The Ultimate Truth

Our conscious minds make us, human beings, aware of five senses, on the average. Some people have access to less (the blind, the deaf, etc.) and some claim access to more. Who is to truely say how many senses we really have. Other animals react to stimuli we cannot percieve. Is this because some of their senses are more acute than ours, or do they have concious access to yet other senses of which we are not aware? Sharks, for instance, have concious access to as many as thirteen senses, depending upon which source you are getting your information from. We as human beings may have yet other senses which we have not developed. Who is to say? I, for instance, can sense diferences in barometric pressure. Whether this is simply a function of my sense of touch (or some combination of my five "standard" senses), or if it is yet a different sense, I cannot say.

The interesting thing is that we each experience the universe differently, in a way that is completely unique to our individual selves. This is most probably due to the influence of our previous experiences - we "tune" our senses according to the input we have previously recieved. We experience the universe through this "lens" of previous experience. Similarly, we interperet the signals we recieve differently for much the same reason. We ARE our past, is a manner of speaking, because each of us constructs our own reality based upon these interperetations of past experience. Who is to say whether there is more to "red" than merely the color that our eyes percieve? It may be that the E.M. wavelength (or, more specifically, the set of wavelengths) which we have termed "red" may have some other effect which one or more of our other senses can percieve, but which we have never bothered to "tune in to," either because we rely so heavily upon our sight, or because we haven't learned to associate that particular stimulus with the word "red," yet. The blind, might have some experience of "red" but never know it because that experience has never been named for them. We have been conditioned to think in words and only rarely do we ever transcend that conditioning to realize that there are many things in our experience which cannot be put into words (which is much of what Art is about, I think).

Our conciousness extends beyond mere awareness, though. And it's time we came to terms with that. We do much more than simply react to stimuli. We reason. We construct entirely imaginary concepts within our minds that are only vaguely related to the "real" world around us. What is this, then? We anticipate - make plans and attempt to execute them in an effort to affect the world around us. These are more than simple (or even complex) reactions to outside stimulus, I believe. We interperet these thoughts using the "language" we learned through the experience of our senses, this is true - but that is merely the product of our conditioning, the result of our experience. Without access to these senses, we would still think. The blind, for instance, having no point of reference for the word "red" still understand that the word has a meaning different form, say, "blue," do they not? They must create some imaginary contruct within themselves upon which to hang "red," which is to them a sound (i.e. the sound of a person saying the word "red") just as it is to those of us who see. Yet they know that the word is a symbol for something "other." This is because they reason.

It is our ability to create constructs within our minds (like "God" for instance) which transcend the experience of our senses that casts doubt on the idea that "mind" is merely a combination of impulses reacting to stimulus (or a combination of the letters M-I-N-D which are themselves symbols). There is a modern fable written by Stanislaw Lem called "The tale of Mymosh the self-begotten," whic describes such a mind:

“…Apparently, I am! ....Yes I am! And there's no apparently about it! Yet the question remains, who is it who says that I am?.... If only there was something else besides me, any sort of something at all, with which I might juxtapose and compare myself - that would be half the battle. But alas, there's not a thing, for I can plainly see that I see nothing whatsoever! Therefore there's only I that am, and I am everything that is and may be, for I can think in any way I like, but am I then - an empty space for thought, and nothing more?' [his senses had rusted out]......
"In his next attempts at thought creation, he proceeded with greater caution, first thinking up elements, like Brutonium, a noble gas, and elementary particles, like the cogiton, the quantum of intellect, and he created beings, and these were fruitful and multiplied. "From time to time he did make mistakes, but after a century or two he grew quite proficient, and his very own Gozmos, sound and stable, took shape in his mind's eye, and it teemed with a multitude of entities, things, beings, civilizations and phenomena, and existence was most pleasurable there, for he had made the laws of that Gozmos highly liberal, having no fondness for strict, inflexible rules, the sort of prison discipline that Mother Nature imposes(though of course he'd never heard of Mother Nature). Thus the world of Selfbegotten was a place of caprice and miracle; in it something might occur one way once, and at another time be altogether different - and without any special rhyme or reason. If, for example, an individual was supposed to die, there were always ways of getting around it, for Mymosh had firmly decided against irreversible events.....”

The mere fact that Mr. Lem can imagine such a thing is in and of itself enough evidence to at least force us to admit that such a possibility exists. And in an infinite universe, where a thing is possible... well, let's just say that the jury is still out on this one. We do not have the data to say for certain just what "mind" really is. We can theorize and postulate. We may eventually devise ways to test and quantify data so as to prove or disprove, but that capability is beyond us at present. "Mind" is a trancendant concept, beyond our ability to communicate in it's totality, or even to completely understand. We have other words for transcendant concepts: "infinite," "God," and so on. Perhaps some day we will have the means to do more than theorize about these things, but for now we simply have to admit that we don't know.

Well, we don't HAVE to admit anything... we have this other concept called "faith" which we often use to shield us from the need to admit to not knowing a thing - and which is one of those things which keeps me thinking that the mind is more than simply the reaction of our physical selves to the stimulus offered by our senses.

 

Well, the brain is not the mind, but then, the eye is not sight. And as DK said, it [the mind] is stimulated by stimuli from the other 5 senses.

 

Well, Darrell, to be completely honest, I think that Buddhism as a system of beliefs is foolish, but I'd never call a particular, practicing Buddhist foolish. And to tell you the truth, I don't know where you get off. I'm not arguing for arguments' sake, I'm raising a problem that I think is pretty interesting. I disagree with you. Deal with it. There's no need for ad hominems. I'd imagine that a moderator wouldn't have to be told that.

Now, back to the point. When I said, "mental states aside," I meant just that, including perception of colour. So, there is nothing objectionable about saying that "red is red" can be known to be true by someone who has never actually seen red. Now, whether someone can "know" red as we normally think of it without having even seen red, is another question entirely. It's a problem of the philosophy of mind, which, as I've said, I don't know a lot about. It certainly seems like a person could have at least some knowledge of red without actually seeing it. That person, who, say, is colour blind, could conclude, for example, that "red is not blue," "red is not green," and so on until he concluded that red isn't like any other colour he's ever seen. He could also ask people to describe red to him, which would be a bit of challenge, but could at least give him some idea of what red is. Also, say the person is neuroscientist. If he knew the way a person's brain works when that person perceived red, then the neuroscientist must have a pretty good idea of what red is. Now, all three of these ways of knowing red are all very abstract. It just depends on if any of these three scenarios satisfies the condition of knowing red, which we haven't yet clarified. So, Darrell, this would be a grand opportunity to expand on your theory of thought, which, as you admitted, you just pulled out of you ass before clicking the "post" button. And believe me, I may not know a lot about philosophy of mind, but I could tell.

Now, is the mind an organ, a sense, or something else? First, let's look at why it can't be a sense. A few posts ago, Hakiru said something about the mind being stimulated whenever it has a thought, the same way a sense organ is. I think the reason we've been running into so many problems is that we haven't yet distinguished the mind from the brain. Colours, I think, is quite right in saying that the mind is different from the brain in that the mind is intangible, or "unextended" to use Cartesian terminology. So, simply because the brain is stimulated in the way that sense organs are, doesn't necessarily mean that the mind is stimulated in the same way. "Stimulation" is a pretty sketchy term to use anyway since it can mean a lot of things. Is the brain really "stimulated" in the same way the sense organs are? I'm not too sure. I'm really not trying to arrive at any specific conclusions right here. I'm just throwing things out for discussion. But I am leaning towards the idea that the mind is something entirely different than the brain or the senses.