Kinds of creatures and kinds of minds Are they all of the thinking kind?
Darwinian minds are the first they say
The simplest forms; the simplest minds
Learning all, from past generations
They survive merely by genetic adaptations
Skinnerian minds still lean from real time trial and error
They learn within a lifetime, but are not yet clever
Popperian minds have conjecture and refutation
They can predict the future by empirical contemplation
Gregorian minds Learn from the past and predict the future
An evolutionary product of nature and nurture
From contemplation to self-conscious self-perception
They are a reverberating loop of self-representation
And finally, the one and only enlightened kind
The venerable and undivided Buddha mind
The one beyond cognitive self-representation
The one that sees the undivided whole and its interpenetration
The one beyond delusion and egocentric illusion
The Buddha mind!! The one and only universal solution!!
This is a poem on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Its describes the different kinds of minds and their evolutionary hierarchy. The ideas expressed here are from philosphy professor Daniel Dennett adapted to include eastern philosophical principles of interdependence
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