For all of human history it was not even widely accepted that the mind existed in the skull, and until a few hundred years ago it was accepted that what Aristotle told us was true, that the heart is the seat of the soul, or mind - not the brain. Aristotle's statement that the heart is the mind is dead wrong and other Greek philosophers did disagree and accurately did locate the mind in the brain (Aristotle's teacher Plato was one such person, however Aristotle caught on), so seeing the brain as the soul faded from popularity until the 1600's. Now very recently one can no longer argue that the mind IS NOT the brain - or at least an emergent property of the physical brain.I am not committing to materialism here. Which is the view that the brain is necessary and sufficient to produce our minds - there is no soul or ghost in the physical brain system in this view. Yet I am open to any evidence to the contrary.
It seems the mind also hinges on a specific serotonin receptor called Serotonin 2a. This receptor is correlated to all the emotions and traits that humans see as special and novel to us. Serotonin 2a receptors are just 400+ atom bundles that read serotonin and somehow produce conscious, first person experience. Neuroscience is a frontier science. It always will be.
Thanks Brady
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