Complex Brain (and why is there more than one?)

December 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Brain, Knowledge, Mind |

It has been noted that the human brain is the most complex entity in the known universe, and is certainly more complex than either the parts from which it is composed (atoms, molecules, neurons, networks) and the greater whole of which it is a part (society, material world, galaxy, universe in totality). The complexity of the brain, which complexity surely gives rise to the strange phenomenon of mind, is not isolated from those greater and lesser entities. Rather there is a necessary dependency of brain on the processes which operate at a smaller scale that it contains and those large-scale cosmic processes in which it is contained. It also seems quite likely, if not inevitable, that the complexity of the brain greatly outstrips that of the mind supervenient on that brain. My brain seems to embody processes which my mind can scarcely conceive of, and then only through metaphor and symbol; quantum theory, complexity, etc.

One of the odd things about the mind is that there appears to be more than one of them.