Mind

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For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation).

The mind (adjective form: mental) is that which

senses, or in other words is the set of faculties responsible for such phenomena.[1][2][3] The mind is also associated with experiencing perception, pleasure and pain, belief, desire, intention, and emotion
. The mind can include conscious and non-conscious states as well as sensory and non-sensory experiences.

The exact nature of the mind is disputed. Traditionally, minds were understood as substances, but contemporary philosophers tend to see them as collections of properties or capacities. There is a lengthy tradition in philosophy, religion, psychology, and cognitive science exploring what constitutes a mind, what its distinguishing properties are, and whether humans are the only beings that have minds.

Mind, or mentality, is usually contrasted with body, matter, or physicality. The issue of the nature of this contrast and specifically the relation between mind and brain is called the

animals, by all living things, whether it is a strictly definable characteristic at all, or whether mind can also be a property of some types of human-made machines.[citation needed
]

Different cultural and religious traditions often use different concepts of mind, resulting in different answers to these questions. Some see mind as a property exclusive to humans, whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities (e.g.,

Islamic
, and medieval European philosophers.

Psychologists such as Freud and James and computer scientists such as Turing developed influential theories about the nature of the mind. The possibility of nonbiological minds is explored in the field of artificial intelligence, which works closely with cybernetics and information theory to understand the ways in which information processing by nonbiological machines is comparable to or different from mental phenomena in the human mind.[7] The mind is also sometimes portrayed as a stream of consciousness, where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing.[8][9]

Etymology

The original meaning of Old English gemynd was the faculty of memory, not of thought in general.[10] Hence call to mind, come to mind, keep in mind, to have mind of, etc. The word retains this sense in Scotland.[11] Old English had other words to express "mind", such as hyge "mind, spirit".[12]

The meaning of "memory" is shared with

PIE verbal root *men-, meaning "to think, remember", whence also Latin mens "mind", Sanskrit manas "mind" and Greek μένος
"mind, courage, anger".

The generalization of mind to include all mental faculties, thought, volition, feeling and memory, gradually develops over the 14th and 15th centuries.[13]

Definitions

The mind is often understood as a faculty that manifests itself in

natural sciences.[15][14] On the traditionally dominant substantialist view associated with René Descartes, minds are defined as independent thinking substances. But it is more common in contemporary philosophy to conceive minds not as substances but as properties or capacities possessed by humans and higher animals.[14][16]

Despite this agreement, there is still a lot of difference of opinion concerning what the exact nature of mind is and various competing characterizations have been proposed, sometimes referred to as theories of mind.[1][17][a] Philosophical definitions of mind usually proceed not just by listing various types of phenomena belonging to the mind but by searching the "mark of the mental": a feature that is shared by all mental states and only by mental states.[15][14] Epistemic approaches define mental states in terms of the privileged epistemic access the subject has to these states. This is often combined with a consciousness-based approach, which emphasizes the primacy of consciousness in relation to mind. Intentionality-based approaches, on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as being a certain way as the mark of the mental. According to behaviorism, whether an entity has a mind only depends on how it behaves in response to external stimuli while functionalism defines mental states in terms of the causal roles they play. The differences between these diverse approaches are substantial since they result in very different answers to questions like whether animals or computers have minds.[1][15][14]

There is a great variety of mental states. They fall into categories like sensory and non-sensory or conscious and unconscious.[18][14] Various of the definitions listed above excel for states from one category but struggle to account for why states from another category are also part of the mind. This has led some theorists to doubt that there is a mark of the mental. So maybe the term "mind" just refers to a cluster of loosely related ideas that do not share one unifying feature.[14][15][16] Some theorists have responded to this by narrowing their definitions of mind to "higher" intellectual faculties, like thinking, reasoning and memory. Others try to be as inclusive as possible regarding "lower" intellectual faculties, like sensing and emotion.[19]

In popular usage, mind is frequently synonymous with thought: the private conversation with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads".[20] Thus we "make up our minds", "change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No one else can "know our mind". They can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate.[21]

Epistemic and consciousness-based approaches

repressed desire, for example, is a mental state to which the subject lacks the forms of privileged epistemic access mentioned.[14][16]

One way to respond to this worry is to ascribe a privileged status to conscious mental states. On such a consciousness-based approach, conscious mental states are non-derivative constituents of the mind while unconscious states somehow depend on their conscious counterparts for their existence.[15][22][23] An influential example of this position is due to John Searle, who holds that unconscious mental states have to be accessible to consciousness to count as "mental" at all.[24] They can be understood as dispositions to bring about conscious states.[25] This position denies that the so-called "deep unconscious", i.e. mental contents inaccessible to consciousness, exists.[26] Another problem for consciousness-based approaches, besides the issue of accounting for the unconscious mind, is to elucidate the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness-based approaches are usually interested in phenomenal consciousness, i.e. in qualitative experience, rather than access consciousness, which refers to information being available for reasoning and guiding behavior.[15][27][28] Conscious mental states are normally characterized as qualitative and subjective, i.e. that there is something it is like for a subject to be in these states. Opponents of consciousness-based approaches often point out that despite these attempts, it is still very unclear what the term "phenomenal consciousness" is supposed to mean.[15] This is important because not much would be gained theoretically by defining one ill-understood term in terms of another. Another objection to this type of approach is to deny that the conscious mind has a privileged status in relation to the unconscious mind, for example, by insisting that the deep unconscious exists.[23][26]

Intentionality-based approaches

Intentionality-based approaches see

desires are forms of representation, this seems not to be the case for pains and itches, which may indicate a problem without representing it.[30][33] But some theorists have argued that even these apparent counterexamples should be considered intentional when properly understood.[35][36]

Behaviorism and functionalism

Behaviorist definitions characterize mental states as dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli.[37][38] On this view, to ascribe a belief to someone is to describe the tendency of this person to behave in certain ways. Such an ascription does not involve any claims about the internal states of this person, it only talks about behavioral tendencies.[38] A strong motivation for such a position comes from empiricist considerations stressing the importance of observation and the lack thereof in the case of private internal mental states. This is sometimes combined with the thesis that we could not even learn how to use mental terms without reference to the behavior associated with them.[38] One problem for behaviorism is that the same entity often behaves differently despite being in the same situation as before. This suggests that explanation needs to make reference to the internal states of the entity that mediate the link between stimulus and response.[39][40] This problem is avoided by functionalist approaches, which define mental states through their causal roles but allow both external and internal events in their causal network.[41][42][16] On this view, the definition of pain-state may include aspects such as being in a state that "tends to be caused by bodily injury, to produce the belief that something is wrong with the body and ... to cause wincing or moaning".[43][18]

One important aspect of both behaviorist and functionalist approaches is that, according to them, the mind is

computationalism, which defines the mind as an information processing system that is physically implemented by the neural activity of the brain.[15][45]

One problem for all of these views is that they seem to be unable to account for the phenomenal consciousness of the mind emphasized by consciousness-based approaches.[18] It may be true that pains are caused by bodily injuries and themselves produce certain beliefs and moaning behavior. But the causal profile of pain remains silent on the intrinsic unpleasantness of the painful experience itself. Some states that are not painful to the subject at all may even fit these characterizations.[18][43]

Externalism

Main article: Externalism

Theories under the umbrella of externalism emphasize the mind's dependency on the environment. According to this view, mental states and their contents are at least partially by external circumstances.[46][47] For example, some forms of content externalism hold that it can depend on external circumstances whether a belief refers to one object or another.[48][49] The extended mind thesis states that external circumstances not only affect the mind but are part of it.[50][51] The closely related view of enactivism holds that mental processes involve an interaction between organism and environment.[52][53]

Forms

Functions and processes

The mind encompasses many functions and processes, including

smell, and taste. The sensory information received this way is a form of raw data that is filtered and processed to actively construct a representation of the world and the objects within it. This complex process underlying perceptual experience is shaped by many factors, including the individual's past experiences, cultural background, beliefs, and expectations.[55]

Memory is the mechanism of storing and retrieving information.[56] Episodic memory handles information about specific past events in one's life and makes this information available in the present. When a person remembers what they had for dinner yesterday, they employ episodic memory. Semantic memory handles general knowledge about the world that is not tied to any specific episodes. When a person recalls that the capital of Japan is Tokyo, they usually access this general information without recalling the specific instance when they learned it. Procedural memory is memory of how to do things, such as riding a bicycle or playing a musical instrument.[57] Another distinction is between short-term memory, which holds information for brief periods, usually with the purpose of completing specific cognitive tasks, and long-term memory, which can store information indefinitely.[58]

Thinking involves the processing of information and the manipulation of

Problem-solving is a closely related process that consists of several steps, such as identifying a problem, developing a plan to address it, implementing the plan, and assessing whether it worked.[61] Thinking in the form of decision-making involves considering possible courses of action to assess which one is the most beneficial.[62] As a symbolic process, thinking is deeply intertwined with language and some theorists hold that all thought happens through the medium of language.[63]

Imagination is a creative process of internally generating mental images. Unlike perception, it does not directly depend on the stimulation of sensory organs. Similar to

daydreaming and plays a key role in art and literature but can also be used to come up with novel solutions to real-world problems.[64]

Motivation is an internal state that propels individuals to initiate, continue, or terminate goal-directed behavior. It is responsible for the formation of

intentions to perform actions and affects what goals someone pursues, how much effort they invest in the activity, and how long they engage in it.[65] Motivation is affected by emotions, which are temporary experiences of positive or negative feelings like joy or anger. They are directed at and evaluate specific events, persons, or situations. They usually come together with certain physiological and behavioral responses.[66]

Attention is an aspect of other mental processes in which mental resources like awareness are directed towards certain features of experience and away from others. This happens when a driver focuses on the traffic while ignoring billboards on the side of the road. Attention can be controlled voluntarily in the pursuit of specific goals but can also occur involuntarily when a strong stimulus captures a person's attention.[67] Attention is relevant to learning, which is the ability of the mind to acquire new information and permanently modify its understanding and behavioral patterns. Individuals learn by undergoing experiences, which helps them adapt to the environment.[68]

Faculties and modules

Traditionally, the mind was subdivided into mental faculties understood as capacities to perform certain functions or bring about certain processes.[69] An influential subdivision in the history of philosophy was between the faculties of intellect and will.[70] The intellect encompasses mental phenomena aimed at understanding the world and determining what to believe or what is true; the will has a practical orientation focused on desire, decision-making, action, and what is good.[71] The exact number and nature of the mental faculties are disputed and more fine-grained subdivisions have been proposed, such as dividing the intellect into the faculties of understanding and judgment or adding sensibility as an additional faculty responsible for sensory impressions.[72][b]

Diagram of the Müller-Lyer illusion
In the Müller-Lyer illusion, the horizontal black lines have the same length but the top line appears longer. The illusion persists even after becoming aware of it because of the automatic functioning of mental modules responsible for low-level visual processing.[74]

In contrast to the traditional view, more recent approaches analyze the mind in terms of

language processing and facial recognition.[79]

Conscious and unconscious

Main articles: Consciousness and Unconscious mind

An influential distinction is between conscious and unconscious mental processes. Consciousness is the awareness of external and internal circumstances. It encompasses a wide variety of states, such as perception, thinking, fantasizing, dreaming, and

altered states of consciousness.[80] In the case of phenomenal consciousness, the awareness involves a direct and qualitative experience of mental phenomena, like the auditory experience of attending a concert. Access consciousness, by contrast, refers to an awareness of information that is accessible to other mental processes but not necessarily part of current experience. For example, the information stored in a memory may be accessible when drawing conclusions or guiding actions even when the person is not explicitly thinking about it.[81]

Unconscious or nonconscious mental processes operate without the individual's awareness but can still influence mental phenomena on the level of thought, feeling, and action. Some theorists distinguish between preconscious, subconscious, and unconscious states depending on their accessibility to conscious awareness.

psychological mechanism of repression keeps disturbing phenomena, like unacceptable sexual and aggressive impulses, from entering consciousness to protect the individual. Psychoanalytic theory studies symptoms caused by this process and therapeutic methods to avoid them by making the repressed thoughts accessible to conscious awareness.[84]

Other categories of mental phenomena

declarative sentence. When a person believes that it is raining, they have the propositional attitude of belief towards the content "it is raining". Different types of propositional states are characterized by different attitudes towards their content. For instance, it is also possible to hope, fear, desire, or doubt that it is raining.[85]

A mental state or process is rational if it is based on good reasons. For example, a belief is rational if it relies on strong supporting evidence and a decision is rational if it follows careful deliberation of all the relevant factors and outcomes. Mental states are irrational if they are not based on good reasons, such as beliefs caused by faulty reasoning, superstition, or cognitive biases, and decisions that give into temptations instead of following one's best judgment.[86] Mental states that fall outside the domain of rational evaluation are arational rather than irrational. There is controversy regarding which mental phenomena lie outside this domain; suggested examples include sensory impressions, feelings, desires, and involuntary responses.[87]

Another contrast is between dispositional and occurrent mental states. A dispositional state is a power that is not exercised. If a person believes that cats have whiskers but does not think about this fact, it is a dispositional belief. By activating the belief to consciously think about it or use it in other cognitive processes, it becomes occurrent until it is no longer actively considered or used. The great majority of a person's beliefs are dispositional most of the time.[88]

Relation to matter

Mind–body problem

Main article: Mind–body problem
Diagram of approaches to the mind–body problem
Different approaches toward resolving the mind–body problem

The mind–body problem is the difficulty of providing a general explanation of the relationship between mind and body, for example, of the link between thoughts and brain processes. Despite their different characteristics, mind and body interact with each other, like when a bodily change causes mental discomfort or when a limb moves because of an

substance dualism, minds or souls exist as distinct substances that have mental states while material things are another type of substance. This view implies that, at least in principle, minds can exist without bodies.[90] Property dualism is another form of dualism that says that mind and matter are not distinct individuals but different properties that apply to the same individual.[91] Monist views, by contrast, state that reality is made up of only one kind. According to idealists, everything is mental.[92] They understand material things as mental constructs, for example, as ideas or perceptions.[93] According to neutral monists, the world is at its most fundamental level neither physical nor mental but neutral. They see physical and mental concepts as convenient but superficial ways to describe reality.[94]

The monist view most influential in contemporary philosophy is

non-reductive physicalists agree that everything is physical, they say that mental concepts describe physical reality on a more abstract level that cannot be achieved by physics.[100] According to functionalism, mental concepts do not describe the internal constitution of physical substances but functional roles within a system.[101] For example, part of the functional role of pain is given by its relation to bodily injury and its tendency to cause behavioral patterns like moaning and other mental states, like the desire to stop the pain.[102] One consequence of this view is that mind does not depend on brains but can also be realized by other systems that implement the corresponding functional roles, possibly also computers.[103]

The hard problem of consciousness is a central aspect of the mind–body problem: it is the challenge of explaining how physical states can give rise to conscious experience. Its main difficulty lies in the subjective and qualitative nature of consciousness, which is unlike typical physical processes. The hard problem of consciousness contrasts with the "easy problems" of explaining how certain aspects of consciousness function, such as perception, memory, or learning.[104]

Brain areas and processes

Another approach to the relation between mind and matter uses empirical observation to study how the brain works and which brain areas and processes are associated with specific mental phenomena.

invertebrates. The human brain is of particular complexity and consists of 86 billion neurons, which communicate with one another via synapses.[106] They form a complex neural network and cognitive processes emerge from their electrical and chemical interactions.[107] The human brain is divided into regions that are associated with different functions. The main regions are the hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain.[108] The hindbrain and the midbrain are responsible for many biological functions associated with basic survival while higher mental functions, ranging from thoughts to motivation, are primarily localized in the forebrain.[109]

Diagram showing the prefrontal cortex
The cerebral cortex is divided into various areas with distinct functions, like the prefrontal cortex (shown in orange) responsible for executive functions.

The primary operation of many of the main mental phenomena is located in specific areas of the forebrain. The

auditory areas. A central function of the hippocampus is the formation and retrieval of long-term memories. It belongs to the limbic system, which plays a key role in the regulation of emotions through the amygdala. The motor cortex is responsible for planning, executing, and controlling voluntary movements. Broca's area is a separate region dedicated to speech production.[111] The activity of the different areas is additionally influenced by neurotransmitters, which are signaling molecules that enhance or inhibit different types of neural communication. For example, dopamine influences motivation and pleasure while serotonin affects mood and appetite.[112]

The close interrelation of brain processes and the mind is seen by the effect that physical changes of the brain have on the mind. For instance, the consumption of

brain injuries can lead to permanent alterations in mental functions. Alzheimer's disease in its first stage deteriorates the hippocampus, reducing the ability to form new memories and recall existing ones.[114] An often-cited case of the effects of brain injury is Phineas Gage, whose prefrontal cortex was severely damaged during a work accident when an iron rod pierced through his skull and brain. Gage survived the accident but his personality and social attitude changed significantly as he became more impulsive, irritable, and anti-social while showing little regard for social conventions and an impaired ability to plan and make rational decisions.[115] Not all these changes were permanent and Gage managed to recover and adapt in some areas.[116]

Development

Evolution

The mind has a long evolutionary history starting with the development of the nervous system and the brain.[117] While it is generally accepted today that mind is not exclusive to humans and various non-human animals have some form of mind, there is no consensus at which point exactly the mind emerged.[118] The evolution of mind is usually explained in terms of natural selection: genetic variations responsible for new or improved mental capacities, like better perception or social dispositions, have an increased chance of being passed on to future generations if they are beneficial to survival and reproduction.[119]

Minimal forms of information processing are already found in the earliest forms of life 4 to 3.5 billion years ago, like the abilities of

vertebrates. All vertebrates, like birds and mammals, have a central nervous system including a complex brain with specialized functions while invertebrates, like clams and insects, either have no brains or tend to have simple brains.[121] With the evolution of vertebrates, their brains tended to grow and the specialization of the different brain areas tended to increase. These developments are closely related to changes in limb structures, sense organs, and living conditions with a close correspondence between the size of a brain area and the importance of its function to the organism.[122] An important step in the evolution of mammals about 200 million years ago was the development of the neocortex, which is responsible for many higher-order brain functions.[123]

The size of the brain relative to the body further increased with the development of

meta-cognition. According to the ecological intelligence hypothesis, the main value of the increased mental capacities comes from their advantages in dealing with a complex physical environment through processes like behavioral flexibility, learning, and tool use. Other suggested mechanisms include the effects of a changed diet with energy-rich food and general benefits from an increased speed and efficiency of information processing.[126]

Individual

Besides the development of mind in general in the course of history, there is also the

adulthood, and old age.[130] These developments cover various areas, including intellectual, sensorimotor, linguistic, emotional, social, and moral developments.[131] Some factors affect the development of mind before birth, such as nutrition, maternal stress, and exposure to harmful substances like alcohol during pregnancy.[132]

Numerous research showed that even embryos demonstrated behavior that could be attributed to ecological learning.[133][134][135][136][137][138][139] At this pre-reflex stage, the embryonal nervous system replicates maternal dynamics at the cellular level for the appropriate neural tissue development – solving, in such a manner, the morphology problem and the binding problem.

Early childhood is marked by rapid developments as infants learn voluntary control over their bodies and interact with their environment on a basic level. Typically after about one year, this covers abilities like walking, recognizing familiar faces, and producing individual words.[140] On the emotional and social levels, they develop attachments with their primary caretakers and express emotions ranging from joy to anger, fear, and surprise.[141] An influential theory by Jean Piaget divides the cognitive development of children into four stages. The sensorimotor stage from birth until two years is concerned with sensory impressions and motor activities while learning that objects remain in existence even when not observed. In the preoperational stage until seven years, children learn to interpret and use symbols in an intuitive manner. They start employing logical reasoning to physical objects in the concrete operational stage until eleven years and extend this capacity in the following formal operational stage to abstract ideas as well as probabilities and possibilities.[142] Other important processes shaping the mind in this period are socialization and enculturation, at first through primary caretakers and later through peers and the schooling system.[143]

Psychological changes during adolescence are provoked both by physiological changes and being confronted with a different social situation and new expectations from others. An important factor in this period is change to the self-concept, which can take the form of an identity crisis. This process often involves developing individuality and independence from parents while at the same time seeking closeness and conformity with friends and peers. Further developments in this period include improvements to the reasoning ability and the formation of a principled moral view point.[144]

The mind also changes during adulthood but in a less rapid and pronounced manner. Reasoning and problem-solving skills improve during early and middle adulthood. Some people experience the mid-life transition as a midlife crisis involving an inner conflict about personal identity, often associated with anxiety, a sense of lack of accomplishments in life, and an awareness of mortality. Intellectual faculties tend to decline in later adulthood, specifically the ability to learn complex unfamiliar tasks and later also the ability to remember, while people tend to become more inward-looking and cautious.[145]

Mental health and disorder

Main articles: Mental health, Mental disorder, and Psychopathology

Mental health is a state of mind characterized by internal equilibrium and

mental disorders.[146] Mental disorders are abnormal patterns of thought, emotion, or behavior that deviate not only from how a mental capacity works on average but from the norm of how it should work while usually causing some form of distress. The content of those norms is controversial and there are differences from culture to culture; for example, homosexuality was historically considered a mental disorder by medical professionals, a view which only changed in the late 20th century.[147]

Photo of hand washing
Obsessive–compulsive disorder is a mental disorder in which a person follows compulsive rituals, like excessive hand washing, to alleviate anxiety caused by intrusive thoughts.

There is a great variety of mental disorders, each associated with a different form of malfunctioning.

dissociative disorders and eating disorders.[152]

There are different approaches to treating mental disorders and the most appropriate treatment usually depends on factors like the type of disorder, its cause, and the person's general condition.

anxiolytics. They fall into the domain of psychiatry and are sometimes used in combination with psychotherapeutic methods.[158]

Non-human

Animal

It is commonly acknowledged today that animals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies and how their mind differs from the human mind.

animal minds is highly relevant to the field of ethics since it affects the treatment of animals, including the topic of animal rights.[162]

Discontinuity views state that the minds of non-human animals are fundamentally different from human minds and often point to higher mental faculties, like thinking, reasoning, and decision-making based on beliefs and desires.[163] This outlook is reflected in the traditionally influential position of defining humans as "rational animals" as opposed to all other animals.[164] Continuity views, by contrast, emphasize similarities and see the increased human mental capacities as a matter of degree rather than kind. Central considerations for this position are the shared evolutionary origin, organic similarities on the level of brain and nervous system, and observable behavior, ranging from problem-solving skills, animal communication, and reactions to and expressions of pain and pleasure. Of particular importance are the questions of consciousness and sentience, that is, to what extent non-human animals have a subjective experience of the world and are capable of suffering and feeling joy.[165]

Artificial

Main article: Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Turing test diagram
The Turing test aims to determine whether a computer can imitate human linguistic behavior to the degree that it is not possible to tell the difference between human and computer.

Some of the difficulties of assessing animal minds are also reflected in the topic of artificial minds, that is, the question of whether computer systems implementing artificial intelligence should be considered a form of mind.[166] This idea is consistent with some theories of the nature of mind, such as functionalism and its idea that mental concepts describe functional roles, which are implemented by biological brains but could in principle also be implemented by artificial devices.[167] The Turing test is a traditionally influential procedure to test artificial intelligence: a person exchanges messages with two parties, one of them a human and the other a computer. The computer passes the test if it is not possible to reliably tell which party is the human and which one is the computer. While there are computer programs today that may pass the Turing test, this alone is usually not accepted as conclusive proof of mindedness.[168] For other aspects of mind, it is more controversial whether computers can, in principle, implement them, such as desires, feelings, consciousness, and free will.[169]

This problem is often discussed through the contrast between

Heideggerian philosophy.[171]

Fields and methods of inquiry

Various fields of inquiry study the mind, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and cognitive science. They differ from each other in the aspects of mind they investigate and the methods they employ in the process.[172] The study of the mind poses various problems since it is difficult to directly examine, manipulate, and measure it. Trying to circumvent this problem by investigating the brain comes with new challenges of its own, mainly because of the brain's complexity as a neural network consisting of billions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 links to other neurons.[173]

Psychology

Main article: Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. It investigates conscious and unconscious mental phenomena, including perception, memory, feeling, thought, decision,

occupational, and neuropsychology.[178]

Psychologists use a great variety of methods to study the mind. Experimental approaches set up a controlled situation, either in the laboratory or the field, in which they modify

dependent variables. This approach makes it possible to identify causal relations between the variables. For example, to determine whether people with similar interests (independent variable) are more likely to become friends (dependent variables), participants of a study could be paired with either similar or dissimilar participants. After giving the pairs time to interact, it is assessed whether the members of similar pairs have more positive attitudes toward one another than the members of dissimilar pairs.[179]

longitudinal studies, naturalistic observation, and phenomenological description of experience.[183]

Neuroscience

Main article: Neuroscience
fMRI image
Functional magnetic resonance imaging is a neuroimaging technique to detect brain areas with increased neural activity (shown in orange).

Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. Its primary focus is the central nervous system and the brain in particular, but it also investigates the peripheral nervous system mainly responsible for connecting the central nervous system to the limbs and organs. Neuroscience examines the implementation of mental phenomena on a physiological basis. It covers various levels of analysis; on the small scale, it studies the molecular and cellular basis of the mind, dealing with the constitution of and interaction between individual neurons; on the large scale, it analyzes the architecture of the brain as a whole and its division into regions with different functions.[184]

brain damage in particular areas to assess the function of the damaged area and how its absence affects the remaining brain.[185]

Philosophy

Main article: Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind examines the nature of mental phenomena and their relation to the physical world. It seeks to understand the "mark of the mental", that is, the features that all mental states have in common. It further investigates the essence of different types of mental phenomena, such as beliefs, desires, emotions, intentionality, and consciousness while exploring how they are related to one another. Philosophy of mind also examines solutions to the mind–body problem, like dualism, idealism, and physicalism, and assesses arguments for and against them. Further topics are personal identity and free will.[186]

Diagram of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment
Philosophers use thought experiments to explore the nature of the mind and its relation to matter, for example, by imagining how a brain in a vat would experience reality if a supercomputer fed it the same electrical stimulation a normal brain receives.

While philosophers of mind also include empirical considerations in their inquiry, they differ from fields like psychology and neuroscience by giving significantly more emphasis to non-empirical forms of inquiry. One such method is

Mary the color scientist, and brain in a vat-scenarios.[188] Because of the subjective nature of the mind, the phenomenological method is also commonly used to analyze the structure of consciousness by describing experience from the first-person perspective.[189]

Cognitive science

Main article: Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mental processes. It aims to overcome the challenge of understanding something as complex as the mind by integrating research from diverse fields ranging from psychology and neuroscience to philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. Unlike these disciplines, it is not a unified field but a collaborative effort. One difficulty in synthesizing their insights is that each of these disciplines explores the mind from a different perspective and level of abstraction while using different research methods to arrive at its conclusion.[190]

Cognitive science aims to overcome this difficulty by relying on a unified conceptualization of minds as information processors. This means that mental processes are understood as computations that retrieve, transform, store, and transmit information.[191] For example, perception retrieves sensory information from the environment and transforms it to extract meaningful patterns that can be used in other mental processes, such as planning and decision-making.[192] Cognitive science relies on different levels of description to analyze cognitive processes; the most abstract level focuses on the basic problem the process is supposed to solve and the reasons why the organism needs to solve it; the intermediate level seeks to uncover the algorithm as a formal step-by-step procedure to solve the problem; the most concrete level asks how the algorithm is implemented through physiological changes on the level of the brain.[193] Another methodology to deal with the complexity of the mind is to analyze the mind as a complex system composed of individual subsystems that can be studied independently of one another.[194]

Relation to other fields

The mind is relevant to many fields. In

analogical or abductive reasoning.[195] Closely related to this problem is theory of mind in psychology, which is the ability to understand that other people possess beliefs, desires, intentions, and feelings that may differ from one's own.[196]

Anthropology is interested in how different cultures conceptualize the nature of mind and its relation to the world. These conceptualizations affect the way people understand themselves, experience illness, and interpret ritualistic practices as attempts to commune with spirits. Some cultures do not draw a strict boundary between mind and world by allowing that thoughts can pass directly into the world and manifest as beneficial or harmful forces. Others strictly separate the mind as an internal phenomenon without supernatural powers from external reality.[197] Sociology is a related field concerned with the connections between mind, society, and behavior.[198]

The concept of mind plays a central role in various religions.

Daoism and Confucianism use the concept of heart-mind as the center of cognitive and emotional life, encompassing thought, understanding, will, desire, and mood.[203]

In the field of

teaching methods including the contrast between group work and individual learning and the use of instructional media.[204] Teacher-centered education positions the teacher as the central authority controlling the learning process whereas in student-centered education, students have a more active role in shaping classroom activities.[205] The choice of the most effective method to develop the minds of the learners is determined by various factors, including the topic and the learner's age and skill level.[206]

Phrenological diagram of brain functions
Phrenology was a pseudoscientific attempt to correlate mental functions to brain areas.

The mind is a frequent subject of

pseudoscientific inquiry. Phrenology was an early attempt to correlate mental functions with specific brain areas. While its central claims about predicting mental traits by measuring bumps on the skull did not survive scientific scrutiny, the underlying idea that certain mental functions are localized in particular regions of the brain is now widely accepted.[207] Parapsychologists seek to discover and study paranormal mental abilities ranging from clairvoyance to telepathy and telekinesis.[208]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ not to be confused with the related term theory of mind
  2. ^ Mental faculties also play a central role in the Indian tradition, such as the contrast between the sense mind (manas) and intellect (buddhi).[73]
  3. ^ A different perspective is proposed by the massive modularity hypothesis, which states that the mind is entirely composed of modules with high-level modules establishing the connection between low-level modules.[77]
  4. ^ The two terms are usually treated as synonyms but some theorists distinguish them by holding that materialism is restricted to matter while physicalism is a wider term that includes additional physical phenomena, like forces.[95]
  5. ctenophorans.[120]

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Sources

Further reading
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Consciousness studies
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