So the mind we experience is our conscious language activity thinking, speaking, writing, imagining, and how this informs our sensations and what we hear, see, touch, taste and smell. Language use promoted the development of a sense of self through interactions with other language users. This allows for “the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts or affections.” Homo sapiens evolved a well-developed language that became the means for memory, providing a sense of the past and the ability to symbolically model the future. Homo sapiens evolved with a higher-order or Tertiary Consciousness. They are aware of things, have mental images in the present but have no sense of being a person, with a past or a future. It “emerged during evolution as a new component of neuroanatomy.” Creatures with Primary Consciousness (such as chimpanzees, most mammals and Neanderthal man) are always in the present. The first is what he calls Primary Consciousness, which is animal consciousness. Gerald Edelman ( Bright Air Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind, 1994) proposes two types of consciousness, one building on the other. But there is much evidence to suggest that the mind as a separate and distinct thing is a myth, and little or no evidence to show otherwise. Contrary to Carter, they argue that as the music is not the organ, the mind is not the brain. Understandably Carter’s well-researched and well-argued hypothesis is discomforting to those who hold that the brain is merely the organ that generates the music we recognize as the mind.
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Her thesis is that the mind is merely a complex biological system housed by the brain, and that free will is an illusion. In Mapping the Mind, Rita Carter documents research that demonstrates how and where the brain stores memories, accommodates language, captures sensory information and creates the avenues that channel understanding. It seems likely that many existing accounts may well appear somewhat excessive, and in need of revision.Ĭolin Brookes, Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershireįollowing Gilbert Ryle’s ghost-busting The Concept of Mind, it became chic to argue that there is no Wizard of Oz, and the brain and mind are one and the same. The advantage of sense-perception and other mental abilities unavoidably entails the increase in human cognitive ability until we are unwittingly beguiled by our brains, so that now we are compelled to believe in a metaphysical self and mind somehow independent of the principal organ that has undergone this process of improvement – the brain. Cartesian dualism provides a root for this way of thinking: there is no way that a material thing – the brain, can be related to the mind – a metaphysical or non-material thing.Ĭoncerning b): our evolutionary history is significantly characterised by increasing capacities for intense, vivid experiences, etc, which represent profound survival value. Proposition a) is supported by the use of the word ‘the’ in the question, presupposing the independent existence of ‘the mind’. This can be the result of two diametrically opposed positions:Ī) The brain and the mind are different types of entities – physical and mental.ī) The extraordinary complexity of brains succeeds in persuading us to believe that minds are metaphysical when they are not. This means for every mind state there is also a brain state.Ĥ. Neural activity correlates with consciousness and its characteristic patterns generate mind. Not prepared entirely to accept a direct equivalence of mind and brain (2), a comfortable position is correlation. Neural correlation – Neural activity correlates with consciousness. It seems at the moment that the kind of language we typically use to discuss minds will increasingly be supplanted by that which describes brain events – ultimately perhaps brain algorithms.ģ. With this option, the question doesn ’t really arise – what occur in brains, amongst other events, are minds. Direct correspondence – Minds consist in or are the same as brain activity. It is very clear, especially from neuroscience, that brains are entirely capable of causing minds, and do.Ģ. This relationship is disconcertingly unproblematic. Straightforward causality – Brains cause minds. How are the mind and brain related? Several different but overlapping kinds of relationship obtaining between mind and brain are evident in recent literature:ġ. SUBSCRIBE NOW Question of the Month How Are The Mind And Brain Related? The following readers’ answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book.