ABSTRACT
There's a big question to do with what sort of overall picture could portray both mind's evident dependence on humans shared cultural, social and physical environments and the fact that it is orchestrated, so to speak, within individual brains. The first step needed towards finding an answer is to recognise that mind isn't much a static thing as an ongoing process. All sorts of inputs contribute to mind, which are taken up and processed by brains whose outputs feed back in one way or another to produce new inputs. The Behaviourists' whole approach to psychology, which was dominant for much of the mid-twentieth century, depended on isolating this first step. The next step involves finding a representation of mind that shows its holism. The most consistent outcome of sleep deprivation experiments in humans is reduced cognitive flexibility, and in animals is reduced behavioural flexibility, which is consistent with supposing that the main function of sleep is to restore landscape changeability.
