What is the nature of the mind/conciousness and brain? One for fan of Descartes!?

Question

Are they seperate? Are they the same thing?

Is the mind physical? If not, how doeit interract with the physical brain?

Will we ever know?

From, a budding philosopher.

Answer 1

The mind answers the minds questions about itself. Doesn't make it a paradox.

The brain is the Mind and the Mind is a collection of Brain works. Like music isn't the Saxaphone and the Sax isn't the music.

Its just a collection of workings and exists as construct.

Answer 2

I think the brain is the computer so to speak. It runs the body, it files memory. That type of thing. Mind/consciousness is us and a part of the whole, energy, thought form, the everything.  Have you ever read  "Infinite Self" by Stuart Wilde  or  "Three Magic Words" by U.S. Anderson. Both are excellent books.

Answer 3

"Let this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," is perhaps the most inspired teaching.

Overgeneralization is a typical error in philosophy.  For example, "mind/consciousness" is already clearly understood to include state-specific wave activity, e.g. alpha reverie, beta bean counting, and high gamma insight and creativity.

Dr. William Tiller, http://www.tiller.org "Psychoenergetic Science," is worth reading, as he quantifies what Lynne McTaggart writes of in "The Field."

http://www.noetic.org

http://www.integralscience.org

http://www.quantumbrain.org

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10

http://www.heartmath.org

are useful, as are

http://www.dreamviews.com

http://www.lucidity.com

Also worthwhile:  "The Masters and Their Retreats" and "The Path of the Higher Self," Mark Prophet,

"Light Is a Living Spirit" and "A Philosophy of Universality," O. M. Aivanhov,

"Kundalini West" and "Watch Your Dreams," Ann Ree Colton,

"The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock, http://www.divinecosmos.com and

"Testimony of Light," Helen Greaves,

"Extraordinary Knowing," Dr. Elizabeth Mayer, and

http://www.carolbowman.com

Answer 4

when you speak of consiousness..it feels like it comes from behind the eyes. Close your eyes and try to figure out what part is the part that tells you your living and active. The function and nature of the brain is to direct the body..mind/conciousness is what allows me to answer this question. i dont think the mind interracts with the physical brain..its a seperate piece. You can be sewing something and thinking about what you did yesterday. Brain is doing the action..mind is thinking.

Answer 5

there are two distinct realities, according to descartes, the res cogitans (thinking thing) and the res extensa (corporeal things). the brain is a res extensa, it is extended because i can measure it, see it, perceive it, sense it; provided you dissect it away from the whole of the body... the mind cannot be perceived, it belongs to the faculty of imaginations, or ideas. yes, the two are separate entities because one is the res cogitans (mind) the other is the res extensa.

the mind is not physical and it interacts with the brain through a gland which descartes calls pineal gland. this gland connects the two distinct realities.....

will we ever know??? im not sure about what you mean... if you're regarding is if we will be able to know if descartes' treatise is true, or the epistemological question: can we know???

if it's the latter,,, i have to suspend my judgment yet.... im too young to answer that... there are still many contemplations, readings and revelations...

Answer 6

I think it's already known. The mind is not physical. How do we know there "is" a "mind/consciousness" at all? The way we know about the mind is totally different from the way we know about the brain. Descartes understood that. His failure seemed to me to be, he didn't explicitly distinguish between "is" (in a way we observe, there it is, out there, not-I, you and I agree) and "is" (in a way we only directly experience - the "am" that depends only and entirely on "I think," and relates coherently to absolutely no thing else).

I think D's error is to assume that just because we perceive our own mind as separate from the world, and our "self" continuing through time, it must be like all other things "in" the world. The mind's not a thing, though. Mind, what it's like to be you, "is" _only and entirely_ your inner experience of being. The ideas of past mind and future mind are logical nonsense. Mind "is" in the present only; it's being Descartes "thinkING thing." Note how pointless "I thought therefore I was" comes out to be... a memory is just another thought in the present.

Mind is, or at least some of it is, "just what it's like to be a brain." The word "mind" is not like other words, it's not a symbol -- it's like the words "god" and "soul," an allusion to the ineffable, uttered in a leap of faith. There's no interaction between mind and brain; there's maybe identity. It's not an "emergent phenomenon" - it's not a phenomenon. We don't need to put mind into one of these "thing that is (Out There)" categories. You may have to force yourself pretty hard to let go of that, because your mind, by its nature, is thinking about some THING. Descartes' "I" needs a thing to be thinking about. By definition of the word "exist," the mind is not there, does not exist. So what "is" the mind? If you can find your mind that has nothing it is thinking about, you might take further steps on these here slippery rocks.

Answer 7

maybe checking out mind-body problem will help you.