Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Following and in tandem with my ‘Homage to’ series concerning minds that changed my mind, I have decided to start a new series, entitled: ‘Concepts that changed my mind’.
I have chosen to write this series as a method of retrospection, by which I will be able to reflect on the course my mind has taken and has evolved through in the last 30 years or so.
I think that by creating those two maps, one of minds that have influenced my thinking and one that follows the concepts that have stimulated my thought processes I will be able to construct a map of my current mind. I believe that such a map will provide me with a clarity of thought and precision of self-description.
Moreover, by providing a conceptual map of thoughts and ideas that have shaped my current mind overview I aim to produce an orientation of direction.
More precisely I aim to ‘see’ as it were, the full spectrum of my sense-thought processes as it has evolved and as it operates at present.
It is partly out of curiosity and partly out of an intuition I carry that such a map will promote a lucidity of cognition and a simplicity of structure.
Besides, it’s a lot of fun.
In coming to write about concepts that changed my mind, I started with a short list of what presently I deem to be the foundational concepts defining my thought activity.
And obviously the first concept I need to expand upon is also the most crucial one, the very concept of mind.
The very foundation of thought and consciousness, can be summed up in one simple concept: “Mind”.
It is therefore a fundamental issue of clarity to define precisely what are we referring to when using the concept Mind.
And yes, it is a concept and not a fact.
The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
Carl Jung
Mind then
The first and most salient issue is that Mind (capital M) is a suitcase concept. A suitcase concept is a concept that contains many other concepts and cannot (and maybe should not) be reduced to its components, the components comprised in the meta concept.
Arguably any meta concept is a suitcase concept. And though it will be true to state that any meta concept is per its definition the sum of its components, in some cases, like the concept Mind, the sum total of its components gives rise to a meaningful and interesting larger or greater sum yet.
One may include in the concept of Mind, the concepts of consciousness, awareness, perception, memory, cognition, thought, reason, intuition and many others (this is of course not an exhaustive list but just to give an idea just how big is the suitcase).
The Mind then as a suitcase contains all or most of that to which we claim subjectivity. Subjectivity in turn relies on one primal axiom, namely that I and only I have access to the machinery and processes of that particular Mind, ‘my Mind’.
For the moment I shall leave aside the issue of ‘other minds’, a complex and highly debatable topic, an area of inquiry that I will deal with later.
First let us try and make sense of the concept of Mind as such and increase the complexity as we go along. As a meta concept, Mind is said to be a set of concepts that are defined by a single reference, I.
What precisely is the correlation of that I to the concept Mind is a subject to much debate and no single theory accounts for all possible issues in this respect.
However, for my purpose here suffice it to say that a Mind refers to one (allegedly) single I, a distinct and highly particular individual, a body defined by its space time coordinates, having a single brain to which this very mind refers to. Fundamental to this idea is the concept of continuity, a crucial issue to which I will refer to further along.
When I say, ‘my Mind’ then, I refer to the suitcase of all that is contained in this body, this brain and these circumstances. Mine.
It should be noted that also concerning the terminology of possession there is much to unfold. Is it even correct to define this relation between body and mind as one of possession? Moreover, assuming that it is, in what fashion is this correlation to be understood? Is my body the owner of this mind or is this mind the owner of this body? Common language is not very helpful here.
As some would have it, particularly in the physics approach, a concept is defined by what it does, and there is nothing further to investigate as to its nature. In other words, a mind is what a mind does. No further intrinsic properties need be assumed. That specific approach is true of all materialistic methodologies, an electron IS what an electron does, a chair IS what a chair does.
This obviously is a circular understanding and does in no fashion bear an explanatory light on the concept of Mind. For how we are to define mind by itself, if a mind IS what a mind does, and what the Mind does is mind, we are in danger of the infinite regression trap. Not an explanation.
At times, it seems that trying to define mind is an Alice in wonderland kind of endeavor, falling repetitively into the rabbit hole, re-finding again and again the red queen.
Many scientists, philosophers and such have left the concept of mind alone, choosing to refrain from defining mind as an either impossible to define or simply not useful, instead choosing to restrict themselves to categories and terms that are more easy to deal with such as cognition, brains and the ever elusive consciousness. I believe however that the concept Mind is an important term in our linguistic arsenal, allowing us the facilitation of communication when dealing with sets, or systems of a complex and/or hyper complex nature.
Moreover, the concept mind, as I see it, has two distinct definitions and meanings, the first is the mind as relates to an individual and the second is the collective Mind of all beings possessed with such an individual mind.
I shall, therefore, in the following refer alternatively to mind when referring to an individual being and Mind when referring to the collective.
Let us remember however that in both cases the term implies the suitcase characteristic, both concepts are containers to many concepts and both needs be understood in context.
Also, it will be useful to recall that both terms are inherently greater than the sum of their parts.
Thank you for reading
This is part one of the concept of Mind and the first installment in my new series on Concepts that changed my mind. Next installment will be next year.
