Philosophical viewpoints include dualism and idealism, which consider the mind somehow nonphysical.

[citation needed] While other views center around physicalism and functionalism, which hold
that the mind is roughly identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as
neuronal activity.[3][need quotation to verify]
One open question regarding the nature of the mind is the mindbody problem, which
investigates the relation of the mind to the physical brain and nervous system.[citation needed] Another
question concerns which types of beings are capable of having minds.[citation needed] For example
whether mind is exclusive to humans, possessed also by some or all animals, by all living things,
whether it is a strictly definable characteristic at all, or whether mind can also be a property of
some types of man-made machines.[citation needed]