Is the Mind Just Environmental?

Craig Volpe The mind being something independent from the physical environment made sense a long time ago, but no longer. With the advent of neuroscience and all the ways experiments manipulating the brain consistently show the mind is a product of and dependent on the physical brain, all the evidence points to the mind is of the environment. Reply 2d Mark Rego Monteiro Craig Volpe Certainly, the human mind´s relatedness to the environment has been developed with various forms of scholarship with empiricism, all philosophical in nature, to correct a bias inherent in the technophile term "science." Neuroscience has made some interesting observations, as has behavioral psychology, and most recently, eco-psychology. Yet, so has transpersonal psychology. And even ecology. Is Lovelock´s "Gaia hypothesis" merely invalidated because it´s not legitimate in scientific terms? Hardly. In fact, Buddhist and Christian uses converge in Comp Religious Studies with eco-psychology etc to provide for an argument and factual concept that people overexposed to "science" extremism in materialist ideology fail to overcome profiteering businesspeople´s propaganda and influences. No named entity? Out of sight, out of mind, in fact. Thus, for example, modern environmentalism emerged as biologist and writer-artist Rachel Carson developed along with things like some Audobon Soc. support, Audobon has done some amazing good, but Carson´s efforts raising red alerts seem more connected to how Sierra Club developed and supplied the founders of Friends of the Earth and co-founders of Greenpeace, as WWF also converged as activists. The issue thus engages with how truth gets perceived and people act more in Jesus´ spirit of "do good (even if it means breaking unjust rules)." Matt 12. With so much overexposure to mere physicalist "science," people can even become opposed to science´s own limits, nature as philosophy, and merely one kind of empiricism. Thus, Sierra Club´s roots in John Muir´s founding them is helpful, since he was an eco-spiritual post-Presbyterian. Emerson met and called Muir a prophet. Unscientific? Empirical. Emerson himself was prophetic, and perhaps slightly more scholarly. He had left Unitarianism, and as an independent studying Hinduism, proposed God as an Oversoul. Emerson also admired the Quaker-Friends. They had been founded not by any scholar, but were lead in being co-founded by Brit George Fox, with minimal formal ed there north of London by 1650. For a lowlevel ed guy, Fox brilliantly simplified worship, and identified key values in meditative worship on the Inner LIght of Christ, respecting individuals and their experiences, women, and protesting injustices. His insights reflect the application of self-awareness, a central spiritual faculty. It is a key factor in extending "Mind over Matter," that reflects more Piaget´s observing agency in child development, and even Freud´s self-analysis for therapeutic psychs in his own school, with what must be many similar apps in diverging schools. Freud´s "id, ego, and superego" were what he formulated not with a microscope, but a notepad after listening to his patients. The human mind and how it, we, humans experience reality beyond merely material sensations. Our symbolic norms, values, and concepts. Black Elk told J Neimann about his vision of sacred hoops and a holy flowering tree, Mother and Father for all beings to be united. We are more familiar in secularism with abstract concepts. Those are non-material. "Sustainability." Its physical referents have been left at more concrete levels of knowledge. The human mind. While "science" tries to objectify, Black Elk had his vision showing relationship of metaphysical issues and referents. A sacred hoop linked to a tree, etc.? And John Muir, who wrote about God while looking at nature, but not equating them. Emerson, drawing on Hinduism as an interfaith, independent Christian-based scholar. Historical, sociological, psychological, all coming into play. And George Fox more directly or explicitly still, uncovered by secular culture´s airbrushing features. Back all the way to Jesus who id´d as the Son, with Peter, Paul, et al. And now able to inspire study of Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, and more. James Frederick Ferrier was a philosopher who innovated the term "epistemology." He also developed an argument that human conceptual self-perception as mind is not original, but requires a template. As Thomas Aquinas revised Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause, empiricizing it, then came discussion of God´s Divine Mind, and JFF´s argument. And then we have such spiritual-religious phenomena, ie metaphysical, as medically attested, medically impossible healing with spiritual religious healing. As in OC Simonton MD´s work, L Mehl-Madrona MD´s work, C Crandall MD´s, and L Dossey´s writing about some of many Catholic account´s. So, the non-physical mind begins to become comprehensible as appropriate information is considered.