The mind has always been a great puzzle for those who try to comprehend it. What is it? Is it a separate entity from the brain, or are they the same entity? Why are there the mind, the consciousness, and the phenomena called qualia? What is the purpose of having them in this universe? How do they occur? And many other questions.
Fortunately, for centuries, a lot of neuroscientists and other scientists and researchers in related fields have gathered a lot of information related to these questions, and they and many philosophers have formed a lot of useful ideas and theories regarding these questions. So, we now have a wealth of scientific evidence and concepts that are complete enough to form a theory that can resolve this great puzzle.
I think that many concepts in this theory, such as that the mind is closely associated with the brain and that mental phenomena are closely related to neuronal functions, have been around in the scientific community and have been the bases for experiments regarding the mind and mental processes for a long time. However, they have never been proved explicitly and rigorously. Also, although there are many scientific theories about some important aspects of the mind, such as about qualia and consciousness, there has never been a basic theory that systematically deals with the fundamental nature of the mind as a whole. Therefore, I consider that it is necessary to prove the basic concepts about the mind as a whole scientifically and state them definitely as a theory with organized theorems so that they can be understood clearly and quickly and can be the targets for further scientific investigations. By doing this, some new concepts such as that mental processes are the information-processing processes of neural circuits and that qualia are some forms of neural signaling patterns have emerged. They are found to be the keys to understand the important issues such as the nature of the mind and the hard problem of consciousness. Also, I think that an explicit theory will help future generations and new investigators in this field quickly get the idea of what the current scientific concepts regarding these matters are, what concepts are still incomplete, and what remains to be done. In addition, I hope that this theory will help the general public understand the concepts easily in a short time and that they will become more interested in this important issue of life.
This theory is a physical theory, not a philosophical or psychological theory. Its main objectives are to answer the questions, based on scientific evidence, of what the mind and its associated phenomena, such as qualia and consciousness, are, why they occur, how they occur, and other related questions. It is a basic theory that deals with only the fundamental concepts; it does not answer the specific questions such as what exact neural circuits create qualia and consciousness or what the exact characteristics of signaling patterns that can create them are. However, at present, great advances are being made regarding these specific questions, and one can find the present or potential answers in the current literature in cognitive neuroscience and related fields.
Whether this theory is correct or not remains to be verified by experiments. Nevertheless, whether the theory is finally proved to be correct, partially correct, or incorrect, I really hope that it will lead to discussions and experiments that will help advance our understanding of the mind.
Chirapat Ukachoke
October 18, 2018