I was trying to articulate a non-mechanistic conception of the mind in a conversation yesterdays. I attempted to describe how the mind isn’t simply taking idea as inputs and generating outputs, since there’s a whole emotional dimension at play. My conversation partner quickly reduced the idea to having emotions as inputs and ideas as programs, he left some space for a non-deterministic component but I came away with the impression he was enamoured with the idea of the mind machine.

In the wake of this conversation, I thought of a clearer analogy for the organic mind: a potter. The mind is like an artesian who takes emotional clay and shapes it based on the ideas and experiences he’s been exposed to. The pots (thoughts) formed around the same idea may have the same general structure, but the substance and craftsmanship makes each one unique.

Of course, there’s still the outstanding matter of the being mind joined with the emotions, but all analogies reach their limit somewhere.

On a broader note, I can’t fathom why so many people are fascinated with the view that the mind and human beings are machines to be programmed. This type of thinking only emerged into mainstream consciousness in the last 150 years; it feels like most have already forgot that humans came before machines, not after. Maybe on some level it’s an escape from uncertainty. You just have to find a useful set of instructions for your organic computer and you’ll live the “right” way. In my experience, this reduces life down to a matter of picking and choosing the correct patterns of behavior, ignoring both the internal and external worlds.

I theorize another reason so many hold this belief is that trauma does cause the mind to behave in a semi-mechanistic manner. I think that free-will is a matter of degree based on the individual’s health -including spiritual. If someone has been repeatedly traumatized to the point where they can’t consciously process experiences related to a certain domain of life the mind will trigger programs in a machine-like manner. But again this is incidental and not the intended state of being.

Man is made in the image of God, not machine. It’s not profitable to compare ourselves to, or strive to become like, our creations. We should be looking towards our transcendent Creator for insight into the wholeness of our beings.