Q (Quora): How does the brain understand philosophy?
A (Martin): The brain… understanding philosophy? My reply to this is similar to the one I gave recently to another question, which was based on Socrates’ answer to an observation that someone was making. The man saw a pool of water being stirred by a stick held by a man and said that the stick was stirring the water. To which Socrates replied: ‘Is it the stick, or the man moving the stick?’ (Which one is the real agent – the material, or the instrumental cause, in Aristotelian terms?).
Equally, is it the brain, or the mind that which ‘moves’ the brain which moves the stick, which stirs the water?
Is it the brain, or the mind that which (using the brain as an instrument) understands philosophy?
Rather, it is consciousness (as a substrate) using the mind using the brain… Consciousness itself does not do anything
Interesting question, Martin! A couple of points:
1) Don’t you really need to define ‘mind’ before answering this question?
2) You say that consciousness is ‘using’ the mind. Doesn’t this mean that consciousness is ‘doing’ something’?
Best wishes,
Dennis
(My enlightened, perspicacious, and unimitable definitions)
1) Mind is a faculty of all sentient beings (including ants, etc.) that relate them to everything – external and internal phenomena (we talk of ‘contents of the mind’, ‘infraconscious (my coinage?) or subconscious mind’). There are degrees in mind’s capabilities or functionality: from molluscs to highly evolved humans. It can also be said that mind is either ‘active’ or ‘passive’ (as a mirror).
2) Consciousness is the substrate of the mind; it is passive, still, and receptive. Consciousness is the most universal entity, indefinable, unmovable, and ungraspable. Consciousness is noumenon, as contrasted to phenomena – everything else. ‘That thou art’.
Sometimes consciousness is equated to (not distinguished from) mind, depending on its usage: being ‘mindful’ of something.
I suppose the problem relates to how we use the word ‘mind’ all the time and simply take it for granted that we all know what we are talking about. I have just looked at my current book (which is discussing how modern teachers, as opposed to traditional ones, attempt to teach Advaita) and find that I have used the word ‘mind’ 290 times, but I haven’t actually defined it anywhere!
Vivaraṇa speaks about cidābhāsa as being Consciousness ‘reflected’ in the mind. But maybe we should acknowledge that the manifestation of Consciousness in humans or any other form is a function of their evolutionary complexity and that, when there is such a manifestation, we say that whatever it is that is manifesting it has a ‘mind’? That ‘mind’ is the word we use to talk about such manifestation?
What do you think?
While not disagreeing with what you have said, I concur with the position of the Vivarana school, i.e. cidabhasa notion. You mentioned cidabhasa (reflection theory), and I wrote ‘substrate’. Do they not say, or amount to, the same thing?
Yes indeed. I wasn’t quibbling with the definitions. Just trying to pin down how we think about ‘mind’ and how Consciousness ‘manifests’. Do dolphins have minds? Dandelions? What about the next generation of AI computers?
Not directly relevant to the topic, but readers should find this video discussion between Bernardo Kastrup and Francis Lucille interesting. The title is ‘Can Computers be Conscious’ but they discuss the nature of mind, consciousness and reality along the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QqV41LPSqc
And here is the link to the paper by Hedda Hassel Mørch in which she proposes the radical theory that “consciousness is the real concrete stuff of reality”! https://nautil.us/is-matter-conscious-236546/
(Why is it that none of these scientist/Western philosophers have heard about Advaita?)
Interesting article by Hedda, especially in articulating the hard problems of consciousness / matter. The problem with her postulate is that we can barely define what consciousness is, let alone assimilate her concept of ‘fundamental particles that have simple consciousness’ – especially given that she states that physics has dissolved the idea of a particle, and also, what is simple consciousness (as opposed to complex)?
All of physics and its mathematical formulations are experiences in consciousness. But the experience itself cannot define the experiencer; it can only pursue more and more rarefied experiences (theoretical concepts and associated experiments). How can one know that by which all this is known?
Agree entirely!