Abstract

This paper asks two questions: What is the primary role of mind in human experience? How does our understanding of this role bear for better or worse upon the "well-being" of the human condition? The term "human condition" means the set of contexts in which we live our lives. The term "well-being" means the health of, and in particular a certain potential of, the human condition to foster in our minds a sense of organic wholeness in human experience. ;The proposed answer to question is that mind's primary role lies in its capacity of "participant understanding" by which it unifies and completes the world which it contemplates--this as opposed to "analytic understanding" which observes the world as a set of objects and infers conclusions from these. The proposed answer to question is that if the human condition is to be in health, then not only must mind's participatory capacity be acknowledged primary, but this acknowledgment must ultimately spring from a direct experience of mind's participatory capacity. It cannot be inferred; it must be intuited. ;Intuition is an alternative name for "participant understanding." In support of the proposed answers to questions and , this paper considered the epistemological studies of several persons who conclude that mind's primary activity is its intuitive power to cognize wholeness in experience. Two of these persons demonstrate that in the right circumstances this intuitive activity itself can be directly, consciously experienced. ;Two conclusions are drawn. First, that mind's power of "participant understanding" is the bedrock foundation of all knowledge. It stands prior to knowledge by inference and, for the well-being of the human condition, requires to be so acknowledged. Second, the dominant materialist worldview permeating the human condition today leads to an uncritical and reckless setting aside of mind's participatory role as a vital element in human well-being. As a result, grave social, intellectual, and spiritual harm is done