“Space, the final frontier.” This opening line in a popular television series
irritates many cognitive scientists, who protest that the final scientific fron-
tier is not space but mind. Many people would agree; with the science of
mind we attempt to study and understand ourselves, as we distinguish our-
selves foremost by our mental abilities. Some, however, would ask the
scientists: Are you really confronting the final frontier? Is it mind that you
are studying? You have produced remarkable results on neural excitations
and brain anatomy, computer and robot designs. But what is the relevance
of these results to our everyday experiences? Can they tell us who we are,
how we understand and feel, why we care for others, what are the mean-
ings of life? How many of your claims on knowledge about mind have
scientific basis, how many are hype?
The frontier of mind shares a similar predicament with the frontier
of space. Scientific explorers of both have made tremendous progress. Most
of what we know about the universe was discovered in the last few
decades, and so was most of what we know about the processes underly-
ing mental phenomena. However, both frontiers face immense unknown
territories, and the headwinds are strong.
Based on the law of gravity and the observed dynamics of galaxies,
physicists infer that as much as 90 percent of the universe is dark and
hence escapes detection of our telescopes and antennae. Almost all dark
matter resides in immense interstellar and intergalactic space, which pre-
cludes practical contemplation of on-site investigation. Earth-bound exper-
iments also face a dim prospect, as high costs discourage public funding
for them. Physicists have produced many speculations about the identities
and properties of the dark matter. However, the only consensus seems to be that it is nothing like any ordinary matter familiar in the luminous part
of the universe. This means that dark matter is mostly beyond the ken of
the current standard model of elementary particle physics
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