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Developing the experience of group mind.

Article Excerpt
* Adapted from an interactive lecture-seminar for the Mind and Consciousness Seminar Series, co-sponsored by the New York Society for General Semantics, the Institute of General Semantics, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and the Media Ecology Association, presented January 24, 2008, at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City.

Is the human mind [...] like a dark cavern (needing illumination)? A muscle (needing exercise)? A vessel (needing filling)? A lump of clay (needing shaping)? A garden (needing cultivation)? Or, as so many say today, is it like a computer that processes data?

Neil Postman, The End of Education (1995) (1)

It is true enough that our ways of talking are controlled by the ways we manage our minds, and no one is quite sure what "mind" is.

Neil Postman, The End of Education (1995) (2)

MY NAME IS BEN HAUCK, and I'm pleased to be the first speaker to kick off The Mind and Consciousness Seminar Series. I will be focusing on the "mind" part of that title. My opening question is that popular one, "What is the mind?" I hope not to bore you with any kind of abstract, intangible theory about what it is. Instead, I want to make you think. And I say that with a little wink.

What is the mind? Can we point to it, extract it, and dissect it like a frog? You can, if you define the term "the mind" as "the brain." However, often when we speak of the mind, we don't mean the brain. Sometimes, we mean something amorphous, ephemeral, non-substantive; something abstract; something almost ghostly. I used to think of "the mind" as a ghostly brain that inheres in the actual brain, or even "floats" in there, so to speak. But that is not the idea I aim to forward.

Before providing my answer to the question "What is the mind?" I wish to provide you with a pool of examples employing the use of the word "mind." In these examples, the word mind is not a synonym for the word "brain." It is also not a synonym for "pay attention to" or "care about," as in the statements "Mind your manners" and "I don't mind if you wear your shoes in the house." Here are some examples of the sense of the word "mind" that I am talking about. As you listen, see if you can figure out what is meant by the word mind--what it refers to.

Examples:

* What's on your mind?

* Are you out of your mind?

* Your name ... Remind me again?

* I'll keep it in mind.

* I'm losing my mind.

* I'm changing my mind.

* That totally blew my mind!

* Free your mind!

* Make up your mind!

* I'm going to give him a piece of my mind.

* Finishing your first marathon requires mind over matter.

* Ladies and gentlemen, cast your mind back to better times.

* There is a connection between mind and body.

In these examples, what does the word "mind" refer to? Did you figure out some answers?

Some more sophisticated examples employing the sense of the word mind follow.

* "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." (Aristotle)

* "The human mind treats...

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