Saturday 4 February 2017

mind-body problem

A new rather disruptive theory being investigated by multidisciplinary teams of scientists in France and Canada suggests that consciousness, the mind (or at least one of the cognitive manifestations thereof) arose out of the brain’s own systemic dissipation—that is, subject to the laws of thermodynamics like any other coherent structure in the Cosmos, the brain’s own lurching towards entropy produces self-awareness as a by-product. What do you think? The study was too small to be conclusive and will need to be peer-reviewed. Within the mind’s suite of faculties, there’s not only consciousness but judgement, perception, memory, intuition and thought as well, and it would seem that to carry the reasoning out to its natural conclusion, the self-preserving quality of being conscious paradoxically propels the brain quicker into dotage by making it a more complex system.