Mind: principle of intelligence, thought, perception, emotion, memory, will and imagination
Origin of the Mind
As paradoxical as the double slit experiment appears, a similar issue becomes apparent as scientists attempt to explain the mind itself within the "scientific" method, which avoids natural human-like tendencies that are intuitive, as mind or purpose. The prevailing theory of mind claims that consciousness emerges from unconscious matter as a certain complexity is reached. That is, at some point in history on Earth, consciousness appears for the first time where it was absent before. However, it seems to be impossible for consciousness to stem from void space. A way to envision this theory is akin to magnetic buckyballs. No matter how we arrange any number of buckyballs, the collection of buckyballs will never give rise to any type of consciousness - unless their was some consciousness contained in the buckyballs initially.
Albeit, as a living organism examining our existence, for example, we can observe that the human body is composed of living, individual, microscopic cells. In your own development within your mother's womb, you began as a single conscious cell, which developed and grew into a complex differentiated multi-organismal being. But at what point did your mind emerge? Was it upon the point when nerve cells grew and became interconnected, eventually forming your brain and spinal cord? Where does consciousness reside? Is it in the dendrites and synapses? No matter how long scientists look at the brain and its components from the outside, they will only ever see the electrochemical energy that flows comprising the brain's activity. We will never see the mind. However, we all know, based on our own experience, that it is present.
So we have two options:
This second view is known as panpsychism. Panpsychism holds that the mind is the inside of matter, no matter how simple, so while we can only see the outside of objects available to our senses, we know from our own direct experience that matter also has an inside and this is what we call mind. The inside of matter is only directly accessible to itself, such that my mind is knowable only to me. Therefore, the mind is part of the fabric of reality and is literally ubiquitous.
Albeit, as a living organism examining our existence, for example, we can observe that the human body is composed of living, individual, microscopic cells. In your own development within your mother's womb, you began as a single conscious cell, which developed and grew into a complex differentiated multi-organismal being. But at what point did your mind emerge? Was it upon the point when nerve cells grew and became interconnected, eventually forming your brain and spinal cord? Where does consciousness reside? Is it in the dendrites and synapses? No matter how long scientists look at the brain and its components from the outside, they will only ever see the electrochemical energy that flows comprising the brain's activity. We will never see the mind. However, we all know, based on our own experience, that it is present.
So we have two options:
- accept the prevailing view that consciousness emerges from mindless matter;
- accept that consciousness is inherent in all matter to some degree and that there is a tiny, crude mind in the egg that creates you (and even more minuscule minds in the constituents of the egg) and as the egg becomes more complex, as does your mind.
This second view is known as panpsychism. Panpsychism holds that the mind is the inside of matter, no matter how simple, so while we can only see the outside of objects available to our senses, we know from our own direct experience that matter also has an inside and this is what we call mind. The inside of matter is only directly accessible to itself, such that my mind is knowable only to me. Therefore, the mind is part of the fabric of reality and is literally ubiquitous.