What is "Mind?"

You are not aware of the electrochemical events occurring at each of the trillion synapses in your brain at this moment. But you are aware, however dimly, of sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, and moods. At the level of your experience, you are not a body of cells, organelles, and atoms; you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents, passing through various stages of wakefulness and sleep, and from cradle to grave.

The universe is filled with physical phenomena that appear devoid of consciousness. From the birth of stars and planets, to the early stages of cell division in a human embryo, the structures and processes we find in Nature seem to lack an inner life. At some point in the development of certain complex organisms, however, consciousness emerges. This miracle does not depend on a change of materials—for you and I are built of the same atoms as a fern or a ham sandwich. Rather, it must be a matter of organization. Arranging atoms in a certain way appears to bring consciousness into being. And this fact is among the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate.

How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? Not only do we have no idea, but it seems impossible to imagine what sort of idea could fit in the space provided.

"What intelligible account can the mechanistic theory of life give of the…recovery from disease and injuries? Simply none at all, except that these phenomena are so complex and strange that as yet we cannot understand them. It is exactly the same with the closely related phenomena of reproduction. We cannot by any stretch of the imagination conceive a delicate and complex mechanism which is capable, like a living organism, of reproducing itself indefinitely often."

"Scarcely twenty years passed before our imaginations were duly stretched. Much work in biology remains to be done, of course, but anyone who entertains vitalism at this point stands convicted of basic ignorance about the nature of living systems."

Science is the epitome of the use of reason that has gone too far.

...not the problem, per se, but the assumption that things / objects exist concretely and independently, rather than as a continuous whole.

We forget that the objects we apply our reasoning to are conceits and conveniences. When people are serious and think that objects are independent and solid, then we're on our way to hell.

"For those who believe that regular science describes reality, it is a naive point of view."

It seems that the higher the level of education one has, the less one really understands about the broader context in which the world and we reside.

The mind-brain does not produce consciousness.

"We would never have occasion to say of something that does not eat, excrete, grow, or reproduce that it might nevertheless be “alive.” It might, however, be conscious."

The whole idea of "purpose" and "programming" assumes a grand intentionality.

"The 'reasons' that we invoke are reasons that are not represented in the mind of God nor are they represented anywhere until they're represented by the biologists that figure them out."

what is being pointed at?

Mind is not totally reductive to objective/mechanical functioning.