MIND

In current English usage the word "mind" means something entirely
subjective. This usage is comparatively recent, probably not more than
about 400 years. The ancient Greek word "nous" is often translated as
"mind" but this is inaccurate. "Nous" meant something better conveyed
as "intellect" (that which thinks) but that automatically implied the
objective part of the psyche. There simply is no equivalent in Ancient
Greek for our use of the word "mind".

According to Joe Sachs in his enlightening translation of "On the
Soul", Green Lion Press, 2001; whereas Aristotle uses over two dozen
words for 'thinking' - one primary, the "energeia nous" (often
translated as "actual mind" or "active mind" but far better as
"being-at-work thinking") and many degradations and broadenings from
this. Degradations is an accurate word because the energeia nous alone
is permanent and true, in Aristotle's book. I say these things because
Sachs description of Aristotle is very similar to my learning from
Steiner. Sachs writes on page 201-2

<< thinking (noein, noesis) This is Aristotle's broadest word for
thinking of any kind, from the contemplative act that merges with the
thing it thinks (429b 3-7, 430a 19-20 431b 17), through all the ways
of dividing up and putting back together those intelligible wholes
(430b 1-4), to mere imagining (427a 27-28); but it is also used in its
most governing sense for the primary kind of thinking that underlies
them all (430a 25), as a synonym for contemplation (theoria, an
intellectual _seeing - MMcC) ... Modern philosphers such as Descartes
and Locke homogenize the objects of all these into the contents of
consciousness or "ideas in the mind". >>

It is this sense of the mind as a dogmatic abstraction from its
concrete reality that I struggle to overcome in myself. Essentially my
whole world view turns upon a single observation, one which it takes a
certain effort to make: namely that thinking (in the primary sense
given above) is an entirely self-sustaining essence. It does not
require me nor anyone else but, rather I and all others exist and know
we exist through it. I insist that is an observation, an experience
and not therefore a matter of faith or belief. Unlike sense perception
which gives us observations for which we ourselves make no special
effort, this one requires that we do. Yet without it each of us is
trapped in our single world views and cannot appreciate philosophy as
a whole, comprising all world views, each with its own time and place.
That thinking is a self-sustaining essence ought to be the fundamental
proposition of all philosophy and it is so entirely irrespective of
the world view.

To move back to what you wrote, I had describe mind a potential (from
Sachs I would use the better word potency, a sort of inner force or
energy) and you thought it might be like a reservoir.

Valtermar:
<< From your description, I gather you take the word "mind" as
representing something like a "container" where memories are stored in
an organized way. It starts as an empty reservoir (the central "dot"
alone) and it grows as experiences are registered there in an
associative way. >>

Perhaps if I'd thought of the word "potency" then the spatial metaphor
of a reservoir might not have been so seductive. In one way it has its
clarity but it is important to me that the sense of movement and
action and so I am uncomfortable that the image of reservoir does not
convey what I intend. Yet I agree that in, at least a one-sided way,
it has merit.

Again the idea of the relation between the mind and brain as similar
to software and hardware has many strengths, yet there is something
which disturbs me and I have returned to this time and again without
ever becoming clear just what. For one thing, software and hardware
each require a designer and usually they are separate people.
Evolution gives us the appearance of design without a designer but I
do not get how it divides into two in the manner to create a mind and
brain. It is a matter I need to think on again.

The nature of knowledge is the most central question of all.

Best Wishes
Maurice