The Map of Mind: A Multi-Axis Framework for Dissolving the Mind's Homonymy

Gregg Henriques diagnoses a root cause of theoretical deadlock in philosophy of mind and psychology: the word 'mind' is a homonym that silently indexes at least four distinct phenomena — behavioral dispositions, neuro-computational processing, phenomenal Consciousness, and self-reflective cognition. He formalizes this as the BM3 problem and argues that much of the field's apparent disagreement is actually people talking past each other because they have different referents in view.

UTOK's Map of Mind resolves this through a three-axis coordinate system. The vertical axis tracks evolutionary and Ontological complexity across three layers. Mind 1 encompasses the bio-physiological substrate, subdivided into covert neuro-informational processing (Mind 1a) and overt behavioral output (Mind 1b) — the respective territories of cognitive neuroscience and behaviorism. Mind 2 designates phenomenal Consciousness: the irreducibly first-personal domain of Qualia and felt experience. Mind 3 covers self-conscious reflection, Propositional language, and normative justification — an intersubjective stratum that flows through symbolic exchange and cultural Scaffolding rather than being sealed inside an individual skull.

The spatial axis cross-cuts each layer into an exterior register (observable to third parties) and an interior register (hidden from direct external view), generating the A/B notation. The epistemological axis carries the framework's most consequential claim: Mind 2 is constituted by an interior, First-person epistemic vector. Science's institutional commitment to systematic third-person Empiricism means its vantage point is structurally misaligned with phenomenal experience. This is not a contingent limitation but a principled one — it is precisely what generates The hard problem and Jackson's knowledge argument.

A further clarificatory move separates 'mindedness' from 'Consciousness.' mindedness is structure-bound, anchored to complex active bodies with nervous systems and rooted in the Cambrian explosion. Consciousness is treated as a family of abstract properties — Functional awareness, subjective experience, and Self-recursive awareness — predicable without reference to any particular substrate. Most empirical neuroscience investigates Mind 2 within minded, embodied animals, while much philosophical debate concerns Consciousness as an abstract property potentially untethered from biology. Conflating these registers produces debates that appear substantive but are partly terminological.

The framework's power is coordinative: it allows any claim about the mind to be located on all three axes simultaneously, revealing when interlocutors are operating at different levels of analysis and transforming apparently intractable disagreements into navigable differences of domain.