(B.1) A physical brain is not essential for life but a brain is essential for mind.
(B.1.1) While the material brain is composed of about 86 billion information-carrying neurons, it is not a static
structure. The interconnectivity of about 70% of all neural cells is physically altered daily in response to the various mental
processes occurring in the brain. Indeed, these changes in interconnectivity have been microscopically observed in living
brains as they occur. The brain you wake up with in the morning will not be the same brain you go to sleep with at
night and the brain you go to sleep with at night will not be the same brain you wake up with in the morning because of
continual physical changes in it. The brain never sleeps.
(B.1.2) The human brain increases in size after birth as it gains experience, that is, as it utilized. Before and
immediately after birth, the brain receives sensory data which the brain is not yet capable of fully processing to
result in the phenomena of consciousness. The neural cells are not fully interconnected in an
organized fashion to be fully functional. Indeed, the brain is not like a fully assembled computer which take home after buying it,
plugging it in, pressing the ON button and away it goes performing computational functions. The brain at birth, however, is largely
a collection of unassembled neurons with take about 25 years of living and learning to become fully assembled and fully
functional.
As an example, the brain of a new-born baby perceives the objective quale of color but not the objective entity that
is a three-dimensional red rubber ball. It perceives the quale of sound but does not link it to either a source of the sound or to
language and its meaning. The baby senses a sea of unassociated qualia of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. They don't see
heads and necks and shoulders at first. They don't see patterns of qualia that they recognize as Mommy and Daddy until the
neurons in the brain assemble themselves that the baby can learn that the colors and shapes and sounds and smells they sense
somehow associated with Mommy and Daddy. That is, they gain knowledge from the subjective experience of leaning that
patterns of subjective qualia that they perceive in the mind are those of the objective physical entity
they perceive in the mind as Mommy and Daddy. The two subjective perceptions are connected in the mind and
experienced by us as a subjective perception of consciousness.
During this early process of brain development, some 24 million new neural connections are made each minute. By the age of 3 the
baby has learned to coordinate body movements (they learn to walk, etc.) and they learn to parse sounds as words (they learn what the sound
of the spoken Mommy and Daddy mean). But if you throw that red rubber ball towards the baby, it try to catch it like Daddy does but the
ball will bounce of its chest because the neural signals of the ball coming at them, the processing of the signals in the
brain itself, and the export of neural signals to the muscles in the arms are too slow for the infant to catch the ball. By the age
of three, a process that creates layers of myelin (the white matter of the brain) that wraps around the neural axons and act as a
layer of insulation for the transmission of electric action potentials down the neuronal axon and eventually the transmission rate
increases by upwards of twentyfold. And so it is that the top athletes are said to have fast muscle twitch and some learners are quicker
than others. Throughout the first 6 years of life this explosive development of neural connections as the result of the flood of sensory
data to the brain continues, packing more and more neurons into each unit volume (cubic centimeters, etc.) of the brain.
But after the age of six, a smaller number of neurons are found in each unit volume as the brain prunes off the less useful neural
connections, even as the ability to reason continues to increases to around the age of 25. But, alas, the ability to make value
judgments does not keep pace and youth in the age range of 15 to 25 do some really stupid thing like commit mass murders. Indeed automobile
rental companies know this and that is why you cannot rent an automobile until you are 25 years old. Further, the ability of the
brain to function peaks in the 20's age range and the result is that most scientists and mathematicians, and, indeed,
philosophers typically do their best work in their 20’s.
(B.1.3) Without a brain there can be no mind, no consciousness, no self. Indeed, all three are creation
of physical processes in the brain.
(B.2) Mind is a phenomenon of the brain which is capable of awareness what we shall call the physical
world of reality. This awareness of the physical world by the mind is what we shall call the mental world
which exists as a result of mental processes within the physical brain That is to say the mind is a mental reflection
of the physical world held in the brain as a nonmaterial phenomenon. Change the physical awareness of
the physical world by way of inputs of sensory data to the brain and its state of physical existence undergoes
material electrochemical changes which are accompanied by changes in the mental world corresponding to changes
sensed in the physical world outside the physical brain.
The brain itself, lacking any sensory cells of its own, cannot directly sense either the outside physical world
or any physical changes in the outside world, but it can perceived them in the
mental world of mind. Further, the neural cells of the brain are sensing the physical state of
themselves in a never ending feedback loop. The mind is then defined by the physical state of the neurological arrangement of
neurons of the physical brain sensing itself as the resultant effect of the cause of sensory inputs from
the sensate material world. Indeed, without any input of sensory data from outside world the physical brain would be
devoid of any information on which to operate at all. It would remain as a set of undifferentiated neurons like those first developed
in the embryo having only the DNA encoding necessary for them to function as a brain. It may thought of allegorically as an
electronic digital computer programmed to perform computational functions, switched on and waiting to receive input data from the keyboard
before making any computations. And like a digital electronic computer using a algorithms in its programming code to learn to play chess,
the brain uses algorithms encoded in the DNA of it neurons to learn how to perform mental functions, including
awareness, consciousness, thought, reasoning and memory.
And just as the brainless amoeba responds to its environment with movement towards materials (such as food) that the
sensory receptors on its surface of the single cell amoeba like and move away from materials that its sensory
receptors dislike, so do the sensory cells of humans have sensory receptors for establishing likes and dislikes of the
physical world. It is, however, the case that our sensory receptors produce electrochemical signals as sensory data
that typically move along networks of neurons to the brain for processing before prompting physical actions of the living
body in response to the world. In the cases of both amoeba and humans that sensory receptors adapt to the chemical stimuli
most beneficial to the organism. Amoeba are attracted to folic acid, lobsters and catfish to amino acids in decaying flesh. Being
omnivorous, humans have sensory receptors that favor the taste of sweet in sugars, but cats and some other carnivorous species have
lost the function of their sweet receptors, They no longer need to taste sweet because the foods they eat, the flesh of other animals or
starchy grains, contain little sugar. We are the product of the physical world which still holds sway over us and our actions
with the mind following in lockstep with it as accorded by the laws of nature.
(B.3) A brain need not have a sensate mind. Our gastrointestinal tract has a brain
that functions to control its actions independently of the brain in our head. The sensory neurons sensory data locally for producing effect from the cause that was sensed but the
sensory data is not sent to the brain in their head. But our gastrointestinal tract does have sensory cells for
the emotion of pain that does reach our head over our extended neural. Rather it part of the separate network that lets you known
when you have a stomach ache.
As for the sensation of hunger, it is such a primitive and important sensation that is initiated in the hypothalamus sitting
on top of the brain stem by sensing the blood flowing through it for 8 different chemical, some of which promote the sensation of
hunger and some which suppress it. When the chemicals in the blood that stimulate hunger are sensed, two other chemical are produced in the
neurons in the hypothalamus ultimately result in production of the sensation of hunger in the conscious mind.
(B.4) A second set of sensory data are simultaneously sent to the brain by the reticular
neural system which imparts information regarding the significance of the qualia data. As an example, sensory data
for imparting the quale of sound is received by the brain and is processed to be recognized as a
sound but lacking any quantitative value. However, the reticular neural system also sends accompanying \
sensory data which the brain uses to assess the magnitude and frequency of the sound for subsequent use
in formulating actions in response to it. The brain first recognizes the qualia sensory data as that of sound which
gets your attention. The greater the value of the reticular sensory data, the greater your initial action in
response as to it. You experience the startled reflex. But then what subsequent actions are to be taken? Fight?
Flight? Ignore? Then the brain interpret the periodicity of the reticular sensory data. Is it repeated or was
it a single event? If a single event, your brain might search for the cause of the sound effect in order to take a course of
action. However if the sound is repeated, your brain will delay the response to in order to assess the appropriate cause
and effect response to it. If the sound is gunfire, you run for cover. If the sound is created by a jackhammer you do not. If no threat
is present, your brain simply ignores the sound altogether as background noise.
And then there is the sound of music for which the quale of sound is emotionally more pleasing if the periodicity of the
notes of sounds corresponds to mathematical ratios of whole fraction (1, 4/3, 3/2, 2/1, etc. for listeners in the western regions of the
world) and is unpleasant if not. And, of course, the increasing level of sound of the notes in a crescendo is the
cause of the physical effect of an increase in the periodicity your heartbeat.
(B.5) Allsensory data of both the reticular and qualia neural system are linked to the
chemistry of neurons in the brain. Indeed, the language used by neurons to communicate and transfer
information with each other in different areas of the brain are chemicals called neurotransmitters. And it is
these neuron and neurotransmitters that control mindful actions, both a subjective and
objective nature of humans.
Indeed, the brain is a material object, that is composed of the molecules, that are composed of atoms, that are composed of
electrons, proton, neutrons, that are composed the electrons plus the subatomic particles of quarks, all of which are bound by the
inviolate laws of nature which results in the processes of the brain creating the perception of the various
nimbus of mind. In the end, the mind is just the reality of the deterministic
chemistry of living biological entities with a brain. It is responsible for both the objective actions of an artist in
creating a work of art and the subjective actions of the observer of the art in response to it.
(B.6) The mind is reflection of experience in both time present and in time past. But the same
experiences may result in entirely different responses of the mind to the same things experienced by both. As an example,
baseball fans of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox baseball teams were placed in an MRI scanner and shown an
images of a Yankees baseball player and a Red Sox player being injured in a game. After the sensory data enters the
brain, the signal is forwarded along two different paths. One path leads directly to the more primitive brain stem which
produces an automatic response that creates a mood, positive or negative, in the mind. The second path leads to areas of the
brain that process the sensory data that when combined with the mood response results in the image of what you experience
in your mind. So what the Yankees fan sees when the Yankee player is injured lights up the anterior insula area of the
brain associated with helping behavior and greater empathy. But what the Red Sox fan sees when the Yankee player is injured lights
up the nucleus accumbens area of the brain which is a part of the pleasure circuit. Foe the Yankee fan observing the injured Red Sox
player, the response is exactly opposite that of the Red Sox fan. Observation of the same realities creates two entirely different
responses of the mind, depending on past evaluations of experiences of emotional attachment. The different response reveal
two different world views, two different sensations of good and bad. One objective experience says it is your
moral duty to be empathetic when your player is injured and the other says it is morally acceptable to laugh at the
misfortune of the player on the opposite opposite. Consciousness reveals in the mind what the physical brain decided
was the case, with emotions and moral judgments attached, based on sensory data inputs for the material world
to the brain both in time present and time past. Indeed, the morality of every human action by an
individual is whatever the mind, resulting from the chemistry of the brain, makes it to be as the result of sensory
data acquired from experience. Moral judgments made by human brains are subjective and thereby malleable.
Only the laws of nature dictating brain chemistry is absolute.
A baby is born with no moral convictions and must taught them by their parents and others around them. And thus we see different
moral values in different persons biased by experience of time past. Further, the moral values held can
change and even reverse with new experiences to the physical world around them. In all cases, the changes in
morals are the slaves of emotions which undergo change. Similarly the mind can create false perceptions of what
is experienced. In a study of policemen, they were asked to briefly observe an equal number of black and white subjects pulling
something from their coat pocked. Half the time the individuals pulled a firearm from their pocket and half the time an iPhone. Without
conditioning of the brain from experience in time past, the policemen should have seen 50% of both black
and white subjects pulling out a firearm. But the policemen have knowledge that blacks that are arrested are 5 times more likely to
possess a firearm than whites. So, rather than based on what they actually experienced, the minds of white policemen saw black
subject pulling out a firearm 85% of the time white subjects pulling out an iPhone 85% of the time. In 15% of the cases, the brain created
a false reality of the world in the mind which was subsequently presented in consciousness as true reality (and
thus the racial bias). What the brain senses of the world outside is always real but what the mind actually sees is
not always real. The mind simply makes a best guess of what happened based on experience and knowledge of time
past implanted it in memory until proven otherwise. Magicians and swindlers take full advantage of this phenomenon to
earn their livelihood. The errors in perception of reality presented in consciousness and memory can only be
corrected with new knowledge. A famous example is a video of a group of individuals tossing a basketball among themselves and an
observer being told to watch them toss the basketball. Everyone will perceive individuals tossing a basketball among themselves but
few if any will perceive the gorilla moving among them until provided with new knowledge that a gorilla was present
among.
(B) Mind is the phenomenoa of subjective aspects resulting frommental processes in the brain that enables what we can know of the material world and do what we can do in it. It is the sum of all mental phenomenon including consciousness, awareness, sensation, thought and reasoning deriving from experiences of unus in the material world. Mind requires a living brain receiving a flow of sensory inputs as well as memory and the knowledge stored in it. The mind remains active until death of the brain, even in the absence of consciousness. The mind itself is not corporealbut is a component of nimbus which together with corpus constitute the unus that we are.