Circularity in Wikipedia and proposal for new definition
Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 8:15 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind
I'd like to propose a new formal definition then that a mind is, only, the sum of ideas, where each idea acts dependently on others ideas creating a networked individual-based "society of mind". There are no "faculties" of mind besides ideas that happens to favour some kind of objective associated with people's consciousness, in other words, there are no other things in the mind than ideas and the functions we attribute to ideas. Consciousness is the only actual proof we have for the existing of some such thing as the mind, it creates the natural environment from which we can perceive some content for which we understand to be parts of a greater set of contents we call "mind", and we make this greater set of contents by filling gaps in our conscious experience with theories of underlying supporting structures of similar kind as the matter of the conscious itself.
Faculties of the brain may however exist, and carry out functions that support the structure of the mind, but the mind does not itself contain its own supporting structure (except the greater set of contents of the same matter as the conscious, but which doesn't decide things like memory, only the contents of the memory, for which is ideas, or patterns, as I've stated on in previous threads in this forum, making it traceable to biological structures).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CognitionA mind is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory
My objection here is that mind is designated meaning by "cognitive" which derives its meaning from "cognition", cognition in turn derives its meaning from "mental" which in turn derives its meaning from "mind". Clearly you have here a four-staged circular definition.In science, cognition is a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.
I'd like to propose a new formal definition then that a mind is, only, the sum of ideas, where each idea acts dependently on others ideas creating a networked individual-based "society of mind". There are no "faculties" of mind besides ideas that happens to favour some kind of objective associated with people's consciousness, in other words, there are no other things in the mind than ideas and the functions we attribute to ideas. Consciousness is the only actual proof we have for the existing of some such thing as the mind, it creates the natural environment from which we can perceive some content for which we understand to be parts of a greater set of contents we call "mind", and we make this greater set of contents by filling gaps in our conscious experience with theories of underlying supporting structures of similar kind as the matter of the conscious itself.
Faculties of the brain may however exist, and carry out functions that support the structure of the mind, but the mind does not itself contain its own supporting structure (except the greater set of contents of the same matter as the conscious, but which doesn't decide things like memory, only the contents of the memory, for which is ideas, or patterns, as I've stated on in previous threads in this forum, making it traceable to biological structures).