The mind refers to the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena,including: thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation.
The term can also refer to the mental phenomena themselves: perception, pleasure and pain, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.
The mind can be divided into different categories, such as conscious and unconscious states or sensory and non-sensory states.
Mind or mentality is usually contrasted with body, matter or physicality:
The contrast and specifically the relation between mind and brain is called the mind-body problem.
Traditional viewpoints consider the mind to be non-physical.
Modern views hold that the mind is roughly identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity.
It is unknown if the mind is exclusive to humans, possessed also by some or all animals, by all living things, whether it is a strictly definable characteristic at all, or whether mind can also be a property of some types of human-made machines.
Different cultural and religious traditions often use different concepts of mind.
Some see mind as a property exclusive to humans whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities.
The linked mind (sometimes described as identical with soul or spirit.
The possibility of nonbiological minds is explored in the field of artificial intelligence, in which information processing by nonbiological machines is comparable or different to mental phenomena in the human mind.
The mind is sometimes portrayed as the stream of consciousness where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing.
The original meaning of mind was the faculty of memory, not of thought in general: call to mind, come to mind, keep in mind, or to have mind of.
The generalization of mind to include all mental faculties, thought, volition, feeling and memory, has gradually developed over time.’
The mind is often understood as a manifestation of mental phenomena like sensation, perception, thinking, reasoning, memory, belief, desire, emotion and motivation.
The mind or mentality is usually contrasted with body, matter or physicality.
The mind exhibit features not found in and maybe even incompatible with the material universe as described by the natural sciences.
It is a contemporary philosophy to conceive the mind as having properties or capacities possessed by humans.
Philosophical definitions of mind list various types of phenomena belonging to the mind but by searching for features that are shared by all mental states and only by mental states.
A consciousness-based approach, emphasizes the primacy of consciousness in relation to mind.
There is a great variety of mental states, like sensory and non-sensory or conscious and unconscious.
Mind may refer to a cluster of loosely related ideas that do not share one unifying feature.
Some define mind to higher intellectual faculties, like thinking, reasoning and memory.
Others include lower intellectual faculties, like sensing and emotion.
In popular usage, the mind is frequently synonymous with thought: the private conversation with ourselves that we carry on inside our heads.
The mind is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access: No one else can therefore know your mind.
Some define the mind as an information processing system that is physically implemented by the neural activity of the brain.
Mental faculties are the various functions of the mind, or things the mind can do.
A mental act allows one to make sense of things in the world.
A mental act represents occurrences and interprets them in ways that are significant, or which accord with their needs, attachments, goals, commitments, plans, ends, and desires.
Thinking involves the symbolic mediation of ideas or data, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reasoning, and making decisions.
Words that refer to similar concepts and processes include deliberation, cognition, ideation, discourse and imagination.
Thinking is sometimes a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is a part of cognitive psychology.
Thinking is connected with our capacity to make and use tools; to understand cause and effect; to recognize matters significance; to comprehend contexts of experience or activity; and to respond to the world in a meaningful way.
Memory refers to the ability to preserve, retain and subsequently recall knowledge, information, or experience.
Imagination refers to the activity of generating/evoking novel situations, images, and ideas in the mind.
Things imagined are said to be seen in the “mind’s eye”.
Imagination provides the ability to project possible future events, or to see things from another’s perspective, and to change the way something is perceived, including to make decisions to respond to, or enact, what is imagined.
Consciousness is an aspect of the mind comprising qualities such as subjectivity, sentience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one’s environment.
The mental phenomena faculties of the mind have been categorized as sensory, qualitative, propositional, intentional, conscious, occurrent or rational.
Mental contents, being “in” the mind, and capable of being formed and manipulated by mental processes and faculties: thoughts, concepts, memories, emotions, percepts and intentions.
Philosophical theories of mental content include internalism, externalism, representationalism and intentionality.
The human brain contains around 86 billion neurons, each linked to as many as 10,000 others.
The relationship between the brain and the mind –the mind–body problem is addressed by three major philosophical schools of thought: dualism, materialism, and idealism.
Dualism holds that the mind exists independently of the brain;
Materialism holds that mental phenomena are identical to neuronal phenomena
Idealism holds that only mental phenomena exist.
There is a strong relationship between the physical brain matter and the mind as the impact of physical alterations to the brain has on the mind, such as with traumatic brain injury and psychoactive drug use.
Philosophy of mind studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body.
The relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the physical body.
The soul and mind are not clearly differentiated and some people, more or less consciously, still feel that the soul, and perhaps the mind, may enter or leave the body as independent entities.
Dualism holds the position that mind and body are in some way separate from each other.
Some argue there is no such thing as a narrative center called the mind, but that instead there is simply a collection of sensory inputs and outputs: running in parallel.
Such a first person perspective indicates that the mind must be conceptualized as something distinct from the brain.
The mind has also been described as manifesting from moment to moment, one thought moment at a time as a fast flowing stream, where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing.
Monism is the position that mind and body are not physiologically and ontologically distinct kinds of entities.
Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind.
Neutral monists perceive things in the world can be regarded as either physical or mental depending on whether one is interested in their relationship to other things in the world or their relationship to the perceiver.
Physicalists argue that although the brain is all there is to the mind, the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are indispensable, and cannot be reduced to explanations of physical science.
Neuroscience studies the nervous system, and the physical basis of the mind, by investigating how biological neural networks form and physiologically interact to produce mental functions and content such as reflexes, multisensory integration, motor coordination, circadian rhythms, emotional responses, learning, and memory.
The physical basis of learning and memory is likely due to changes in gene expression that occur in brain neurons.
Such gene expression changes are introduced by epigenetic mechanisms involveing chemical modification of DNA or DNA-associated histone proteins.
Such epigenetic chemical modifications can cause long-lasting changes in gene expression.
Epigenetic mechanisms are employed in learning and memory include methylation, acetylation and deacetylation of neuronal histone proteins.
The excitation of neural pathways and subsequent endocrine signaling, provides a capacity for structural activation of gene expression in the histone code, allowing a mechanism of epigenetic interaction with the nervous system.
Mental functions that give rise to information processing, termed cognition include: perception, attention, working memory, long-term memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.
The cognition theory of mind hold that cognition and mental phenomena is the product of active interactions between individuals and their surrounding environment.
Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior, and mental functioning.
Psychology involves the scientific study of mental processes such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, as well as environmental influences, social and cultural influences, and interpersonal relationships, and human behavior.
Psychology applies knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals’ daily lives and the treatment of mental health problems.
Psychology differs from the other social sciences, such as anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology) as its focus on experimentation is at the scale of the individual, or individuals in small groups as opposed to large groups, institutions or societies.
It differs from biology and neuroscience in that it was primarily concerned with mind rather than brain.
Psychological science incorporates physiological and neurological processes into its conceptions of perception, cognition, behavior, and mental disorders.
Mental health is defined as a state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life.
There is no one definition of mental health, as cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing theories all affect how it is defined.
Mental health and mental disorder are not opposites-the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not necessarily an indicator of mental health.
Mental health is evaluated by how effectively and successfully a person functions.
Feeling capable and competent, able to handle normal levels of stress, maintaining satisfying relationships, and leading an independent life, the ability to recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental health.
Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living, by increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience.
Psychotherapists employ experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships.
Research in AI is concerned with producing machines to automate tasks requiring intelligent behavior, including control, planning and scheduling, the ability to answer diagnostic and consumer questions, handwriting, natural language, speech and facial recognition.
AI has also become an engineering discipline, focused on providing solutions to real life problems, knowledge mining, software applications, strategy games like computer chess and other video games.
Many religions attribute spiritual qualities to the human mind.
The mind is not composed of space, but shares some descriptive similarities to space.
The mind is not an illusion, but shares some descriptive qualities with illusions.
During brain death all brain function permanently ceases.