Any study of modern theories of philosophy of mind makes for rather depressing reading. Modern philosophers are of the view that the mind is not separate from the body and that our intuitive feeling that the mind is something apart the brain is misleading. Some of these ‘explanations’ seem to describe the mind only in terms of thought processes — as if the mind is noise created by the moving cogs of a machine.
This view is based on a false premise. The premise is that the mind can be studied in an objective, scientific way. In fact, this is a circular argument. If we assume that the mind can be studied scientifically then it logically follows that it must follow the rules that we use when we make scientific experiments. And these rule include that what we study is objective and exists in in physical realm, or at least can be explained in the physical realm.
Not only is this intuitively wrong, it fails to explain some of the basic characteristics of mind. One of which is that the mind seems to reverse entropy.
Entropy, in this context, is the degree of disorder. Zero entropy is complete order and infinite entropy is maximum disorder. The universe naturally progresses to increasing entropy. A car is manufactured in a number of stages: steel from raw iron oxide, plastics from hydrocarbons and so on. Left to itself the car will eventually return to something akin to its origins. The steel will rust to iron oxide, the plastics will eventually degrade back into hydrocarbons, and so on. When humans create a product we reverse entropy. In fact, it’s not just humans that do this. All living things create an order out of the natural chaos — they create something that has lower entropy. Whether it is a tree or a plant, a bird building a nest, or a human building a house. Each of these products of life are more ordered than the natural world and left to themselves revert to their roots. They increase in entropy.
When Steve Jobs came up with the concept of the iPhone, this was an idea in his mind. Where did this come from and when the idea arose how was he able to separate it from the noise of other ideas? It required discerment.
The engineer Nicola Tesla described his own creative process as follows:
My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practise of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time.
How is this possible if the mind is purely a result of mechanistic processes in the brain?
There is another issue that theories of mind seem to ignore, and that is that thinking and consciousness are not the same thing. I can be consciously aware (or unaware) of my own thoughts. So what is doing the awareness?
The mind exists in a dimension beyond the four dimensions (or three and half dimensions, as we are only aware of half the time dimension). It is in the fifth dimension. I explain this more here.
By Philip Braham on .
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