Is mind a spiritual (non-material) entity?

Idealism is a label for the philosophical position that rejects realism. Realism is the view that the world is only matter and that objects are independent of mind and can be known as they really are. Idealism stresses the spiritual (other worldly) characteristic of mind, which is different in kind from body.

Idealism has many definitions but all focus on the assumption that consciousness is detached from its concrete socially situated subjects. Such an assumption leads to the isolation of ideas from the concrete body. Theories, beliefs, human conduct and other products can be understood and analyzed in isolation from the historical subject. A giant unbridgeable gap develops between mind and body.

Idealism holds the twin principles nature or matter on one hand and spirit, God, ego, etc. on the other. Man and woman are creatures harboring two distinctly different realities within one structure. We are bipartite beings. Thought, especially theoretical thought is a substance of the spirit thus intellectual, moral, artistic and such are activities of the spirit.

Consciousness is the property of the spirit and because spirit transcends the world of matter then philosophers surmise consciousness is autonomous and independent, governed by non-material principles.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting for traditional thinking in two respects. “First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

I hold the view that there is no body/mind dichotomy (division into two mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities). It seems to me that one must be an idealist to believe that a person has a soul. Do you have a different view and does that view agree with Darwin’s view of natural selection?

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

Rubbish.

I don't hold that we can accurately predict our evolutionary future based on past criteria. We can look back and see the unfolded tree, but if we were to continue to evolve for billion or more years - in that time frame prediction becomes impossible. Never could we have predicted that the small undulating picaya would be the only creature of the Devonian age whose proprietary nodal cord would become the foundation of all vertebrates, and hence us.

Mind's abilities are themselves evolving and mind is becoming increasingly able to do things not at all required for survival. We're not talking about the play of otters or comic mischief of squirrels. Our minds so rarely need to focus on staying alive, uneaten, and fed that the mind's purpose is moving into a new state which isn't body oriented, it is SELF oriented. It is mind itself that is wondering, suggesting, that it's not necessarily bound to body.

It never mattered which lifeform was the first to do it, only that it happened: since the primordial soup, evolution of Life has steadily through eons and eons progressed to the 'greater and greater' in all numbers, ways and styles and chances it could, and it found the means to stand apart from itself and behold it's self, and for the first time the awareness of life resonated in itself completely, and we who are this will continue into evolution's wide-open vista, whose possibilities are the home of the poet and the thinker, but whose actualities no one may know. Mind and body have been inextricably bound until our species (+ whales?), but a growing sense of mind/body duality, extremely new by evolutionary measure, has occurred.

Absolutely right, soundhertz! Although it is of course still occuring.

The biggest problem of today is understanding ourselves as part of this reality. This seems like a point at which the Human race can either make a sensible cross-over into this future, or hold ourselves back with the same old animalistic paranoias. These 'old ways' are obviously extremely hard to shake off, as we have needed them in the past, simply to survive.

If we create a safer environment for ourselves, we do not need to hang on to the old fears. But what we have today is an illusion of a safer environment, which is only 'safe' for a few select lucky ones. This prompts the actions of today's 'western politics' to try and build a safer environment for its future, but is at the expense of a more unstable environment in other parts of the world.

This instability elsewhere is the unconscious future damage that we do to ourselves, by not recognising One World. Our actions of today will come back to haunt us in future generations, indeed they already are doing, as most of the mid-east trouble is a consequence of the mess the 'west' left after the end of WW2.

We continue to create a mess, and leave the clearing up to our grandchildren.

We simply have to start voting for wisdom, same as ever, really... Will we ever 'get it'?

Without wisdom, further evolution will be just a pipe-dream for Humans. It's time to stop fearing the future, and start building a decent one.


k.

I think that evolution will continue unabated in terms of the species. Individually there are some obvious detriments to this new 'mind becoming aware of itself' stage, i.e. survival of the physically fittest is no longer an evolutionary axiom, and obviously we are in the midst of this and other paradigm changes. These changes we are influencing will have the expected 'wrench in the gears' awkwardness that any new evolutionary path can cause. Remember that at one time the biota of this planet was anaerobic, and oxygen, a waste product of a new and extremely successful bacterial mutation - cyano bacteria - became the most poisonous and arresting evolutionary development the biota had ever seen. And there was great death. And great adaptation.

Yes we may/will promote human/animal die-offs as new paradigms proceed. We are unable to absorb what a million years really is, and even that time frame is exceedingly short by Earth's perspective. The arguments here rest on the opinion of some that our influence is too strong and quick for Gaia to handle. But are we as strong and quick as a 5 mile wide meteor hitting Earth? In the short run that was completely devastating from our perspective. In the long run Gaia absorbed it and came out smelling like a rose. Earth regrouped even after a shatter that gave it it's moon, which now Gaia relies on. Things go best for planets that make the best of how things go. Earth is a survivor. I believe it will survive the impact of mind. And mind will survive it's own doubts about what it is and what it can do. It has no choice but to evolve, and our task is to see it from not a human standpoint of time but from evolution's pov. Then we will learn that it is not the planet we are threatening - we haven't the power - but it is our species we are threatening.

Species have come and gone for millenia of millenia here. Changelessness does not occur here. Beautiful wondrous new species will come along, as they always have done. Species are like sand castles, and that which births them never sleeps. The kinship we feel with them inspires our desire to save them even as we extinguish them, but remember it's all Life, and the palette and easel is still beyond our reach. Gaia will continue with or without us, but I put my money on our continuance. We're living in the birth pangs of nascent mind; we'll figure it out, just not in the 'short term'. But whatever our solutions may be, for the first time in evolution, mind has been a contributing factor. This presents a case for mind/body duality - mind acting independantly of natural physical 'unconscious' processes.