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The Nature of Mind
What makes things happen in the universe?
Nature is evolving, becoming — both the life forms in it and the universe as a whole. Nature is organizing itself. Either that or some transcendent entity is organizing it.
Either/or. Immanent or transcendent. It always comes down to that. Perhaps both somehow. It’s hard to say. But the moment we recognize any kind of order in nature — the laws of thermodynamics, for example — we presume that some kind of organizing force exists. And clearly it does. All is not chaos otherwise we would not have anything to think about, or the ability to do so.
Something in nature is doing the organizing. Do we dare call it Mind, as the German Idealists did? Is it aware of what it’s doing? Is it conscious of itself? Or are we by saying this merely projecting our own awareness, our own consciousness, onto the universe at large? That’s easy enough to do.
It is extremely difficult to imagine an organizing entity at work in nature that doesn’t think and act as we do. Conversely, it is perfectly natural for us to create God in our own image. What else can we go by?
The Existence of Mind
There is mind in the universe, no doubt. Our own minds are proof of that, as are the minds of chimps, dolphins, whales, and a host of other…
