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The mind is the totality of psychological phenomena and capacities, encompassing consciousness, thought, perception, sensation, feeling, mood, motivation, behavior, memory, and learning. The term is sometimes used in a more narrow sense to refer only to higher or more abstract cognitive functions associated with reasoning and awareness.
22 de dez. de 2011 · The web page explains how the unified theory of psychology (UT) resolves the mind-body problem by conceptually separating the mind from the brain and the information from the matter. It also discusses the relationship between neuro-linguistic information processing and consciousness, and the limits of our knowledge on the latter.
- Overview
- Common assumptions among theories of mind
- Disputed questions
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mind, in the Western tradition, the complex of faculties involved in perceiving, remembering, considering, evaluating, and deciding. Mind is in some sense reflected in such occurrences as sensations, perceptions, emotions, memory, desires, various types of reasoning, motives, choices, traits of personality, and the unconscious.
A brief treatment of mind follows. The subject of mind is treated in a number of articles. For a philosophical treatment of Western conceptions, see mind, philosophy of. For scientific treatment of the so-called mental faculties, see intelligence; animal learning; learning theory; memory; perception; thought. For treatment of Eastern conceptions, in the context of the respective philosophical traditions, see Buddhism; Hinduism; etc.
Several assumptions are indispensible to any discussion of the concept of mind. First is the assumption of thought or thinking. If there were no evidence of thought in the world, mind would have little or no meaning. The recognition of this fact throughout history accounts for the development of diverse theories of mind. It may be supposed that such words as “thought” or “thinking” cannot, because of their own ambiguity, help to define the sphere of mind. But whatever the relation of thinking to sensing, thinking seems to involve more—for almost all observers—than a mere reception of impressions from without. This seems to be the opinion of those who make thinking a consequence of sensing, as well as of those who regard thought as independent of sense. For both, thinking goes beyond sensing, either as an elaboration of the materials of sense or as an apprehension of objects that are totally beyond the reach of the senses.
The second assumption that seems to be a root common to all conceptions of mind is that of knowledge or knowing. This may be questioned on the ground that, if there were sensation without any form of thought, judgment, or reasoning, there would be at least a rudimentary form of knowledge—some degree of consciousness or awareness by one thing or another. If one grants the point of this objection, it nevertheless seems true that the distinction between truth and falsity and the difference between knowledge, error, and ignorance or between knowledge, belief, and opinion do not apply to sensations in the total absence of thought. Any understanding of knowledge that involves these distinctions seems to imply mind for the same reason that it implies thought. There is a further implication of mind in the fact of self-knowledge. Sensing may be awareness of an object, and to this extent it may be a kind of knowing, but it has never been observed that the senses can sense or be aware of themselves.
Thought seems to be not only reflective but reflexive, that is, able to consider itself, to define the nature of thinking, and to develop theories of mind. This fact about thought—its reflexivity—also seems to be a common element in all the meanings of “mind.” It is sometimes referred to as “the reflexivity of the intellect,” as “the reflexive power of the understanding,” as “the ability of the understanding to reflect upon its own acts,” or as “self-consciousness.” Whatever the phrasing, a world without self-consciousness or self-knowledge would be a world in which the traditional conception of mind would probably not have arisen.
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The third assumption is that of purpose or intention, of planning a course of action with foreknowledge of its goal or of working in any other way toward a desired and foreseen objective. As in the case of sensitivity, the phenomena of desire do not, without further qualification, indicate the realm of mind. According to the theory of natural desire, for example, the natural tendencies of even inanimate and insensitive things are expressions of desire. But it is not in that sense of desire that the assumption of purpose or intention is here taken as evidence of mind.
These assumptions—thought, knowledge or self-knowledge, and purpose—seem to be common to all theories of mind. More than that, they seem to be assumptions that require the development of the conception. The conflict of theories concerning what the human mind is, what structure it has, what parts belong to it, and what whole it belongs to does not comprise the entire range of controversy on the subject. Yet enough is common to all theories of mind to permit certain other questions to be formulated: How does the mind operate? How does it do whatever is its work, and with what intrinsic excellences or defects? What is the relation of mind to matter, to bodily organs, to material conditions, or of one mind to another (see mind–body dualism)? Is mind a common possession of men and animals, or is whatever might be called mind in animals distinctly different from the human mind? Are there minds or a mind in existence apart from man and the whole world of corporeal life? What are the limits of so-called artificial intelligence, the capacity of machines to perform functions generally associated with mind?
The intelligibility of the positions taken in the disputes of these issues depends to some degree on the divergent conceptions of the human mind from which they stem. The conclusions achieved in such fields as theory of knowledge (see epistemology), metaphysics, logic, ethics, and the philosophy of religion are all relevant to the philosophy of mind; and its conclusions, in turn, have important implications for those fields. Moreover, this reciprocity applies as well to its relations to such empirical disciplines as neurology, psychology, sociology, and history.
Mind is the complex of faculties involved in perceiving, remembering, considering, evaluating, and deciding. Learn about the Western and Eastern conceptions of mind, the common assumptions and disputed questions, and the scientific and philosophical treatments of mind.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
26 de ago. de 2021 · What is the mind? Scientists may not agree on an answer, but new research shows that people across diverse cultures do. This shared conception of the human mind appears to be a cognitive...
- Bertram F. Malle
- bfmalle@brown.edu
- 2021
The mind that thinks our thoughts is a pretty special place. But is it distinct from the brain? Is there, in fact, a soul directing our thoughts or are they determined entirely by the output of our biology?
3 de out. de 2020 · The mind creates and controls functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning, as well as taking physical actions to achieve our goals.
18 de jun. de 2004 · Distinctions can be drawn between creature and state consciousness as well as among the varieties of each. One can refer specifically to phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, reflexive or meta-mental consciousness, and narrative consciousness among other varieties.
