Mind

A mind is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory—a characteristic of sentience, but which also may apply to other lifeforms.

The main question regarding the nature of mind is its relation to the physical brain and nervous system – a question which is often framed as the mind–body problem, which considers whether mind is somehow separate from physical existence, deriving from and/or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity, or whether the mind is identical with the brain or some activity of the brain. Another question concerns which types of beings are capable of having minds. Even today, with all of the advances in psychology and psionics, these questions are unanswered.

Whatever its relation to the physical body it is generally agreed that mind is that which enables a being to have subjective awareness and intentionality towards their environment, to perceive and respond to stimuli with some kind of agency, and to have consciousness, including thinking and feeling.

The description and definition is also a part of psychology where psychologists have developed influential theories about the nature of the sentient mind.

The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different racial, cultural and religious traditions. Some see mind as a property exclusive to sentients whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities, to animals and to deities. Some of the earliest recorded speculations linked mind (sometimes described as identical with soul or spirit) to theories concerning both life after death, and cosmological and natural order.