Blathering.
Aug. 29th, 2003 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharplittleteeth(Posted this as a reply to a discussion about Mind, Intellect and Body in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nuwishas_tail's journal. Thought you lot should suffer, too.)
The mind is to the brain as ideas are to the words on a page.
Ideas are like all abstract things. They don't exist unless they are embodied in some physical form (print, speech, the neurons in your brain). Yet they are separate from that embodiment. An idea can be embodied in two different physical forms, yet still be the same idea.
Your mind is an abstract. Your brain is the physical embodiment. Some might say that your mind is the software and your brain is the hardware. That's wrong. Your mind is the algorithm. And your brain is the implementation.
Intellect is the ability to process thoughts. It's a function of your mind in the same way that sorting alphabetical lists is a function of the heapsort algorithm.
So... Mind is a system. Intellect is the function. Brain is the implementation.
(Going off on a tangent:
One day I'll get off my lazy arse and do the research necessary to write an essay tying Eastern martial arts philosophy to contemporary neuroscience via Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind. The summary goes like this:
The mind is not a single unified system. It is a collection of sub-systems, each performing their own task. Consciousness presides over these sub-systems like a CEO presides over a company: its job is to make sure they all work together. And when they don't, or aren't sure what to do, it takes charge.
Except that consciousness taking charge causes a huge disruption in the mental processes, and chews up huge amounts of cognitive time.
Time a martial artist can't afford to waste. So the martial artist trains the sub-conscious processes to do their jobs correctly. Then he trains the conscious mind to shut up and stop interfering.)
nuwishas_tail's journal. Thought you lot should suffer, too.)The mind is to the brain as ideas are to the words on a page.
Ideas are like all abstract things. They don't exist unless they are embodied in some physical form (print, speech, the neurons in your brain). Yet they are separate from that embodiment. An idea can be embodied in two different physical forms, yet still be the same idea.
Your mind is an abstract. Your brain is the physical embodiment. Some might say that your mind is the software and your brain is the hardware. That's wrong. Your mind is the algorithm. And your brain is the implementation.
Intellect is the ability to process thoughts. It's a function of your mind in the same way that sorting alphabetical lists is a function of the heapsort algorithm.
So... Mind is a system. Intellect is the function. Brain is the implementation.
(Going off on a tangent:
One day I'll get off my lazy arse and do the research necessary to write an essay tying Eastern martial arts philosophy to contemporary neuroscience via Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind. The summary goes like this:
The mind is not a single unified system. It is a collection of sub-systems, each performing their own task. Consciousness presides over these sub-systems like a CEO presides over a company: its job is to make sure they all work together. And when they don't, or aren't sure what to do, it takes charge.
Except that consciousness taking charge causes a huge disruption in the mental processes, and chews up huge amounts of cognitive time.
Time a martial artist can't afford to waste. So the martial artist trains the sub-conscious processes to do their jobs correctly. Then he trains the conscious mind to shut up and stop interfering.)
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-28 10:06 pm (UTC)The mind is not a single unified system.
...is the paragraph I most fervently agree with.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 02:10 am (UTC)I'm saying that all abstracts MUST have a physical embodiment. An idea cannot be thought, unless there is something to do the thinking.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 02:27 am (UTC)agree
Consciousness presides over these sub-systems like a CEO presides over a company: its job is to make sure they all work together. And when they don't, or aren't sure what to do, it takes charge.
Not without a lot of training it doesn't. Instinct rules in a crisis unless the conscienceness is trained to recognise the signs of instinct and step on them (if needed and help them if not)
People underestimate th reptile hind brain
Except that consciousness taking charge causes a huge disruption in the mental processes, and chews up huge amounts of cognitive time.
Time a martial artist can't afford to waste. So the martial artist trains the sub-conscious processes to do their jobs correctly. Then he trains the conscious mind to shut up and stop interfering.)
I think it is one step beyond that. If you think about what you are doing then yes you stuff it up. This is the point were you are training the nerves to do the job without conscience thought however once they are trained the conscienceness does in fact direct them but only when the conscienceness has been trained properly otherwise you have action without thought which doesn't work. This is why meditation is essential to the martial artist.
IMNSFHO of course. :)