Integrating Brain, Consciousness, and Mind: A Naturalistic Emergentist Dual-Aspect View

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, I develop a naturalistic emergentist dual-aspect framework to address the relationships among the human mind, consciousness, and the brain. I begin by arguing that the mind consists of the brain’s first-person, meaning-making activities, which underlie—and thereby unify—all semantic, semiotic, logical, and mathematical operations and constructs. This characterization allows for a clear distinction between the mind and the purely third-person causal, spatial, and temporal attributes of brain states and processes. I contend that failing to distinguish between these two perspective-based categorial frameworks inevitably leads to category mistakes. My critique focuses on the concepts of mental causation, representation, and information. Next, I argue against the notion of an ‘unconscious mind’. Instead, I contend that the mind constitutes the very inner structure of the brain’s first-person consciousness. Finally, I argue that neurobiological research provides an empirical basis for understanding human consciousness—and, by extension, the mind—as the result of a relational-transformational process of ontological emergence within the brain.