Mind, meet brain

Mind Hacks: Biting the mind

Mind Hacks is a terribly good blog on all things to do with neuroscience and associated issues. It really is worth checking out every couple of days.

The post above is a particularly clear and concise summary of the brain/mind problem, and I think it is an excellent little bit of writing.

For what it's worth, here's my little comment on it. I understand the position the writer seems to support (property dualism), which he says means:

....that both mind-level and brain-level explanations may explain how we think and behave but at different levels that may not always be reducible.

For what it is worth, I find it a little puzzling to get around the issue of how the mind level of meaning has feedback to the brain level. It is (especially with the computer analogy of hardware and software) easy these days to imagine brain creating mind, but somewhat harder to imagine how the world of meaning that the mind lives in affects the brain.

Words spoken to you can cause a flood of tears. That's sort of odd, isn't it? It's the meaning the words convey, nothing to do with the physical nature of the sounds, that affects your mind which affects your brain and leads to the tears.

Well, I think it's odd anyway.