The Mind

Mind or mentality is contrasted with body, matter or physicality. The debate over the relationship between mind and brain is called the mind-body problem. Traditional viewpoints include dualism and functionalism, which hold that the mind is roughly identical with brain activities or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity. Alternatively, some philosophers see mind as a separate entity from body, possessed by all living things, or limited to humans.

If this is true, then perhaps Descartes' experiment was mistaken from the start. After all, if we close our eyes in a silent room, the feeling of having a body isn't something we can just imagine away. This question of mind and body becomes particularly interesting at a time when we're considering future technologies, such as neural prosthetics and wearable robots that could become extended parts of our bodies. Or the slightly more radical idea of mind uploading, which dangles the possibility of immortal life without a body by transferring a human consciousness into a computer. If the body is deeply mapped in the brain, then by extending our sense of self to new wearable devices, our brains may eventually adapt to a restructured version with new sensory representations. Or perhaps uploading our consciousness into a computer might not even be possible unless we can also simulate a body capable of delivering physical sensations.

The idea that our bodies are part of our consciousness and vice versa also isn't new. It's found extensively in Buddhist thought, as well as the writings of philosophers from Heidegger to Aristotle. But for now, we're still left with the open question of what exactly our self is. How do you know it's really yours? It seems obvious, unless you've experienced the rubber hand illusion. In this experiment, a dummy hand is placed in front of you and your real hand is hidden behind a screen. Both are simultaneously stroked with a paint brush. No matter how much you remind yourself the dummy hand isn't yours, you eventually start to feel like it is, and inevitably flinch when it's threatened with a knife. That may just be a temporary trick, but it speaks to a larger truth: our bodies, the physical, biological parts of us, and our minds, the thinking, conscious aspects, have a complicated, tangled relationship. Which one primarily defines you or your self? Are you a physical body that only experiences thoughts and emotions as result of biochemical interactions in the brain?

That would be a body with a mind. Or is there some non-physical part of you that's pulling the strings but could live outside of your biological body? That would be a mind with a body. The nature of the contrast between mind and body is a perennial topic of debate. Dualism and idealism, the traditional viewpoints, consider the mind to be non-physical. Modern views center around physicalism and functionalism, which hold that the mind is roughly identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity. This question is still open to debate, with proponents on both sides.Consciousness is the foundation of any living thing. Since living things are not equal and have a great deal of variety, so too does consciousness: it has infinite potential for development in either direction.If we understand our mind and its functions, if we face the barriers to our development that egocentrism represents, if we work upon our mind every day, we can take the steps that lead to our empowerment as thinkers