Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

sense in which the word ‘mind’ seems to be subtly reductionist. Use of the word mind seems to be suggesting that even the most vivid of human psychological experiences is just the workings of the brain and that the brain is doing nothing more than going about its functions, much like the liver or the kidneys!

The so-called ‘bundle theory of the mind’ is perhaps more familiar from Buddhism. In Buddhist thought, freedom from the illusion of having a self is one aspect of enlightenment. We will return to this in a later chapter. David Hume also alluded to bundle theory, where there is no ‘thing’ called mind, just a stream of thoughts. People are all just a collection of experiences and there is no reason to postulate a separate self at all. As we’ve noted in examples in previous chapters however, all such theories very much have to assume mind and consciousness to begin with, before they can start to prove that mind and consciousness don’t exist! Something like a bundle theory however is still very much in vogue. It ties in well with that notion of the brain just being another internal organ.

Consciousness seems to suggest something more than just mind. Just asking the question — what is consciousness — feels a little like a trick question! Leibniz said that if the brain were big enough to walk through, the workings of mind and consciousness could still not be observed — which neatly sums up the predicament. Consciousness is the most immediate thing in our awareness — the thing we are most certain of — yet also the most strange. Yet, as John Locke long ago suggested, and as Descartes

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