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Is the mind completly reducable to the brain?
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
Is the mind (thoughts and feelings or 'qualia') just a product of physical processes in the brain? Is the mind something completly seperate and the brain acts as a reciever for mind. Or is the mind an emergent phenomena of the brain, something produced by the brain but possessing qualities of its own not determined by the brain and thus having downward causality? Or is it some other type of phenomena?
For myself I don't feel that the mind is simply a literal product of firing neurons in the brain. With the use of fMRI and eeg scientists can 'read' a persons brain waves and can interpret the signals to allow someone, even a monkey, to move a cursor on a computer screen. They can tell the difference when someone is thinking of geometric shapes and when they are thinking about food. To the best of my knowledge though they can't tell if someone is thinking about a circle or a square, or an apple or an orange. They could hook up their machine to Stephen Hawkings brain and he could move a cursor to select certain symbols to form a complex mathematical formula but he couldn't just think of the formula and have the computer write it out.
The view of some buddhists, I'm thinking of HHDL and other TB, is that the mind is outside the brain and the brain is like a TV or radio receiving the signal. I'm moving more away from this notion to a more integrated notion of the two.
I feel that the mind, at least the one we experience from day to day, is maybe produced by the brain but is a strongly emergent phenomena and thus qualia and conciousness are able to act somewhat freely of the processes in the brain. Its not that they are independent of the brain and certain basic states of mind arise in dependence on specific areas of the brain, but the specifics of circle or square, apple or orange or complex ideas are one of the emergent properties of the mind and aren't directly produced by the brain.
In more advanced teachings of the fundamental nature of the mind in Buddhism its quality is described as clear and knowing. I speculate that this quality of the mind somehow interacts with the physical brain and the emergent mind to produce awarness, or "I think therefore I am". Without this basic, non-physical aspect of the mind we would be nothing more than organic computers with no self-awarness acting and reacting to internal and external phenomena without any chance for reflection and change.
I feel like I want to write more and tie this in to free will somehow but I'm not really sure how to go about it. Anyway, this is my current hypothesis and would like to hear if anyone agrees or disagrees and why.
For myself I don't feel that the mind is simply a literal product of firing neurons in the brain. With the use of fMRI and eeg scientists can 'read' a persons brain waves and can interpret the signals to allow someone, even a monkey, to move a cursor on a computer screen. They can tell the difference when someone is thinking of geometric shapes and when they are thinking about food. To the best of my knowledge though they can't tell if someone is thinking about a circle or a square, or an apple or an orange. They could hook up their machine to Stephen Hawkings brain and he could move a cursor to select certain symbols to form a complex mathematical formula but he couldn't just think of the formula and have the computer write it out.
The view of some buddhists, I'm thinking of HHDL and other TB, is that the mind is outside the brain and the brain is like a TV or radio receiving the signal. I'm moving more away from this notion to a more integrated notion of the two.
I feel that the mind, at least the one we experience from day to day, is maybe produced by the brain but is a strongly emergent phenomena and thus qualia and conciousness are able to act somewhat freely of the processes in the brain. Its not that they are independent of the brain and certain basic states of mind arise in dependence on specific areas of the brain, but the specifics of circle or square, apple or orange or complex ideas are one of the emergent properties of the mind and aren't directly produced by the brain.
In more advanced teachings of the fundamental nature of the mind in Buddhism its quality is described as clear and knowing. I speculate that this quality of the mind somehow interacts with the physical brain and the emergent mind to produce awarness, or "I think therefore I am". Without this basic, non-physical aspect of the mind we would be nothing more than organic computers with no self-awarness acting and reacting to internal and external phenomena without any chance for reflection and change.
I feel like I want to write more and tie this in to free will somehow but I'm not really sure how to go about it. Anyway, this is my current hypothesis and would like to hear if anyone agrees or disagrees and why.
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Comments
No offense...I read your post over and over again but I still don't understand why the answer to this question is important to you?
Why do you want to know the answer? Is it just for intellectual curiousity or there is more reason to it (i.e. somehow important for your spiritual development)?
it probably is a receptor only.
awareness = mindfulness = choice to act unconscious or with consciousness = freewill
non-self just means there is no permanent, independent, single essence or inherent self.
that means there can be a impermanent, dependent, interdependent self that is constantly evolving aka ego.
now breathe. one who isn't aware acts unconsciously based on previous patterned. one who is aware has a choice because he/she see's their patterns. one realizes this self has the 3 marks. right view, with free will with conditioned mind.
and to answer op's question. i believe that there is only consciousness, but consciousness only arises when there is body/mind. so everything is reduced to emptiness and even emptiness is reduced to emptiness.
My opinion is that the mind is emerges from the neurochemical processes in the body. That is all it is. This was the view I had as a western philosopher and the view that I have now as a buddhist - it blew my mind when I started reading about the skandic mind, it seemed such a modern theory!
Yes
No Yes
As you seem aware, western philosophy sees a distinction between the two "Yes" views above, but this distinction does not trouble the skandic mind.
There is no mind other than process and the mind emerges/arises from the aggregation of those processes.
All those very smart superviencince or epiphenomenist approaches are redundant in dharma.
I'd be interested to see how you can reconcile the cogito with anatman, I think it is deeply impossible - I haven't heard of Cartesian philosophers noticing this.
You have to be so careful here that you dont smuggle in dualism as emmergnce. We can be nothing more than organic computers and yet live these amazing sentient lives, full of metta, dukka, karma and love.
To my, mind that is a part of the "middle of" the Middle path. I think somehow the buddha realsied what were were but found that true values emmerge and there is no need to head to the extream of nihilsm.
Keep writing, keep thinking about this stuff, I'm certainly interested to read it. (Ignore the negs)
metta and respect,
Mat
Furthermore, Buddhism is entirely compatible with causal determinism. For example, Dhammanando Bhikkhu once gave me the example of a mosquito biting you on the nose: first you feel annoyed and want to squash it, but then you recall that you're a precept-observing Buddhist and so restrain yourself.
He explained that when this event is described in conventional terms, or according to the Sutta method, it might be said that you had a choice to kill the mosquito or to refrain, and that you chose the latter. But when it's described according to the Abhidhamma method, your abstention from killing wasn't due to choice but to the arising of kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors) such as moral shame and fear of wrong-doing (hiri & ottappa), and abstinence (virati), i.e., it was causally determined.
True free will requires an independent agent (If it's conditioned, how can it said to be free?), and Buddhism effectively denies such an agency. And if our volition is itself conditioned by other factors, then it, too, must ultimately be the result of causally determined processes, meaning that it's not so much an actual agent as it has the appearance of one.
Of course, others have a different opinion of this matter and see room for a free yet conditioned agent, at least conventionally speaking. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for example, a monastic I have great respect for, often talks about free will, e.g., in one essay he writes: But even though our present actions aren't necessarily determined by past actions, that doesn't mean that they're not conditioned by other factors. Conversely, if they are independent of any causes and conditions, then we're confronted with the possibility of a self or soul in the equation, a ghost in the machine called intention (cetana), which would seem to contradict teachings like SN 22.59 unless intention somehow lies outside of the aggregates.
I think the world is all physical, this does not mean there cannot be love, spirituality, fun, experience, dukka... and all these emergent properties.
namaste
Your question "where is it?".... its there! Right there, arrisen from the way its parts are arranged. This is true of all emergent things, which is most things, hence emptiness:)
Take the property of "betweeness" this doesnt exist in just two things, but add a third thing and hey presto, betweeness enters the possibility space.
We havent added anything new, just more of the same, yet we get something new.
The skandic mind is made of the same stuff as a watermelon, yet one can love and the other can mearley taste yummy.
Ponder this if you care @person, and @jason too:
Could you, ignoring the trivial, rearrange a watermelon's atoms to make the Buddha's brain, and thus the Buddha's mind?
xx
'Vaccha, the position that "the world is eternal" is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, & fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, stopping; to calm, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding.
'The position that "the world is not eternal"... "the world is finite"... "the world is infinite"... "the soul is the same thing as the body"... "the soul is one thing and the body another"... "after death a Tathāgata exists"... "after death a Tathāgata does not exist"... "after death a Tathāgata both exists & does not exist"... "after death a Tathāgata neither exists nor does not exist"... does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, stopping; to calm, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding.'
'Does Master Gotama have any position at all?'
'A "position," Vaccha, is something that a Tathāgata has done away with. What a Tathāgata sees is this: "Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is perception... such are fabrications... such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance." Because of this, I say, a Tathāgata — with the ending, fading out, stopping, renunciation & relinquishing of all construings, all excogitations, all I-making & my-making & obsessions with conceit — is, through lack of sustenance/clinging, released.'
exerpt from Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta, MN 72 (Thanissaro translation)
... ah, peace is.