The Mind’s Irreducible Structure

Abstract

The human mind is one of our most compelling subjects of scientific inquiry—and perhaps our most elusive. Despite impressive biological advances, neuroscience has yet to produce a logical and empirical analysis of the mind that exhibits universal, objective explanatory power of human mental phenomena on both an individual and species level. This article first explores the limitations of the current neuroscientific approach to the human mind and then argues for a reconceptualization of the relationship between human mental phenomena and the brain. Here I introduce a new interpretation of neuroscientific data and argue that this framework has the capacity to causally explain the link between social, psychological and biological levels of analysis.