The mind o_O

[Misschoco]

Maybe I should of searched this topic beforehand before posting this..anyways......boredom contributed to this.

The main question here is ‘what is the mind?’ what is this thing that is conscious, that thinks that enjoys experiences, that feels anger etc....
There are two different answers to this...

The first-The mind is somehow part of the physical world. What goes on in your mind is just what goes on in your brain.i.e our thoughts and feelings etc are nothing more than physical processes taking place within our brains.

The second-The mind is separate from the physical world. The mind may interact with the brain but its not the same thing as the brain. According to this our thoughts feeling experiences etc are something extra in addition to the physical processes in our brain.

Personally the second seems more plausible. Take the example of experience if you were for example to smell some coffee and you were to relay your experience back to a friend-say for example you experienced the smell as sharp and tangy.If you were to look inside the physical brain at that moment you wouldn’t be able to find anything ‘sharp and tangy’ so overall the experience isnt physical...ilu plx im not making much sense :aldo:

So which one do you concur with?

If this is all too philosophical cliché for you then stfu and don’t complain plx :cookie:

[Sundance Kid]

I like the second choice as well....because it is not said that the mind IS the brain...but is like...I guess you could say... a "brain soul"....Like when someone says: I'm losing my mind...that usually means they cannot comprehend with taking in so much of what is going on around them...It's a mental thing...because if the brain is the same thing as the mind then I think we'd all think more alike...be like...robots...or have no freewill of conciousness....it was makes the mind unique and not a physical thing....it is our conciousness and how we think for ourselves rather then depend on neurons and electrons to make us think a certain way...because if that were the case then we'd all think alike, just as I said before...and we know all to well that we as humans do not agree....

[Maggy]

I think there is no mind.
At the beginning all humans are a bunch of cells. Everyone has a genetic code, which is a framework for the education and experience one gets in a life. These things form the charakter of everyone. It's like a program that expands itself. When someone "feels" something, then you can interpret this as a result of a combination of your education/experience/hormones. Maybe one day humans will be able to build an artificial intelligence, that's complex enough to simulate something like an awareness.

But to be honest, it scares me a bit. :|

[Misschoco]

I think there is no mind.
At the beginning all humans are a bunch of cells. Everyone has a genetic code, which is a framework for the education and experience one gets in a life. These things form the charakter of everyone. It's like a program that expands itself. When someone "feels" something, then you can interpret this as a result of a combination of your education/experience/hormones. Maybe one day humans will be able to build an artificial intelligence, that's complex enough to simulate something like an awareness.

But to be honest, it scares me a bit. :|
If there is no mind then you must be implying that our thoughts feelings and experiences are 'physical'.Like my earlier example if you were to experience a pungent smell y and were to examine the brain openly there you wouldn't be able to find anything 'physical' in the brain that was pungent.No matter how deep you were to examine a persons brain you wouldn't be able to find anything physical which would show what they at the moment are experiencing.

I don't see how a genetic code can determine education.If so then why can people develop when they study.
Saying that the there is only one entity in play (the brain) is to mechanistic.It would be more intelligible to say that the mental non physical states interact with the physical casually.

[Maggy]

If there is no mind then you must be implying that our thoughts feelings and experiences are 'physical'.Like my earlier example if you were to experience a pungent smell y and were to examine the brain openly there you wouldn't be able to find anything 'physical' in the brain that was pungent.No matter how deep you were to examine a persons brain you wouldn't be able to find anything physical which would show what they at the moment are experiencing.

I don't see how a genetic code can determine education.If so then why can people develop when they study.
Saying that the there is only one entity in play (the brain) is to mechanistic.It would be more intelligible to say that the mental non physical states interact with the physical casually.

When you smell something, your brain tells you the name of the smell based on what you learned to call it. The 'physical' thing about it, are the chemical/electrical reactions in your brain. It's like a computer with a few sensors attached to it.

I didn't want to say that a genetic code can determine education (maybe I used the wrong words). A genetic code can only specify biological characteristics and simple behavior (like start breathing when you are born). That's the initial programming everybody has and it tells you how to process new data (education/experience). Through education and experience this programming extends itself.

[Rophe]

If you look at it like this, the brain can be seen as merely an extremely powerful computer. Electrical signals passing through, storing information gathered from input devices and outputting other information. The eyes and ears are like a keyboard, the brain itself the CPU and the mouth like speakers. Technically, if this is correct people may one day be able to simulate awareness in computers because according to this theory our brains are merely computers simulating awareness.

Personalities are varied because different brains make different connections. Computers all start out the same way but they are personalised by installing programs and changing parts or contracting viruses, brains start out the same, as a few cells but over time, different experiences, different inputs (sounds sights etc.) will personalise them.

I feel that I may be stretching out this computer metaphor to its limits here but I feel it is a very good example.

[Aquaman]

I don't really agree with either one. :/

I think it may be a mix of both personally. But I am way to lazy to type all that out now. SO, I will later. :cookie:

[Maggy]

If you look at it like this, the brain can be seen as merely an extremely powerful computer. Electrical signals passing through, storing information gathered from input devices and outputting other information. The eyes and ears are like a keyboard, the brain itself the CPU and the mouth like speakers. Technically, if this is correct people may one day be able to simulate awareness in computers because according to this theory our brains are merely computers simulating awareness.

Personalities are varied because different brains make different connections. Computers all start out the same way but they are personalised by installing programs and changing parts or contracting viruses, brains start out the same, as a few cells but over time, different experiences, different inputs (sounds sights etc.) will personalise them.

I feel that I may be stretching out this computer metaphor to its limits here but I feel it is a very good example.

That's what I meant :)

[Misschoco]

When you smell something, your brain tells you the name of the smell based on what you learned to call it. The 'physical' thing about it, are the chemical/electrical reactions in your brain. It's like a computer with a few sensors attached to it.

Even so no matter how physical it was you still wouldn't be able to 'find' this experience in literal terms.Im still going to use experience as an example.No matter how much a scientist gathers information on what goes on physically when you have an experience,including what goes on inside the brain,none of this will still be able to tell the scientist* what the experience is actually like from the point of view of someone having it.i'e the mind is a private non-physical place not even immense examination can enter.even knowing everything physical that goes on when theres an experience you'd only be seeing another persons experience from third person.

Mental events have a certain subjective quality to them, whereas physical seem not to. So, for example, one may ask what a burned finger feels like, or what the blueness of the sky looks likethe subjective aspects of mental events are called qualia (or raw feels).
There is something that it's like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of blue, and so on. There are qualia involved in these mental events. And the claim is that qualia seem particularly difficult to reduce to anything physical

[Maggy]

No matter how much a scientist gathers information on what goes on physically when you have an experience,including what goes on inside the brain,none of this will still be able to tell the scientist* what the experience is actually like from the point of view of someone having it.

I think the reason why a scientist can't tell what an experience is like for another person, is the huge amount of information you'd need to do that. You'd need the genetic code and ALL educational influence the person has been under (<-don't know if that's a grammatical correct sentence :cunning:). Then you would know the "current programming" of that person.

[Rophe]

You'd need the genetic code and ALL educational influence the person has been under (<-don't know if that's a grammatical correct sentence :cunning:). Then you would know the "current programming" of that person.

Exactly my point. The point of view for a particular person during an experience would depend upon that person's ENTIRE life experiences. If a person has particularly sensitive fingers they will react differently to a burn than someone with less sensitive fingers, someone who is colour blind will react differently to bright colours than someone who isn't. Someone who has a bad experience with spiders will react differently to someone who hasn't, it all depends on past inputs and experiences and so in order to see something from someone else's point of view they would be required to have all the influence and genetic code of that person as stated by Maggy.

[AT23]

The human mind is improbable to understand for the most part.

[Misschoco]

I think the reason why a scientist can't tell what an experience is like for another person, is the huge amount of information you'd need to do that. You'd need the genetic code and ALL educational influence the person has been under (<-don't know if that's a grammatical correct sentence :cunning:). Then you would know the "current programming" of that person.
In some sense i meant if the scientist had every single bit of information there was to be found...well i don't want to go into detail or extended explanations so 'personally' I'd still think the scientist wouldn't still be able to obtain a first person experience.

[AT23]

Here's a more serious and thought out answer I have for this topic. My answer for whether the mind being physical or more ethereal is that I am impartial about it. I think to me it is a combination or mixture of the two, as greedy and nonsense as it is. However, I have converted the term physical into scientifc, and the mind into spiritual/other worldly. The brain exist. The chemicals, 'proven' by science exist... yet, to think about how physical it is, this thing we call mind and experiences and feelings we have are rather not tangible. I usually associate physical things to be tangible so... yeah. So far to my and any scientists's knowledge, experiences and feelings can't be transferrable on a brain to brain basis. Yet. Supposedly.

There's so many elements to this discussion on the mind that I can't possibly provide an agreeable answer in one reply in this thread. To touch base on a few things said so far though, I can agree that the mind is the brain. Since every thought and feelings are kept inside the mind, it is common to see the connection between the two. But we also make a connection with our feelings to our hearts. Despite the fact that everything *should* go on in our brains, where supposedly our minds are, our heart beats fast if we kiss someone, or "hurt" if we feel "heart broken" or sad. It seems rather illogical for a heart to play some kind of reaction to these things especially when our consciousness accepts, or in some cases doesn't accept but gets interpretted into our brains for some kind of acknowledgement. To the greater merit of the arguement of the mind being ethereal, there are many things in our world that science itself cannot explain yet some are willing to accept it openly with personal beliefs.

The "physical" point of view is one that is often seen as a cross reference or similarities between the human brain and a computer. In both objects, both are capable of storing and processing "data", be it experiences, thoughts, information and feelings for human beings and raw, numberical codes that translate into a language and artificial data for computers.

I would go into further detail but hell, it's 4AM in the morning and this discussion is already nerve-wracking and wall of text insinuating... I would like to talk about what Rophage, Maggy and Choco said in their latest posts but for now, I am going to go sleep and rest my head for a clearer insight and discussion for this topic. Good night.