Jump to content
Science Forums

Mind Vs Brain


hazelm

Recommended Posts

I think the majority of people use "brain" and "mind" synonymously.  However there are some who see them as two entities that work together.   I would like to find a scientist  who has authored a book on this topic.  Not  a philosopher or one of religion.  Those points of view I have read.  I would like to read a discussion of the possibility of brain and mind being two different entities as seen by a scientist.  Does anyone know of such a book or author?

 

Thank you.

Edited by hazelm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the majority of people use "brain" and "mind" synonymously.  However there are some who see them as two entities that work together.   I would like to find a scientist  who has authored a book on this topic.  Not  a philosopher or one of religion.  Those points of view I have read.  I would like to read a discussion of the possibility of brain and mind being two different entities as seen by a scientist.  Does anyone know of such a book or author?

 

Thank you.

I'm not sure that is right. I always thought people saw the mind as the working of the brain. 

 

I do not have any recommendation for books about this, specifically. The only author I know of for this sort of thing is Oliver Sacks, who I find is always very interesting and writes well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure that is right. I always thought people saw the mind as the working of the brain. 

 

I do not have any recommendation for books about this, specifically. The only author I know of for this sort of thing is Oliver Sacks, who I find is always very interesting and writes well. 

That is what I am looking for, writings about the mind as a working of the brain.  But, whenever I ask someone who has made some comment he will invariably say it is just a synonym for brain.  I don't want to use the word "separate" as that isn't quite right.  Maybe it is the conscious output of the brain?   In other words, there is a connection between the two but they are, at the same time, distinct entities. 

 

Hard to explain, isn't it?  Maybe it is those explanations that I hope to find.  Last night I read such an article by a philosopher.  He indicated that the mind was our consciousness.   I had never hear it put that way but makes sense. 

 

Anyway, I'll check out Oliver Sacks.  Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My favorite book on this topic is, of course, written by a computer scientist: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. What is nice about it is that he uses some nice Alice in Wonderland-like anthropomorphism to get his points across. It can get a little bit technical at times, but it's very, very readable! :cheer:

 

 

Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not, :phones:

Buffy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you, Buffy.  I'll look next trip to B&N which will be after New Year's.  It's just that I want to hear the theory from a scientific p.o.v.  I've heard/read it from a philosophical and religious p.o.v. but I think it would be interesting to hear a scientist defend the idea.  Until last night, I'd never heard the mind referred to as the consciousness which almost everyone seems to say has not yet been explained/identified.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There hasn't been a language for them, but AI research has developed a bunch and it's being applied much further afield. What that book goes into (and realize it's almost 40 years old, but we were doing a lot of foundational AI work back then) is what's called "emergent systems": that is, complex systems which demonstrate properties that are not "designed in."

 

At it's physical level, the brain is actually quite simple: it's a massive network of a few billion "simple analog computers" that we know of as neurons. We actually know the operation of the brain at the level of the neuron extremely well. The complexity comes from the tens of billions of interconnections between those neurons and the role of the chemicals that swim around them and how they change over time to change the levels/combinations of inputs to decide when to fire a signal to their downstream components.

 

Why any of this should result in a "Mind" is completely mystifying, but we do experiments that show how you can get systems of neural networks to do absolutely incredible things like drive cars, and do it without giving them explicit "programming" instructions about how to drive, just giving them "goals" ("do not run into people or other cars"), and letting them figure out how to do it on their own by "experimenting and practicing." 

 

Once you see how these relatively simple machines learn how to do very sophisticated operations *on their own* it all of a sudden does not seem so incredible that you could end up with a "mind" with "free will" and "consciousness."

 

There's a very human tendency to want to make these things "special" and "unique." For millennia it's been popular to think that "only man has a Mind," but we've slowly gotten to the point where we recognize that's not true. And when you realize your dog or cat has complex feelings and communicates without language, you can start to see that a machine or artificial organism can get there too.

 

But it'll still be a little disturbing.

 

 

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind, :phones:

Buffy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for that, Buffy.  And thank you for ending it as you did.  That is exactly what I was going to say.  Once you have had a cat or dog and watched it in action (or simple thought) you never doubt that they, too, have minds.   You can almost read a cat's mind when he sits pondering. 

 

Back to ours, what you wrote is getting at what I am looking for - some thoughts from the scientific point of view.  It has a history, of course, this mind and our attitude toward it, from ancient times to today.  You can follow man's progress in understanding by following what our ancestors thought the mind to be.  And it moves from early superstition to religion to philosophy and, finally, to science. 

 

The brain and how it works, I pretty much understand.  Well, a novice understanding, of course.  Nothing like neuroscientists understand it but it all makes sense.  The mind, how and why it came to be? That is another story.  I did not realize the scientific theory is that the brain created the mind.  It gets deeper, this mystery. I am really curious about that book you suggested.  Also one I read about in Philosophy Now last night.  "Ultimate Questions" by Bryan Magee.  He asks a lot of questions about our unsolved mysteries and makes a lot of comments but gives us no answers according to the review.  We are left to ponder on everything ourselves.

 

All right.  I am chattering too much.  Your post was a good way to start the day. Merry Christmas to everyone.  Enjoy the holiday.   Hazel

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...