Mind Is Not Brain
I just saw this quote from Patricia Churchland, a professor of neurophilosophy: "To understand the mind, we must understand the brain." Now this leads one's thoughts in perhaps unintended directions, although Churchland might not disagree with anything I'm about to say. It seems to be equally valid that to understand the brain, we must understand the mind. We must understand, in other words, what it means to understand, which is a mental, but not a brain, activity, as well as a state of being. I don't see how it can make sense to try to understand what it means to understand if all we talk about is the brain. That sounds like a category mistake: how could neuroscience explain what understanding -- that is, comprehension -- is? Neuroscientists can talk from now till the end of time about what goes on in the brain when we engage in mental activities, but that is nothing like explaining what those activities are in themselves. I am not aware of my brain activity, bu