Question on mind

[The Grand Nudger]

Ask them why they believe that in the first place, is how I'd approach it.

[GrandizerII]

Your bio says you're a Buddhist, so I'm curious about your take on this.

Are there Buddhist teachings on mind that you're aware of? Would there be an orthodox Buddhist answer to the question you pose in the OP?

I was a Buddhist. Now I’m an Athiest. We were said to believe that the mind is something like a soul which finds a human when they are born. And it goes to someone else when we die. Most of the humans personally, traits come from the soul or whatever energy that is. Maybe Because consciousness cannot be explained.

I don’t believe in rebirth or souls since you asked Buddhist view. I was just asking this because if someone asks flesh and blood come from parents and mind comes from somewhere else , how to answer that question

Human consciousness is coming from the human brain (if not completely, then for the most part at least).

Now if what you really mean is how exactly is this happening, then you can say you don't know, nothing wrong with that. Philosophers of mind are struggling with the same question themselves, so you're in good hands.

[miaharun]

Ask them why they believe that in the first place, is how I'd approach it.

It’s always “ I don’t know but There has to be a reason “ so the reason is “x”. It’s similar to someone believing in God.

So i told , if you don’t know , that doesn’t give you the right to say therefore it should be x. Sometimes the answer is “ I don’t know “.

[The Grand Nudger]

Then they're begging the question, and wrong in point of fact. There doesn't have to be any reason that their preferred belief is true, and we still have no explanation for why they believe as much in the first place.

Consciousness didn't -have- to come from our brains, for example. There could have been another organ, or another mechanism. At many points in history we thought there was. Turns out that it does, is all. I think that alot of the time, you can get even the most ardent supernaturalist to agree (at least in principle) that consciousness is a product of our brains - but they can always insist that their god gave us those brains somehow. Tacit acknowledgement of the opposition point, but hey - that's what you're left with when you try to negotiate with reality, eh?

[miaharun]

Anyway I don’t mean to change anyones belief systems but when these kind of beliefs affect certain things in our day to day life it’s really uncomfortable. I came to a conclusion that “Any” religion can sometimes affect a lot of things in a negative manner and sometimes lead to not having a good family life for example. Even so called peaceful or philosophical doctrines like Buddhism

[The Grand Nudger]

The only distinction would be whether that discomfort was the intentional effect of the doctrine or an unintended and negatively appraised side effect.

Axial traditions lay a claim to peace, for example, - but that claim was never more than relative and it's dated today. It's easy to believe that axial traditions presented a more peaceful world view than the then-current world order - but with respect to the present world order, that view is retrograde. We also have the benefit of hindsight.

Sadly, many of the items of familial discord are intentional products with a positively appraised value. Kicking your queer son out of the house is a good thing according to their assertions of value - as one example. I'm sure you can think of some equivalent traditional justification from your own upbringing. The one's about family stand out in every religion, or every historic religion - because family is the most open and permissive place in the ethical space in every tradition for forbearance and acceptance. Our earliest (and still most compelling) value systems are an extension of family interactions, the whole of religious enterprise the creation of a single family of belief.

All that said, there's no specific reason that it would be impossible for a religion to be constructed so that it had no such effects - it's a testament to the incompetence of the authors of every historic religion that we find them in such a sorry state on that issue. The great sages of every religion vacillated between profundity and abject stupidity in their utterances, and the contemporary faithful seem particularly keen on going to the mat for the dumb shit they said..and not entirely or genuinely committed to the profound things they said.

[Paleophyte]

Hello, I just wante to know what you guys think of this analogy. We make children and they get our flesh and blood but where do they get their mind or conciousness ?

It arises from the interaction between the genetically determined structures and functions of the brain and the environment that it grows up in. There's a very simple experiment that you can do to demonstrate this. Go to Japan and check to see how many kids are speaking Swedish. You'll find a similarly small number of Germans kinder fluent in Dyak, and I'll be surprised if you can find a single resident of Arkansas who can rattle off anything meaningful in Tagalog.

The fact that children develop languages and cultures that mirror their surroundings, rather than those from half way around the world, is a big hint as to where their minds are coming from.

[Nay_Sayer]

From the Mind store, I usually go with Consciousness'R'Us

[AFTT47]

Hello, I just wante to know what you guys think of this analogy. We make children and they get our flesh and blood but where do they get their mind or conciousness ?

The only honest answer is that we don't know. Evidence strongly suggests consciousness is a product of functions of the physical brain but we have no idea of a mechanism to explain this. We have absolutely no idea how electro-chemical brain functions result in self-awareness of the type where we have awareness of our own existence.

But even in granting that, what is your point? The fact that the origin of consciousness is currently beyond us in no way justifies the creation of religions where an answer to this question is pulled out of one's ass. Sometimes, the only logical answer to a question is, "I don't know." There is no shame in this. There is shame in claiming you have the answer when you do not, though. It is okay to speculate as long as you acknowledge that it is speculation. But claiming you have the answer to a tough question when you do not is fraud. Better to be humble and admit you do not know.

[The Grand Nudger]

-ish, we know more..a hell of alot more, about how the sausage is made than we give ourselves credit for. The brain isn't exactly a black box. Similar to the heart - there's a point before which the only thing we know is not to touch it. We're past that point with the brain, though we passed it more recently than we did the heart. It's entirely likely that a person wondering how it's done could isolate any specific item for consideration and there will be a detailed explanation of how that cog works.

The thing that halts the explanation is, itself, something we recently discovered and now know for a fact. There's no cpu. If all of these processes were gated through a single structure it would be a hell of alot easier to study and explain consciousness - but they aren't...and at least some of what any such petitioner is asking about actually isn't happening -at all-...yet another thing we know.