The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as
historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements.
The stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an
individual's personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to
the community or Roman state. Heroism is an important theme. When the
stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are more concerned
with ritual, augury, and institutions than with theology or cosmogony.
Classical mythology is the amalgamated tradition of Greek and Roman mythologies, as disseminated especially by Latin literature in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance,
and up to present-day uses of myths in fiction and movies. The
interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater
influence on narrative and pictorial representations of myths than Greek
sources. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical.
Because ritual
played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks,
it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology.
This perception is a product of Romanticism and the classical scholarship of the 19th century, which valued Greek civilization as more "authentically creative." From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting. The Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends,
concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus
on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a
pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. In Rome's earliest period,
history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship. As T. P. Wiseman notes:
Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Virgil and the first few books of Livy's history as well as Dionysius's Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, and the fourth book of elegies by Propertius. Scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs.
The Aeneid and Livy's early history are the best extant sources for Rome's founding myths. Material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. The Trojan prince Aeneas was cast as husband of Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, patronymical ancestor of the Latini, and therefore through a convoluted revisionist genealogy as forebear of Romulus and Remus. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the mythical ancestors of the Roman people.
The characteristic myths of Rome are often political or moral, that is, they deal with the development of Roman government in accordance with divine law, as expressed by Roman religion, and with demonstrations of the individual's adherence to moral expectations (mos maiorum) or failures to do so.
Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, and the growth of Rome through conflict and alliance.
Servius Tullius,
the sixth king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely
mythologized and who was said to have been the lover of the goddess Fortuna.
The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors.
Lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic.
Cloelia, a Roman woman taken hostage by Lars Porsena, who escaped but after negotiations returned voluntarily to save others and preserve the peace treaty.
Narratives of divine activity played a more important role in the
system of Greek religious belief than among the Romans, for whom ritual
and cultus were primary. Although Roman religion was not based on scriptures and their exegesis, priestly literature was one of the earliest written forms of Latin prose. The books (libri) and commentaries (commentarii) of the College of Pontiffs and of the augurs contained religious procedures, prayers, and rulings and opinions on points of religious law. Although at least some of this archived material was available for consultation by the Roman senate, it was often occultum genus litterarum, an arcane form of literature to which by definition only priests had access. Prophecies pertaining to world history and to Rome's destiny turn up
fortuitously at critical junctures in history, discovered suddenly in
the nebulous Sibylline books, which Tarquin the Proud (according to legend) purchased in the late 6th century BC from the Cumaean Sibyl. Some aspects of archaic Roman religion survived in the lost theological works of the 1st-century BC scholar Varro, known through other classical and Christian authors.
Although traditional Roman religion was conservative in ritual rather
than dogmatic in doctrine, the meaning of the rituals they perpetuated
could be adapted, expanded, and reinterpreted by accretions of myths, etiologies, commentary, and the influences of other cultures in response to social change. The earliest pantheon included Janus, Vesta, and the so-called Archaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, whose three patrician flamens were of the highest order. According to tradition, Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome, founded Roman religion; Numa was believed to have had as his consort and adviser a Roman goddess or nymph of fountains and of prophecy, Egeria. The Etruscan-influenced Capitoline Triad
of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion,
replacing the Archaic Triad – an unusual example within Indo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male. The cult of Diana became established on the Aventine Hill, but the most famous Roman manifestation of this goddess may be Diana Nemorensis, owing to the attention paid to her cult by J.G. Frazer in the mythographic classic The Golden Bough. What modern scholars call the Aventine Triad – Ceres, Liber, and Libera – developed in association with the rise of plebeians to positions of wealth and influence.
Punishment of Ixion: in the center stands Mercury holding the caduceus, and on the right Juno sits on her throne. Behind her Iris stands and gestures. On the left Vulcan (the blond figure) stands behind the wheel, manning it, with Ixion already tied to it. Nephele sits at Mercury's feet. – Roman fresco from the eastern wall of the triclinium in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii, Fourth Style (60–79 AD).
The gods represented distinctly the practical needs of daily life,
and the Romans scrupulously accorded them the appropriate rites and
offerings. Early Roman divinities included a host of "specialist gods"
whose names were invoked in the carrying out of various specific
activities. Fragments of old ritual accompanying such acts as plowing or
sowing reveal that at every stage of the operation a separate deity was
invoked, the name of each deity being regularly derived from the verb
for the operation. Tutelary deities
were particularly important in ancient Rome. Saturn was known as the
father of Jupiter, Ceres, Pluto, Neptune, Juno, and Vesta.
Thus, Janus and Vesta guarded the door and hearth, the Lares protected the field and house, Pales the pasture, Saturn the sowing, Ceres the growth of the grain, Pomona the fruit, and Consus and Ops the harvest. Jupiter,
the ruler of the gods, was honored for the aid his rains might give to
the farms and vineyards. In his more encompassing character he was
considered, through his weapon of lightning, the director of human
activity. Owing to his widespread domain, the Romans regarded him as
their protector in their military activities beyond the borders of their
own community. Prominent in early times were the gods Mars and Quirinus,
who were often identified with each other. Mars was a god of both war
and agriculture; he was honored in March and October. Quirinus was the
patron of the armed community in time of peace.
The 19th-century scholar Georg Wissowa thought that the Romans distinguished two classes of gods, the di indigetes and the di novensides or novensiles: the indigetes
were the original gods of the Roman state, their names and nature
indicated by the titles of the earliest priests and by the fixed
festivals of the calendar, with 30 such gods honored by special
festivals; the novensides were later divinities whose cults were
introduced to the city in the historical period, usually at a known date
and in response to a specific crisis or felt need. Arnaldo Momigliano and others, however, have argued that this distinction cannot be maintained. During the war with Hannibal,
any distinction between "indigenous" and "immigrant" gods begins to
fade, and the Romans embraced diverse gods from various cultures as a
sign of strength and universal divine favor.
The absorption of neighboring local gods took place as the Roman
state conquered neighboring territories. The Romans commonly granted the
local gods of a conquered territory the same honors as the earlier gods
of the Roman state religion. In addition to Castor and Pollux, the conquered settlements in Italy seem to have contributed to the Roman pantheon Diana, Minerva, Hercules, Venus, and deities of lesser rank, some of whom were Italic divinities, others originally derived from the Greek culture of Magna Graecia. In 203 BC, Rome imported the cult object embodying Cybele from Pessinus in Phrygia and welcomed its arrival with due ceremony. Both Lucretius and Catullus, poets contemporary in the mid-1st century BC, offer disapproving glimpses of Cybele's wildly ecstatic cult.
In some instances, deities of an enemy power were formally invited through the ritual of evocatio to take up their abode in new sanctuaries at Rome.
Communities of foreigners (peregrini) and former slaves (libertini) continued their own religious practices within the city. In this way Mithras came to Rome and his popularity within the Roman army spread his cult as far afield as Roman Britain. The important Roman deities were eventually identified with the more anthropomorphic Greek gods and goddesses, and assumed many of their attributes and myths.
In Roman and Greek mythology, Jupiter places his son born by a mortal woman, the infant Hercules, on Juno's
breast while she is asleep so the baby will drink her divine milk and
thus become immortal, an act which would endow the baby with godlike
qualities. When Juno woke and realized that she was breastfeeding an unknown infant, she pushed him away, some of her milk spills, and the spurting milk became the Milky Way. In another version of the myth, the abandoned Hercules is given by Minerva
to Juno for feeding, but Hercules' forcefulness causes Minerva to rip
him from her breast in pain. The milk that squirts out forms the Milky
Way.
The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances, and unconscious
processes, which can influence an individual without intention or
awareness. The mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life,
but its exact nature is disputed. Some characterizations focus on
internal aspects, saying that the mind transforms information and is not
directly accessible to outside observers. Others stress its relation to
outward conduct, understanding mental phenomena as dispositions to engage in observable behavior.
The mind–body problem
is the challenge of explaining the relation between matter and mind.
Traditionally, mind and matter were often thought of as distinct substances that could exist independently from one another. The dominant philosophical position since the 20th century has been physicalism,
which says that everything is material, meaning that minds are certain
aspects or features of some material objects. The evolutionary history
of the mind is tied to the development of nervous systems, which led to the formation of brains.
As brains became more complex, the number and capacity of mental
functions increased with particular brain areas dedicated to specific
mental functions. Individual human minds also develop over time as they
learn from experience and pass through psychological stages in the
process of aging. Some people are affected by mental disorders, in which certain mental capacities do not function as they should.
It is widely accepted that at least some non-humananimals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies. The topic of artificial minds poses similar challenges and theorists discuss the possibility and consequences of creating them using computers.
The mind is the totality of psychological phenomena and capacities, encompassing both conscious and unconscious states. The term mind is sometimes used in a narrow meaning to refer only to cognitive functions associated with perception, reasoning, awareness, and memory. In a broader sense, it also includes processes like feeling, motivation, and behavior. The precise definition of mind is disputed. While it is generally
accepted that some non-human animals also have minds, there is no
agreement on where exactly the boundary lies. Despite these disputes, there is wide agreement that the mind plays a
central role in most aspects of human life as the seat of consciousness,
emotions, thoughts, and sense of personal identity. Various fields of inquiry study the mind; the main ones include psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.
The words psyche and mentality are usually used as synonyms of mind. They are often employed in overlapping ways with the terms soul, spirit, cognition, intellect, intelligence, and brain,
but their meanings are not exactly the same. Some religions understand
the soul as an independent entity that constitutes the immaterial
essence of human beings, is of divine origin, survives bodily death, and
is immortal. The word spirit has various additional meanings not directly associated with mind, such as a vital principle animating living beings or a supernatural being inhabiting objects or places. Cognition encompasses certain types of mental processes in which knowledge is acquired and information is processed. The intellect is one mental capacity responsible for thought, reasoning, and understanding and is closely related to intelligence as the ability to acquire, understand, and apply knowledge. The brain is the physical organ responsible for most or all mental functions.
The modern English word mind originates from the Old English word gemynd, meaning "memory". This term gave rise to the Middle English words mind(e), münd(e), and mend(e),
resulting in a slow expansion of meaning to cover all mental
capacities. The original meaning is preserved in expressions like call to mind and keep in mind. Cognates include the Old High Germangimunt, the Gothicgamunds, the ancient Greekμένος, the Latinmens, and the Sanskritmanas.
Forms
The mind encompasses many phenomena, including perception, memory, thought, imagination, motivation, emotion, attention, learning, and consciousness. Perception is the process of interpreting and organizing sensory information to become acquainted with the environment. This information is acquired through sense organs receptive to various types of physical stimuli, which correspond to different forms of perception, such as vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
The sensory information received serves as raw data that is filtered
and processed to actively constitute the experience of the world and the
objects within it. This complex process underlying perceptual
experience is shaped by many factors, including the individual's past experiences, cultural background, beliefs, knowledge, and expectations.
Memory is the mechanism of storing and retrieving information. Episodic memory
handles information about specific past events in one's life and makes
this information available in the present. When a person remembers what
they had for dinner yesterday, they employ episodic memory. Semantic memory
handles general knowledge about the world that is not tied to any
specific episodes. When a person recalls that the capital of Japan is
Tokyo, they usually employ semantic memory to access this general
information without remembering the specific instance when they learned
it. Procedural memory is memory of how to do things, such as riding a bicycle or playing a musical instrument. Another distinction is between short-term memory, which holds information for brief periods, usually with the purpose of completing specific cognitive tasks, and long-term memory, which can store information for extended periods, potentially lasting a lifetime.
Thinking involves the processing of information and the manipulation of concepts and ideas.
It is goal-oriented and often happens in response to experiences by
aiming at making sense of them, organizing their information, and
deciding how to respond. Logical reasoning is a form of thinking that starts from a set of
premises and aims to arrive at a conclusion supported by these premises.
This is the case when deducing that "Socrates is mortal" from the
premises "Socrates is a man" and "all men are mortal". Problem-solving
is a closely related process that consists of several steps, such as
identifying a problem, developing a plan to address it, implementing the
plan, and assessing whether it worked. Thinking in the form of decision-making involves considering possible courses of action to assess which one is the most beneficial. As a symbolic process, thinking is deeply intertwined with language, and some theorists hold that all thought happens through the medium of language.
Imagination is a creative process of internally generating mental
images, ideas, experiences, and related phenomena. Unlike perception,
it does not directly depend on the stimulation of sensory organs.
Similar to dreaming,
these mental constructs are often derived from previous experiences but
can include novel combinations and elements. Imagination happens during
daydreaming
and plays a key role in art and literature. Additionally, it can also
be used to come up with novel solutions to real-world problems.
Motivation is an internal state that propels individuals to
initiate, continue, or terminate goal-directed behavior. It is
responsible for the formation of intentions to perform actions and affects what goals someone pursues, how much effort they invest in the activity, and how long they engage in it. Motivation is affected by emotions, which are temporary experiences of
positive or negative feelings like joy or anger. They are directed at
and evaluate specific events, persons, or situations. They usually come
together with certain physiological and behavioral responses.
Attention is an aspect of other mental processes in which mental
resources like awareness are directed towards certain features of
experience and away from others. This happens when a driver focuses on
traffic while ignoring billboards on the side of the road. Attention can
be controlled voluntarily in the pursuit of specific goals but can also
be diverted involuntarily when a strong stimulus captures a person's attention. Attention is relevant to learning, which is the ability of the mind to
acquire new information and permanently modify its understanding and
behavioral patterns. Individuals learn by undergoing experiences, which
helps them adapt to the environment.
An influential distinction is between conscious and unconscious
mental processes. Consciousness is the awareness of external and
internal circumstances. It encompasses a wide variety of states, such as
perception, thinking, fantasizing, dreaming, and altered states of consciousness. In the case of phenomenal consciousness, the awareness involves a
direct and qualitative experience of mental phenomena, like the auditory
experience of attending a concert. Access consciousness, by contrast,
refers to an awareness of information that is accessible to other mental
processes but not necessarily part of current experience. For example,
the information stored in a memory may be accessible when drawing
conclusions or guiding actions even when the person is not explicitly
thinking about it.
Unconscious or nonconscious mental processes operate without the
individual's awareness but can still influence mental phenomena on the
level of thought, feeling, and action. Some theorists distinguish
between preconscious, subconscious, and unconscious states depending on their accessibility to conscious awareness. When applied to the overall state of a person rather than specific processes, the term unconscious implies that the person lacks any awareness of their environment and themselves, like during a coma. The unconscious mind plays a central role in psychoanalysis as the part of the mind that contains thoughts, memories, and desires not accessible to conscious introspection. According to Sigmund Freud, the psychological mechanism of repression
keeps disturbing phenomena, like unacceptable sexual and aggressive
impulses, from entering consciousness to protect the individual.
Psychoanalytic theory studies symptoms caused by this process and
therapeutic methods to avoid them by making the repressed thoughts
accessible to conscious awareness.
Other distinctions
Mental states
are often divided into qualitative and propositional states.
Qualitative states are experiences of sensory qualities, typically
referred to as qualia, like colors, sounds, smells, pains, itches, and hunger. Propositional states involve an attitude towards a content that can be expressed by a declarative sentence.
When a person believes that it is raining, they have the propositional
attitude of belief towards the content "it is raining". Different types
of propositional states are characterized by different attitudes towards
their content. For instance, it is also possible to hope, fear, desire,
or doubt that it is raining.
A mental state or process is rational
if it is based on good reasons or follows the norms of rationality. For
example, a belief is rational if it relies on strong supporting evidence
and a decision is rational if it follows careful deliberation of all
the relevant factors and outcomes. Mental states are irrational if they
fail to adhere to these standards, such as beliefs caused by faulty
reasoning, superstition, or cognitive biases, and decisions that give into temptations against one's best judgment. Mental states that fall outside the domain of rational evaluation are
arational rather than irrational. There is controversy regarding which
mental phenomena lie outside this domain; suggested examples include
sensory impressions, feelings, desires, and involuntary responses.
Another contrast is between dispositional
and occurrent mental states. A dispositional state is a power that is
not exercised. If a person believes that cats have whiskers but does not
think about this fact, it is a dispositional belief. By activating the
belief to consciously think about it or use it in other cognitive
processes, it becomes occurrent until it is no longer actively
considered or used. The great majority of a person's beliefs are
dispositional most of the time.
Faculties and modules
Traditionally, the mind was subdivided into mental faculties understood as capacities to perform certain functions or bring about certain processes. An influential subdivision in the history of philosophy was between the faculties of intellect and will. The intellect encompasses mental phenomena aimed at understanding the
world and determining what to believe or what is true; the will is
concerned with practical matters and what is good, reflected in
phenomena like desire, decision-making, and action. The exact number and nature of the mental faculties are disputed. More
fine-grained distinctions divide the intellect into the faculties of
understanding and judgment or add sensibility as an additional faculty
responsible for sensory impressions.
In the Müller-Lyer illusion,
the horizontal black lines have the same length but the top line
appears longer. The illusion persists even after becoming aware of it
because of the automatic functioning of mental modules responsible for
low-level visual processing.
In contrast to the traditional view, more recent approaches analyze the mind in terms of mental modules rather than faculties. A mental module is an inborn system of the brain that automatically
performs a particular function within a specific domain without
conscious awareness or effort. In contrast to faculties, the concept of
mental modules is normally used to provide a more limited explanation.
It is typically restricted to certain low-level cognitive processes
without trying to explain how they are integrated into higher-level
processes such as conscious reasoning. Many low-level cognitive processes responsible for visual perception
have this automatic and unconscious nature. In the case of visual illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion,
the underlying processes continue their operation and the illusion
persists even after a person has become aware of the illusion,
indicating the mechanical and involuntary nature of the process. Other examples of mental modules concern cognitive processes responsible for language processing and facial recognition.
Theories of the nature of mind
Theories of the nature of mind aim to determine what all mental states
have in common. They seek to discover the "mark of the mental", that
is, the criteria that distinguish mental from non-mental phenomena. Epistemic criteria say that the unique feature of mental states is how
people know about them. For example, if a person has a toothache, they
have direct or non-inferential knowledge that they are in pain. But they
do not have this kind of knowledge about non-mental phenomena such as
the physical causes of the pain, and may have to consult external evidence
through visual inspection or a visit to the dentist. Another feature
commonly ascribed to mental states is that they are private, meaning
that others do not have direct access to a person's mental state. As a
result, external observers have to make inferences from other
indicators, like the pain behavior of the person with the toothache.
Some philosophers claim that knowledge of some or all mental states is infallible, for instance, that a person cannot be mistaken about whether they are in pain.
A related view asserts that all mental states are either
conscious or accessible to consciousness. According to this view, when a
person actively remembers the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris
then this state is mental because it is part of consciousness. When the
person does not think about it, this belief is still considered a mental
state because the person could bring it to consciousness by thinking
about it. This view denies the existence of a "deep unconsciousness",
that is, unconscious mental states that cannot in principle become
conscious.
Another theory says that intentionality is the mark of the mental. A state is intentional if it refers to or represents
something. For example, if a person perceives a piano or thinks about
it then the mental state is intentional because it refers to a piano.
This view distinguishes between the original intentionality of mental
phenomena and the derivative intentionality of some non-mental
phenomena. According to this view, the ability of words and pictures to
refer to things derives from the fact that they can evoke mental states.
In this sense, only mental states have original intentionality, whereas
words and pictures have derivative intentionality since they would not
refer if divorced from linguistic conventions or visual interpretations.
Some philosophers disagree that all mental states are intentional,
citing itches, tickles, and pains as possible exceptions.
According to behaviorism,
mental states are dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable
behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli. This view
implies that mental phenomena are not private internal states but are
accessible to empirical observation like regular physical phenomena. Functionalism
agrees that mental states do not depend on the exact internal
constitution of the mind and characterizes them instead in regard to
their functional role. The functional role of a mental state is the way
it interacts with other phenomena. For example, pain
is often caused by bodily injury and typically leads to pain behavior,
like moaning, and a desire to stop the pain. As a result, injury, pain
behavior, and desire are part of the functional role of pain. Computationalism, a similar theory prominent in cognitive science, defines minds in terms of cognitions and computations as information processors.
Theories under the umbrella of externalism
emphasize the mind's dependency on the environment. According to this
view, mental states and their contents are at least partially determined
by external circumstances. For example, some forms of content externalism hold that it can depend
on external circumstances whether a belief refers to one object or
another. The position of embedded cognition
emphasizes that mental processes happen in the context of a physical
and social environments. It examines how this context shapes cognitive
activity. The extended mind thesis
states that external circumstances not only influence the mind but are
part of it. In this sense, a diary is part of the mind by helping it
store information. Similarly, an electronic calculator is part of the
mind by helping it perform calculations. The closely related view of enactivism holds that mental processes involve an interaction between organism and environment. A theory from the field of embodied cognition
states that the connection to a body is an essential feature of minds.
It asserts that certain aspects of the body outside the nervous system,
like motor capacities, are part of the mind.
The mind–body problem is the difficulty of providing a general
explanation of the relationship between mind and body, for example, of
the link between thoughts and brain processes. Despite their different
characteristics, mind and body interact with each other, like when a
bodily change causes mental discomfort or when a limb moves because of
an intention. The mind–body problem came to particular prominence in modern
philosophy as a result of Descartes' metaphysical distinction between
mind and body. Earlier philosophers typically did not see mind and body
as contrasting principles.Following Descartes' philosophy, minds were often conceived as
substantial entities able to exist on their own. Now they are more
commonly seen as capacities rather than independent entities.
Different approaches toward resolving the mind–body problem
According to substance dualism, minds or souls exist as independent entities in addition to material things. This view implies that, at least in principle, minds can exist without bodies. Property dualism is another view, saying that mind and matter are not independent entities but different properties that apply to the same individual. Monist views, by contrast, state that reality is made up of only one kind. According to metaphysical idealists, for instance, everything is mental. They understand material things as mental phenomena, for example, as ideas or perceptions. According to neutral monists,
by contrast, the world is at its most fundamental level neither
physical nor mental but neutral. They see physical and mental concepts
as convenient but superficial ways to describe reality.
The monist view most influential since the 20th century has been physicalism, also referred to as materialism, which states that everything is physical. According to eliminative physicalism, there are no mental phenomena, meaning that things like beliefs and desires do not form part of reality. Reductive physicalists
defend a less radical position: they say that mental states exist but
can, at least in principle, be completely described by physics without
the need for special sciences like psychology. For example, behaviorists aim to analyze mental concepts in terms of observable behavior without resorting to internal mental states. Type identity theory also belongs to reductive physicalism and says that mental states are the same as brain states. While non-reductive physicalists
agree that everything is physical, they say that mental concepts
describe physical reality on a more abstract level that cannot be
articulated by physics. According to functionalism, mental concepts do not describe the internal constitution of physical substances but functional roles within a system. One consequence of this view is that mind does not depend on brains but can also be realized by other systems that implement the corresponding functional roles, possibly also computers. A different approach, found in the tradition of phenomenology,
aims to dissolve the mind–body problem by arguing that it is based on
an artificial dichotomy not present in the phenomenological description
of experience.
The hard problem of consciousness
is a central aspect of the mind–body problem: it is the challenge of
explaining how physical states can give rise to conscious experience.
Its main difficulty lies in the subjective
and qualitative nature of consciousness, which is unlike typical
physical processes. The hard problem of consciousness contrasts with the
"easy problems" of explaining how certain aspects of consciousness
function, such as perception, memory, or learning.
Brain areas and processes
Another
approach to the relation between mind and matter uses empirical
observation to study how the brain works and which brain areas and
processes are associated with specific mental phenomena. The brain is the central organ of the nervous system and is present in all vertebrates and the majority of invertebrates. The human brain is of particular complexity and consists of about 86 billion neurons, which communicate with one another via synapses. They form a complex neural network and cognitive processes emerge from their electrical and chemical interactions. The human brain is divided into regions that are associated with different functions. The main regions are the hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain. Many biological functions associated with basic survival are the
responsibility of the hindbrain and midbrain. Higher mental functions,
ranging from thoughts to motivation, are primarily localized in the
forebrain.
The primary operations of many of the main mental phenomena are located in specific areas of the forebrain. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions, such as planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and working memory. The sensory cortex processes and interprets sensory information, with different subareas dedicated to different senses, like the visual and the auditory areas. A central function of the hippocampus is the formation and retrieval of long-term memories. It belongs to the limbic system, which plays a key role in the regulation of emotions through the amygdala. The motor cortex is responsible for planning, executing, and controlling voluntary movements. Broca's area is a separate region dedicated to speech production. The activity of the different areas is additionally influenced by neurotransmitters, which are signaling molecules that enhance or inhibit different types of neural communication. For example, dopamine influences motivation and pleasure while serotonin affects mood and appetite.
The close interrelation of brain processes and the mind is seen
by the effect that physical changes of the brain have on the mind. For
instance, the consumption of psychoactive drugs, like caffeine, antidepressants, alcohol, and psychedelics, temporarily affects brain chemistry with diverse effects on the mind, ranging from increased attention to mood changes, impaired cognitive functions, and hallucinations. Long-term changes to the brain in the form of neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries can lead to permanent alterations in mental functions. Alzheimer's disease in its first stage deteriorates the hippocampus, reducing the ability to form new memories and recall existing ones. An often-cited case of the effects of brain injury is Phineas Gage,
whose prefrontal cortex was severely damaged during a work accident
when an iron rod pierced through his skull and brain. Gage survived the
accident but his personality
and social attitude changed significantly as he became more impulsive,
irritable, and anti-social while showing little regard for social
conventions and an impaired ability to plan and make rational decisions. Not all these changes were permanent and Gage managed to recover and adapt in some areas.
Development
Evolution
The mind has a long evolutionary history starting with the development of the nervous system and the brain. While it is generally accepted today that mind is not exclusive to
humans and various non-human animals have some form of mind, there is no
consensus at which point exactly the mind emerged. The evolution of mind is usually explained in terms of natural selection: genetic variations
responsible for new or improved mental capacities, such as better
perception or social dispositions, have an increased chance of being
passed on to future generations if they are beneficial to survival and reproduction.
Minimal forms of information processing are already found in the
earliest forms of life 4 to 3.5 billion years ago, like the abilities of
bacteria and eukaryoticunicellular organisms to sense the environment, store this information, and react to it. Nerve cells emerged with the development of multicellular organisms
more than 600 million years ago as a way to process and transmit
information. About 600 to 550 million years ago, an evolutionary
bifurcation happened into radially symmetric organisms with ring-shaped nervous systems or a nerve net, like jellyfish, and organisms with bilaterally symmetric bodies,
whose nervous systems tend to be more centralized. About 540 million
years ago, vertebrates evolved within the group of bilaterally organized
organisms. Vertebrates, like birds and mammals, have a central nervous system including a complex brain with specialized functions. Invertebrates, like clams and insects, typically either have no or relatively simple brains. In the course of evolution, the brains of vertebrates tended to grow
and the specialization of different brain areas tended to increase.
These developments are closely related to changes in limb structures,
sense organs, and living conditions with a close correspondence between
the size of a brain area and the importance of its function to the
organism. An important step in the evolution of mammals about 200 million years ago was the development of the neocortex, which is responsible for many higher-order brain functions.
The size of the brain relative to the body further increased with the development of primates, like monkeys, about 65 million years ago and later with the emergence of the first hominins about 7–5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago. Various theories of the evolutionary processes responsible for human intelligence
have been proposed. The social intelligence hypothesis says that the
evolution of the human mind was triggered by the increased importance of
social life and its emphasis on mental abilities associated with empathy, knowledge transfer, and meta-cognition.
According to the ecological intelligence hypothesis, the main value of
the increased mental capacities comes from their advantages in dealing
with a complex physical environment through processes like behavioral
flexibility, learning, and tool use. Other suggested mechanisms include
the effects of a changed diet with energy-rich food and general benefits
from an increased speed and efficiency of information processing. Some models propose that another major cognitive shift occurred possibly 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. Called behavioral modernity,
it is associated with the emergence of new or improved mental
abilities, such as technological innovativeness, abstract thinking, the
use of symbols, planning, and social coordination.
Individual
Besides the development of mind in general in the course of history, individual human minds also develop
in the course of their lifetime. Some of the individual changes vary
from person to person as a form of learning from experience, like
forming specific memories or acquiring particular behavioral patterns.
Others are more universal developments as psychological stages that all
or most humans go through as they pass through early childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. These developments cover various areas, including intellectual,
sensorimotor, linguistic, emotional, social, and moral developments. Some factors affect the development of mind before birth, such as
nutrition, maternal stress, and exposure to harmful substances like
alcohol during pregnancy.
Early childhood is marked by rapid developments as infants
learn voluntary control over their bodies and interact with their
environment on a basic level. Typically after about one year, this
covers abilities like walking, recognizing familiar faces, and producing
individual words. On the emotional and social levels, they develop attachments with their
primary caretakers and express emotions ranging from joy and surprise
to fear and anger. An influential theory by Jean Piaget
divides the cognitive development of children into four stages. The
sensorimotor stage from birth until two years is concerned with sensory
impressions and motor activities while learning that objects remain in
existence even when not observed. In the preoperational stage until
seven years, children learn to interpret and use symbols in an intuitive
manner. They start employing logical reasoning
to physical objects in the concrete operational stage until eleven
years and extend this capacity in the following formal operational stage
to abstract ideas, probabilities, and possibilities. Other important processes shaping the mind in this period are socialization and enculturation, at first through primary caretakers and later through peers and the schooling system.
Psychological transformations during adolescence are provoked by
physiological developments and by being confronted with a different
social situation in the form of new expectations from others. An
important factor in this period is change to the self-concept, which can take the form of an identity crisis.
This process typically involves developing individuality and
independence from parents while at the same time seeking closeness and
conformity with friends and peers. Further developments in this period
include improvements to the reasoning ability and the formation of a
principled moral viewpoint.
The mind also changes during adulthood but in a less rapid and
pronounced manner. Reasoning and problem-solving skills improve during
early and middle adulthood. Some people experience the mid-life
transition as a midlife crisis involving an inner conflict about personal identity,
associated with anxiety, a sense of a lack of accomplishments in life,
or an awareness of mortality. Intellectual faculties tend to decline in
later adulthood, specifically the ability to learn complex unfamiliar
tasks and later also the ability to remember. At the same time, people
tend to become more inward-looking and cautious.
Non-human
Animal
It
is commonly acknowledged today that animals have some form of mind, but
it is controversial to which animals this applies and how their mind
differs from the human mind. Different conceptions of the mind lead to different responses to this
problem. When understood in a very wide sense as the capacity to process
information, the mind is present in all forms of life, including
insects, plants, and individual cells. On the other side of the spectrum are views that deny the existence of
mentality in most or all non-human animals based on the idea that they
lack key mental capacities, like abstract rationality and symbolic language. The status of animal minds is highly relevant to the field of ethics since it affects the treatment of animals, including the topic of animal rights.
Discontinuity views state that the minds of non-human animals are
fundamentally different from human minds and often point to higher
mental faculties, like thinking, reasoning, and deliberate
decision-making. This outlook is reflected in the traditionally influential position of defining humans as "rational animals" as opposed to all other animals. Continuity views, by contrast, emphasize similarities and see cognitive
differences in degree rather than kind. Central considerations for this
position are the shared evolutionary origin and organic similarities on
the level of the brain and nervous system. Observable behavior is
another key factor, such as problem-solving skills, animal communication, and reactions to and expressions of pain and pleasure. Of particular importance are the questions of consciousness and sentience,
that is, to what extent non-human animals have a subjective experience
of the world and are capable of suffering and feeling joy.
Some of the difficulties of assessing animal minds are also reflected
in the topic of artificial minds. It includes the question of whether
computer systems implementing artificial intelligence should be considered a form of mind. This idea is consistent with some theories of the nature of mind, such
as functionalism and its claim that mental concepts describe functional
roles. It asserts that the functions implemented by biological brains
could in principle also be implemented by artificial devices.
The Turing test
aims to determine whether a computer can imitate human linguistic
behavior to the degree that it is not possible to tell the difference
between human and computer.
The Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing
(1912–1954), is a traditionally influential procedure to test
artificial intelligence: a person exchanges messages with two parties,
one of them a human and the other a computer. The computer passes the
test if it is not possible to reliably tell which party is the human and
which one the computer. While there are computer programs today that
may pass the Turing test, this alone is usually not accepted as
conclusive proof of mindedness. For some aspects of mind, it is controversial whether computers can, in
principle, implement them, such as desires, feelings, consciousness,
and free will.
This problem is often discussed through the contrast between weak
and strong artificial intelligence. Weak or narrow artificial
intelligence is limited to specific mental capacities or functions. It
focuses on a particular task or a narrow set of tasks, like autonomous driving, speech recognition, or theorem proving. The goal of strong AI, also termed artificial general intelligence,
is to create a complete artificial person that has all the mental
capacities of humans, including consciousness, emotion, and reason. It is controversial whether strong AI is possible; influential arguments against it include John Searle's Chinese Room Argument and Hubert Dreyfus's critique based on Heideggerian philosophy.
Mental health is a state of mind characterized by internal equilibrium and well-being
in which mental capacities function as they should. Some theorists
emphasize positive features such as the abilities of a person to realize
their potential, express and modulate emotions, cope with adverse life
situations, and fulfill their social role. Negative definitions, by
contrast, see mental health as the absence of mental disorders. Mental disorders are abnormal patterns of thought, emotion, or
behavior. These patterns deviate not only from how a mental capacity
works on average but from how it should work while usually causing some
form of distress. The content of those norms is controversial and there are differences from culture to culture. For instance, homosexuality
was historically considered a mental disorder by medical professionals,
a view which only changed in the second half of the 20th century.
There is a great variety of mental disorders, each associated with a different form of malfunctioning. Anxiety disorders
involve intense and persistent fear that is disproportionate to the
actual threat and significantly impairs everyday life. An example is social phobia, which involves irrational fear of certain social situations. Anxiety disorders also include obsessive–compulsive disorder, for which the anxiety manifests in the form of intrusive thoughts that the person tries to alleviate by following compulsive rituals. Mood disorders
cause intense moods or mood swings that are inconsistent with the
external circumstances and can last for long periods. For instance,
people affected by bipolar disorder experience extreme mood swings between manic states of euphoria and depressive states of hopelessness. Personality disorders are characterized by enduring patterns of maladaptive behavior that significantly impair regular life. Paranoid personality disorder, for example, leads people to be deeply suspicious of the motives of others without rational basis. Psychotic disorders are among the most severe mental illnesses and involve a distorted relation to reality in the form of hallucinations and delusions, as seen in schizophrenia. Other disorders include dissociative disorders and eating disorders.
The biopsychosocial model
identifies three types of causes of mental disorders: biological,
cognitive, and environmental factors. Biological factors include bodily
causes, in particular neurological influences and genetic
predispositions. On the cognitive level, maladaptive beliefs and
patterns of thought can be responsible. Environmental factors involve
cultural influences and social events that may trigger the onset of a
disorder. There are various approaches to treating mental disorders, and the most
suitable treatment usually depends on the type of disorder, its cause,
and the individual's overall condition. Psychotherapeutic methods use personal interaction with a therapist to change patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. Psychoanalysis aims to help patients resolve conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on conscious mental phenomena to identify and change irrational beliefs and negative thought patterns. Behavior therapy relies on classical conditioning to unlearn harmful behaviors. Humanistic therapies try to help people gain insight into their self-worth and empower them to resolve their problems. Drug therapies use medication to alter the brain chemistry involved in the disorder through substances like antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and anxiolytics.
Fields and methods of inquiry
Various
fields of inquiry study the mind, including psychology, neuroscience,
philosophy, and cognitive science. They differ from each other in the
aspects of mind they investigate and the methods they employ. The study of the mind poses various problems since it is difficult to
directly examine, manipulate, and measure it. Trying to circumvent this
problem by investigating the brain comes with new challenges of its own,
mainly because of the brain's complexity as a neural network consisting
of billions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 links to other neurons.
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. It
investigates conscious and unconscious mental phenomena, including
perception, memory, feeling, thought, decision, intelligence, and personality.
It is further interested in their outward manifestation in the form of
observable behavioral patterns, studying how these patterns depend on
external circumstances and are shaped by learning. Psychology is a wide discipline that includes many subfields. Cognitive psychology is interested in higher-order mental activities like thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, and concept formation. Biological psychology
seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms on the physiological
level and how they depend on genetic transmission and the environment. Developmental psychology studies the development of the mind from childhood to old age while social psychology examines the influence of social contexts on mind and behavior. Personality psychology
investigates personality, exploring how characteristic patterns of
thought, feeling, and behavior develop and vary among individuals. Further subfields include comparative, clinical, educational, occupational, and neuropsychology. As a scientific discipline, psychology emerged at the end of the 19th century from the experimental work of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). Early schools of thought included structuralism, psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, functionalism, and behaviorism.
Psychologists use a great variety of methods to study the mind.
Experimental approaches set up a controlled situation, either in the
laboratory or the field, in which they modify independent variables and measure their effects on dependent variables. This approach makes it possible to identify causal relations
between the variables. For example, to determine whether people with
similar interests (independent variable) are more likely to become
friends (dependent variable), participants in a study could be paired
with either similar or dissimilar participants. After giving the pairs
time to interact, it is assessed whether the members of similar pairs
have more positive attitudes toward one another than the members of
dissimilar pairs.
Correlational methods examine the strength of association between two variables without establishing a causal relationship between them. The survey method
presents participants with a list of questions aimed at eliciting
information about their mental attitudes, behavior, and other relevant
factors. It analyzes how participants respond to questions and how
answers to different questions correlate with one another. Surveys usually have a large number of participants in contrast to case studies,
which focus on an in-depth examination of a single subject or a small
group of subjects, often to examine rare phenomena or explore new
fields. Further methods include longitudinal studies, naturalistic observation, and phenomenological description of experience.
Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. Its primary focus is the central nervous system and the brain in particular, but it also investigates the peripheral nervous system
mainly responsible for connecting the central nervous system to the
limbs and organs. Neuroscience examines the implementation of mental
phenomena on a physiological basis, covering various levels of analysis.
On the small scale, it studies the molecular and cellular basis of the
mind, dealing with the constitution of and interaction between
individual neurons. On the large scale, it analyzes the architecture of
the brain as a whole and its division into regions with different
functions. The study of the nervous system began in the ancient period and evolved through the centuries, including anatomical
insights through dissections and speculative theories about brain
functions. Neuroscience was recognized as a distinct academic discipline
in the 20th century as technological advances, like the development of neuroimaging techniques, revolutionized the field.
In modern neuroscience, neuroimaging techniques are of particular importance as the main research methods of neuroscientists. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures changes in the magnetic field
of the brain associated with blood flow. Areas of increased blood flow
indicate that the corresponding brain region is particularly active. Positron emission tomography (PET) uses radioactive substances to detect a range of metabolic changes in the brain. Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the electrical activity of the brain, usually by placing electrodes
on the scalp and measuring the voltage differences between them. These
techniques are often employed to measure brain changes under particular
circumstances, for example, while engaged in a specific cognitive task.
Important insights are also gained from patients and laboratory animals with brain damage, helping neuroscientists understand the function of the damaged area and how its absence affects the remaining brain.
Philosophy of mind examines the nature of mental phenomena and their
relation to the physical world. It seeks to understand the "mark of the
mental", that is, the features that all mental states have in common. It
further investigates the essence of different types of mental
phenomena, such as beliefs, desires, emotions, intentionality,
and consciousness while exploring how they are related to one another.
Philosophy of mind also examines solutions to the mind–body problem,
like dualism, idealism, and physicalism, and assesses arguments for and
against them. It asks whether people have a free will or the ability to choose their actions, and how this ability contrasts with the idea that everything is determined by preceding causes.
The brain in a vat
is a thought experiment to examine the nature of the mind and its
relation to matter. It explores how a brain would experience reality if a
supercomputer fed it the same electrical stimulation a normal brain
receives.
While philosophers of mind also include empirical considerations in
their inquiry, they differ from fields like psychology and neuroscience
by giving significantly more emphasis to non-empirical forms of inquiry.
One such method is conceptual analysis, which aims to clarify the meaning of concepts, like mind and intention, by decomposing them to identify their semantic parts. Thought experiments are often used to evoke intuitions
about abstract theories to assess their coherence and plausibility. To
do so, philosophers imagine a situation relevant to a theory and employ counterfactual thinking to assess the possible consequences of this theory. Influential thought experiments include Mary the color scientist, philosophical zombies, and brain in a vat-scenarios. Because of the subjective nature of the mind, the phenomenological method is also commonly used to analyze the structure of consciousness by describing experience from the first-person perspective. The philosophical discussion of the mind has a long history, reaching back to antiquity. Influential contributions were made by Plato (c. 428–347 BCE), Aristotle (384–322 BCE), René Descartes (1596–1650), David Hume (1711–1776), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), William James (1842–1910), and Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976).
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mental
representations and processes. It aims to overcome the challenge of
understanding something as complex as the mind by integrating research
from diverse fields ranging from psychology and neuroscience to
philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.
Unlike these disciplines, it is not a unified field but a collaborative
effort. One difficulty in synthesizing their insights is that each of
these disciplines explores the mind from a different perspective and
level of abstraction while using different research methods to arrive at
its conclusion. Cognitive science emerged in the second half of the 20th century as
researchers from various disciplines began to examine how mental
processes represent the world and transform information. The field
expanded in the 1980s following advances in neuroimaging to include a biological perspective on how computational processes are implemented by the brain.
To incorporate insights from diverse disciplines, cognitive science relies on a unified conceptualization of minds as information processors. This means that mental processes are understood as computations that retrieve, transform, store, and transmit information. For example, perception retrieves sensory information from the
environment and transforms it to extract meaningful patterns that can be
used in other mental processes, such as planning and decision-making. Cognitive science relies on different levels of description to analyze
cognitive processes. The most abstract level focuses on the basic
problem the process is supposed to solve and the reasons why the
organism needs to solve it. The intermediate level seeks to uncover the algorithm as a formal step-by-step procedure to solve the problem. The most concrete level asks how the algorithm is implemented through physiological changes on the level of the brain. Another methodology is to analyze the mind as a complex system composed
of individual subsystems that can be studied independently of one
another.
Relation to other fields
The mind is relevant to many fields. In epistemology, the problem of other minds
is the challenge of explaining how it is possible to know that people
other than oneself have a mind. The difficulty arises from the fact that
people directly experience their own minds but do not have the same
access to the minds of others. According to a common view, it is
necessary to rely on perception to observe the behavior of others and
then infer that they have a mind based on analogical or abductive reasoning. Closely related to this problem is theory of mind
in psychology, which is the ability to understand that other people
possess beliefs, desires, intentions, and feelings that may differ from
one's own.
Anthropology
is interested in how different cultures conceptualize the nature of
mind and its relation to the world. These conceptualizations affect the
way people understand themselves, experience illness, and interpret
ritualistic practices as attempts to commune with spirits.
Some cultures do not draw a strict boundary between mind and world by
allowing that thoughts can pass directly into the world and manifest as
beneficial or harmful forces. For instance, some indigenous beliefs
systems, like traditional beliefs in the Azande culture,
hold that angry thoughts can directly damage another person's crops or
make them ill. Other cultures strictly separate the mind from external
reality, seeing it as an internal phenomenon without supernatural
powers. Sociology is a related field concerned with the connections between mind, society, and behavior. Among other topics, it is interested in the phenomenon of intersubjectivity,
which happens when different people have a shared understanding or
experience, meaning that their cognitive perspectives overlap.
The concept of mind plays a central role in various religions. Buddhists say that there is no enduring self underlying mental activity. They analyze the mind as a stream of constantly changing experiences characterized by five aspects or "aggregates": material form, feelings, perception, volition, and consciousness. Hindus, by contrast, affirm the existence of a permanent self. In an influential analogy, the human mind is compared to a horse-drawn chariot: the horses are the senses,
which lure the sense mind corresponding to the reins through sensual
pleasures. The senses are controlled by the charioteer embodying the intellect while the self is a passenger. In traditional Christian philosophy, mind and soul are closely intertwined as the immaterial aspect of humans that may survive bodily death. Islamic thought distinguishes between mind, spirit, heart, and self as interconnected aspects of the spiritual dimension of humans. Daoism and Confucianism use the concept of heart-mind as the center of cognitive and emotional life, encompassing thought, understanding, will, desire, and mood.
Phrenology was a pseudoscientific attempt to correlate mental functions to brain areas.
In the field of education,
the minds of students are shaped through the transmission of knowledge,
skills, and character traits as a process of socialization and
enculturation. This is achieved through different teaching methods including the contrast between group work and individual learning and the use of instructional media. Teacher-centered education positions the teacher as the central authority controlling the learning process whereas in student-centered education, students have a more active role in shaping classroom activities. The choice of the most effective method to develop the minds of the
learners is determined by various factors, including the topic and the
learner's age and skill level.
The mind is a frequent subject of pseudoscientific inquiry. Phrenology
was an early attempt to correlate mental functions with specific brain
areas. While its central claims about predicting mental traits by
measuring bumps on the skull did not survive scientific scrutiny, the
underlying idea that certain mental functions are localized in
particular regions of the brain is now widely accepted. Parapsychologists seek to discover and study paranormal mental abilities ranging from clairvoyance to telepathy and telekinesis.
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