Mind

## Names

**Engish:** *mind*, "that which feels, wills, and thinks; the intellect," late 12c., *mynd*, from Old English *gemynd* "memory, remembrance; state of being remembered; thought, purpose; conscious mind, intellect, intention," Proto-Germanic \*ga-mundiz (source also of Gothic muns "thought," munan "to think;" Old Norse minni "mind;" German Minne (archaic) "love," originally "memory, loving memory"), from suffixed form of PIE root \*men- (1) "to think," with derivatives referring to qualities of mind or states of thought.

Meaning "mental faculty, the thinking process" is from c. 1300. Sense of "intention, purpose" is from c. 1300. From late 14c. as "frame of mind. mental disposition," also "way of thinking, opinion." "Memory," one of the oldest senses, now is almost obsolete except in old expressions such as *bear in mind* (late 14c.), *call to mind* (early 15c.), *keep in mind* (late 15c.). -- *Etymonline*

**German 1:** *Verstand*, from Middle High German *verstant*, *verstont*, *ferstant*, from Old High German *firstant* (“intellect, wisdom”), from Proto-West Germanic *\*frastand*, from Proto-Germanic *\*frastandaną* (“to understand”), equivalent to *ver-* +‎ *Stand*. Cognate with Middle Low German *vörstant* (whence German Low German *Verstand*), Dutch *verstand*. Related to *verstehen* ("to understand"). -- *Wiktionary*

**German 2:** *Gemüt*, from Middle High German *gemüete*, from Old High German *gimuoti*, same root as *muot*, from Proto-West Germanic *\*mōd* ("mind, sense, courage, anger"). -- *Wiktionary 1, 2*

**Russian 1:** *ум*, inherited from Proto-Slavic *\*umъ,* from Proto-Balto-Slavic *\*aum-*, from Proto-Indo-European *\*h₂ew-m-o-*, a derivation of *\*h₂ew-* (“to see, perceive”).

Cognate with Lithuanian *aumuõ* (“mind”) and indirectly Ancient Greek αἰσθάνομαι (aisthánomai, “to perceive”), Sanskrit आविस् (āvís, “openly, manifestly, evidently”), Latin *audiō*, and Hittite 𒌋𒀪𒄭 (u-uḫ-ḫi, “I see”). -- *Wiktionary 1*, *2*

**Russian 2:** *душа*, inherited from Old East Slavic *доуша* (duša, “soul”), from Proto-Slavic *\*duša,* Perhaps from Proto-Balto-Slavic *\*dáuṣjāˀ*, from Proto-Indo-European *\*dʰowsyeh₂*, from *\*dʰews*- +‎ *\*-yeh₂*. Equivalent to *\*duxъ* (“spirit”) +‎ *\*-ja*.

Compare Lithuanian *daũsios* f pl (“air; empyrean, paradise”), Gaulish *dusios* (“phantasm”).. -- *Wiktionary 1, 2*

**Russian 3:** *сознание*, substantive from the verb *сознать*, form *co-* ("co-", "with") + *знать* ("to know"), inherited from Old East Slavic *знати* (znati), from Proto-Slavic *\*znati*, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *\*źnōˀtei*, from Proto-Indo-European *\*ǵnéh₃t* (“to know, get to know”), from *\*ǵneh₃-*, whence English *know*, *cunning*, *kenning*, *canny*, *note*, *recognize*, *ignore* and *gnostic*. -- *Wiktionary*

## Aporias

"The chief drawback of dualism is its failure to account adequately for mental causation. If the mind is nonphysical, it has no position in physical space. How, then, can a mental cause give rise to a behavioral effect that has a position in space? To put it another way, how can the nonphysical give rise to the physical without violating the laws of the conservation of mass, of energy and of momentum?" -- ***Jerry Fodor**, "The Mind-Body Problem"*

"In the 1920'S John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University made the radical suggestion that behavior does not have mental causes. He regarded the behavior of an organism as its observable responses to stimuli, which he took to be the causes of its behavior. Over the next 30 years psychologists such as B. F. Skinner of Harvard University developed Watson's ideas into an elaborate world view in which the role of psychology was to catalogue the laws that determine causal relations between stimuli and responses. In this 'radical behaviorist' view the problem of explaining the nature of the mind-body interaction vanishes; there is no such interaction.

Radical behaviorism has always worn an air of paradox. For better or worse, the idea of mental causation is deeply ingrained in our everyday language and in our ways of understanding our fellow men and ourselves. For example, people commonly attribute behavior to beliefs, to knowledge and to expectations. Brown puts gas in his tank because he believes the car will not run without it. Jones writes not 'acheive' but 'achieve' because he knows the rule about putting i before e. Even when a behavioral response is closely tied to an environmental stimulus, mental processes often intervene. Smith carries an umbrella because the sky is cloudy, but the weather is only part of the story. There are apparently also mental links in the causal chain: observation and expectation. The clouds affect Smith's behavior only because he observes them and because they induce in him an expectation of rain". -- ***Jerry Fodor**, "The Mind-Body Problem"*

## Conclusions

"...in proportion as any given body is more fitted than others for doing many actions or receiving many impressions at once, so also is the mind [mens], of which it is the object, more fitted than others for forming many simultaneous perceptions ; and the more the actions of the body depend on itself alone, and the fewer other bodies concur with it in action, the more fitted is the mind of which it is the object for distinct comprehension." -- **Baruch** **Spinoza**, *Ethics*, pt. 2, prop. 12, scholium

"...mind and body are one and the same thing, conceived first under the attribute of thought, secondly, under the attribute of extension. Thus it follows that the order or concatenation of things is identical, whether nature be conceived under the one attribute or the other ; consequently the order of states of activity and passivity in our body is simultaneous in nature with the order of states of activity and passivity in the mind. The same conclusion is evident from the manner in which we proved II. xii.

Nevertheless, though such is the case, and though there be no further room for doubt, I can scarcely believe, until the fact is proved by experience, that men can be induced to consider the question calmly and fairly, so firmly are they convinced that it is merely at the bidding of the mind, that the body is set in motion or at rest, or performs a variety of actions depending solely on the mind's will or the exercise of thought. However, no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature, in so far as she is regarded as extension. No one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions ; nor need I call attention to the fact that many actions are observed in the lower animals, which far transcend human sagacity, and that somnambulists do many things in their sleep, which they would not venture to do when awake : these instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at.

Again, no one knows how or by what means the mind moves the body, nor how many various degrees of motion it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it. Thus, when men say that this or that physical action has its origin in the mind, which latter has dominion over the body, they are using words without meaning, or are confessing in specious phraseology that they are ignorant of the cause of the said action, and do not wonder at it.

But, they will say, whether we know or do not know the means whereby the mind acts on the body, we have, at any rate, experience of the fact that unless the human mind is in a fit state to think, the body remains inert. Moreover, we have experience, that the mind alone can determine whether we speak or are silent, and a variety of similar states which, accordingly, we say depend on the mind's decree. But, as to the first point, I ask such objectors, whether experience does not also teach, that if the body be inactive the mind is simultaneously unfitted for thinking? For when the body is at rest in sleep, the mind simultaneously is in a state of torpor also, and has no power of thinking, such as it possesses when the body is awake. Again, I think everyone's experience will confirm the statement, that the mind is not at all times equally fit for thinking on a given subject, but according as the body is more or less fitted for being stimulated by the image of this or that object, so also is the mind more or less fitted for contemplating the said object.

But, it will be urged, it is impossible that solely from the laws of nature considered as extended substance, we should be able to deduce the causes of buildings, pictures, and things of that kind, which are produced only by human art ; nor would the human body, unless it were determined and led by the mind, be capable of building a single temple. However, I have just pointed out that the objectors cannot fix the limits of the body's power, or say what can be concluded from a consideration of its sole nature, whereas they have experience of many things being accomplished solely by the laws of nature, which they would never have believed possible except under the direction of mind : such are the actions performed by somnambulists while asleep, and wondered at by their performers when awake. I would further call attention to the mechanism of the human body, which far surpasses in complexity all that has been put together by human art, not to repeat what I have already shown, namely, that from nature, under whatever attribute she be considered, infinite results follow. As for the second objection, I submit that the world would be much happier, if men were as fully able to keep silence as they are to speak. Experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more easily than their appetites ; when it comes about that many believe, that we are only free in respect to objects which we moderately desire, because our desire for such can easily be controlled by the thought of something else frequently remembered, but that we are by no means free in respect to what we seek with violent emotion, for our desire cannot then be allayed with the remembrance of anything else. However, unless such persons had proved by experience that we do many things which we afterwards repent of, and again that we often, when assailed by contrary emotions, see the better and follow the worse, there would be nothing to prevent their believing that we are free in all things. Thus an infant believes that of its own free will it desires milk, an angry child believes that it freely desires vengeance, a timid child believes that it freely desires to run away ; further, a drunken man believes that he utters from the free decision of his mind words which, when he is sober, he would willingly have withheld : thus, too, a delirious man, a garrulous woman, a child, and others of like complexion, believe that they speak from the free decision of their mind, when they are in reality unable to restrain their impulse to talk. Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined ; and, further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore vary according to the varying state of the body. Everyone shapes his actions according to his emotion, those who are assailed by conflicting emotions know not what they wish ; those who are not attacked by any emotion are readily swayed this way or that. All these considerations clearly show that a mental decision and a bodily appetite, or determined state, are simultaneous, or rather are one and the same thing, which we call decision, when it is regarded under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state, when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and rest. This will appear yet more plainly in the sequel. For the present I wish to call attention to another point, namely, that we cannot act by the decision of the mind, unless we have a remembrance of having done so. For instance, we cannot say a word without remembering that we have done so. Again, it is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. Therefore the freedom of the mind must in any case be limited to the power of uttering or not uttering something which it remembers. But when we dream that we speak, we believe that we speak from a free decision of the mind, yet we do not speak, or, if we do, it is by a spontaneous motion of the body. Again, we dream that we are concealing something, and we seem to act from the same decision of the mind as that, whereby we keep silence when awake concerning something we know. Lastly, we dream that from the free decision of our mind we do something, which we should not dare to do when awake". -- **Spinoza**, *Ethics*, pt. 3, prop. 2, note

"In the last thirty years, the original extreme thesis of logical behaviourism has gradually been weakened to something like this:

(1) That there exist entailments between mind-statements and behaviour-statements; entailments that are not, perhaps, analytic in the way in which 'All bachelors are unmarried' is analytic, but that nevertheless follow (in some sense) from the meanings of mind words. I shall call these analytic entailments.

(2) That these entailments may not provide an actual translation of 'mind talk' into 'behaviour talk' (this 'talk' talk was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his Concept of Mind), but that this is true for such superficial reasons as the greater ambiguity of mind talk, as compared with the relatively greater specificity of overt behaviour talk". -- ***Hilary Putnam**, "Brains and behaviour"*

## Aphorisms

"Great minds think alike". -- ***English proverb***