the eye of Nova&#39;s mind

Well, what I'm wondering is, what is the difference between consciousness and the mind?

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Consciousness is only one aspect of the mind's activity.

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So you believe that consciousness is contained in the brain, in the material of the brain? You believe that the mind encapsulates consciousness?

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Sorry, I'm thinking in Venn diagrams.

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droid-1.livejournal.com

The mind operates at the subconcious level as well as at the concious level. Conciousness is where you're monitoring what you're doing and thinking. The subconcious is where you can't tell what's going on.

Things from the conciousness can go into memory, things from the subconcious, well, you're not aware of them in the first place.

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kali-ma.livejournal.com

I think of it as: the brain is hardware, the mind is software.

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A friend said something the same thing a few weeks ago. But a brain is not a computer, though it can compute.

I understand the analogy and agree with it to a good degree, but it doesn't quite explain what I'm going after.

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kali-ma.livejournal.com

True... and you can't eject the mind from it's "hardware".
Or maybe we just don't have the technology yet ;)

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We experience the mind as distinct from body, so it seems a natural conclusion. But the reductionist claims that distinction is an elaborate illusion, though s/he cannot describe how such an illusion might come to exist.

BTW a materialist explanation of consciousness does not necessarily have to be reductionist. This is one benefit of a theory like quantum consciousness, or my flegling idea of the "noönic field."

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So how does consciousness arise from the material?

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I agree with the concept of "panprotopsychism," which suggests that the potential for raw awareness exists in all matter. It is not so much a question of consciousness "arising" from the material, as consciousness being the process whereby material reality itself is explicated (differentiated into form and substance) from the holomovement/pleroma.

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animals are conscious, in that they're not asleep. But do they have "minds"?

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If the brain is the mind, then yes.

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Being conscious and having consciousness are not the same, as we saw in the Terri Schaivo case.

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I'm not entirely sure I agree. She seemed to be in some kind of "half-conscious" state. I think animals are a bit like that. Eyes open, reflexes working, but no higher functioning in the brain (aside from some of the smarter mammals and birds, perhaps).

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But you seem to be implying (and correct me if I'm wrong) that animals don't have "minds," i.e., higher functions. But if the brain and the mind are the same (as the neuropsychologist said earlier), how are these things resolved? Obviously they have brains.

dionysus1999 were talking about something similar after seeing Revenge of the Sith, and I made mention that all animals are sentient. Sentience is confused with intelligence quite often, and they are not the same. Sentience means being able to perceive one's surroundings. Bats are sentient; they do not have higher intelligence.

Perhaps a similar semantic disconnect is happening here. I've come to prefer the Greek terms for different functions of the brain: the psyche, the nous, the logos. As much as I love the English language, I think it lacks a little in this area.

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I'm probably what one of your other commenters called a redutionist, in that I only believe in the brain. I don't think minds exist except as a concept born out of dualistic thinking.

I think that animals have more or less complex brains, and more complex brains are prone to some kind of self-knowledge and self-awareness, which I consider to be a necessary component of intelligence.

It's possible I'm muddled about some of this. Words are wonderful and confusing at the same time.

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reductionist

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What exactly do you believe about the brain?

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Personally, I'm a bit cautious about making strong contrasts between what it is like to be human, and what it is like to be, say, a bat.

Really the only thing about the mind that seems to be unique in humankind is the stream of consciousness excreted by a memeplex known as "the self." The self creates an ongoing narrative which we then convince ourselves is the center of our mental activity. IMO it exists in order to make ourselves LESS aware of what is going on in our mind, so that we can overlook unsavory aspects of our cognition.

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