Shades of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Complexities of Kinds of Minds

Abstract

Minds are associated with human beings, and scholars are mainly engaged in understanding human minds. However, there are also possibilities of existence of minds of others such as animals, creatures and non-biological entities. The problem of the “other minds” is well known within the philosophy of mind. In this paper, I would like to engage in ontological and epistemological queries of kinds of minds from different perspectives including: evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and the science of complexity and information. I postulate four hypotheses for the existence of minds based on complexity and material properties, rather than relying on causal properties and a complex adaptive information processing system. I consider the essence of mind to be conscious experience instead of cognitive functions alone. I argue that a complex adaptive information processing system is a pre-requisite for a mind to exist, but not a sufficient condition.