Mind (pronounced /ˈmaɪnd/) refers to the aspects of intellect and consciousness manifested as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all of the brain’s conscious and unconscious cognitive processes. “Mind” is often used to refer especially to the thought processes of reason. Subjectively, mind manifests itself as a stream of consciousness.
There are many theories of the mind and its function. The earliest recorded works on the mind are by Zarathushtra, the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Adi Shankara and other ancient Greek, Indian and Islamic philosophers. Pre-scientific theories, based in theology, concentrated on the relationship between the mind and the soul, the supernatural, divine or god-given essence of the person. Modern theories, based on scientific understanding of the brain, theorize that the mind is a product of the brain and has both conscious and unconscious aspects.
The question of which attributes make up the mind is also much debated. Some argue that only the “higher” intellectual functions constitute mind: particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions – love, hate, fear, joy – are more “primitive” or subjective in nature and should be seen as different from the mind. Others argue that the rational and the emotional sides of the human person cannot be separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and that they should all be considered as part of the individual mind.
In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought. It is that private conversation with ourselves that we carry on “inside our heads.” Thus we “make up our minds,” “change our minds” or are “of two minds” about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No-one else can “know our mind.” They can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate.
Ned Block: On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness” in: The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1995.
^ Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted. ed. Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^ Plato (1995). E.A. Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Robinson, J.C.G. Strachan. ed. Phaedo. Clarendon Press.