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Understanding the concepts 'mind' and 'brain'

We learned in math that groups sometimes intersect other groups without either group encompassing the totality of the other group. A simple example is red and cars. Some things that are red are cars, but not all cars are red. We were taught to visualize this by drawing a circle to represent everything that is red, and another circle to represent cars. There will be a slight overlap in the two circles, but neither circle will be within the other as a subgroup, or subset.

Our brains and our minds are similar in that regard. Portions of our brains comprise portions of our minds, but our minds do not include the parts that control involuntary reactions such as reflexes, or automatic functions such as heartbeats and breathing. Three parts of the physical brain are part of the mind. I am not a neurosurgeon, and likely you are not either, so for the sake of "conceptual thought," the three parts are the "left brain," the "right brain," and the "memory bank." These three parts of the brain will determine our principles. The other parts of the brain, then, would contain our natures and instincts.

Pitted against one another, natures and instincts are far stronger than principles. We have all likely seen this in flinching contests, where the principle of stoicism is pitted against our involuntary reaction to defend ourselves.

In most people, the left brain is the analytical side, and the right brain is the creative side. Human bodies are necessarily "cross-wired" or, literally, our right hands would not know what our left hands were doing. From this, we know that left-handed people really have the right brain on the left side of their physical brains. Ambidextrous people do not have cross-wiring either. They have strong enough "creative sides" to emulate the action of their "analytical sides." Once we have some level of success, the image is stored in our memory banks for future reference, and we are more easily able to emulate the typically analytical action creatively.

Our minds use these three parts of the brain to formulate our principles. Some people resort to their natures over their principles with less stress than other people, but the function of the mind is still the same. Our minds are deductive, meaning that we actually consider everything in our memory banks, but we eliminate that which is not relevant. From there, some people use their creative sides dominantly, while most people rely more upon their analytical sides to determine "principled reactions."


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Understanding the concepts 'mind' and 'brain'

  • 1 of 16

    by Tom Koecke

    We learned in math that groups sometimes intersect other groups without either group encompassing the totality of the... read more

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    by A. South

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    by Richard Hemingway

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Understanding the concepts 'mind' and 'brain'

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