Mind/Matter?

Of all aspects from this week's readings, I must admit the "hard problem" of philosophy caught my interest the most: what exactly is the purpose of consciousness?  Psychologists tend to be more concerned with the relationship between mental experience and brain activity.  In psychology, this is called the mind-body problem, as proposed to us by the philosopher Rene Descartes of the 17th century.  "I think, therefore I am" was his famous philosophical statement, and Dualism his theoretical tribute to the mind-body problem which suggests that the body functions like a machine following the laws of nature and that the mind, or soul, operates independently from nature and is seated at the pineal gland of the brain.  There is a fundamental problem with Descartes' premises, however.  One can easily refute the mind's independence from nature with practically endless piles of empirical data, from Pavlov and Skinner's findings on conditioning behavior to modern technologies, such as fMRI, that are currently being used to illustrate the associations between brain activity and mental experience.  Of particular significance to this topic is a recent study conducted by the University of Southern California.  The idea behind the study was that certain types of eye movements are characteristic of particular disorders.  The researchers asked their subjects to watch 15 minutes worth of video clips and used eye-tracking data with machine learning technology to predict with relatively high accuracy which of their subjects were classified as having either Parkinson's disease (PD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).  This type of innovative technology along with others (MRI, fMRI, PET, MEG, etc.) can give us further insight to the dependent relationship of both mind and body.  For example, a person with ADHD surely views the world differently from someone without the disorder precisely because the disorder has molded and distorted the mind of the disordered individual.  Any advantage or disadvantage set by nature will affect the mind of any being, and whether the effect inflicts the conscious or the unconscious mind is of a more profound and controversial matter.

Finally, and most importantly, I can get to the central issue at hand: what is the purpose of consciousness?  With the rapid advances in technology of this age, we are becoming more and more acutely aware of the association between the mind and the body.  If indeed they are inseparable, then should we dare to entertain the possibility of life after death?  I like to think so.  I believe there is so much more to nature than we can possibly fathom at this point in time.  

One of my favorite writers is Terence McKenna who happened to be a rather well-known ethnobotanist until his untimely death in April of 2000.  In one of his documentaries he expressed his beliefs about the extra-dimensional workings of nature and stated: "Nature is some kind of minded entity.  Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields.  Nature is not the despiritualized  lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics, but it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind."  I contend with his beliefs to a high degree.  From what I understand, nature has an order—a structure or form if you will—and out of these forms all of life is rendered to achieve certain functions.  One of the forms that I find most convincing of such convictions is the apparent construct of the cosmos, as we know it, and its striking similarity to the shape of a neuron:

Currently, I hold to the idea that a collective consciousness exists and that nature is the entity to which it belongs.  Each living creature contributes with the use of its senses what it can to this collective consciousness and feeds it with the experience that it craves.  This feed, in turn, builds it up and continues to shape nature and vice versa.  I suppose you can call this minded entity of nature God.  In saying this, I admit that I am both an evolutionist and a creationist.  My theories are not set, however.  They are still evolving as time progresses, and I will make sure to keep you posted on them as they change.

We may never come to understand fully the purpose of consciousness while we are alive, but surely we all come to discover its purpose on our final day.  During our seven-minute process of death, after our hearts have stopped beating, we will experience the mitosis that severs the mind from the body.  Will our consciousness survive the pitfall of death?  Will we be born to a higher state of existence?  I suppose we'll find out...someday. Until then, I guess our minds will continue to probe and dissect the mind of nature, or the nature of mind.