Mind
The word 'mind', as an abstract noun, refers to no observable physical entity, but to a faculty of human beings associated with their ability to think, broadly defined, and relatedly, to their ability to experience events of reality non-consciously, consciously, and self-consciously.
In verbal forms, 'mind' also relates to the ability of humans to think, characterized in different senses of the verb by different aspects of the thinking process. Such phrases as "mind what I tell you", "mind your own business", "minded the babysitter", "mind your manners", "he doesn't mind taking out the garbage" — typically refer to some aspect of thinking, or to a requirement for thinking, as indicated through paraphrasing the utterance in terms of thinking. "Mind what I tell you", for example, paraphrases to "Think about what I tell you, and think about the consequences of not doing so", in both expressions the precise aspect of 'thinking', or requirement for 'thinking', given by the context embedding the utterance. "Mind the icy walkway", "think about how you walk on the icy path".
The verbal forms of 'mind' long predated the noun form. Before the sixteenth century, people did not consider themselves as possessing minds, and 'mind' was used exclusively as a verb, 'minding', 'to mind' (Szasz 1996).
Nominalization of verbs, typically creating an abstract entity, reifying the action/activity into a 'thing', appears as a natural tendency in humans, exemplified as such nominalizations/reifications as thinking to thought, living to life, experiencing consciously to consciousness. In the case of nominalizing minding to mind, studies of the nature and meaning of mind often stray from considerations of the nature and meaning of the reality of the action, becoming abstracted into a non-physically observable, non-existent entity that performs the action.
Mind is a product of our thinking, not its underpinning. And 'to think' cannot be defined in words that do not themselves ultimately require 'thinking' to define them. 'Think' is a semantic primitive.
Notes
References
- Szasz, Thomas. (1996) The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience. Westport, CT: Praeger. | Google Books preview. | Thomas Szasz: Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. | Citizendium article: Thomas Szasz. | Books by Thomas Szasz.