Came with the invention of the tool. A tool, an instrument, is a condensed thought, an idea in the form of a form. As such thought was placed outside of man (or ape) and the process of metaphysical development took hold. Thoughts were no longer private, neurological phenomena, but actual things, for all to see and use and expound on. So we need to see the mind if we are to understand it psychologically - as a collection of notions which are available to every other mind - not as an exclusive array of personal impressions.
I agree that the mind seems to be a public phenomenon that was later privatised - similarly to the way that writing was at first a memory aid to vocal (public) speech, and only in the last few centuries became a method of communication in and of itself.
The only problem with the thesis is that ‘tool’ is also an indistinct word; the mind is a tool, language is a tool, a sharpened rock is a tool. A tool is something that enables, an object or skill that increases our power, control, influence. And that in some way we use to extend ourselves when we use it.
Ther is a remarkable serial running on the BBC about how to read churches; each church reflects all sorts of different and often conflicing thoughts. The bloke teaches you how to read the private minds behind the public artefact through the ages.
I’d think that displays of emotion were our initial, and most fundamental, methods of sharing thought. Perhaps not as ‘objective’ as a tool, but predictable enough to be understood.
Good stuff! I particularly like your use of “available” as opposed to “accessible”. Well said, man.
I know this might be off topic, but I am still waiting for hard science to prove that the mind exists. If it can only be known subjectively, than how is it anymore of a “fact” than God? The prevailing notion of the mind under the scientic paradigm is that the mind exists in the brain, and is made of material “stuff”. I don’t understand what right hard scientists have in taking for granted that such thing as a “mind” even exists at all, anymore so than the fly spaghetti monster.
Well grab yourself some popcorn and get comfortable. It’s gonna be a while…
I am pretty sure that “science” presumes that the world we perceive has meaning and exists. It is a tool used to refine our understanding of perception. As such, science presumes an observer. To presume an observer presumes a mind.
What you’re getting into is philosophy, not science. Science will never try to prove that the mind exists as any attempt at proof would be proof enough for science.
Can you expand upon this? I honestly (most likely because of my ignorance) don’t know what you mean by the “attempt and proof” being proof enough.
What is attempting the proof if not a conscious observer?
I agree. Architecture, especially involving ‘sacred’ geometry, as cathedrals, greek temples, pyramids, is perhaps the clearest reflection of mind.
It’s interesting to imagine how the outcry representing the emotion at the discovery of a method for making fire would have become the ‘official term’.
that difference is interesting, but not easily expressible for me. Can you define these words so that the difference in this context becomes clear?
It’s interesting to imagine how the outcry representing the emotion at the discovery of a method for making fire would have become the ‘official term’.
that difference is interesting, but not easily expressible for me. Is it possible to define the terms so that the superior adequacy of the first is made clear?
No scientist will tell you there is a ‘thing’ called mind.
It’s a term for an indirectly known phenomenon.
But even if it doesn’t exist as a physical thing, much can be known about it that cannot be known about physical things.
Our knowledge of it is deeper that out knowledge of things, because if we think about our thing-ideas, we come up with the idea of an underlying medium.
Mind is like ether, It doesn’t exist but it does have properties. Or, I don’t know, it has properties but existence-proper isn’t one of them. However you put it, mind is elusive -
until you allow that hard facts, truths, can exist prior to any notions of physicality, of which we consider mind a derivative. This is impossible if indeed physicality is seen as prior to mind, which is logical only in as far as physicality is not an intellectual concept. - But it is; ‘physicality as such’ doesn’t exist. So we can say that in all practical matters, mind is prior to physicality.
mind is based on brain
It’s only really neuroscience and psychology that look into mind, and they’re still pretty much split on how to define it.
“Mind” is a very sloppy term. It covers actions, abilities, tendencies and dispositions, a postulated “other essence”, all sorts of things. You don’t need to have an “other essence” as a ghost in the machine to explain mind. But there’s no evidence that science thinks of the mind as material, as far as I’m aware.
“mind is based on brain”
Brilliant…
Unfortunately, “brain” is based on mind.
Before, when there was nothing known about mind, there was no mind and no way of finding out what was there.
Is there mind? …. who is asking the question? who or what is this ‘I’? what is mind?
How does one find out? There is no asking how, yet, do inquire, be aware, and see what is. On the other hand, it may be that the whole business of self-inquiry is a joke.
But in the first place, why do we ask these questions? Who am I? What is man? Is there a God? Is soul different from the body? What is the meaning of all this?
Are these really our questions? Or, are we repeating the questions already asked by others in the past, sometimes rephrasing them this way or that? Or, are we asking these questions because our traditions have told us that they are very important and that it is possible to find answers? Or is it because the old answers are really no answers, that the questions have remained and continue to be asked. Could it be that there are actually no questions but only unsatisfying and unconvincing answers, and these answers are our problem. Is the problem that we hope that one day we should be able to find satisfactory and final answers to all our questions?
Obviously, of all the creatures living on this planet, only the self-conscious human being asks questions. The questioning is backed by a sort of a priori belief that it is possible to know, to understand and share or communicate that understanding to others. Otherwise, all our inquiries, all our searching, all our sciences should come to a grinding halt.
To ask, say, what the body, or the mind or a human being is, is to seek out its essence. Does such a thing as essence exist? This is indeed a metaphysical question and metaphysical answers are no real answers at all.
There is only the wording and the language in which it is expressed. The implication is that we have first to examine the text, how it works, examine the language and see if it offers any meaning, stable or otherwise, and whether the texts achieves anything at all.
It is not the question, but language itself that is problematic. The self, or even the body, is not something given, but the significant effect of language. The self is not outside of language, and is always in relation to the other. In fact, it is in and through language and in comparison with others that man constructs himself as a subject, and establishes the concept of self.
So long as we remain bound to epistemology, to metaphysics, searching for ultimate basis, grounds, origins, or explanations, we are perhaps condemned to go round in endless circles.
I’m not entirely in agreement you when you say that the human is the only being asking questions. I think that we are as far as we know the only species in which this questioning is internalized. When I see in front of me the childhood memory of the ant, whom I closed off from his aim by erecting a wall around him, I see a questioning at work: he is running here and there, reaching for an answer, a way to the ‘truth’ - his goal.
That analogy goes further than questioning - animals also signal, ‘give answers’ to each other in the form of motions - the bee-‘mind’ uses visual patterns made out of multiple bees, to signal to other bees where to find honey. Several bees ‘think’ together to assemble into a pattern which to other bees will be perceived as a symbol.
How and if the bees communicate with each other is unclear, but, following the definitions we hold, we have no choice but to attribute such behavior to the term ‘mind’.
My personal belief happens to be that mind is probably not confined to the individual brain, and that it is certainly not explained by it.