Missing in action: Where is the mind?

I agree.

I think it is more likely that biology and chemistry will reveal themselves to be effects of consciousness rather than causes of it.

My guess, and that's all it is, is that they will be BOTH causes and effects of each other. Mutual causation is fundamental to all complex systems of operations--I think.

I would say that is a pretty good guess. If the mind is treated as a whole than I would say it has both traits of cause (intention) and effect (dreaming/imagination). Perhaps the specialisation of the left and right hemispheres in the brain having different cognisant abilities has something to do with it.

May I interject here?
Why would you separate the mind/body/reality experience into three separate things?
It is one in the same, your central nervous system is an extension of the mind into the body, creating the mind/body experience of reality.
Reality is in you and you are in reality, just the same as when you dream a dream.

Again; if you look for causes in nature all you find are effects... If you ask why people do what they do, and because they are so unconscious generally of their motivations, or their motivations are so self serving or irrational, you cannot count on honesty or truth from them... We spin reality and our behavior to shine the best light upon it, and personally, I think that the more people look for the absolute cause for thought or behavior the more they will find the uncertainty principal applies to sociology and behavioral science...

A person who believe an omniscient God is noting all behavior, and even thought, or a person with a sensitive conscience finds the examined life is led nothing like the unexamined life... Science suggest that from birth some are more likely criminals, or at minimum dare devil thrill seekers... Would it be possible if such people were aware -for them to modify their behavior to accord with the expectations of society???...

What if society could cure agression in the womb??? Would that justify robbing all of society of the defense such behavior could be turned to in crisis??? What if aggression plays no small part in procreation, for when we have no weapon to send against reality we give birth to armies???...No one has enough knowledge to play god, and to me, the more behavior is thought to be pre-determined the more likely the thought will result in general injustice and class prejudice... It could be the most well meaning people, dressed in the white coats of science who doom humanity out desire for pacivity... Scientists are like every kid who ever dug into his navel to find his beginning only to find his end... If they wanted to do the world a service they would look into their own motivation...

My turn to agree... When people look at nature, even their own nature, it is nature seeing nature...We would like to put nature under a magnifying glass, but we can never divide what is seen from who is seeing it...

The ultimate act of our vivisection is to divide mind from body, and this is impossible if the brain is the matter behind the mind because everywhere we have blood vessels we have nervous tissue... Our brains are our bodies... When threatened, people cover their vital organs... It is not just poets who think love is in the heart and fear in the stomach... The brain agrees with the artist... Most of us do not grasp what a luxury it is to be able to think with ones brain... Even today, for every one who thinks with they brain, perhaps 90 think with their stomach while another 9 think with their nads... Today, great numbers can be philosophers... In days past, a person needed independent wealth provided by slaves, or the church for security in order to be a philosopher... Technology has made us all much more secure... It does not stop people from thinking carnally...

I think I agree with your thinking.
In a way, paradigms aren't made to last forever.

I like the general direction (as vague as it may be) in which this thread is moving.

I am leaning more and more towards the idea that the "location" of the mind and it's contents are one and the same.

I too am thinking of mind as its contents (experiential contents and consciousness as one)--as I do self and its world (tat tvam asi). But ultimately it is all just what it is: a transendental who knows?

I never inferred there was that sort of seperation, rather a synergy of causes and effects.

It's interesting that you put quotation marks on the word "location". Does it imply that the locality of the mind may not be restricted to a sort of physcalism or is it beyond an emobodied consciousness, or perhaps both?


I guess it depends how you look at it. I have an understanding that its contents are one and the same but I can also sense the content individually (the idea that it is different and the same simultaneously). But I still think that it's all part of the mind.

Yes, most things depend on how you look at them.

The quotation marks were put in because I didn't want to imply that the mind has such a thing as location. It has presence or not, but we cannot say where thoughts exist.

Yes, location may apply to "brain" but not to "mind." And it begs the question to say that when you've located a brain you've located a mind.

The mind is a moral form. Thoughts are in forms.. No form means no thought... Every form is a form of relationship by which I mean, of classificattion, relating one thing to all things.. The brain is concious of itself the way it is consious of all things and non things, though forms.

We conceive of ourselves spiritually because we simply have no choice but to do so... Even the best of science as it stands cannot account for a single thought... What we do not know is what becomes of the mind without the brain, though it is the most obvious conclusion to make, that without brain there is no mind, and no thought, and no life and no soul... We cannot conceive of nothing, and without the help of the East, we perhaps never would have even by way of numbers... It is more easy to think of having always existed and existing always in the eye of God than to think of life and all that comes with it as terminating... Nothing scares us so much as nothing, but I think empty skulls think nothing, and that all meaning is a result of living, so that life is meaning, and words like mind and all moral forms only have their meaning in relation to life...

I think it is obvioius (although that does not make it true) that there is no mind without brain. But it seems to me equally obvious that there is no "brain" without mind since the former (like the latter) is a mental event.

Everything is a mental event. Even physical objects are only classified as such within the confines of our mental experience. The distinction physical / non-physical may be meaningless without the contrast of our particular situation. I see this as a point in favor of there being no "ding an sich". "Ding an sich" is just another mental exercise.