I’m curious about the mind and how it works. Conventional theories have left me feeling ill. Rupert Sheldrake has a theory of that make more sense to me than any that I’ve heard thus far:
This talk at Google is worth a listen.
I’m currently reading Sheldrake’s book A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the mind. Is the mind inside the brain? What is the relationship between the mind and the brain? What is the mind? What does it mean to be conscious? What is consciousness? Share yours with me…
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“the” mind is not inside the brain, it is present in any system of sufficient complexity to transmit information and respond to conditions. the brain is one of the places where the body connects itself up in order to process that information, but the information (and thus the mind) occurs at the interface with the world. when you feel the ground through your hands on the steering wheels and through the tires, the steering wheel and the tires are part of your mind. my understanding (or my definition) is that consciousness is recursive: awareness of being aware. as primates we are tribal and interactive, thus we have internal narrative about what is happening among those others we participate with. since we are part of those interactions, we self-represent in those narratives. thus we end up with a sense of (separate) self which we call consciousness (as opposed to awareness or sentience). how widespread among other species this sense of self-in-a-mirror exists i have no idea.
Hi Ellen,
This was really helpful. I really liked how you described our ability to use our imagination to create a narrative, and how we create a self to interact in those narratives. I also really liked the differentiation between sentience and consciousness. Have you seen Charlie Rose’s Brain Series? I posted a short video of John Searle of the University of California above this post. Searle described consciousness almost the same as you describe the mind, as this qualitative interface with the world. But he didn’t separate sentience from consciousness as you have.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in this discussion is memory, imagination and the ability to learn.
if we are telepathic, which we may be, who says the brain is not involved? no one seems to be examining how the brain and thus the soma are engaged in telepathy, or even closely defining what telepathy is when it is studied.
of course the mind exists beyond the brain. there may be field effects but don’t reify the field.
“don’t reify the field”, she says.
I’m afraid I may be guilty of just that. If the field we are talking about is the mind, then I may be guilty. The mind either exists or it doesn’t exist. Are we saying that the mind is just an abstract concept or does it actually exist? When it exists, it is a field, a field of qualitative experience. I think the brain interacts with this field in the same way a magnet interacts with a magnetic field. I think we draw and transmit our experience and our being. The brain is the sensory organ sensing the field of mind.
This is just a description not an explanation. (Thanks again) But it works
[...] brain sense the qualitative experience. It is not in the brain. Qualitative experience is a field. See post below… Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Think once for “yes” and twice for [...]