什么是思想？One of the great mysteries of our time

“什么是思想？”是一个非常重要的问题。如果不是你的想法，你是什么？

心理学is of course the science of the mind, and yet graduate students of psychology have great difficulty answering this question. From their replies, you might think that the mind is just a very complicated information processing device. But are你a complicated information processing device?

头脑不是目的

困难的来源是，思想不是目的; it is not something out there in the world that you can point to and say: “That is a mind; that thing over there is what I call ‘the mind’.”

The mind is invisible. But it is not invisible in the same way that gravity and electricity are. It is true that the existence of the mind, like that of gravity and electricity, can be inferred from its physical effects (For example, “She moved her hand when I asked her to; that movement was caused by her mind, by an act of the will.”) The difference is that the mind can also be perceived directly. It feels like something to be a mind.

The mind能够被感知

So the mind能够被感知，，，，no less than planets and atoms, but this kind of perception – perceiving things like memories, thoughts and feelings – is something主观。Therefore, you can only ever experience yourown头脑。

这是问题的核心。您一般无法体验思维。这使得拥有一门科学变得非常困难。对于科学来说，当然渴望客观性 - 普遍性。我们竭尽全力将主观排除在科学之外。

The mind versus the brain

As a result, throughout the history of psychology, there have been serious attempts to exclude the mind from science. We were told by the Behaviourists (who dominated 20^Th例如，世纪心理学），认为思想并不真正存在。只有它responses存在 - 其行为。

Today, in the era of神经科学，我们面临类似的问题。有人告诉我们，思想实际上只是大脑。这是大脑产生的精致幻觉。那么，如果我告诉您您（您的主观经历）将从明天开始就不再存在，但是您不必担心，因为我会让您的大脑活着？

您的大脑还活着，但没有经验会给您带来冷舒适。因为您 - 您心爱的自我 - 将不再存在。这个简单的事实似乎证明了您的思想与大脑并不相同。

But now I hear you say: the brain in a coma is just the brain minus the mind. The mind is the part of the brain that is lost when it is in a coma. The question then becomes: what part of the brain is essential to produce the mind? And how does it do it? How does the brain get over the hump from electrochemistry to feeling?

什么是a mind真的？

这个问题将是我们免费在线课程的起点，”什么是思想？”基于神经科学的最新发现，但也考虑了生活经验（例如，由心理分析家研究）和时代的哲学智慧，我们将解决时代的最大奥秘之一。

Step by step, we answer this question: Whatisa mind… what is it真的？