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If we think in the way that Lev Vygotsky (1962) proposed, mind isn't a container in which memories, thoughts, plans, and impressions can be inserted or from which they can be retrieved. It IS these memories, thoughts, plans, and impressions. If the brain is the hardware and the processes that run beneath the surface of consciousness are the software, mind is the set of results that the software produces. These results are the mind. They are what we experience consciously. And, better still, in our communications with each other, we can exchange pieces of mind. Intimacy with someone means being with that person in a way that we can say whatever one's mind produces. A novel or film is a largish piece of mind, which the writer elaborates and offers to readers or watchers, who can adopt it and make their own.
Two recent pieces of work point towards this being a good way to think about mind and consciousness.
The first is by Roy Baumeister and E.J. Masicampo (2010). They proposed that the way to resolve the problems set by recent findings that actions can occur before decisions to initiate these actions are made consciously, and that people sometimes respond to social situations and act in ways that they do not consciously understand, can be resolved by giving up the idea that the function of consciousness is to make decisions. Instead, they propose, its function is to run a simulation in which past memories are integrated with future plans, and in which we mentally elaborate what we see and hear of others and what we might do and say. Results of this simulation do affect how we decide, but mostly this occurs indirectly, and it takes some time for the conscious processes to shape the mind such that the decision-making processes are affected.
I have proposed (Oatley, 1999) that fiction, too, is a kind of simulation, one that runs not on a computer but on the cognitive processes of the mind. So when we read a novel, or watch a movie, we put aside our own projects, and take on those of fictional characters, as we run the simulation which is the story.
In a large meta-analysis of fMRI results, of-as it were-the hardware that supports these processes, Raymond Mar (2011) has found that an idea that fMRI researchers have been proposing recently has a good deal of evidence in favor of it. This idea is of a core network that supports autobiographical memory, finding one's way around, future planning, and daydreaming. He has shown, too, that this same network also supports the understanding of narrative.
The most parsimonious conclusion is that a narrative is a piece of mind which we can take in with the help of our language interface, and which we can run on our own hardware and software.
Baumeister, R. F., & Masicampo, E. J. (2010). Conscious thought is for facilitating social and cultural interactions: How mental simulations serve the animal-culture interface. Psychological Review, 117, 945-971.
Mar, R. (2011). The neural bases of social cognition and story comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, In press.
Oatley, K. (1999). Why fiction may be twice as true as fact: Fiction as cognitive and emotional simulation. Review of General Psychology, 3, 101-117.
Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language (E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Image: Lev Vygotsky
