1.0.4 Existence of Minds: Overview

Version 1.3 March 2013                                (Previous Version)

The question we address here is the nature of mind, and over what period it exists.

We look at concepts of mind, soul and ideas in the major religions and philosophies.

·       Hinduism has the concept of Ātman, our self or soul.  If we acquire self-knowledge and see that our true self, Ātman, is identical to the transcendental self, Brahman, we overcome suffering.

·       Buddhism says the idea that there is a core self is an illusion. Anātman refers to this “non-self”.  Liberation comes when we realize this illusion: we suffer no more, as there is no ego to suffer.

·       Reincarnation is the idea that after death we are reborn into another life, perhaps as an insect if we behaved badly, perhaps into a higher caste or a more affluent family if we behaved well.

·       Christianity and Islam have the idea of souls – the essence of our minds which survive life after death.  They don’t explain how souls are created, or consider life before birth.  They say where we go after death, heaven or hell, depends on how well we have followed God’s law on Earth.

We accept, as part of our metaphysics (section 1.0.2), that we experience internal; mental events differently to external events that we perceive through our senses.  The more we look at these, the more we investigate how the minds of others work, the more we realize that our internal mental events are subject to the same scientific analysis as are all the external events.  We explain that all the evidence shows that there is no consciousness or mind without a working brain, so there is no life after death, no ghosts or spirits, no reincarnation, no karma.  When we die, we rot. 

Some people find the prospect of total personal annihilation frightening.  Many who stop believing in God take more years to give up belief in the soul.  But we live on only though our descendants, in our works, and in the memories of others.  We come to realise that this is enough to be content.

We face the same dilemma of “chaos or causality” as we do when consider what is Truth.  Our thoughts and feelings are either explained scientifically, through causal laws or probabilistic laws, or they are not, in which case they are incomprehensible and effectively random.  Nevertheless we still feel that we have free will, but we aren’t sure of why.  Some cling to the hope that free will arises out of quantum theory uncertainty.  Either way, our notion of “self” is really an illusion – there is nothing uniquely “me” that lasts from birth to death, and nothing that lasts beyond death.

Concluding that mental processes are “natural” gives us some hope that we can devise effective interventions to improve people’s behaviour, rather than appealing to some intangible “free will”.  It is liberating to realize that there is no hell, no eternal damnation, no exclusion from god. 

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

   more                                                             Statement 4

We value this natural life as opposed to the supernatural or the afterlife.  We can’t “prove” that our minds are totally dependent on our brains, but we can justify adopting this belief.