Animate or inanimate

What is this thing called 'being alive'? There is no doubt we can judge what is and what is not 'alive', I would even consider plants to be animate as they grow and reproduce. Like the chicken and the egg, which came first the brain or the mind? Do we have thoughts because we have a brain, or do we have a brain because of the thoughts? For me, the answer is always that the mind came first, then the brain developed as the best way to control the body. There are lots of questions about why the body is this way and not another, and I would conjecture that there are different bodies with slightly different brains. But without brains the mind cannot control matter, my theory is that mind without body exists, and that this mind enabled the development of plants, animals and humans, but this mind is not able to have complete control over the matter of the universe.

This notion of control has many problems, there are other words like autonomy and authority, but control is the most speculative and therefore is harder to define. We feel control everyday, every minute of everyday because we are using our bodies, our brains are guiding our bodies around the world. But control in a perfect sense, in the kind of sense where control is complete, we would be the best at everything. If the mind could move the body without limitations we would be the best athlete, musician and anything else that requires the movement of the body. So we are limited in our control of the body, practice maybe, and habit, we learn the movements as we grow and then find the movements harder as we get old. In the same vein, I believe the mind is limited by the movements of the brain, mind without body has a purer sense of understanding and judgement, in short the physical nature of the brain means it can be harder to develop knowledge.

God, it must be said, has no body, he is not limited by a material being, but can we say his control is perfect? No, because his design of life is not perfect, he does not have the power to make anything out of everything, it seems to me he relies on probability and possibility, not perfect control. I think what is important is to recognise that humans took a long time to develop our brains and they are highly tuned machines, with lots of cogs and bolts. The great ability to engage the body into movement and to control it's consciousness, is something incredibly unique. So much of our understanding of physics surrounds the inanimate, we understand so much about the objects we interact with. But the cause and purpose of consciousness, can we really understand it as electrical signals buzzing within the brain? I believe what we need is to offer conjecture on the limitations of a physical mind and the limitations of a mind without physics. That is my next step in my own analysis, body without mind, mind and body, mind without body, these are the three categories of my speculation.