Mind
The mind is what thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills, encompassing the totality of mental phenomena. It includes both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances, and unconscious processes, which can influence an individual without intention or awareness. Traditionally, minds were often conceived as separate entities that can exist on their own but are more commonly understood as features or capacities of other entities in the contemporary discourse. The mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life but its exact nature is disputed; some theorists suggest that all mental phenomena are private and directly knowable, transform information, have the ability to refer to and represent other entities, or are dispositions to engage in behavior.
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation).
The mind–body problem is the challenge of explaining the relation between matter and mind. The dominant position today is physicalism, which says that everything is material, meaning that minds are certain aspects or features of some material objects. The evolutionary history of the mind is tied to the development of the nervous system, which led to the formation of brains. As brains became more complex, the number and capacity of mental functions increased with particular brain areas dedicated to specific mental functions. Individual human minds also develop as they learn from experience and pass through psychological stages in the process of aging. Some people are affected by mental disorders, for which certain mental capacities do not function as they should.
It is widely accepted that animals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies. The topic of artificial minds poses similar challenges, with theorists discussing the possibility and consequences of creating them using computers.
The main fields of inquiry studying the mind include psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. They tend to focus on different aspects of the mind and employ different methods of investigation, ranging from empirical observation and neuroimaging to conceptual analysis and thought experiments. The mind is relevant to many other fields, including epistemology, anthropology, religion, and education.
Definition[edit]
The mind is the totality of psychological phenomena and capacities, encompassing consciousness, thought, perception, sensation, feeling, mood, motivation, behavior, memory, and learning.[1] The term is sometimes used in a more narrow sense to refer only to higher or more abstract cognitive functions associated with reasoning and awareness.[2] Minds were traditionally conceived as immaterial substances or independent entities and contrasted with matter and body. In the contemporary discourse, they are more commonly seen as features of other entities and are often understood as capacities of material brains.[3] The precise definition of mind is disputed and while it is generally accepted that some non-human animals also have mind, there is no agreement on where exactly the boundary lies.[4] Despite these disputes, there is wide agreement that mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life as the seat of consciousness, emotions, thoughts, and sense of personal identity.[5] Various fields of inquiry study the mind; the main ones include psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy.[6]
The words psyche and mentality are usually used as synonyms of mind.[7] They are often employed in overlapping ways with the terms soul, spirit, cognition, intellect, intelligence, and brain but their meanings are not exactly the same. Some religions understand the soul as an independent entity that constitutes the immaterial essence of human beings, is of divine origin, survives bodily death, and is immortal.[8] The word spirit has various additional meanings not directly associated with mind, such as a vital principle animating living beings or a supernatural being inhabiting objects or places.[9] Cognition encompasses certain types of mental processes in which knowledge is acquired and information processed.[10] The intellect is one mental capacity responsible for thought, reasoning, and understanding[11] and is closely related to intelligence as the ability to acquire, understand, and apply knowledge.[12] The brain is the physical organ responsible for most or all mental functions.[13]
The modern English word mind originates from the Old English word gemynd, meaning "memory". This term gave rise to the Middle English words mind(e), münd(e), and mend(e), resulting in a slow expansion of meaning to cover all mental capacities. The original meaning is preserved in expressions like call to mind and keep in mind. Cognates include the Old High German gimunt, the Gothic gamunds, the ancient Greek μένος, the Latin mens, and the Sanskrit manas.[14]
Theories of the nature of mind[edit]
Theories of the nature of mind aim to determine what all mental states have in common. They seek to discover the "mark of the mental", that is, the criteria that distinguish mental from non-mental phenomena.[50] Epistemic criteria say that the unique feature of mental states is how people know about them. For example, if a person has a toothache, they have direct or non-inferential knowledge that they are in pain. But they do not have this kind of knowledge of the physical causes of the pain and may have to consult external evidence through visual inspection or a visit to the dentist. Another feature commonly ascribed to mental states is that they are private, meaning that others do not have this kind of direct access to a person's mental state and have to infer it from other observations, like the pain behavior of the person with the toothache. Some philosophers claim that knowledge of some or all mental states is infallible, for instance, that a person cannot be mistaken about whether they are in pain.[51]
A related view states that all mental states are either conscious or accessible to consciousness. According to this view, when a person actively remembers the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris then this state is mental because it is part of consciousness; when the person does not think about it, this belief is still a mental state because the person could bring it to consciousness by thinking about it. This view denies the existence of a "deep unconsciousness", that is, unconscious mental states that cannot in principle become conscious.[52]
Another theory says that intentionality[c] is the mark of the mental. A state is intentional if it refers to or represents something. For example, if a person perceives a piano or thinks about it then the mental state is intentional because it refers to a piano. This view distinguishes between original and derivative intentionality. Mental states have original intentionality while some non-mental phenomena have derivative intentionality. For instance, the word piano and a picture of a piano are intentional in a derivative sense: they do not directly refer to a piano but if a person looks at them, they may evoke in this person a mental state that refers to a piano. Philosophers who disagree that all mental states are intentional cite examples such as itches, tickles, and pains as possible exceptions.[54]
According to behaviorism, mental states are dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli. This view implies that mental phenomena are not private internal states but are accessible to empirical observation like regular physical phenomena.[55] Functionalism agrees that mental states do not depend on the exact internal constitution of the mind and characterizes them instead in regard to their functional role. Unlike behaviorism, this role is not limited to behavioral patterns but includes other factors as well. For example, part of the functional role of pain is given by its relation to bodily injury and its tendency to cause behavioral patterns like moaning and other mental states, like a desire to stop the pain.[56] Computationalism, a similar theory prominent in cognitive science, defines minds in terms of cognitions and computations as information processors.[57]
Theories under the umbrella of externalism emphasize the mind's dependency on the environment. According to this view, mental states and their contents are at least partially determined by external circumstances.[58] For example, some forms of content externalism hold that it can depend on external circumstances whether a belief refers to one object or another.[59] The extended mind thesis states that external circumstances not only affect the mind but are part of it, like a diary or a calculator extend the mind's capacity to store and process information.[60] The closely related view of enactivism holds that mental processes involve an interaction between organism and environment.[61]
Development[edit]
Evolution[edit]
The mind has a long evolutionary history starting with the development of the nervous system and the brain.[89] While it is generally accepted today that mind is not exclusive to humans and various non-human animals have some form of mind, there is no consensus at which point exactly the mind emerged.[90] The evolution of mind is usually explained in terms of natural selection: genetic variations responsible for new or improved mental capacities, like better perception or social dispositions, have an increased chance of being passed on to future generations if they are beneficial to survival and reproduction.[91]
Minimal forms of information processing are already found in the earliest forms of life 4 to 3.5 billion years ago, like the abilities of bacteria and eukaryotic unicellular organisms to sense the environment, store this information, and react to it. Nerve cells emerged with the development of multicellular organisms more than 600 million years ago as a way to process and transmit information. About 600 to 550 million years ago, an evolutionary bifurcation happened into radially symmetric organisms[e] with ring-shaped nervous systems or a nerve net, like jellyfish, and organisms with bilaterally symmetric bodies, whose nervous systems tend to be more centralized. About 540 million years ago, the bilaterally organized organisms separated into invertebrates and vertebrates. All vertebrates, like birds and mammals, have a central nervous system including a complex brain with specialized functions while invertebrates, like clams and insects, either have no brains or tend to have simple brains.[93] With the evolution of vertebrates, their brains tended to grow and the specialization of the different brain areas tended to increase. These developments are closely related to changes in limb structures, sense organs, and living conditions with a close correspondence between the size of a brain area and the importance of its function to the organism.[94] An important step in the evolution of mammals about 200 million years ago was the development of the neocortex, which is responsible for many higher-order brain functions.[95]
The size of the brain relative to the body further increased with the development of primates, like monkeys, about 65 million years ago and later with the emergence of the first hominins about 7–5 million years ago.[96] Anatomically modern humans appeared about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago.[97] Various theories of the evolutionary processes responsible for human intelligence have been proposed. The social intelligence hypothesis says that the evolution of the human mind was triggered by the increased importance of social life and its emphasis on mental abilities associated with empathy, knowledge transfer, and meta-cognition. According to the ecological intelligence hypothesis, the main value of the increased mental capacities comes from their advantages in dealing with a complex physical environment through processes like behavioral flexibility, learning, and tool use. Other suggested mechanisms include the effects of a changed diet with energy-rich food and general benefits from an increased speed and efficiency of information processing.[98]
Individual[edit]
Besides the development of mind in general in the course of history, there is also the development of individual human minds. Some of the individual changes vary from person to person as a form of learning from experience, like forming specific memories or acquiring particular behavioral patterns. Others are more universal developments as psychological stages that all or most humans go through as they pass through early childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.[99] These developments cover various areas, including intellectual, sensorimotor, linguistic, emotional, social, and moral developments.[100] Some factors affect the development of mind before birth, such as nutrition, maternal stress, and exposure to harmful substances like alcohol during pregnancy.[101]
Early childhood is marked by rapid developments as infants learn voluntary control over their bodies and interact with their environment on a basic level. Typically after about one year, this covers abilities like walking, recognizing familiar faces, and producing individual words.[102] On the emotional and social levels, they develop attachments with their primary caretakers and express emotions ranging from joy to anger, fear, and surprise.[103] An influential theory by Jean Piaget divides the cognitive development of children into four stages. The sensorimotor stage from birth until two years is concerned with sensory impressions and motor activities while learning that objects remain in existence even when not observed. In the preoperational stage until seven years, children learn to interpret and use symbols in an intuitive manner. They start employing logical reasoning to physical objects in the concrete operational stage until eleven years and extend this capacity in the following formal operational stage to abstract ideas as well as probabilities and possibilities.[104] Other important processes shaping the mind in this period are socialization and enculturation, at first through primary caretakers and later through peers and the schooling system.[105]
Psychological changes during adolescence are provoked both by physiological changes and being confronted with a different social situation and new expectations from others. An important factor in this period is change to the self-concept, which can take the form of an identity crisis. This process often involves developing individuality and independence from parents while at the same time seeking closeness and conformity with friends and peers. Further developments in this period include improvements to the reasoning ability and the formation of a principled moral viewpoint.[106]
The mind also changes during adulthood but in a less rapid and pronounced manner. Reasoning and problem-solving skills improve during early and middle adulthood. Some people experience the mid-life transition as a midlife crisis involving an inner conflict about personal identity, often associated with anxiety, a sense of lack of accomplishments in life, and an awareness of mortality. Intellectual faculties tend to decline in later adulthood, specifically the ability to learn complex unfamiliar tasks and later also the ability to remember, while people tend to become more inward-looking and cautious.[107]
Non-human[edit]
Animal[edit]
It is commonly acknowledged today that animals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies and how their mind differs from the human mind.[108] Different conceptions of the mind lead to different responses to this problem; when understood in a very wide sense as the capacity to process information, the mind is present in all forms of life, including insects, plants, and individual cells;[109] on the other side of the spectrum are views that deny the existence of mentality in most or all non-human animals based on the idea that they lack key mental capacities, like abstract rationality and symbolic language.[110] The status of animal minds is highly relevant to the field of ethics since it affects the treatment of animals, including the topic of animal rights.[111]
Discontinuity views state that the minds of non-human animals are fundamentally different from human minds and often point to higher mental faculties, like thinking, reasoning, and decision-making based on beliefs and desires.[112] This outlook is reflected in the traditionally influential position of defining humans as "rational animals" as opposed to all other animals.[113] Continuity views, by contrast, emphasize similarities and see the increased human mental capacities as a matter of degree rather than kind. Central considerations for this position are the shared evolutionary origin, organic similarities on the level of brain and nervous system, and observable behavior, ranging from problem-solving skills, animal communication, and reactions to and expressions of pain and pleasure. Of particular importance are the questions of consciousness and sentience, that is, to what extent non-human animals have a subjective experience of the world and are capable of suffering and feeling joy.[114]