If you hit your hand against something hard it will cause you to experience a lot of pain. Your hand coming in touch with that hard object is a physical happening that causes your neurons to respond in a particular way. These neurons transmit electrical impulses to your brain making you experience that feeling of pain.

The question is, what precisely is the pain that you experience during that painful encounter? What is the connection between the mind and body?

Great thinkers through the ages have asked two questions about the connection between states of your body like hitting your hand and states of your mind-like experiencing pain. The first question is, are mental states one and the same with physical states? Can pain just be the transmission of electrical impulses to the brain? If that is the case, then it looks like your mind is no more than just your brain. On the other hand, if pain is something more elusive than just the transmission of electrical impulses to the brain, then it can be assumed that your mind is something additional, some force you have extra to a brain and body.

Now for the other question. If the mind is not connected in any way to the brain, how does what happens in your body, particularly things that happen in the brain, have an effect on the mind? Also how does what happens in the mind have an effect on the body? Just say that if the mind is separate from the brain and body, does that mean that it is not matter? If so how does it interact with matter which is what the brain and body is? A few great thinkers are of the idea that the mind and body can work together just as matter can work together with other matter. Other thinkers, referred to as epiphenomenalists are of the idea that it is only the body that can cause changes in the mind, and that the mind has no influence whatsoever over the body.

So far science does not know what the mind really is. This lack of knowledge creates a serious obstacle in the creation of artificial intelligence. Science may be able to make an artificial brain such as a high powered sophisticated computer, but will they in the future be able to make an artificial mind, just like the human mind, to animate it?