I was promted to ask this because of our (newly) resident skeptic Angie54321 and her (no offence intended Angie) blasé response on the [url]Out of Body Experience thread[/url] here in the Scientific Matters forum.
Now, if I recall correctly Angie said that her field of expertise was clinical Biology and Psychology, so I would certainly be interested to hear Angie's views on these questions as well as other members, from a purely scientific point of view...
Q: What is the "I" that we talk about when we talk about ourselves?
Q: What is the mind?
These may be asking the same thing or may be different depending on your point of view.
Love and Reiki Hugs
from a purely scientific point of view...
Q: What is the "I" that we talk about when we talk about ourselves?
Q: What is the mind?
From the purely scientific point of view of Computer Science, I would say that the "I" would refer to the computer system (with the monitor) itself, while the "mind" would refer to the network of information (internet) that it is connected to. This is why mind always outlives the physical body because we know that if an individual computer crashes, it does not mean that the network (or internet) would "crash" as well. A single computer might disable a number of computers if it crashes, but it will not wipe the internet out.
This is why I would rephrase the question to ask not what the mind is, but what an individual mind is. (in the context of "I")
a known unknown? or perhaps an unknown unknown?
Now, if I recall correctly Angie said that her field of expertise was clinical Biology and Psychology, so I would certainly be interested to hear Angie's views on these questions as well as other members, from a purely scientific point of view...
Q: What is the "I" that we talk about when we talk about ourselves?
Q: What is the mind?
nice question 😉
i suppose what you mean by "purely scientific point of view" is that which can be established by empirical science using repeatable experiments.
normally repeatable experiments are designed to show statistically significant differences of responses to different treatments and if you can't do an experiment to test the hypothesis, it ain't worth talking about.
it can quite reasonably be considered that the rigor these types of experiments require in their design cannot really be satisfied by experiements that look at answering either of energylz questions. there is then little point asking the questions... but maybe someone that has more expertise in this area could give a better explaination as; from what i remember, psychology has always had problems establishing its credentials as a scienctific discipline, but maybe things have moved on since i was at college.
peace and love
norbu
What Norbu has written above reminded me of this excerpt from The Resurrection Pattern by Geoffrey Hoyland (written in 1947) Though in this case, the author (not CS) was someone who was looking at spiritual healing, I feel that his observations apply to the whole field of natural science.
The time has come when it is an urgent necessity that science should look at the pattern of life as a whole, taking every factor into account and excluding nothing from its inquiry... Firstly, science must approach the problem in the spirit of relativity rather than of Newtonianism; it must look for patterns, with a readiness to recognise whole patterns, rather than for force-laws. It will no longer start with the presumption that certain events cannot happen, or must not happen, or ought not to happen, in the old force-law terminology; it will rather be content to ask simply whether the event did happen, or does happen, and if so, of what particular pattern it is the evidence. It will be on the look-out particularly for the evidence of faint patterns emerging into sudden prominence... Relativity rules nothing out a priori; it is not concerned with rules, it observes patterns - and if it sees them it does not shut its eyes.
Judy
Thanks SeaWay,
From the purely scientific point of view of Computer Science, I would say that the "I" would refer to the computer system (with the monitor) itself, while the "mind" would refer to the network of information (internet) that it is connected to. This is why mind always outlives the physical body because we know that if an individual computer crashes, it does not mean that the network (or internet) would "crash" as well. A single computer might disable a number of computers if it crashes, but it will not wipe the internet out.
An interesting analogy, which implies that we are all of one mind, but that one mind does not need the individual "I"'s for it to exist, although it would surely need at least one "I" in order to exist. To deviate just slightly, that could be taken as saying that the mind will only exist whilst there is someone alive to believe in it.
This is why I would rephrase the question to ask not what the mind is, but what an individual mind is. (in the context of "I")
Hence why the question was left open ended. It's more interesting to see what people perceive the mind, or individual mind, to be.
Love and Reiki Hugs