Nothing in this world is so mysterious as the human mind. Where does our ordinary perceptual experience come from? How do our minds – mere spirits – move muscles? And where do our minds go in deep sleep, under general anesthesia and at the moment of death?
I was just wondering and wondering and wondering!!!
In the past three hundred years, science has made immense progress in comprehending the physical universe at all scales from quark to quasar. But the inner life of humans (let alone other conscious beings) is still an intellectual black hole. It’s not that we possess bad, partial or flawed theories of the inner life. We have no such theories at all. Instead we possess only vague fantasies, philosophical hunches, and diffuse, speculative, untestable guesses.
Two major conjectures dominating the scientific discussion about the nature of mind are:
· Mind is an “emergent feature” of certain complex biological systems.
· Mind is the “software” controlling the brain’s computer-like hardware.
And now we have something called “Elemental Mind” that explores a third hypothesis: A mind is a fundamental process in its own right (control), as widespread and deeply embedded in nature as light or electricity – ( and that’s far from being a rare occurrence in complex biological or computational systems..)
“Elemental Mind” surveys basically what we know about the mind’s outer dwelling place and certain tentative maps we have made of our own inner experiences.
Two approaches are particularly stressed: those that stem from Einstein’s special relativity theory – such as the notions of Jean Charon and of James Culbertson – and those based on extensions of quantum theory–such as the ideas of John von Neuman, Sir John Eccles and Henry Stapp.
1) Among them, Culbertson’s Space time reductive materialism (SRM) hypothesis is one of the few mind models that actually tries to explain the fine details of inner experience such as what goes on in the world to make the experience of red different from the experience of green.
2) And according to the quantum theories of mind, three main features of mind are randomness, thinglessness, and interconnectedness…..and they have continued to play an increasingly important role in quantum thinking… “Elemental Mind” makes a plausible case from biological, psychological, and para psychological evidence that these three features of supposedly inert matter are the external signs of three basic features of mind: free will, essential ambiguity, and deep psychic connectedness.
So, we can conclude that “Elemental Mind” offers a fresh approach to the riddle of consciousness, which has challenged philosophers and scientists for centuries…………!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
