The Essence and Principles of Mind

 

Author: Xin-Yan Zhang

E-mail: reex9@yahoo.com

Website: www.oocities.org/reex9/

 

 

Everyone understands what the word “mind” means. Everyone recognizes that one possesses a mind. However, almost none knows what its nature is or how it works.

Essentially there is nothing mysterious in the mind. All its nature and its principles can be found also from non-mind objects. Mountains of data have been accumulated from scientific observation. However, we still need a theoretical corn for ourselves to digest, understand and unify all the data as a whole. This theoretical corn can not only be found but also need to be created. Presented here is my understanding of such a corn.

 

1.     The essence of mind

All biological behaviors are, in phenomenology, an organism’s perception of and action on its environment and, in principles, the structure and function of the organism’s control system (PMB system). Essentially the mind is such a PMB system in our bodies. We will then know the essence of mind so long as we well understand this system.

All the PMB system is composed of 3 parts called as the input part that takes in the environment’s action on the system, the output part that gives the system’s action on the environment, and the core part that mediates the changes from perception to system’s action.

The energy and matter input from environment into the system may be called as perception, output from the system into environment as behaviour, and remaining in system as memory. The perception and the behaviour are the same in nature but different in their moving directions in relation to the system. A perception always moves from environment to PMB system and a behaviour from the system to its environment. Memory is neither input into system nor output into environment and is always opposite to both perception and behaviour in nature. Memory may be divided further into the hereditary memory, which is structure formed under the influence of an organism’s internal environment, and the acquired memory, formed under the influence of its external environment.

All the biological behaviours may be explained with the interaction and interchange among perception, behaviours and memories in PMB systems. There are 3 different changes that may happen to perception, behaviours and memories in a PMB system, called life change, form change and location change. In the life change matter may become energy or vice versa but not in the form change and the location change. The changes happen in the input part and the output part of a PMB system are mainly the form changes and in the core part the life changes. And the location changes happen in all the three parts. The activities of the mind can not be explained only with the activities of the nerve impulses and neurotransmitters, because the nerve impulse moving through a nerve or the neurotransmitter through a synapse is only a location change, and the nerve impulse changing into neurotransmitter or vice versa is only a form change.

A PMB system may be called as one with EME system relation when its perception and behaviours more like energy but its memories more like matter, or one with MEM system relation when vice versa. The PMB systems that consist of mind are mainly with EME relation.

 

2. The organisation of mind 

A human mind is mainly a part of the nervous system and also part of sense organs, motor organs and inner organs. Shown as below, the mind itself is composed of 6 brains, a sense brain (SB), an organ brain (OB), a motor brain (MB) and 3 intermediate brains (IB). SB has more direct connections with the sense organs that compose the surface of the human body. MB has more direct connections with the skeletal muscles. OB has more direct connections with internal organs. And IB has more direct connections with the other brains.

Each of the brains is composed of hereditary parts containing hereditary memory and acquired parts containing acquired memory. The acquired parts contain a subpart, owned by each brain, called as SM, OM, MM and IM, and a subpart shared by brains, called as central memory (CM).

 

 

FIGURE (1)   ORGANISATION OF THE HUMAN MIND

  The areas between the peripheral circle and the central circle are mind’s hereditary parts. The areas within the central circle are mind’s acquired parts. The areas outside the peripheral circle are mind’s parts inside the body but outside the nervous system. Area 1, 2 and 3 are IBs. Area 4 is OM. Area 5 is SM. Area 6 is MM. Area 0 is the CM. Area 7, 8 and 9 are the IM. The solid blue stripes are where the consciousness is produced.

 

3. Consciousness

Consciousness is energy produced in mind and may be produced in waking state or sleeping. The energy of perception from sense organs may trigger and influence the production of consciousness but may never become the consciousness itself. Whenever consciousness appears, the mind is not gaining or feeling it but only producing it. If consciousness may be considered as the video pictures seen from the screen of a TV monitor and then the energy of perception is only the signal from TV aerial. The video pictures are essentially the energy of an electron beam produced by kinescope, the movement of which is influenced by the TV signal but is not the signal itself.

Although the pictures on the TV screen may be watched by someone, there is none like a soul or spirit watching the consciousness in our minds. The energy of consciousness is produced in the hereditary parts and then flow into the acquired parts where it interacts with the acquired memory. Consciousness is the only gate to get into the acquired memory and the acquired memory is the only reader of the information in consciousness.

The energy of consciousness is not the whole mind but only a component part of it, which alone does not sense or recognize, does not remember or recollect, does not think or move our body, does not feel or will, and does not drive or rule the mind.

 

4. The functional activities of mind

As PMB systems, the mind is similar to our digestive system in many functional activities, even though EME system relation dominates in the former and is the reverse in the latter. Every sense organ functions as mind’s mouth and teeth and bits off a piece out of external environment whenever it senses, and then, also as mind’s stomach and intestine, digests the piece of external environment by its sense cells’ analyzing and ingests it into mind’s hereditary parts in form of bioelectricity. The input of the bioelectricity from sense organs or the energy of perception interacts with hereditary memory there and causes the production of consciousness. Consciousness then flows into mind’s acquired parts and interacts with the acquired memory, which is metabolism of consciousness and memory. In this metabolism, some energy of consciousness is consumed and synthesized into new memory and some memory undergoes catabolism and releases energy. Some energy is discharged as behaviour from the body through motor organs.

The OB’s and MB’s relationship with SB is just like SB’s with mind’s environment. The OB’s relationship with SB and MB is just like MB’s with mind’s environment.

As mind’s continually taking in and accumulating, one’s external environment is completely moved as information into his mind, and organized as an inside relationship accordingly to its outside relationship with the mind. In waking state, the life activities in sense brain simulate environment’s action on mind, called internal world (inW), the life activities in organ brain simulate the interaction between mind and body, called internal self (inS), the life activities in motor brain simulate the mind’s action on environment, called internal behaviour (inB), and the life activities in intermediate brains simulate the interaction among the inW, the inS and the inB, called internal relation (inR). Together inW, inS, inB and inR are called as internal Whole (inWH). All the activities of inWH are both hereditary and acquired in nature, since all the brains are composed of both hereditary and acquired memories.

Those inW, inS, inB and inR act and interact with each other autonomously according to the relations that they simulate. Consciousness joins their activities and behaviour leaves their activities, making the activities not only initiated, directed, adjusted and constrained by their own activities but also by mind’s environment.

The inWH is not only passively influenced by the mind’s inputting and outputting of energy but also plays a positive role in them. Its positively information searching for input is called as attention and in output will. The attention is a behaviour and the will a consciousness.

The inWH does not only follow real-time changes of environment in passive or positive ways but also goes beyond the spatial or temporal limitation of the input from sense organs or output to motor organs. The activities of the inWH may go into the past of the input and output’s time point and produce explanation of their causation and may go into their future and produce anticipation of their results.

 

 

 

The central memory is an area of multi-direction, more like life than any other areas of memory. The organisation of the central memory and the energy in it is called the thought. The thought exists as a whole. There is only one thought in one mind.

The behaviour or consciousness produced by the O brain is called the language of the O brain (the O language), and that by the M brain is called the language of the M brain (the M language). The language of the brains output from the hereditary part of the O brain or the M brain can be either consciousness or behaviour but can never be both of them at the same time.

The thought is never the consciousness or the behaviour. The O language and the M language are descriptions and translations of the thought but not the thought itself. Usually the languages of the brains can only describe and translate once a fraction of the entire thought. In communication with other persons, the O language may be used alone to express one's thought, but the M language is usually used together with the O language.

The input of the consciousness selectively increases the energy in the indirect environment of the mind and further increases the activities of the spring lives in the mind. The output of the behaviour selectively decreases the energy in the mind and further increases the activities of the autumn lives in the mind. Therefore, the output can influence the mind as well as the input.

Thought is different in its form from the languages that express it. Though the human mind has much more ways to express its thought, no thought may be expressed thoroughly and exactly. When it can not be expressed with proper forms, ways and opportunities, the thought will interact with the O brain and the M brain, which may lead to the reorganisation of their indirect environments. Such reorganisation of mind may produce either some creation or certain psychological illness.

Thinking is the circulation in which the energy product output from the hereditary part of the O brain or the M brain is input back to the acquired parts and reprocessed by the mind. The whole process of the feedback and reprocessing is called the ruminant process. The ruminant process is an important way of communication among the three brains. Not only the consciousness but also the behaviour is the way through which the ruminant process may be carried out, the former is called the internal ruminant process and the latter the external ruminant process.

At the centre of our living, feeling, thinking, judging and behaving, there are something called as SELF. However, this self is only a consciousness created by the O brain, and is, therefore, only a part of a human self, not the whole of it. The eleventh conjecture says: a complete human self is composed of 3 parts, called as the body, the mind and the soul.

An individual human self is composed of many different PMB systems, some of which have some of their parts in the non-mind part of the body and rest of their parts in the mind and produce plant behaviours, called as plant system; some of which have all their parts in the mind and produce animal behaviours, called as animal system; and some of which have some of their parts in the mind and rest of their parts in the body's environment and produce human behaviours, called as human system. The human self exists neither entirely in an individual mind, nor entirely in an individual human body.

The parts of an individual human self in the body's environment are called the unified parts, the parts in the body's non-mind part are called the scattered parts, and the parts in the mind the related parts. The difference is that the scattered parts of an individual human self can not be the parts of other human selves at the same time but the unified parts can. Many human selves in the same environment can share same unified parts. The unified parts unify many human selves as a whole.

A human self does not always have all the three component parts during its whole existence. At the very beginning when a human being is still one fertilised egg, none of the parts of the human self exists. During the human body's development, the scattered parts of the human self begin to form first, then the related parts, the latest the unified parts. A human self with three component parts exists only during part time of its whole existence. After this period, the scattered parts begin to disappear first, then the related parts. The unified parts of a human self may exist much long than the other two sorts of parts. Its disappearance is not caused only by the disappearance of the body. Therefore, we may say that a human self does not exist completely as the human body exists and does not die completely as the body dies.

Since The unified parts of a human self may enable a living human body to appears as a human being, may exist outside a human body and still be a part of its mind, may exist even the body no longer exists, and may become a part of other human self, it may, therefore, be called as the soul of the human self.

Still, the unified parts of the human selves are not immortal but exist also as a course. The whole of the unified parts of the human selves will become more and more like matter if its indirect environment changes towards the direction of the U. Autumn, or become more and more like energy if its indirect environment changes against the direction.

No matter whatever human beings have created and will create, we are still a part of the U. Autumn and we do only what the U. Autumn has to do. Therefore, the meaning of the human existence, the moral criterions for human behaviours, the orientation of scientific, economic and social developments may never be found within ourselves but can be found from our relation with the year cycle, especially with the U. Autumn. This is the twelfth conjecture and the end of this article.

 

 

References:

1. Bertrand Russell: A history of western philosophy, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1955.

2. Stephen W. Hawking: A brief history of time, Bantam, London, 1988.

3. John Boslough: Beyond the black hole, Colins, London, 1985.

4. The encyclopaedia Britannica, 14. ed., Encycl. Britannica, Chicago, 1971.