At
first let’s know the meaning of the both words “The Mind and The Brain”
Mind: The
mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, perception,
thinking, judgment, language and memory.
Brain: The
enlarged and highly developed mass of nervous tissues that forms the upper in
of the central nervous system.
How
are the mind and the brain related?
i.
Straightforward casualty – Brains cause
minds. This relationship is disconcertingly unproblematic. It is very clear,
especially from neuroscience, that brains are entirely capable of causing minds
and do.
ii.
Direct correspondence – minds consist in or
are the same as brain activity. With this option the question doesn’t really
arise. What occur in the brains, amongst other events are minds. It seems at
the moment that the kind of language we typically use to discuss minds will
increasingly be supplanted by that which describes brain events ultimately
brain algorithms.
iii.
Neural
Correlation: Neural activity correlates with consciousness. This seems to be
about hedging bets. Not prepared entirely to accept a direct equivalence of
mind and brain, a comfortable position is correlation. Neural activity
correlates with consciousness and its characteristics patterns generates mind.
This means for every mind state, there is also a brain state.
iv.
Overwhelming incompatibility: This can be the
result of two diametrically opposed positions:
a.
The Brain and The Mind are different types
of entities – Physical and Mental.
b.
The extraordinary complexity of brain succeeds
in persuading us to believe that minds are metaphysical when they are not.
-
Proposition A) is supported by the use of
“the” in the question, presupposing the independent existence of “the mind”.
Cartesian dualism provides a root for this way of thinking, “there is no way
that a material thing – the brain can be related to the mind ”
-
Concerning B): our evolutionary history is
signifying characterized by increasing capacities for intense, vivid
experiences etc which represent profound survival value. The advantage of sense
– perception and other mental abilities unavoidably entails the increase in
human cognitive ability until we are unwittingly beguiled by our brains, so
that we are compelled to believe in a metaphysical self and mind somehow
independent of the principal organ that has undergone this process of improvement
- the brain. It seems likely that many existing accounts may well appear
somewhat excessive and in need of revision.
COLIN
BROOKES; WOODHOUSE EAVES, LEISTERSHIRE
Following Gilbert Ryle’s ghost-busting
“the concept of mind” it became chic to argue that there is no Wizard of Oz and
the brain and mind are one and the same. In “Mapping the Mind” Rita Carter
documents research that demonstrates how and where the brain stores memories,
accommodates language, captures sensory information and creates avenue that channel
understanding. Her thesis is that the mind is merely a complex biological
system housed by the brain and that free will is an illusion.
Understandably, Carter’s well
researched and well argued hypothesis is discomforting to those who hold that
the brain is merely the organ that generates the music we recognize as the
mind. Contrary to Carter, they argue that as the music is not the organ, the
mind is not the brain. But there is much evidence that the mind as a separate
and distinct thing is a myth and little or no evidence to show otherwise.
Gerald
Edelman (Bright Air Brilliant Fire on the Matter of the Mind, 1994) proposes
two types of consciousness, one building on the other. The first is what he
calls primary consciousness, which is animal consciousness. It “emerged during
evolution as a new component of neuroanatomy” creatures with primary
consciousness (such as chimpanzees, most mammals and Neanderthal man) are
always in the present. They are aware of things, have mental images in the
present but have no sense of being a person with a past or a future. Homo sapiens
evolved with a higher order of tertiary consciousness. This allows for “the
recognition of a thinking subject of his or her own acts or affections.” Homo
sapiens evolved a well developed language that became the means for memory,
providing a sense of the past and the ability to symbolically model the future
language use, promoted the development of a sense of self through interactions
with other language users. So the mind we experience is our conscious language
activity; thinking, speaking, writing, imagining and how this informs our
sensations and what we hear, see, touch, taste and smell. All of these exist as
a direct result of brain activity. Central to the issue of the mind/brain
relationship is an explanation of consciousness that satisfies the demands of
science and promotes the opportunity for further research. While there is a
good reason to believe that consciousness is created by electrochemical
activity within the brain, we still don’t know how the functions of the brain
produce consciousness.
If our consciousness stems from the
brain, we must confront the idea that simple atoms which ordinarily make up the
rocks and the stone can when arranged in a particular way, think for themselves
and feed complex emotions such as pride and jealousy. We must ask ourselves
what is so special about the construction of the brain which allows non-living
matter like water and carbon atoms to decide its own future? If you examine the
living brain with the most powerful tools, you find none of its constituent
molecules behave any differently to how they would under sterile laboratory
conditions apart from the brain or body. However, if we cannot find evidence of
our mind’s origin inside our brains like this, perhaps which suggests that the
mind resides as an entity fundamentally separate from the body.
In short, our mind is conveyed by our
brains like light is conveyed by glass. But what we can never know is whether
the light is contained within the glass, like a lantern or if the light simply
shines through like a window.