Here are yet a few more of my thoughts and comments on the general topics dealing with the mind, consciousness and personal identity.
Can the Mind Heal the Body?
Can the mind heal the body, or can the immaterial affect the material? Thinking in its own right is material since it requires and uses up energy (the brain is a very energy intensive body organ for its size). What is being thought is probably of an immaterial nature. The concept of the mind healing the body is immaterial. Thinking about how the mind can heal the body is material. The mind actually healing the body should be entirely physio-chemical in nature - of material stuff.
Put another way, anything immaterial about the brain/mind and/or the body has to exist and operate independently of an energy (and therefore matter) supply.
Presumably pure thought cannot create any molecules or bio-chemicals that the brain, or body, hasn't already the ways and means to produce. I mean I can't think the way to having my body produce uranium hexafluoride even if my body does contain traces of uranium and fluorine! Though it would be nice, I can't by thought alone turn the high-calorie sugars in my soft drinks into the dietary zero-calorie kind once I've consumed the former. I can't drink methyl alcohol and then turn it into ethyl alcohol.
Conversely, I cannot by pure thought split my water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen or the salty parts of my body into chlorine and sodium or my fatty cells into waste products my body can quickly eliminate (and thus effortlessly lose weight).
It would also be nice if we could will our bodies to manufacture aspirin as required (and save a trip to the pharmacist), or Omega-3, or antioxidants or antihistamines or any one of thousands of extremely expensive prescription medicines we all need from time to time. We can't, so we often succumb or rely instead on the placebo effect - if we think it will work, it will work. We all tend to take various supplements to prevent or cure this, that or the next thing even if clinical trials tend to show such supplements are a waste of money and just produce rather expensive urine. If we take a sugar pill but think its aspirin, then the pain still goes away. But can it really? A sugar pill can't really alleviate a headache like an aspirin can, at least that's the commonsense viewpoint.
So can the mind really heal the body (to a limited extent otherwise we'd all be immortal curing our aliments and ills via thought alone every day, even the most hideous of diseases from cancer to Ebola)? If the mind-over-matter placebo effect even partially works (albeit to that same limited extent) how is this explained? Anytime the nebulous or immaterial can influence the material, well commonsense tells you that something is screwy somewhere.
But if the mind and the body are both immaterial, or both composed of the same stuff (bits and bytes instead of quarks and electrons) then there is scope for some acceptance or belief that the mind can heal the body since both the mind and the body are run by programmable software. We might have limited scope to influence our programming akin to how our free will operates within our simulated landscape. This of course assumes that we exist as virtual beings in a simulated landscape, or what I term the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 1
According to some, dreams are not as vivid as we think they are. Try telling that to a child having nightmares! Some say we are seeing next-to-nothing in our dreams, but please note the logic here that next-to-nothing isn't nothing. I don't care if you rate the vividness of dreaming as 1 out of 10, or 9 out of ten, it is not zero!
Physics is the whole story because it came first. There was a time when there was physics but no life, and certainly no us. We, as a life form, are an emergent phenomena out of the laws, principles and relationships of physics. Physics exists very nicely without humans and will continue to exist even when we go kaput. Humans on the other hand can't survive and thrive without physics.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 2
The cosmos is all there is and ever will be.
The cosmos can exist, does exist, and maybe is even required to exist, because the laws, principles and relationships of physics make it so.
The cosmos and the laws, principles and relationships of physics are a quasi-chicken-and-egg issue since both came into existence simultaneously if the Big Bang event was an actual happening.
We call this existence reality.
The cosmos-physics relationship makes this reality a deterministic one, so there is no free will.
The non-material (i.e. - the mind) too has reality since it is part of the cosmos.
Causality operates in the realm of the non-material as well as in the realm of the material.
That means there must be some sort of laws, principles and relationships of yet undiscovered physics or exotic physics (like for example the speculations about dark matter and dark energy) that governs the non-material - or maybe it’s software.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness?
One little point may not have occurred to most people reading this. We are not actually an organism. We are a colony of billions, actually trillions of organisms - we call them cells. So, even though we may be totally unconscious, our body, our trillions of cells, are still aware of the state of the environment and act accordingly. Cells need oxygen, they are aware when their oxygen supply is low, so they collectively make sure we keep on breathing even though we're asleep, etc. There's no difference in principle between a plant cell being aware and acting accordingly and a human cell being aware and acting accordingly. So, the Royal "we" might not be aware when asleep or passed out drunk, but the essential units that make us up, our cells, are still aware. If they weren't, we'd be up fertiliser creek without a canoe. So yes, the Royal "we" do survive without consciousness but you'd better pray like hell that our cells keep on keeping on, or else look forward to an immediate afterlife!
Is There Anything Non-Physical About the Mind?
If you want evidence that’s suggestive that there is a non-material part of you then consider this: All common pets – cats and dogs – have their very own unique personality. Yet any veterinary surgeon doing an autopsy on their brain will find zero, zip, and zilch of that personality in there. Einstein’s brain was removed (illegally) after his death but has since been studied extensively and there is no cerebral physics to be uncovered anywhere within. Finally, you do not have free will since none of your trillions of body cells can have free will. Zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. Unless of course your alleged free will is just one of those nebulous non-physical attributes you have.
Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem
If one requires that only something physical can interact with something physical, that the body / brain can only interact with the mind (and vice versa) if both are composed of stuff, then it might be postulated or speculated that this 'immaterial' essence we ascribe to the mind is actually material but composed of such an exotic nature, with such an exotic structure, such an exotic substance that it lies outside the boundary of physics and chemistry as we know it. Perhaps it might be something akin to this exotic and mysterious dark matter that no one can pin down even though some of it has to, if it exists at all, be incorporated throughout Planet Earth we inhabit, hence this exotic matter would be incorporated within our own bodies and brains. So maybe, dark matter or something closely related is the stuff of the mind - maybe.
Does ESP Reveal the Non-physical?
Many people over many eras on many topics have suggested that, other than perhaps extending the decimal places down another notch or so, that was that. Discovery had come to an end. So, one, based on these historical examples of "oops", should always expect the unexpected. Discoveries march on.
Now my definition of "non-physical" is apparently not the same as some other definitions. My definition of "non-physical" is the void or a perfect vacuum that contains nothing of structure or substance. That is, no particles; no forces; no fields; no nothing. Since the existence of ESP would have to somehow involve interactions with particles, forces or fields, ESP, if it exists, is a something with structure and substance. Therefore, the possible existence of ESP cannot reveal the non-physical, the void, the perfect vacuum.
However, some apparently link ESP with the Higgs field which is a something IMHO. So the existence of ESP would just be another manifestation of particles / forces / fields interacting. I'd be rather surprised if science would actually define the Higgs Field as something non-physical, but perhaps others are more clued about such things than I am.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 1?
What's that famous inscription at Delphi, ancient Greece - "Know Thyself". Of course while you are the best person available that can come to terms with the real nature, albeit ever changing nature of yourself, probably most people most of the time use their minds to try to come to terms with people, places, things, patterns, creations, concepts, etc. other than themselves.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 2?
Memory and self-awareness / self-identity are clearly linked as cases of amnesia clearly demonstrate. Any time you lose your consciousness / memory you lose your sense of self. You have no sense of self when asleep or when passed out drunk or when knocked out or when under a general anaesthesia since your memory isn't active or functional under those circumstances. So, consciousness cannot be the be-all-and-end-all of reality since you're not always conscious.