Some philosophical ideas about human Mind

...The upshot is that while many ‘perceptions’ can be simultaneously in the mind, the mind can only pay attention to one of these perceptions at a time. The simultaneous perceptions are successively attended to, but to the mind it seems as though the attendings-to of each perception occur simultaneously. Thus, there must be some account of how it is that what is in fact a succession seems to the mind like a simultaneity, and an awkward distinction is necessary between the simultaneously given perceptions and our subsequent consciousness of those perceptions. Briefly, Stewart’s account of this phenomenon is as follows. All the point-perceptions are present in the mind simultaneously. The mind quickly and willfully moves attention from one of these perceptions to the next. Each of the acts of will corresponding to a shift of attention is so brief that it falls beneath the minimally discernible duration (Reid’s MDD) and is therefore not remembered by the mind as an individual act of will, or as a distinct act of attention. However, once the spotlight of attention shines on a perception, that perception (and the point that it is a perception of) gets remembered by the mind. Though each of the perceptions is noted by attention at a different time – there is in fact a succession of perception-attendings – these attendings are not noted as distinct because the
interval between them is too brief, beneath the MDD, even though they are sufficiently long as to be subsequently remembered. In this way the mind takes itself to have noticed all the perceptions simultaneously. consciousness is not a faculty that is aware of, or perceives, sensations, but rather is constituted by the having of sensations, let us imagine a human being born with his faculties perfect as in mature life, and let ussuppose a sensation to arise for the first time in his mind. … let us suppose the sensation to be …
that which the fragrance of a rose excites. … there will be, in this first momentary state, no separation of self and the sensation, – no little proposition formed in the mind, I feel or I am conscious of a feeling, – but the feeling and the sentient I, will, for the moment, be the same. (Brown, Human Mind, 297)

… because the knowledge of self, as distinct from the particular feelings, implies the remembrance of former feelings, – of feelings which, together with the present, we ascribe to one thinking principle…
Let us … suppose another sensation to be excited, as, for instance, that which is produced by the sound of a flute. The mind either will be completely absorbed in this new sensation, without any subsequent remembrance, … or the remembrance of the former feeling will arise. If the remembrance of the former feeling arise, and the two different feelings be considered by the mind at once, it will now … conceive the two sensations, which it recognizes as different in themselves, to have yet belonged to the same being. … The notion of self, as the lasting subject of successive transient feelings, being now, and not till now, acquired, through the remembrance of former sensations … In these circumstances, the memory of the past will often mingle with
and modify the present … (Brown, Human Mind, 297-8)

There is a persisting mind capable ofbeing the subject of multiple sensations synchronically and diachronically (where ‘is the subject of’ is not to be understood as ‘perceiving’ or otherwise ‘acting on’). But the mind does not necessarily conceive of itself as such, as a self, mind or subject. What allows the mind to conceive of itself as a self is its having of a present sensation along with a remembrance of a prior sensation. In these conditions the mind is forced to recognize itself as the persisting unity underlying the diversity of sensations There is, indeed, one other sense in which we often talk of our consciousness of a feeling, and a sense in which it must be allowed that the consciousness is not precisely the same as the feeling itself. This is, when we speak of a feeling, not actually existing at present, but past – as when we say, that we are conscious of having seen, or heard, or done something. Such a use of the term, however, is pardonable only in the privileged looseness and inaccuracy of familiar conversation; the consciousness, in this case, being precisely synonymous with remembrance or memory, and not a power different from remembrance. … (Brown, Human Mind, 302-3

When we think of feelings long past, it is impossible for us not to be aware that our mind is then truly retrospective … But when the retrospect is of very recent feelings – of feelings, perhaps, that existed as distinct states of the mind, the very moment before our retrospect began, the short interval is forgotten, and we think that that primary feeling, and our consideration of the feeling, are strictly simultaneous. … When it is any thing more than the sensation, thought, or emotion,
of which we are said to be conscious, it is a brief and rapid retrospect. (Brown,Human Mind,303)

Memory for Brown is a matter of the presence of a feeling whose intentional object is another, previously experienced, feeling. But crucially this diagnosis draws a distinction between two mnemonic phenomena: those for which the temporal interval between the memory-feeling and the remembered feeling is noticed because it is great enough, and those for which the temporal interval is so brief that the temporal interval is not noticed. The latter sort of case, which Brown describes as a rapid retrospect, results in a situation where the mind takes itself to simultaneously have a feeling and another mental state that has this feeling as its intentional object. This invites the confused suggestion that the mind in its usual mode of operation consists of the perception of perceptions