What The Mind Is And How It Works Essay, Research Paper

What the Mind is and How it Works

The first section of this book addresses the question whether or not the mind actually exists. Some believe the concept that because the mind does not have physical abundance that it does not exist at all. Bros goes on to say that “If we mistake concepts for fact, we will become increasingly ignorant of reality ” After this one would think that the author would go on to explain his view, however Bros does no such thing and rather leaves the issue hanging.

The book goes on to talk about insults and how they affect our minds and bodies. Insults are not of physical abundance but our mind generates them and the effects occur within our bodies and hurt. Physical harm is controlled in our society and many times emphasized with. However mental harm is not controlled and the results are many a times looked down upon. Bros believes that there is no difference between a physical blow well aimed and a mental blow well aimed. The 1st crushes muscle and blood from the outside, the 2nd from the inside. He also believes that if there is a difference in degree between the two, it favors the first. The damage from a physical blow comes to an end when the physical impact ends. A mental blow reoccurs whenever we think back. Physical blows hurt! Mental blows keep on hurting.

The author also disagrees strongly with the belief that we use only a fraction of our brain-in fact, he refers to it as absurd. He uses Darwin s theory as the basis of his argument. He states that nature does not create a complex of tissue the size of the human brain so that we can utilize 1% of it. I very much agree with Bros on this one.

The rest of the book goes on to explain Peter s theory on how our minds actually work and what there functions are. Despite the big words and rambling on, I still find much of this book very hard to swallow because the author makes no attempt to explain the reasons for his beliefs. He also does not cite facts that backup any of his beliefs making the rest of the book sound much more like a bunch of assumptions. Anyway, Bros goes on to tell us his theory, stated as fact, of what our minds do. First our brain forms a picture of reality, however it can only form one picture at a time. Throughout each day our mind forms consecutive pictures of reality either from events in our lives or either from recall. Our minds can also form pictures from recall of realities that don t exist in reality. And the last function is that it stores pictures of reality for later recall. The book then goes into further explanation of these functions leaving the reader either asleep or wondering what in the heck he or she has just read.

I, personally, did not enjoy this book in least sense of the word and did not feel I really obtained anything from it. What Peter Bros wrote could have been summarized in about a tenth of what he made into a book. This writing contains pages upon pages of useless information that nullifies the reader. On a scale from 1 to 10 I give this book a 4 just because I m a generous guy.