In this book, the term “mind” refers to the product of the brain’s functions and processing, along with the nervous system. Everything perceived through the senses is processed in the brain and thus considered part of the mind. I will also use the terms “Space of Awareness” and “Mental Space” interchangeably to describe the concept of a “mind without content.”
If every thought, feeling, image, sound, and taste we experience is considered content, the space of awareness is the substrate where this content emerges. It is clear that the concepts of the mind and the space of awareness do not exist in a tangible, physical sense and are used only to convey the subject matter.
The mind encompasses all perceptions through the five senses, the totality of all beliefs and ideas, and the contents of our memory. Additionally, all experiences that we refer to as emotions also appear in the space of awareness and form part of our mind.
Since the experience of having a body is also processed by the brain, the experiences of pleasure and pain also emerge in the space of awareness and are part of our mind. Therefore, in this book, the body and mind are not considered separate entities; rather, the experience of having a body and everything experienced through it occurs within the mental space. By this, I do not mean to imply that having a body is an illusion; instead, I attempt to explain the nature of the mind.
When you close your eyes, you cannot see your body. This does not mean that you lack a body; it means that the visual aspect of the space of awareness is eliminated. In essence, one of the sources providing awareness—sight—has been removed, and the focus has shifted away from the visual aspect of awareness. Similarly, if you lose your hearing, smell, and touch, you will be unable to hear, smell, or perceive any odors or tastes. In such a condition, where all the inputs from the five senses are impaired, significant information can still appear in the space of awareness. You are not unconscious and retain the ability to think; hence, thoughts will continue to emerge in your space of awareness. You can also experience anger, fear, anxiety, and all other emotions. If you’ve ever practiced mindfulness with your eyes closed, you’ll have realized that thoughts appear continuously in the space of awareness in a chain-like manner. These thoughts can make you angry, hateful, anxious, restless, envious, ashamed, or regretful, or they can lead to joy, delight, and excitement. You may also feel these emotions physically. For example, a thought that makes you angry can increase your heart rate, cause muscle contraction, or alter your breathing rhythm. Similarly, excitement or physical activity can have similar effects on our bodies. What distinguishes these two is the mental context, or what we call “Context.”
Given the importance of understanding mental context, I will delve into this topic in the next section.
Now, imagine a scenario where, in addition to the five senses, your body is entirely paralyzed, and you cannot feel or move your body. In other words, you are not only in complete darkness and silence, but you also cannot feel your body or move it. In this state, thoughts and emotions still emerge in the space of awareness, even though visual, auditory, tactile, and motor aspects do not provide additional information to this content.
From an external viewpoint, you are a motionless body, but from a first-person perspective, which is your space of awareness, you are an unbounded, dark, and silent space where thoughts emerge.
If the emergence of thoughts were to cease, you could, in full wakefulness and alertness, experience the infinite, borderless absolute space of awareness.
“This experiment can practically be conducted with a specific dose of ketamine.”
Throughout the content discussed here and in all parts of the book, everything is examined from a first-person perspective—the viewpoint of the individual experiencing it. The third-person perspective, on the other hand, involves examining another individual. It is clear that when we examine a person from a third-person perspective, we view them as an object that is moving, influencing, and being influenced by their surroundings. When we look at a human being, we only see a moving object, whereas when we view the world from within a human being, we see the entire universe.
As humans, in the early years of our lives, we can only perceive the world from a first-person perspective. Gradually, as our brains develop and our abilities for imagination and self-awareness grow, we learn to see ourselves from a third-person perspective. As far as we know, most animals can only perceive the world from a first-person perspective, so the concept of a third-person perspective would be completely meaningless to them. This ability in humans forms the foundation of many of our achievements.
We slowly realize that what we receive through our senses—what we call the surrounding world—reacts to our actions. Our mothers and fathers react differently to our laughter and crying; animals and insects flee; objects fall, and some things cause an unpleasant sensation called pain. Gradually, we realize that this is not the end of the matter; things in this surrounding world also react to our appearance (including our face, body, and clothing) and our behaviors (including movement, language, body language, and facial expressions), and this is how the sense of having a “self” begins to take shape in us.
Over time, we conclude not only that “I can somewhat control my environment,” but we also begin to observe this constructed self from a third-person perspective and attempt to judge ourselves from this viewpoint
Clarifying the viewpoint in philosophical discussion is very important because when we view a human from a third-person perspective, we are inevitably limited to their behavior, and this shifts us from the realm of philosophy to the social sciences. If we examine their physiological changes within the domains of medicine and neuroscience, we can, at best, gather information about their physiology through experiments, scans, and sensors—not about their mental content. (It is evident that as of writing this book, accessing the mental content of an individual is not possible, though it may not be far-fetched in the future.)
We must also remember that the third-person perspective also appears within the first-person perspective of each individual. This means that if you are observing and analyzing the behavior of another human being, that other human being appears as content in your space of awareness, within the context of your mental framework.
This point is quite clear, but it needs to be reiterated: we have access only to our own minds and spaces of awareness, and whatever others tell us about their experiences are stories conveyed to us through language and words, which will inevitably differ from what we experience. From this point on, I will refer to this reality as “second-hand knowledge.” Therefore, everything you are currently reading is being processed by your brain and understood based on your knowledge, lived experience, and comprehension, and it is placed within your mind. What we call the mind or space of awareness is unique and exclusive to each individual; no one else can experience what we experience. I will refer to this unique experience as “first-hand knowledge.”
First-hand and second-hand knowledge do not have superiority over each other; they are not only complementary but also interact extensively and overlap in many ways. What we experience is not separate from our lived experience in society.
Not all mental content is necessarily stored and processed in our brains. Instead, we have an extended mind or extended minds responsible for a significant portion of storing and processing our mental content. A classic example of this type of mind is found in traditional forms such as stories and customs passed down orally through generations, books, and paintings, and in more modern forms like tapes, CDs, computers, smartphones, cloud storage, and artificial intelligence. A substantial amount of the information we use daily is provided to us through these tools. These tools, which are interconnected and also linked with the tools of others, create a complex and close-knit network between human minds through the internet.
I was born in a decade when the only means of communication between human minds were direct contact, books, radio, television, and the telephone. After several decades, these tools have completely transformed. It is true that a simple address book could also serve as an extended mind, and books have been the most valuable extended mind of humanity over the past few centuries, but these tools are miles apart from what we have today.
Humans have long sought to extend their minds in various ways. All the drawings and carvings we made on cave walls thousands of years ago were part of our mental content. Now, thousands of years later, we can not only store a large portion of our mental content in an infinite space, but we can also share it with all humans on Earth and even on other planets. We have created tools that can learn our mental patterns and even think and make decisions on our behalf. Artificial intelligence not only has access to the minds of billions of living humans online but also contains the knowledge of the minds of billions who lived in the past and recorded their thoughts.
In this book, when I speak of artificial intelligence, I include the internet and computer networks. Artificial intelligence and the internet are inseparable to the extent that the internet can be seen as the space of awareness and mental content of artificial intelligence. From my perspective, the creation of artificial intelligence is not only the most significant event of the century but also the most important and impactful event in history. An event that not only can overshadow the destiny of humanity but also has the potential to change the course of evolution. I will further elaborate on the subject of artificial intelligence and its connection to evolution in subsequent sections.
