Personally I give exactly the same meaning to these exprssions:

'mind' ,  ''consciousness'' , ''experience'' , ''awareness'' , ''phenomenal consciousness'', ''what it is like''.

A heterodox take on the illusion of "mind" in this forthcoming journal article: 

Article Demonic Geographies

Neuroscience findings confirm the Buddhist view that the 'mental' aspect of 'awareness' has no unifying schema. The old Medieval reduction to singular 'thing' called 'mind' is refuted. There are multiple hierarchical levels of awareness. Damasio has proved extensive evidence for this.  I attach my 1 page mapping of neuroscience findings on awareness/consciousness.  If this map does accurately summarize neuroscience brain structure findings, then there is no singular things called 'consciousness' or 'awareness' or (mental) 'mind'. The Buddha was totally correct.

Dragos,

 '' That is to say that there is no mind independent of the brain ''

Nobody is making the opposite claim so what is the point of making this point.  Should we say: ''They is no walking independent of the brain'', ''they is no vision independent of the eyes''.  

This is called a strawman argument.

Mind? Res cogitans. Let's go back to Latin.

Latin is not a global language, only small descendent of Proto-Indo-European, one of thousands of languages with terms for something perhaps but perhaps not analogous to the Latin or Greek term for 'mind'.  So I doubt it is any longer suitable for either philosophy or science. For example, using the StarLing global database, root #5 KVNV, to know, occurs in Eurasiatic, including PIE, which --> Greek noein, which is taken up in Husserl (noesis-noema), Plato nous, etc. The Dravidian from same KVNV root, "eye; to see; become visible, sight; knowledge' and thus a very visual sense. The Proto-Afroasiatic root means to know, learn --> Semitic act as a priest, have second sight, prophecy.  In Sino-Caucasian it means to know, with emphasis on to ask (of a teacher),, learn.  A different global root #3 MVNV, to think.  This root yields, in my view, over a half dozen distinct clusters of denotations, with some overall  emphasis  'mind, think, analyzed, count, test, try, strive, reflect, opinion; care, careful', etc. #2 HVNV, 'to understand', has denotations for be awake, count, intelligence, to hear, discern, search, investigate'. It connotes by understanding, 'to hear, to listen, open one's eyes, notice, think, see' and related #3 HVLV, 'mind, wisdom, knowledge, understand, think, investigate, observe, explain.'  There are other reconstructed roots for something like these in denotations.  I have only listed 4 examples.  To my mind this calls into question an absolute or unitary notion of 'mind' or 'to know'.

But James, why would there be an 'absolute or unitary notion of 'mind'..' –  independently of a specific discourse that would use it as a concept? Mind is (Latin) MENS, hence 'mental' etc. I was implicitly referring to that last great rationalist debate on mind, namely Descartes' Meditations and Spinoza's Ethics. In philosophy, the status of minds and thoughts is a metaphysical question, and a rather interesting one (dualism / monism) if we are working in cognitive science, for example. The term 'cognitive' of course refers to Descartes' cogito. I think it would be fine to take it from there, for a critical clarification in a modern context –

Per Aage Brandt,

I set aside that definitional issue.  More important I think is Bernd's paper in another researchgate project On consciousness. One of many points, is awareness versus ego-intention (subject-object).  Something very similar you have arrived at independently on your own, in terms of  intentionality versus 'surround' or 'meta-cognition'.  I think your thesis an important contribution to the discussion.  I wish Bernd would collapse his several projects into one and give us a discussion thread for the whole.