Mr. Confident Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 Well, I must say that few people venture into this domain! He-he. When it comes to dealing with one's inner self, that existential inner being, phew!...things can get intense. The superset of this forum is 'Mind, Body, & Soul'. Hmmm, interesting terminology. Well, OK...let's begin this thread with a discussion of 'Mind'. What is it? Link to post Share on other sites
yes Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 i don't know what "mind" is - i mean i may know, but i can't tell you - but one idea i've read recently, and liked, is that You are NOT your mind. Your mind is just something you have - just like your body. my 2 cents for the morning, -yes Link to post Share on other sites
quankanne Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 "Mind," to me, is the body of intellect that you possess. Knowledge, experience, likes and dislikes, etc. "Body" is the corporeal unit -- the bag of bones and skin that physically make up you. "Soul" is your spiritual home, something that transcends mind because it's a bit more visceral than just a vast collection of knowledge or ideas you've been exposed to. where are we going with all of this? Link to post Share on other sites
Ryan Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I believe Sartre had a good definition for what mind is...or at least consciousness. His basic premise is that there is being....and there is nothingness. Being is all that exists in the physical world. Nothingness is consciousness.....nothingness exists only so long as consciousness exists. I also like a mild Cartesian paraphrase: mind is thought, which means mind is that which necessarily exists. Link to post Share on other sites
Tony T Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Mind is the body of thought and the mental essence of a human being. Mindlessness is an epidemic that affects all of society. Right mindedness is staying far away from those who are mindless. The French philosopher Descartes coined the phrase "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am" in order to prove his existence. Conversely, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard preferred the concept of "Sum, ergo cogito" or "I am, therefore I think" because he felt it was not Illogical to conclude that "thinking arises from a precise, premeditated, even aesthetic conglomeration of countless cosmic elements (God)." My take on all this is that our mind creates our reality...so we must first exist in mind before anything will manifest itself in our lives. Everything that is created on this planet was first a conception of mind....in God's or in man's. Show me something that was not. Link to post Share on other sites
Ryan Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 The French philosopher Descartes coined the phrase "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am" in order to prove his existence. I might add that this is probably the most profound and airtight philosophical statement known to man. It defines an irrefutable starting point for metaphysics. Kierk's flaw is a rather basic logical fallacy. The converse of a true statement has no known truth value. Furthermore, the statement of existence requires an implied premise (I am a thinking thing) for the converse to be valid....which really doesn't add to the original concept. But hey...it's not easy to build off Cogito Ergo Sum....Descartes couldn't do it well either. Everything that is created on this planet was first a conception of mind....in God's or in man's. Show me something that was not. The main problem with that is the implied premise that "God" exists and is a thinking thing (a mind). That statement cannot be shown true or false. If we further extend your notion that all things created are initially thoughts in a mind, then "God" must have been a thought in a mind....and that mind was a thought in another mind....etc. The idea leads us to an infinite regress. The only way out is to assert that "God" was never created...which is basically omnipresence....which is an implied truth of the general definition of "God." This escape requires the assertion of omniscience as well...meaning all ideas are in the mind that is "God." There's some interesting discussion to be had in all of this about what is idea, what isn't idea, and how that alters our concepts of reality and transcendence. Link to post Share on other sites
MercyRose Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I never read any philosophers opinion but the word that popped into my mind was consciousness. The mind is aware of everything, existence, thoughts, decisions, consequences, discernment etc Link to post Share on other sites
HokeyReligions Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Another theory is that everything that exists today (both known and unknown) is an evolution from something else. A tree evolves from an acorn; an adult evolves from a baby; a baby evolves from an occurrence (the joining of sperm and egg); etc. On a microscopic level this constant evolution or change is ever-present. Old skin is sloughed off and new skin evolves, etc. This evolution transcends the physical or material. The body works on electric impulses. Your brain fires off an impulse when you scratch your nose, and then fires off another to stop scratching. If your mind didn’t fire off that second impulse you would keep scratching your nose until it fell off! The same for thoughts and “mind”. The mind has continued to evolve from the beginning of time. The human brain is like a central control room for the body, with storage areas and generators, and the mind is generally accepted as a function (one of millions of functions) of the brain. Ideas and inventions and emotions are electrical and cannot be identified or put under a microscope. Mapping of the brain is in its infancy. A million years ago humanoid beings evolved to where they could reason things out and “think” and along with that evolution came the wheel and clothing and the ability to harness fire. Also creativity and invention and from that evolved patterns of belief, worship, and habit. And from all of this evolved what we call “culture” to describe sections of people who differ geographically and physically and by their beliefs. At one point humans worshipped the lights in the sky. They made up stories and based beliefs and actions and worship on the lights in the sky. Then someone questions it, and others followed and exploration took place, and as knowledge increased, beliefs, values, and cultures changed. Once the world was flat. That was a known fact and accepted. The world was flat. You could travel to the edge and fall off. Then someone traveled to the edge and didn’t fall off. That was a profound discovery. It changed so much. A big step in the evolution of the human mind – which resides in, or is part of the brain – which controls the body. Wow! Can you imagine how it must have been, what it must have felt like, to suddenly be confronted with the FACT that your belief was wrong? The world is NOT flat. How incredible. The basic theory is that the mind is nothing more than electrical and/or chemical impulses controlled by the brain – the same as heartbeat and instinctual behavior. Personally, I think we are all in gel-filled tubes somewhere and our only awareness or consciousness exists in a computer-generated matrix. I think the original movie MATRIX wasn’t just a movie, but the real thing and created to play over the machines matrix and feed into our minds. And I think that the second movie was the machines way of tricking us into thinking it was ONLY a movie. I mean, c’mon, the guy was right in the first “movie” – why does everything taste like chicken? OMG! What was that? Do you feel it? Do the machines kno.. ah.. Link to post Share on other sites
Author Mr. Confident Posted July 12, 2003 Author Share Posted July 12, 2003 The interpretations from the contributors of the various sources are greatly appreciated! Another one out there that I am particularly fond of is from R. Buckminster Fuller's introduction to 'Synergetics. An Exploration in the Geometry of Thinking.', i.e., 'The Wellspring of Reality', is: "Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank; and, in seeking to identify their inter-complementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already cataloged principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalog of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe." This, integrated with the previous entries, sums up our interactive concepts of 'mind', that metaphysical entity by which we are able to fulfill our roles. I would say that 'Body' is self-evident. However, 'Soul' isn't. Shall we go on to that topic, or will there be further comments made on 'Mind'? thank you Link to post Share on other sites
Author Mr. Confident Posted July 12, 2003 Author Share Posted July 12, 2003 Oh, another thing...what is the relationship between mind and body? I would venture to say that it lies in the brain. Mind can't function without it. Mind exists, but without the brain it amounts to the premise that "consciousness is nothing''. I didn't want to give the impression from my previous post that the 'Body' or the physical component of the human entity should be overlooked! Link to post Share on other sites
Ryan Posted July 12, 2003 Share Posted July 12, 2003 I would say that 'Body' is self-evident. I don't think that's true....at least not from a certainty standpoint. All we REALLY have is what Descartes started with.....a thinking thing. Everything else requires a degree of speculation and assumption. Mind exists, but without the brain it amounts to the premise that "consciousness is nothing''. And you wouldn't be the first to suggest this. Link to post Share on other sites
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