What is a Mind?
How do you know whether something has a mind?
A question was asked during the "What is a Mind?" course, that I was following. I'm not sure if I'm able to answer this difficult question logically but I'm giving it a go using my limited logical skills.
The thing with a mind I can think of is us, humans. Let me talk about it from my own perspective. In my opinion, there are different kinds of responses or behaviors our minds can display.
One of them is that we, humans, are able to appear something different or act differently from what we actually think. We can hide our emotions. We might be angry at someone, however; we can interact with them as if everything is going smoothly.
We might be nice to someone though we actually hate them. We come up with the idea that if we're nice to them, we might be able to get more advantages than those we get when we're being rude.
We're also moody. I'm not sure if animals share this with us but I don't think that a cat might bite you just because it woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Thirdly, our experiences throughout our lives shape who we are to a great extent. If your father neglected you during your childhood, this might negatively affect your mind, your relationships with others and yourself. How we feel about ourselves might affect the types of dreams or nightmares we have.
An incident like being sexually harassed might shock your mind as well as your body which will definitely play a major role in how you respond to those who approach you and show you affection, desire and sincere love. We sometimes face unseen "psychological" obstacles that trap us in some way and which others might not see or understand if they don't know what we have come through.
Later on in the course, I learned about agency as one of four main characteristics a mind has. Thinking about different choices and making a decision upon what benefits us the most is something that distinguishes species with thoughts from those without.
We imagine situations that haven't happened yet in our minds to understand how things would go in each scenario. What is the right thing to do? If I do this, what will happen? If I don't, what might be the consequences? We make our minds up to choose the road with less harm and better outcomes. We are also able to suppress actions we want to do to avoid significant losses.
For instance, when a member of my family wishes for me to get married and have children sooner. My instant reaction would be to jump down their throat telling them I don't want to marry. And if I change my mind and get married one day, absolutely I don't want to have children.
Accordingly, I think and imagine what would happen if I told them that?
They would give me a hard time every time I meet with them telling me that I'm going against the will of Allah. They would wonder how dare I say no to God's blessing or they might think I'm going insane. Nonetheless, they already consider me a weirdo as they think I'm an asocial person and I often go against their norms.
After making my mind up, I would instead thank them and try to make the chat as short as possible. I already avoid getting in touch with them to the best of my ability. I also don't have any of them on WhatsApp or any other social media platform.
We're also moody. I'm not sure if animals share this with us but I don't think that a cat might bite you just because it woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Thirdly, our experiences throughout our lives shape who we are to a great extent. If your father neglected you during your childhood, this might negatively affect your mind, your relationships with others and yourself. How we feel about ourselves might affect the types of dreams or nightmares we have.
An incident like being sexually harassed might shock your mind as well as your body which will definitely play a major role in how you respond to those who approach you and show you affection, desire and sincere love. We sometimes face unseen "psychological" obstacles that trap us in some way and which others might not see or understand if they don't know what we have come through.
Later on in the course, I learned about agency as one of four main characteristics a mind has. Thinking about different choices and making a decision upon what benefits us the most is something that distinguishes species with thoughts from those without.
We imagine situations that haven't happened yet in our minds to understand how things would go in each scenario. What is the right thing to do? If I do this, what will happen? If I don't, what might be the consequences? We make our minds up to choose the road with less harm and better outcomes. We are also able to suppress actions we want to do to avoid significant losses.
For instance, when a member of my family wishes for me to get married and have children sooner. My instant reaction would be to jump down their throat telling them I don't want to marry. And if I change my mind and get married one day, absolutely I don't want to have children.
Accordingly, I think and imagine what would happen if I told them that?
They would give me a hard time every time I meet with them telling me that I'm going against the will of Allah. They would wonder how dare I say no to God's blessing or they might think I'm going insane. Nonetheless, they already consider me a weirdo as they think I'm an asocial person and I often go against their norms.
After making my mind up, I would instead thank them and try to make the chat as short as possible. I already avoid getting in touch with them to the best of my ability. I also don't have any of them on WhatsApp or any other social media platform.
A mind is a complicated matter. We can't see our mind but we can see how powerful a role it plays in our lives. If we are able to decipher our minds well, we will save ourselves from stumbling and a lot of troubles.
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