In watching the first video, what struck me to be interesting was the idea of “being” conscious and the idea of the mind being separate from the brain. As the definition states in the video, “A sense of one’s personal or collective identity.” Could the existence of a person itself be a consciousness of them or do they have to attain movement in order to be considered conscious? If you think about it in the literal sense, the only use the body has for the mind is to make it move. If one takes that standpoint to thinking about the mind, the mind is a collection of ideas, beliefs and dreams whereas the brain could be looked upon as the aid to the body, or the captain of movement.
Thinking about it aesthetically, if the body never moved, what would be the point of having a brain? A collection of ideas, beliefs, and thoughts themselves would serve useless if one could not act there thoughts out.
Another thing that stuck out to me about this topic is that researchers openly admit they could be wrong. In the second lecture, there’s a Freud quote in which he says, “All I’m doing is pointing out…And I can assure that in a hundred years time our work will still be rejected.”
This was really refreshing to me because it seemed in previous topics such as religion vs science, science vs art, etc that there was an open controversy but ultimately one side was right. The thing about neuroscience is it’s such a complex topic that there’s no real answer. Similar to art, it’s open to the viewers interpretation and that’s what I enjoyed about it.
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Works Cited
"Existentialism." Philosophy Talk. 7 Mar. 2006. Web. 18 May 2015.
"History of Neuroscience." Columbia.edu. Web. 18 May 2015.
Sarich, Christina. "The Mind vs. Brain Debate (What Is Consciousness?)." The Cuyamungue Institute. Web. 18 May 2015.
Satel, Sally. "Distinguishing Brain From Mind." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 30 May 2013. Web. 18 May 2015.
Vesna, Professor Victoria. "Neuroscience-pt1.mov." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 18 May 2015.
Vesna, Professor Victoria. "Neuroscience-pt2.mov." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 18 May 2015.
Hey Chad! Your ideas regarding the body and the mind are very interesting to me, and when I watched the first lecture video I thought of similar ideas. What strikes me as interesting is why exactly the unconscious part of our brain evolved, as the answer is not as obvious as the conscious part. Are the two dependent on each other? Or could we do just as well without the unconscious part, like if Freud was right, with his largely negative interpretation of the unconscious part of our mind and how we make use of it for repressed thoughts and feelings, why would we evolve to have it? The separation and interaction between the conscious, unconscious, and the body might end up being a final topic for me. Thanks for the interesting post, it really helped me think of interesting questions!
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