Mind as a behavioral inhibition network
This study reconsiders the conventional definition of mind as “a part of a person that makes mental activity” and proposes an additional definition of mind as “the internal other”. In this paper, we investigate the substance of the internal other from the perspectives of comparative psychology, ethology, and neurophysiology, and propose the hypothesis that “behavioral inhibition network” corresponds with the internal other. We believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because the authors investigate whether the behavioral inhibition network matches the mind that one experiences in their daily life.The behavioral inhibition network is a promising candidate for the source of endogenous fluctuations observed in animal behavior. In this paper, we introduce studies illustrating that the ability to generate behavioral fluctuation generates “emergent behavior”.We believe that this paper will be of interest to the readership of psychological journals because the authors introduce experimental results suggesting the possibility that plants and materials such as stones have a behavioral inhibition network. Approaching the substance of mind not only reveals that mind exists in all living things and materials, but also brings a new worldview that all living things and materials have creativity of generation of emergent behavior.