Brain is equivalent to computer hardware; mind is the software it generates.
What “software" the brain *can *generate is restricted by genetic inheritance, though still capable of myriad manifestations. The brain and mind interact in a feedback-feed forward manner. Mind is capable of affecting body chemistry to some extent. This happens when we are angry, afraid and sexually aroused, for example. This is a case of the software instructing the hardware how to function. The hardware in turn influences the action of the software.
The issue of consciousness is another matter and a very profound one. In Western thought, both religious and scientific, consciousness is viewed to be an epiphenomenon of matter (in the form of a central nervous system which salient component is the brain). In Eastern metaphysical religious/philosophical thought, it is the exact opposite; i.e., matter is viewed to be an epiphenomenon of consciousness. (“Brahman” in Hindu religious parlance.) This belief system can be referred to as idealism, and there are corresponding beliefs within dissenting Western thought. Consciousness is the primal reality; matter (and the material world) is the illusion.
Although Catholic, I have often been tempted towards idealism. When one thinks about it, consciousness is the arena where everything takes place. Without it, we could not attest to the existence of anything. Some have tried to position scientific support for such a view with the emergence of quantum physics. Some interpretations of the renowned double-split experiment positions that nothing actually occurs within reality until some conscious being observes it. Thus, for example, a flipped coin is neither heads nor tails until someone observes one of the possible outcomes.
Those who have found such a seemingly metaphysical explanation for material reality to be unpalatable have positioned competing interpretations for the experiment’s seemingly bizarre ramifications. Chief among these today is the “Many-Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics which states that all possible outcomes of any action (event) occur in “parallel universes,” and we cannot detect such from an empirical perspective because we too split with each different outcome of the event. Thus, we are not aware of the existence of our alternate selves in other universes, just as real as are own.
For example, those reading this note are living in an universe where President Obama won the last American presidential election. Others are in parallel universes where Senator McCain prevailed, and still others in which Senator Clinton did among myriad other possibilities.
