha Bach.

Start reading

Tip: Annotations toggles internal drafting labels ([BACH]/[SYNTH]/[NOTE]/[OPEN]).

Book overview

The manuscript builds the framework in four steps: models and control, valence and motivation, self-modeling and consciousness, then social minds and implications for AI. The style is dense and definition-first, with careful separation between function, mechanism, and phenomenology.

What you will find here

  • Manuscript chapters: manuscript/chapters/
  • Blog posts (short-form companion): content/blog/posts/
  • Source index: sources/sources.csv
  • Per-source notes (timecodes, extracted segments): sources/source_notes/
  • Working notes (glossary, claim ledger, concept map): notes/
  • Build artifacts (generated locally): manuscript/book_public.md, content/series/chapters/, dist/

Website

A static site can be built from the same knowledge base (chapters, glossary, claims, sources) and published (e.g., via GitHub Pages). Site assets/templates live in site/.

Build

Build all reader-facing outputs:

npm ci
python3 scripts/build_all.py

Outputs:

  • Book (clean): manuscript/book_public.md
  • Blog posts: content/blog/posts/
  • Chapter series exports: content/series/chapters/
  • Static site (local build): dist/

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages deployment is configured via GitHub Actions in .github/workflows/pages.yml. In the GitHub repo settings, set Pages “Build and deployment” source to “GitHub Actions”.

License

CC0-1.0 (public domain dedication) for the repository contents.