Topics Mind

Question If mind is a special form of matter, doesn't it follow that all matter may possess a special form of mind, and that oak trees and lumps of coal have been quietly thinking all this time?

Accepted:
June 25, 2011

Comments

Or stones. They may be quietly thinking of Vienna. (Sorry; irresistible inside joke.)

People who think the mind is material don't think there's some special kind of matter ("Mindium?") that has the power to think. They think that matter appropriately structured and in appropriate relationship with the environment allows organisms to have beliefs, feelings, etc. And "appropriately structured" is best illustrated by things like human brains. The matter in trees and lumps of coal doesn't have anything like the kind of structure that brains do. And so the reasons we have for thinking that purely physical things can have minds don't give us reason to think that just any old physical thing can think.

A footnote: some people have suggested that there's a sort of primitive mental character associated with all matter. The view is called panpsychism. But even panpsychists would generally agree that complex mental processes depend on the right kinds of complex arrangements of matter.

Question If mind is a special form of matter, doesn't it follow that all matter may possess a special form of mind, and that oak trees and lumps of coal have been quietly thinking all this time? Accepted:June 25, 2011

Question If mind is a special form of matter, doesn't it follow that all matter may possess a special form of mind, and that oak trees and lumps of coal have been quietly thinking all this time?

Accepted:
June 25, 2011