The Contents of the Mind

The mind may appear very complex, like there are many different parts at work, from the memory to perception to intuition and everything in between. For David Hume there were only two parts to the mind, the impressions, which is the vivid feeling of sensation, and the Ideas, which are the less vivid interpretations of the impressions. Ideas would cut and paste the impressions so as to create an understanding of the physical world. Immanuel Kant however, saw the mind as a number of different levels, from the perception which was direct from sensation, to the pure concepts of the understanding, which was the abstract world of the a priori.

For me, there is a distinction between the sensations and the abstract, in the sensations there is a complex physical world, full of individual objects. And there is the abstract mind, where concepts are organized to produce an understanding of the whole of existence. At the one end, that of perception, there is the judgement, it is the focus of the mind, full of particulars and it's main concern is to change the world, or at least to know what is within the sensation. The other end is the understanding, which attempts to contain all the judgments into a single belief, or principle, or at least only a few principles But it goes both ways, so we are able to understand our judgements as much as we can judge or understanding.

There is of course another separation in our minds, not only do we want to understand the physical world, but there is also the moral world. For some people the rules of physics are as strong as the rules of morality, they are both universal laws. But the moral mind is concerned with better and worse, can I make the world a nicer place, am I making people happier by my actions? These are judgements of change, not just judgments of what is this objects composition, what is this object made from? Of course better and worse is a part of physical study, can I understand this object better? Change happens without making the world better or worse, I consider this necessity it is without choice, I am still searching for where choice lies in the concept of mind.