For many of you, this is not a question at all: The mind is located in the brain, or the mind is equal to the brain! You probably use both terms, brain and mind, interchangeably, like “Everything is in your mind” or “Everything is in your brain”.
Are you right?
Let me explain this complicated subject!
Since the seventeenth century, many philosophers and scientists were involved in the debate over this “simple” question: “What is the definition of the human mind and the human brain?”
One of the best known arguments came from Rene Descartes (1596~1650), a French philosopher, who developed a dualistic theory of mind and matter. In “translation” into today’s computer terminology, may we say that Descartes “explained” “the mind as software, and the brain as hardware?”
A British biologist, Sir Julian Huxley (1887~1975) had this to say: “The brain alone is not responsible for mind”.
For decades, we as a human society did not have an explanation in plain English as to how to distinguish the mind and the brain.
At the end of the twentieth century, we had a very powerful tool in our hands: brain imaging technology. We got an opportunity to literally see the living human brain at work, the only possible way for a better understanding of how the human brain works. As neuroscience has available a computerized technology for studying the live brain, it can explain many of the previously inexplicable facts about the human brain.
According to neuroscience, we have an accurate definition of the mind and the brain: “The mind is the brain in action. The mind is the state when the brain is alive and at work. When the brain is dead, the mind cannot function”.
The mind and the brain need each other. The mind exists only in the live brain. This is the perfect unity between two inseparable parts of human existence.
Now, can we say that the mind and the brain are the same? Definitely – not!
The mind is not the brain, and the brain is not the mind!
What is the brain? Well, we could say that the brain is some kind of “bio-machine” which produces the mind or that the “living functioning brain produces the mind”.
What is the mind? The mind is “a product of the living brain”.
It sounds complicated?
I already told you, this subject is complicated!
My article has the title: Where Is the Human Mind Located? What would be your answer? No idea?
Let us make the whole subject “simple”:
The human mind is located only in the living, working brain. The dead brain has no mind!
This is “a whole philosophy” on one simple question: “What is the definition of the human mind and the human brain?”
Still confused?