Staring at Mind
What is the mind? Let's start with examining its attributes!
I took an Oxford University short course on Philosophy of Mind in 2012. The mind had fascinated me since the brain injury had separated it from my brain in 2000. It took me awhile to realize my internal experience — the qualia of it, if you will — differed from pre-brain injury. My mind was telling my brain what to do. And sometimes it felt like a larger consciousness was directing my steps.
I passed the short course because of my writing skills. My reading comprehension sucked. Trying to read up to write a required essay was like pulling words out of a hat, seeing them fleetingly, then watching them flare and burn into ash, immediately forgotten.
Six years passed before I found treatment to restore my reading comprehension.
A few years later, I started jotting down my thoughts on consciousness and the mind in a little black notebook that I’d received from Evernote.
6 Feb 2022: Personality is the brain’s interpretation of the mind.
27 Feb 2022: Thinking about how brain shows activation before conscious (mind) knows what to do.
Observations. Thoughts. Responses to what others said about the mind. Just because the brain shows activation before conscious thought registers and perceives doesn’t mean brain equals mind. Before we can make that conclusion, we ought to theorize and discover what mind actually is. And before we can do that, let’s begin with listing its attributes.
I mean, in terms of functionality, what is mind?
What do we perceive when we look at it — before we consider its physical composition? Looking at altered brain states can provide insight and give us direction.
I wrote a Psychology Today post on what doctors call vegetative state.
“I thought about what could replace it, given that subjective measures like the DSM-V are inappropriate, that objective measurement tools are still being improved upon and provide only the barest glimpse into the final frontier of the brain, and that consciousness is considered the "hard problem" by philosophers.
I propose a new term: invisibly conscious state.
This term connotes that this is a human being and that this human being's consciousness is invisible to the diagnostician. This term would hopefully lead physicians to adopt a humble, open-minded attitude to the person lying in the bed before them and to those loving ones who can communicate with them.”
Attributes
I begin with Descartes famous saying: I think therefore I am. I am a thinking thing.
What is thought?
Desire.
Belief.
Doubt.
Memory.
Thoughts as we think of them.
Emotions.
We don’t usually think of emotions as thought, but research shows — and I experienced when neurostimulation therapies restored my affect — that emotions enhance thinking.
Is the Mind More Than Thought?
When I recently read about terminal lucidity, I wondered how the mind could punch through non-functioning neural networks, through damaged brain areas, to have the body express fully the person imprisoned by dementia, advanced brain tumours, and sundry other devastating neurological conditions. We don’t really know what thought is. Is it a brainwave frequency? A function of a brain section? An unknown substance that uses neurons and neural networks to express itself? But could thought alone have a person with a catastrophically damaged brain “come alive” again for a few hours or days before death?
I feel like that’s not possible. But then I’m not sure what thought is, and so if it’s a kind of energy waveform, perhaps…? Or maybe not a wave or a particle but something entirely new, yet undiscovered?
Therefore, the mind has the attribute of both working through neurons and neural networks and separate from them in a way that externally looks like the person is free from dementia.
What other attributes does the mind hold?
Love
There’s a scene in Extraordinary Attorney Woo, the first K-Drama I watched. Netflix served it up to me; curiosity got me to watch it. In one episode, a prosecutor asks an intellectually disabled victim what love is. Seriously? My immediate thought was: can anyone define love? The defence attorney voiced that thought, as well.
Paul defined love’s attributes in one of his letters.
1 Corinthians, 13:4-7, Paul defined love as:
Patient
Kind
Does not envy
Does not boast
Is not proud
Does not dishonour others
Not self-seeking
Not easily angered
Keeps no record
Does not delight in evil
Rejoices with truth
Always protects
Always trusts
Always hopes
Always perseveres.
Paul defined a long list of attributes! But not its substance.
Is love thought?
I don’t think so. It seems to transcend thinking, and it isn’t emotion, either. It’s like a photon. A photon is both particle and wave. Love is emotion, a state, thoughts, action, zeitgeist. It’s both internal to us as individuals and external as when with a group of friends or family.
So is love a key attribute of the mind? I think so. It may even be foundational.
Mind Like Quantum Particles
The mind can also connect with others across distance, not physically proximal. And it can support others in their work when physically close. Is the latter a function of the brain solely? As in brains support brains, which I’ve written about on my website. Or is it a co-function of brain and mind, and we just can’t see the mind’s contribution?
I can’t imagine brainwaves being strong enough with far-enough propagation to connect with others across space. You know, like when a person suddenly thinks of another person and how they should call them right now. And turns out, that that person needed a phone call and was hoping someone would reach out to them.
Can you think of any other attributes of the mind or consciousness?
Having considered these, I can launch off them to consider what kind of substance holds these attributes.