Briefly:
Mind is a component of the essence of a person or other creature, which is responsible for the possibility of meaningful activity. The mind is responsible for the formation of an adequate picture of the world, the search for answers to questions and the solution of problems, the creation of an internal semantic basis - a position, beliefs for subsequent decisions. The mind has its own incentive force, which directs a person to knowledge, improvement, finding the truth and doing the right thing, however, in a state of suppression by irrational motives from other components of the psyche, it can play an unnatural role for itself.
More details:
What is Mind?
The concept of "mind" can be considered both in a broader and in a narrower sense. Consider two definitions here.
1) If we consider the question of mind in a statement like “What is mind as a phenomenon of the Universe?”, Then we can give the following definition:
Reason (in a broad sense) is a tendency to complication, ordering, and an increase in the level of organization of systems. In a broad sense, the mind appears as a kind of beginning, a phenomenon opposite to the tendencies to decay, chaos and increase in entropy. Unfortunately, when they talk about what intelligent beings living on other planets should be like, then, very often, completely unreasonably, for some reason come to the belief that these creatures should be like people, have the same knowledge and even live only on planets that are close in terms of their conditions to the Earth and be similar to people in appearance. This is, of course, nonsense. Reason as a phenomenon of the Universe is a very broad concept and can have a huge range of manifestations, while there is absolutely no guarantee that the knowledge, the values that exist on Earth,will have some analogues among the creatures of extraterrestrial civilization. There is no "objective" knowledge, there are no "objective" laws to which the mind must inevitably come, as some mistakenly believe. Even the simplest and fundamental concepts and properties of our thinking, such as the formula "2 + 2 = 4", or the concepts "yes" and "no", which seem natural to humans, are specific elements of our mind and do not have to be constituent elements in the mind of another intelligent being. However, every intelligent creature is capable of carrying out purposeful, ordering, creative activities in accordance with its own values and principles.as it is mistakenly believed by some. Even the simplest and fundamental concepts and properties of our thinking, such as the formula "2 + 2 = 4", or the concepts "yes" and "no", which seem natural to humans, are specific elements of our mind and do not have to be constituent elements in the mind of another intelligent being. However, every intelligent creature is capable of carrying out purposeful, ordering, creative activities in accordance with its own values and principles.as it is mistakenly believed by some. Even the simplest and fundamental concepts and properties of our thinking, such as the formula "2 + 2 = 4", or the concepts "yes" and "no", which seem natural to humans, are specific elements of our mind and do not have to be constituent elements in the mind of another intelligent being. However, every intelligent creature is capable of carrying out purposeful, ordering, creative activities in accordance with its own values and principles.are specific elements of our mind and do not have to be constituent elements in the mind of another rational being. However, every intelligent creature is capable of carrying out purposeful, ordering, creative activities in accordance with its own values and principles.are specific elements of our mind and do not have to be constituent elements in the mind of another rational being. However, every intelligent creature is capable of carrying out purposeful, ordering, creative activities in accordance with its own values and principles.
2) In addition, the concept of "mind" has a second, narrower, but at the same time a completely clear and definite meaning, in which we refer this concept to actions, ideas, qualities of a person in relation to his current existence in human society. It is the mind in the second meaning that is understood when it comes to the need to implement a reasonable approach on this site.
Consider what definition we should give the concept of "mind". Unfortunately, this issue is rather complicated, and we must therefore consider various aspects of this issue, showing the meaning of the concept of "mind" in stages.
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2.1Unfortunately, the use of the concepts "reason", "reasonable" in the context of human behavior in human society at the present time there is complete arbitrariness. Very often, a "reasonable" decision is understood as a profitable decision, and "reasonableness" is understood as a person's knowledge of certain dogmas, which the person giving the definition considers "reasonable". However, intelligence and intelligence are something completely different. Reason with profit and knowledge of dogmas has nothing to do. A person striving for profit means for himself that there are certain certain favorable conditions that matter to him, and he will only look for an opportunity to get these more favorable conditions for himself, discarding consideration of any other issues not directly related to this task …Reason, on the other hand, is the ability to come to correct conclusions in general and to distinguish true from error, absolutely outside of any pre-set context of deriving benefit from the knowledge found. In modern abnormal and unreasonable society, a stereotype is widespread, according to which the mind is only an instrument for satisfying certain needs and should serve the purposes of profit. In fact, the opposite is true - the mind is not intended to serve the purposes of benefit, the benefit is what should be put in second place, and it is possible to determine what is beneficial and what is not, only with the help of reason. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of people do not realize at all that it is necessary to study and understand any things, for by missing an understanding of anything in the world around us, we endanger our existence and deprive ourselves of potential opportunities,about which we do not know because of our ignorance. In addition, it is obvious that the mind is a universal ability to understand the essence of what is happening in the world, and not get hung up on some dogmas and have certain conclusions in mind, just as literacy is the ability to read in general, and not read a specific word on a specific sign … We present a person with an arbitrary situation, a person thinks and acts correctly in it - this is the essence of reason, to find the right solutions and be able to understand the situation in general, and not know certain stereotypes - this is the essence of reason.and not read a specific word on a specific sign. We present a person with an arbitrary situation, a person thinks and acts correctly in it - this is the essence of reason, to find the right solutions and be able to understand the situation in general, and not know certain stereotypes - this is the essence of reason.and not read a specific word on a specific sign. We present a person with an arbitrary situation, a person thinks and acts correctly in it - this is the essence of reason, to find the right solutions and be able to understand the situation in general, and not know certain stereotypes - this is the essence of reason.
2.2In the article "Is Man Reasonable?" talked about the approaches existing in today's time to attempts to more accurately define what the mind is, what is its essence. Summing up very briefly the results of this article, we note that it can be quite clearly stated that the mind is NOT any innate, genetically predetermined human ability, despite the fact that such views, based on primitive materialism, are still very common. In addition, the mind cannot be reduced either to the possession of some simple logical methods, or to the possession of ready-made knowledge about some objects and the connections between them. It would also be correct to separate the mind from a person's ability to formally think through words, which makes it possible to draw simple concrete conclusions about specific objects,which it would be correct to designate with the term "reason". Discarding all these elements, in the remainder we get that the mind for a modern person is a kind of still unformalized ability to come to understanding and correct conclusions regarding abstract objects and general patterns in the world around. In other words, rationality for our modern society will mean not the ability to draw a conclusion at the level "if you turn on the tap, water flows from it", but to draw conclusions for yourself regarding more complex patterns and issues affecting the whole complex of problems of our modern society, all the moments, concerning its functioning. Therefore, you need to understand the relativity of rationality, to understand that this is not an absolute property, and rationality for us now,for our time and for our realities there is the ability to find the right decisions, to orientate, to act expediently in the realities in which we live with you now. It is quite obvious that it is much more difficult to navigate in those situations and in the environment in which we live today than it was to navigate in the realities in which the hunter of the Stone Age was, and a set of knowledge, a set of questions that had to be asked then and now. incomparable. The rationality of a primitive hunter for us would be completely insufficient, rationality for you and me is the ability to solve the issues that are now facing us with you, the ability to think and create a system of knowledge for ourselves at a level that meets the challenges of civilization. In general, the rationality of people is determined by the level of development of culture,worldview system of the society in which they live. People living in a primitive society, a society with a primitive culture, are unable to make complex generalizations and correct conclusions about abstract things and patterns. The Spaniards who landed on the islands of the Caribbean noted that their inhabitants were extremely naive and could not make the simplest, from the point of view of the Spaniards, conclusions about elementary things. For example, having seized guns from the Spaniards during the uprising in Cuba, the Indians began to stick them into the ground, hoping that new ones would thus grow out of them.that their inhabitants were extremely naive and could not make the simplest, from the point of view of the Spaniards, conclusions about elementary things. For example, having seized guns from the Spaniards during the uprising in Cuba, the Indians began to stick them into the ground, hoping that new ones would thus grow out of them.that their inhabitants were extremely naive and could not make the simplest, from the point of view of the Spaniards, conclusions about elementary things. For example, having seized guns from the Spaniards during the uprising in Cuba, the Indians began to stick them into the ground, hoping that new ones would thus grow out of them.
2.3But is culture, science, and the worldview model of modern civilization at a sufficient level now so that people can operate well enough with abstract concepts, orient themselves well enough and draw correct conclusions in complex issues? Of course not. The thinking of modern people is extremely inconsistent, dogmatic, suffers from severe violations of logic and distorted by emotions (see the article "Fear of Thinking"), and besides, most importantly, people lack the desire to understand anything and the idea of the need to understand anything. Reason, as noted above, is the property of its owner to independently fight chaos, with the challenges of the external environment, independently introduce order into it, and, therefore, independently, in our case, acquire new knowledge, draw new conclusions about things, etc. …But if a person by himself does not strive to draw such conclusions, if his motivation to study the world around him is close to zero (and this is exactly the case for the overwhelming majority, and those who are not included in this majority have a desire to study has a limited and narrowly focused character), then how can such a person be called reasonable? Such a person is, rather, only a parasite on the minds of others, just repeating, broadcasting those behavioral patterns and knowledge that were discovered by someone, but not a rational being. And it is worth considering when, as is customary in appropriate cases, phrases such as "a man learned to block rivers with dams", "a man sent devices to other planets", "a man was able to release the energy of an atomic nucleus," etc., are uttered that these phrases are unlikely can it be applied to a person as such,a typical person and consider these achievements the achievements of the typical human mind, for these achievements are only the result of individual breakthroughs in thought, the result of the work of individual outstanding personalities, while the overwhelming majority of people are not capable of much smaller achievements, engaging in only copying other people's methods and memorizing other people's knowledge, which they accept as invariable dogmas.
A natural consequence of the unreasonableness of mankind is that at present there is no clear understanding of the mind, a clear characteristic of the mind, and a person's ability to draw correct conclusions in a given situation looks to be largely dependent on some elusive (from the point of view of modern science) factors, a significant role in not only creating some, for example, a new theory, but also to understand that it is correct, firstly, intuition plays, and secondly, the actual desire and habit of a person to understand something and ask any questions. A person still has to significantly develop his mind. At the same time, in order for people and society to be considered reasonable in full, it is required to adopt other value and worldview attitudes than those that exist now.
Incorrect definitions of reason and ideas about reason:
Reason, rationality -
- the ability to find rational, optimal solutions;
- a human property inherent in genes, a property inherent in humans as a biological species;
- this property, which appeared as a result of some incomprehensible jump or mutation, since then people have this property unchanged;
- what makes a person look like a machine;
- this is what can be reduced to the final sum of some universal rules and algorithms;
- what depends on one simple indicator (the number of logical operations per second, the number of neurons in the brain, the number of connections between neurons, etc.);
- something that helps to make the right decisions when there is a lack of initial data;
- mystical, supernatural property, any truly correct knowledge and information can only be obtained by a supernatural way;
- possession of certain correct knowledge, the correctness of which was previously established by someone and confirmed by experience;
- a tool that a person uses to optimally meet his needs.
Correct definitions of mind and ideas about mind:
Mind -
- the ability to think independently, to understand things, to build models of phenomena adequate to reality;
- the ability to see urgent problems, on the basis of their identification, to set tasks to be solved and clearly find their solutions;
- a person's ability to organize their ideas about the world;
- something that is closely related to the desire of a person to cognize the world and search for more and more new (so far unknown) opportunities;
- something with which you can control emotions and animal instincts;
- ability to establish the truth;
- this is when a person understands something, penetrates into the essence, and does not just memorize a certain set of facts, formal definitions and dogmas;
- this is when a person applies a systematic approach to the study of phenomena;
- it is when a person, before performing a task, thinks - is there any point in this?