CHESMAYNE
Mind
01 Sanskrit: the word ‘man’ is
derived from the Sanskrit word ‘manas’ (mind), implying no original gender
discrimination. Some people are able to
contact part of the vast field of the human unconscious (overmind). Each individual mind is a fragmentary part
of a transcendent whole.
“Measure your mind’s height by the shade it
casts!” (Paracelsus).
Self: a droplet of the Universal Mind - Godhead.
02 Mind-sports: Chess, Shogi, Go, crosswords, Monopoly, Chinese Chess,
Trivial Pursuit, Backgammon, etc are among some of the hundreds of games that
may be played. Reading books and
magazines on your favourite game is a good way to increase your knowledge. Strategical games are
testing for the mind and played by millions of people around the world.
Oyster
Catcher
03 Chess is the KI of board games and
many play or are fascinated by it. The
World Chess Federation (FIDE) is the largest sport organization in the world.
04 William Bill Gates’ b-1955
motto is: ‘I can do anything I put my mind to’. His wealth is based on pure intelligence not
inheritance.
05 The Magician:
the Tarot ‘I’ card. Mercury. Yellow signifies the powers of Air and the
Mind. He stands as a lightning conductor
between the planes - a bridge between the worlds. Crowned
with a band of gold. The sign of
infinity is placed above his head. He
wears the serpent girdle around his waist. His
vows: ‘to Dare, to Know, to Will and to be Silent.’
One Large
Marble – Devil’s Marbles, Northern Territory
06 The butterfly is a symbol for
the mind (the art of transformation). Egg
stage, larva stage, cocoon stage. The
final stage is the chrysalis stage and birth which demands that you use your
newfound wings - and fly. The
never-ending cycle of self-transformation.
“
07 Proverbs
23:7 ‘For as a wo/man thinks in h/her heart, so is s/he.’ The spirit communicates with God,
being the receptive device that receives knowledge and
insight from Him. The Way - the mind -
the Christ aspect of our being. The
potential power of our minds is vast (infinite). “Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open”.
08 Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound):
‘words are the physicians of a mind diseased’.
Macbeth: ‘Canst thou
not minister to a mind diseased?’
09 A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘Love
looks not with the eyes, but with the mind - and therefore is winged Cupid
painted blind’.
10
11 Ghost: Ryle in ‘Concept of
Mind’, 1949: “The dogma of the Ghost in the machine maintains that there exist
both bodies and minds; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements
and mental causes of corporeal movements”.
12 Training for the priesthood
is mental and spiritual (equilibrium) and one of the reasons why the
preparation (paramaters) for the spiritual life (priests, rabbis,
etc) is so long and so mentally demanding.
13 That upon which we dwell in
the mind we become.
14 Prayer: the ultimate psychic
expression. Through prayer we receive
information and instruction from the Highest Source. Man’s instinct to pray is universal.
15 ‘Only the mind is real. Thought builds the soul more than deeds’.
16
17 Gothamites: symbol of the
narrow minded bourgeoisie/provincialness.
Evil Lurks in the Minds of All Good Chess Players: “There is sleight of
hand in chess... …you make your
opponent think he’s seeing everything while at the same time you make him
realize he’s not. I try to make my
moves seem only reasonable and then, at the last minute, pull the rug from
beneath my opponent’s feet, very gently so there’s a little thrill. Ah...
…now I see said the blind man”.
Many
near-death accounts involve a description of traveling through a realm that is
commonly known in NDE circles as - the void.
Together with the earthbound realm, the void is known by many religious
traditions as hell, purgatory, or outer darkness to name a few. There are many myths concerning this realm
and it is my point to also dispel some of these myths.
Summary of Insights
Concerning the Void
After
death, some souls travel very quickly through the two lower realms - the earthbound
realm and void - by means of the tunnel and on to higher realms. Other souls, particularly those who have
developed a strong addiction for some earthly desire that went beyond the
physical and into the spiritual, may enter the earthbound realm in a vain
attempt to re-enter earth. Many
near-death accounts, as you will see later, involve souls entering the void
immediately after death. From here, the
soul may then enter the tunnel toward the light in the next heavenly
realm. Other souls remain in the void
for one reason or another until they are ready to leave it.
The
general consensus among near-death reports is that the void is totally devoid
of love, light, and everything. It is a realm
of complete and profound darkness where nothing exists but the thought patterns
of those in it. It is a perfect place
for souls to examine their own mind, contemplate their recent earth experience,
and decide where they want to go next.
For
some souls, the void is a beautiful and heavenly experience because, in the
absence of all else, they are able to perfectly see the love and light they
have cultivated within themselves. For
other souls, the void is a terrifying and horrible hell because, in the absence
of everything, they are able to perfectly see within themselves the lack of
love and light they have cultivated within themselves. For this reason, the void is more than a
place for the reflection of the soul.
For some souls, it is a place for purification. In the latter case, the void acts as a kind
of time-out where troubled souls remain until they choose a different course of
action.
For
some souls, the time spent in the void may feel like only a moment. For others, it may seem like eternity. This is because the way to escape the void is
to choose love and light over the darkness.
Once this happens, the light appears and the tunnel takes them toward
the light and into heaven for further instruction. For those souls who either refuse the light
or have spent a lifetime ignoring the light, it may take what seems like eons
of “time” before they reach the point that they desire the light of love. The problem for many souls is that they
prefer the darkness rather than the light for one reason or another. For some of these souls, their only hope is
reincarnation. This is because it is not possible for any soul to be confined
in the earthbound and void realms forever.
God is infinitely merciful and would never abandon anyone to their own
spiritual agony for too long; however, God allows souls to remain there only as
long as it suits their spiritual growth.
The
void is not punishment. It is the
perfect place for all souls to see themselves and to purge themselves from all
illusions. For those souls who are too
self-absorbed in their own misery to see the light, there are a multitude of
Beings of Light nearby to help them when they freely chose to seek them. The nature of love and light is such that it
cannot be forced upon people who don’t want it.
Choosing love/light over darkness is the key to being freed from the
void. The moment the choice is made, the
light and tunnel appears and the soul is drawn into the light.
Source: The NDE and the Void - http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research15.html
The keywords below can be found in this dictionary…….
MIND
A
BAS..................................16:01
ABERGLAUBE.............................16:02
ABBERANT-ABBERATION....................16:03
ABIOGENESIS............................16:04
ABOUT-TURN
(VOLTE-FACE)................16:05
ABREACTION.............................16:06
AEGIS..................................16:07
AEON...................................16:08
AESTHETE...............................16:09
AFFLATUS...............................16:10
ALEATORY...............................16:11
ALLEGORY...............................16:12
ALTRUISM-ALTRUIST-ALTRUISTIC...........16:13
AMBROSIA...............................16:14
AMELIORATE-AMELIORATION................16:15
AMRITA.................................16:16
ANIMATISM..............................16:17
ARCANUM................................16:18
ARMAGEDDON.............................16:19
ATE....................................16:20
AXIOM..................................16:21
CASTALIA...............................16:22
CATHEXIS...............................16:23
DOUBLETHINK............................16:24
HOBSON'S
CHOICE........................16:25
MAIEUTIC...............................16:26
MAXIM..................................16:27
MELIORISM..............................16:28
MIND...................................16:29
MYSTIC.................................16:30
NOETIC.................................16:31
ORGANON................................16:32
PABULUM................................16:33
PETER
PRINCIPLE........................16:35
PHRENIC................................16:36
PLATONISM..............................16:37
PROVERB................................16:38
RELATIVITY OF
KNOWLEDGE................16:39
STREAMOF
CONSCIOUSNESS.................16:40
SUBCONSCIOUS...........................16:41
TORCHBEARER............................16:42
VISION.................................16:43
WISDOM.................................16:45
WONDER.................................16:46
ZEIGEIST...............................16:47
ACTION.................................16:48
ALEMBIC................................16:49
AMBIVALENCE............................16:50
AMUSE..................................16:51
ANT....................................16:52
ASSOCIATION OF
IDEAS...................16:53
ATARAXIA...............................16:54
ATTIC..................................16:55
AUREOLE................................16:56
BEE....................................16:57
BIRD...................................16:58
BOW AND ARROW..........................16:59
BRAIN..................................16:60
BRIDGE-BRIDGEHEAD......................16:61
BRILLANCY
PRIZE........................61:62
BRINKMANSHIP...........................61:63
CECITY.................................16:64
CLOUDS.................................16:65
COLUMN.................................16:66
CONFLICT...............................16:67
CONSCIENCE.............................16:68
COSMIC
LAW.............................16:69
CREATIVITY.............................16:70
DAEMON.................................16:71
DAIMON-DAIMONES........................16:72
DANCE..................................16:73
DEVOURED...............................16:74
DIRECTIONS (The Four
Directions).......16:75
DISINTEGRATE...........................16:76
DJINN or
Jinnee........................16:77
DREAM..................................16:78
ECSTASY................................16:79
ELIXIR OF
LIFE.........................16:80
EXCOGITATE.............................16:81
FLYING.................................16:82
GEMATRIA...............................16:83
GENIUS.................................16:84
GNOSTIC................................16:85
GREY
MATTER............................16:86
HERMAPHRODITE (Hermes and Aphrodite)...16:87
I
CHING................................16:88
IMAGINATION............................16:89
INCUBUS................................16:90
INSPIRATION............................16:91
INTUITION..............................16:92
IQ (Intelligence Quotient).............16:93
KNOWLEDGE..............................16:94
LIGHT..................................16:95
LIGHTNING..............................16:96
LITERACY...............................16:97
MADRASAH...............................16:98
MAGIC..................................16:99
MANDALA................................16:100
MANTRA.................................16:101
MEMORY.................................16:102
METHOD.................................16:103
OWL....................................16:104
PALLADIAN..............................16:105
PATTERNS...............................16:106
PEACE..................................16:107
PHILOSOPHER'S
STONE....................16:108
PHILOSOPHY.............................16:109
POLYMATH...............................16:110
PROPHET................................16:111
PSYCHIC
POWERS.........................16:112
PUSILLANIMITY..........................16:113
PUZZLE.................................16:114
QUANDARY...............................16:115
AUTEXOUSY..............................16:116
SACRED
GEOMETRY........................16:117
SAGACIOUS..............................16:118
SAGE...................................16:119
SANGFROID..............................16:120
SAVANT.................................16:121
SEEING.................................16:122
SEER-SEERESS...........................16:123
SOCIAL
MORALITY........................16:124
SPORTING
PLAY..........................16:125
STATUES................................16:126
SUBLIMATE..............................16:127
TABU-TABOO.............................16:128
TAOISM.................................16:129
THINKER
(The)..........................16:130
THOTH..................................16:131
THRONE.................................16:132
TRUTH..................................16:133
ULEMA..................................16:134
URNA...................................16:135
UTOPIA.................................16:136
VIRTUOSO...............................16:137
WAR....................................16:138
WAR OF
NERVES..........................16:139
WELTANSICHT............................16:140
WIT....................................16:141
WITAN..................................16:142
WIZARD.................................16:143
ABRACADABRA............................16:144
ALCHEMY................................16:145
APHORISMS..............................16:146
ARISTOTELIAN...........................16:147
ARRIERE-PENSEE.........................16:148
ART....................................16:149
DOME OF THE
ROCK.......................16:150
KABBALAH...............................16:151
KALOPSIA...............................16:152
KARMA..................................16:153
LEITMOTIF..............................16:154
LOVE...................................16:155
LYCEUM.................................16:156
MALAPROP...............................16:157
MOUSE..................................16:158
MYSTERY................................16:159
OXYMORON...............................16:160
PARTIE
PRIS............................16:161
POWER..................................16:162
PYRRHONISM.............................16:164
QUODLIBET..............................16:165
RESIPISCENCE...........................16:166
RIPOSTE................................16:167
ROLAND FOR AN
OLIVER...................16:168
SANHEDRIN..............................16:169
SATIRE.................................16:170
SCHADENFREUDE..........................16:171
Thought
Covert symbolic responses to
intrinsic (arising from within) or extrinsic (arising from the environment)
stimuli. Thought, or thinking, is
considered to mediate between inner activity and external stimuli.
Depending on the relative intensity of intrinsic and
extrinsic influences, thinking can be expressive (imaginative and full of
fantasy) or logical (directed and disciplined). Other terms for the two aspects of thinking
are, respectively, autistic (subjective, emotional) and realistic (objective,
externally directed). Both types of
thinking are involved in normal adjustment.
Realistic
thinking. Logical, or realistic, thought
includes convergent thought processes, which require the ability to assemble
and organize information and direct it toward a particular goal; judgment, the discrimination
between objects, items of information, or concepts; problem solving, a more
complex form of realistic thinking; and creative thinking, the search for
entirely new solutions to problems.
Autistic
thinking. Thought that is characterized by
a high level of intrinsic influence and a low level of extrinsic influence
includes free association, the giving of unconstrained verbal response to
stimuli, found helpful in bringing repressed or forgotten experiences to
consciousness; fantasy, characterized by sensory imagery in which a person
loses contact with the environment, and ranging from vague reveries to vivid
images; marginal states of consciousness, such as those experienced just before
falling asleep or those induced by drugs; dreaming (see dream);
and pathological thinking, which may be the result of
antisocial behaviour disorders, neuroses (see psychoneurosis),
or psychoses (see psychosis). The latter is characterized by major
distortions in thinking and the lack of a realistic relation to the external
environment.
Theories of thought and thought processes have
concentrated on directed thinking, in which thinking is organized in order to
solve a problem. Theories have been
concerned with both the elements of thought and with the procession of
elements.
According to one view, the elements organized by
thinking are very weak nerve impulses sent to various muscles
such that if the impulses were stronger, they would cause
overt behaviour. At first it was thought
that these impulses were primarily sent to the muscles used for speaking, so
that thinking was seen as a kind of unexecuted speech; evidence that other
muscles also receive very weak impulses during thinking led to the so-called
peripheral theory, which holds that thinking goes on in the entire body by
means of implicit muscular activities.
In the last few decade’s psychologists have come to give more credence
to so-called centralist theories, which hold that the locus of thinking is the
brain, and that the implicit muscular activity is, in effect, a
by-product.
There are other conceptions of the elements of thought
that regard them in more mentalistic terms.
The Gestalt
theorists of the 1920s and 1930s believed the elements to be of the nature of
patterns elicited from experience. A
more contemporary approach, influenced by the development of computers,
considers the elements of thought as bits of information undergoing
processing.
At the beginning of this century the
early behaviourists
suggested that thought proceeded by association. The basic principles of association are
similarity and contiguity, whereby an idea of something is followed by an idea
of a similar or related thing.
A later, more sophisticated view that thinking proceeds
according to the whole of a situation was emphasized by the Gestalt
psychologists. They argued against the
turn-of-the-century view that thinking proceeds by an internal process of
trial-and-error, whereby a thinker imagines various responses to a stimulus,
eliminates those that are inappropriate, and thus gradually comes to a final
response. By contrast, the Gestalt
theorists held that the solution to a problem comes as the result of a sudden
insight into the nature of the problem as a whole. Around 1950, however, evidence was found that
integrated these two views, by suggesting that the thinker must become familiar
with a problem through trial-and-error before being able to grasp its structure
as a whole.
Stimulated by advances in computer science, researchers
have become concerned not simply with which thought element follows which, but
also with operations that shift one element to the next. It is argued that these operations exploit a
kind of controlled trial-and-error: in what is called a heuristic approach, the most promising avenues of solution to a
problem are attempted first. Another
topic of current interest concerns the motivations for thinking.
According to the Gestalt (see Gestalt psychology) theorists, the motivation
arises when a person experiences a “gap” in his or her overall conception of a
situation. A similar view is held by
neobehaviourists, who note that there are affective (emotional) rewards for
resolving inconsistencies between thoughts.
Click here for a list of other articles that contain
information on this subject
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Thought Elements of thought The prominent use of words in thinking (“silent speech”) has encouraged
the belief, especially among behaviourist and neobehaviourist
psychologists, that to think is to string together linguistic elements
subvocally. Early experiments (largely
in the 1930s) by E. Jacobson and L.W. Max revealed that evidence of thinking
commonly is accompanied by electrical
activity in the muscles
of the thinker’s organs of articulation.
This work later was extended with the help of more sophisticated
electromyographic equipment, notably by A.N. Sokolov. It became apparent, however, that the
muscular phenomena are not the actual vehicles of thinking but represent
rather a means of facilitating the appropriate activities in the brain
when an intellectual task is particularly exacting. The identification of thinking with speech
was assailed by L.S. Vygotski
and by J. Piaget,
both of whom saw the origins of human reasoning in the ability of children to
assemble nonverbal acts into effective and flexible combinations. These theorists insisted that thinking and
speaking arise independently, although they acknowledged the profound
interdependence of these functions, once they have reached fruition. Following different approaches, a 19th-century Russian
physiologist (I.M. Sechenov), the U.S. founder of the
behaviourist
school of psychology (J.B.
Watson), and a 20th-century Swiss developmental psychologist
(Piaget) all arrived at the conclusion that the activities that serve as
elements of thinking are internalized or fractional versions of motor
responses; that is, the elements are considered to be attenuated or curtailed
variants of neuromuscular processes that, if they were not subjected to
partial inhibition, would give rise to visible bodily movements. Sensitive instruments can indeed detect faint activity in various parts
of the body other than the organs of speech; e.g., in a person’s limbs when the movement is thought of or
imagined without actually taking place.
Such findings have prompted statements to the effect that we think
with the whole body and not only with the brain, or that
“thought is simply behaviour
- verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt” (B.F. Skinner). The logical outcome of these and similar
statements was the peripheralist view (Watson, C.L. Hull)
that thinking depends on events in the musculature, feeding proprioceptive
impulses back to influence subsequent events in the central nervous system,
ultimately to interact with external stimuli in determining the selection of
a course of overt action. There is,
however, evidence that thinking is not precluded by administering drugs that
suppress all muscular activity.
Furthermore, it has been pointed out (e.g., by K.S. Lashley) that thinking, like other more-or-less
skilled activities, often proceeds so quickly that there is simply not enough
time for impulses to be transmitted from the central nervous system to a
peripheral organ and back again between consecutive steps. So the centralist view that thinking
consists of events confined to the brain (though often accompanied by
widespread activity in the rest of the body) was gaining ground in the third
quarter of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, each of these neural events can be regarded both as a
response (to an external stimulus or to an earlier neurally mediated thought
or combination of thoughts) and as a stimulus (evoking a subsequent thought
or a motor response). The elements of thinking are classifiable as “symbols” in accordance
with the conception of the sign process (“semiotic”)
that has grown out of the work of some philosophers (e.g., C.S. Peirce, C.K. Ogden, I.A. Richards, and C.R. Morris)
and of psychologists specializing in learning (e.g., C.L. Hull, N.E. Miller, O.H. Mowrer, and C.E.
Osgood). The gist of this conception
is that a stimulus event ‘x’
can be regarded as a sign representing (or “standing for”) another event ‘y’ if ‘x’ evokes some part, but not all, of the behaviour
(external and internal) that would have been evoked by ‘y’ if it had been present. When a stimulus that qualifies as a sign
results from the behaviour of an organism for which it
acts as a sign, it is called a “symbol”.
The “stimulus-producing responses” that are said to make up thought
processes (as when one thinks of something to eat) are
prime examples. This treatment, favoured by psychologists of the stimulus-response
(S-R) or neo-associationist current, contrasts with that of the various cognitivist
or neorationalist theories. Rather
than regarding the components of thinking as derivatives of verbal or
nonverbal motor acts (and thus subject to laws of learning and
performance that apply to learned behaviour in general), adherents of such
theories see them as unique central processes, governed by principles that
are peculiar to them. These theorists
attach overriding importance to the so-called structures in which “cognitive”
elements are organized. Unlike the
S-R theorists who feel compunction about invoking unobservable intermediaries
between stimulus and response (except where there is clearly no other
alternative), the cognitivists tend to see inferences, applications of rules,
representations of external reality, and other ingredients of
thinking at work in even the simplest forms of learned behaviour. The Gestalt
school of psychologists held the constituents of thinking to be of
essentially the same nature as the perceptual patterns that the nervous
system constructs out of sensory excitations.
After mid-20th century, analogies with computer
operations acquired great currency; in consequence, thinking frequently is
described in terms of storage, retrieval, and transmission of items of
information. The information in
question is held to be freely translatable from one “coding” to another
without impairing its functions. The
physical clothing it assumes is regarded as being of minor importance. What
matters in this approach is how events are combined and what other
combinations might have occurred instead.
The
process of thought According to the classical empiricist-associationist view, the
succession of ideas or images in a train of thought is determined by the laws
of association.
Although additional associative laws were proposed from time to time, two
invariably were recognized. The law of
association by contiguity
states that the sensation or idea of a particular object tends to evoke the
idea of something that has often been encountered together with it. The law of association by similarity
states that the sensation or idea of a particular object tends to evoke the
idea of something that is similar to it. The early behaviourists, beginning with
Watson, espoused essentially the same formulation but with some important
modifications. The elements of the
process were conceived not as conscious ideas but as fractional or incipient
motor responses, each producing its proprioceptive stimulus. Association by contiguity and similarity
were identified by these behaviourists with the
Pavlovian principles of conditioning and generalization. The Würzburg school, under the leadership of Külpe,
saw the prototype of directed thinking in the “constrained-association”
experiment, in which the subject has to supply a word bearing a specified
relation to a stimulus word that is presented to him (e.g., an opposite to an adjective, or the capital of a
country). Their introspective
researches led them to conclude that the emergence of the required element
depends jointly on the immediately preceding element and on some kind of
“determining tendency” such as Aufgabe
(“awareness of task”) or “representation of the goal”. These latter factors were held to impart a
direction to the thought process and to restrict its content to relevant
material. Their role was analogous to
that of motivational factors – “drive stimuli”, “fractional anticipatory goal
responses” - in the later neobehaviouristic accounts of reasoning
(and of behaviour in general) produced by C.L. Hull and his followers. The determination of each thought element by the whole configuration of
factors in the situation and by the network of relations linking them was
stressed still more strongly in the 1920s and 1930s by the Gestalt
psychologists on the basis of W. Köhler’s
experiments on “insightful” problem solving by chimpanzees, and on the basis
of later experiments by M. Wertheimer and of K. Duncker on human
thinking. They pointed out that the
solution to a problem commonly requires an unprecedented response or pattern
of responses that hardly could be attributed to simple
associative reproduction of past behaviour or experiences. For them, the essence of thinking lay in
sudden perceptual
restructuring or reorganization, akin to the abrupt changes in appearance of
an ambiguous visual figure. The Gestalt theory has had a deep and far-reaching impact, especially
in drawing attention to the ability of the thinker to discover creative,
innovative ways of coping with situations that differ from any that have been
encountered before. This theory,
however, has been criticized for underestimating the contribution of prior
learning and for not going beyond rudimentary attempts to classify and
analyze the structures that it deems so important. Later discussions of the systems in which
items of information and intellectual operations are organized have made
fuller use of the resources of logic and mathematics. Merely to name them, they include the
“psychologic” of Piaget, the simulation of human thinking with the help of
computer programs using list-processing languages and tree structures (H.A.
Simon and A. Newell), and extensions of Hull’s notion of the “habit-family
hierarchy” (I. Maltzman, D.E. Berlyne).
A further development of consequence is a growing recognition that the
essential components of the thought process, the events that keep it moving in
fruitful directions, are not words, images, or other symbols representing
stimulus situations; rather, they are the operations that cause each of these
representations to be succeeded by the next, in conformity with restrictions
imposed by the problem or aim of the moment.
In other words, directed thinking can reach a solution only by going
through a properly ordered succession of “legitimate steps”. These steps might be representations of
realizable physicochemical changes, modifications of logical or mathematical
formulas that are permitted by rules of inference, or legal moves in a game
of chess. This conception of the train
of thinking as a sequence of rigorously controlled transformations is
buttressed by the theoretical arguments of Sechenov and of Piaget, the
results of the Würzburg experiments, and the lessons of computer
simulation. Early in the 20th century both E. Claparède
and John Dewey
suggested that directed thinking proceeds by “implicit trial-and-error”. That is to say, it resembles the process
whereby laboratory animals confronted with a novel problem situation try out
one response after another until they sooner or later hit upon a response
that leads to success. In thinking,
however, the trials were said to take the form of internal responses
(imagined or conceptualized courses of action, directions of symbolic
search); once attained, a train of thinking that constitutes a solution
frequently can be recognized as such without the necessity of implementation
through action, followed by sampling of external consequences. This kind of
theory, popular among behaviourists and
neobehaviourists, was stoutly opposed by the Gestalt school whose insight
theory emphasized the discovery of a solution as a whole and in a flash. The divergence between these theories appears, however, to represent a
false dichotomy. The protocols of Köhler's
chimpanzee experiments and of the rather similar experiments performed later
under Pavlov’s auspices show that insight typically is preceded by a period
of groping and of misguided attempts at solution that soon are abandoned. On the other hand, even the trial-and-error
behaviour of an animal in a simple selective-learning
situation does not consist of a completely blind and
random sampling of the behaviour of which the learner is capable. Rather, it consists of responses that very
well might have succeeded if the circumstances had been slightly
different. A. Newell, J.C. Shaw, and H.A. Simon pointed out the indispensability
in creative human thinking, as in its computer simulations, of what they call
“heuristics”. A large number of possibilities may have to
be examined, but the search is organized heuristically in such a way that the
directions most likely to lead to success are explored first. Means of ensuring that a solution will
occur within a reasonable time, certainly much faster than by random hunting,
include adoption of successive subgoals and working backward from the final
goal (the formula to be proved, the state of affairs to be brought about). Click
here for a list of other articles that contain information on this subject
Contents of
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The mind is thought to be the seat of perception,
self-consciousness, thinking, believing, remembering, hoping, desiring,
willing, judging, analyzing, evaluating, reasoning, etc.
Dualists
consider the mind to be an immaterial substance, capable of existence as a
conscious, perceiving entity independent of any physical body. Dualism is popular with those who believe in
life after death. The brain may decay,
disintegrate, and be forever annihilated, but the mind (or soul) does not depend on the body
for its existence and so may continue to flourish in another world. This belief in the mind as a substance which
exists independently of the brain, however implausible, seems to be required
for most religious doctrines, as well as for many New Age notions and
therapies. Whereas dualist philosophers
have long struggled with what is known as the mind-body
problem, New Age gurus are calling for mind-body harmony in medicine, therapy
and science. In short, philosophers have realized that
there is a problem in explaining how two fundamentally different kinds of
reality can affect one another, while New Age pundits think the problem has
been caused by treating the two - mind and body - as if they do not
interact.
Metaphysical
materialists, on the other hand, consider the mind to be either the brain
itself or an emergent reality, i.e., an entity separate from but
brought into being by the workings of the brain. The latter doctrine is known as epiphenomenalism. For the materialist ‘mind’ is a catch-all
term for a number of processes or activities which can be reduced to cerebral,
neurological and physiological processes.
Behaviorists consider
‘mind’ to be a catch-all term for a set of behaviors.
There is probably no more fascinating topic in philosophy or neurology
than mind or consciousness.
Yet, despite the fact that the human mind has made it possible to gain
all the understanding of the world and ourselves which we now possess, it has
done precious little to help us understand the mind itself. For example, memory is something we all have
to some degree or another. Yet, we do
not fully understand the nature of memory, and several models of memory are
equally plausible.
Models of mind or consciousness continue to occupy the
brains of some of our best philosophers and scientists. Yet, despite the fact that the key to
understanding the human mind is likely to be found in the study of the
functioning human brain, many philosophers
and psychologists continue to be
guided by the belief that the mind can be adequately understood independently
of the brain.
Philosophers, who have not yet adequately explained
what the mind is, are nevertheless clear enough on the concept to believe there
is a problem in proving
that other minds exist. Presumably they use their own minds to either prove
than other minds exist, or that other minds don’t exist, or that other minds
might exist but we’ll never know for sure.
This might be called the mind leading the mind problem.
See related entries on astral projection, dualism, free will, materialism, memory , souls, Charles Tart, and p-zombies.
further reading
The Paleo Ring -
Websites on Paleontology, Paleoanthropology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Evolution
of Behavior, and Evolutionary Biology
Mind and Body: René
Descartes to William James by Robert Wozniak of
"Deciphering
the Miracles of the Mind ," by Robert Lee Hotz.
Churchland, Patricia Smith. Neurophilosophy
- Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1986).
Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes'
Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Avon Books, 1995). $10.80
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Brainstorms:
Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, Vt.:
Bradford Books, 1978).
Dennett, Daniel Clement.
Consciousness explained illustrated by Paul Weiner (Boston : Little,
Brown and Co., 1991).
Dennett, Daniel Clement.
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Kinds
of minds: toward an understanding of consciousness (New York, N.Y. :
Basic Books, 1996). $8.80
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Elbow
room: the varieties of free will worth wanting (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT
Press, 1984). $14.95
Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Daniel C. Dennett The mind's I: fantasies and reflections on self and soul (New
York : Basic Books, 1981). $14.36
Hofstadter, Douglas. Metamagical
Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic
Books, 1985). See especially chapter 5, "World Views in Collision: The
Skeptical Inquirer versus the National Enquirer". $18.40
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind
(New York: Barnes and Noble: 1949). $12.95
Sacks, Oliver W. An
anthropologist on Mars : seven paradoxical tales (New York : Knopf,
1995). $10.40
Sacks, Oliver W. The man who
mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (New York : Summit
Books, 1985). $10.40
Sacks, Oliver W. A leg to stand
on (New York : Summit Books, 1984). $10.00
Sacks, Oliver W. Seeing voices
: a journey into the world of the deaf (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989). $8.80
The Benefits of Playing Chess
Although Chess is recognized as the ultimate game, somehow, it has fallen from its once exalted position to a place a little lower than that dice game called Yahotze, or whatever it’s called.
What most
people don’t understand is that Chess is not simply a game. It is a learning tool for the development of
the mind, and just happens to be in the form of a game. How fortunate we are to
have an easy method of exercising and developing much deeper thought processes
in our minds while also amusing the simpler side of our nature.
It is also an
unending challenge. Its spectrum extends
from “learning how the pieces move,” to seeing how many simultaneous blindfolded
games we can play. Obviously it takes a
highly developed mind just to play one game blindfolded. And for most of us, playing Chess is much
more fun than using math for this necessary mental exercise.
That’s why
thinking games are such excellent tools for young children. They can be played and enjoyed while deeper
thought patterns are being developed.
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