Being alive is a 4-D process
Life is a subjective experience of being in the present. Death is a subjective experience of nothingness.Life is produced by a mind which is an activity of matter in space and time. Even though life depends on the existence of matter, it's only the activity of that matter in time and space that causes life to exist.
A popular notion among people who ponder nature of minds is that mind is a pattern of brain structure. This view is fundamentally wrong because a brain structure is static while minds and life are dynamic processes, a claim that is continually validated by our daily experience. As living creatures we sense, think and experience emotions not statically, but dynamically. What that dynamic nature of mind implies is a necessary time component by which that nature can be fully described. This is true of all sentient or nonsentient processes. Something cannot be considered a process if that something doesn't change in time.
But time isn't the only concept by which we can describe full nature of minds. The other components that allow minds to exist are matter and space. Electrical signals that course through brain's network of synapses and neurons are nothing more than energy and matter traveling in space as part of a mind-producing process.
Time, matter and 3-dimensional space are all necessary conditions that allow a full and true description of the mind. But what is mind exactly? A unifying concept that brings time, matter, energy and space together in order to describe the mind is one of a process, a specific kind of activity of energy and matter in space and time. Minds aren't static 3D structures, but 4-dimensional objects/processes and any analysis that fails to account for all these dimensions cannot paint a true picture of what mind really is and is unable to offer adequate methods of extending its survival.
posted by Heartland @ 6:18 PM
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