Am I my body?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961) wrote in The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) that "I am my body." This was his assault on mind-body dualism, which claims that I am my mind and my body is intrinsically different from me. Since MP is not a great writer (sorry!), here is a summary from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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It should be clear from this that Merleau-Pontys statement that I am my body cannot simply be interpreted as advocating a materialist, behaviorist type position. He does not want to deny or ignore those aspects of our life which are commonly called the mental and what would be left if he did? but he does want to suggest that the use of this mind is inseparable from our bodily, situated, and physical nature. This means simply that the perceiving mind is an incarnated body, or to put the problem in another way, he enriches the concept of the body to allow it to both think and perceive. It is also for these reasons that we are best served by referring to the individual as not simply a body, but as a body-subject.
END QUOTE
Although MP's statement is, in my opinion, a necessary corrective, I still think it falls short. I would say that I am a person. I am conscious and bodily to be sure, but I am not a mind or a body, and I don't have a body.
While we're at it, I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit.
BEGIN QUOTE
It should be clear from this that Merleau-Pontys statement that I am my body cannot simply be interpreted as advocating a materialist, behaviorist type position. He does not want to deny or ignore those aspects of our life which are commonly called the mental and what would be left if he did? but he does want to suggest that the use of this mind is inseparable from our bodily, situated, and physical nature. This means simply that the perceiving mind is an incarnated body, or to put the problem in another way, he enriches the concept of the body to allow it to both think and perceive. It is also for these reasons that we are best served by referring to the individual as not simply a body, but as a body-subject.
END QUOTE
Although MP's statement is, in my opinion, a necessary corrective, I still think it falls short. I would say that I am a person. I am conscious and bodily to be sure, but I am not a mind or a body, and I don't have a body.
While we're at it, I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit.
Comments (143)
I am very sympathetic to phenomenology but have a limited understanding of it.
Quoting Kurt Keefner
No body either? Not sure if using 'person' is much help. What counts as a person? What elements does this appellation unify or make coherent? You may as well say you are a being. Personhood can be quite an elaborate and contested area. Is a person in a coma for 10 years still a person? Is a fetus? Etc.
I am interested in why this is important. If you are a whole, conscious physical unit, what does being a person assist you with in the world? What relationship does physical have to body in your view?
Here's my definition of "person": a conceptually, conscious physical unit, living and moving in a directly perceived world with other entities and people.
That might be more of a summary of my theory on the subject, rather than a true definition, but you get the idea. I know it's got a lot of moving parts, and we can discuss them one by one.
A person is a person if they are asleep or if they are in a coma they might wake up from. If they have severe brain damage and can never be conscious again, then they are not a person. I suspect a fetus past a point in its development might count as a person, but I don't pretend to know the answer to that question. In any case, I am not worried about outliers.
What I am concerned with is how people experience emotions, physical activity, sex, eating, etc. All of these things are affected by what you think you are, if you have let it sink in. For example, if you believe you are a soul, created by God and tethered to a physical body, you might believe sex is a sin.
I have been working on these ideas for many years, and I hope to publish an essay on the subject in the near future.
Quoting Kurt Keefner
Here's how I think about it, based on introspection. As I experience it, my self - my identity, I, me, my soul, my spirit - is my experience of the world. I am my thinking, feeling, remembering, perceiving, imagining, what else? That includes my experience of my body. Does that answer the question? Is that what the text I've quoted above is saying? I'm not sure.
Lose your possessions, relationships, status, occupation - you're still yourself, though a less effective self.
Lose a leg or an arm, your hearing, sight, health - you're still yourself, though in need of support.
Lose the power of locomotion, continence, memories - you're still yourself, only much reduced.
Lose your consciousness; suffer a traumatic enough injury to your brain - you're nobody.
Self as you identify it at the height of your powers is all those things: body, physical and mental faculties, accomplishments and acclaim.
Self as identified at the beginning and end of life is something very much smaller and more primitive, but still wholly dependent on a functional brain.
Put that brain in a vat of saline solution, hooked up to pumps for blood and oxygen, you'd still be a self, though probably insane in short order.
My issue is that Your body literally does not think. There are dead bodies everywhere. This seems to contradict even the symbolic use of this conflation.
Quoting Vera Mont
Hehe :smirk:
I think the etymology of 'soul' is relevant. Originally in Greek it was 'psuche', roughly equivalent to our 'psyche' but with a broader set of meanings. It really meant something like an animating principle, or 'breath of life', and indeed was translated into Latin as 'anima' (root of 'animal' and 'animation'.)
Over history, of course, these terms changed their meaning, especially because of the religious appropriation of the term via the rubric of the immortal soul, meaning that in today's secular culture the term is considered archaic or problematic. But I take 'soul' to mean precisely 'the whole being'. Not 'person', as such, because 'person' is derived from 'persona' which were the masks worn by actors in Greek drama. It corresponds to 'ego', which is, we can say, the self's idea of itself, and refers to what we are consciously aware of as ourselves, who we ourselves think that we are.
But as depth psychology has pointed out, we also comprise sub- and un-conscious aspects which are often not available to conscious introspection, but which are also vital aspects of the whole being. It is really impossible to delimit exactly the extent of that, as a sage once said, 'The mind is a vast abyss (profunda abyssus est homo), and no man knows its depths.' Added to which there's the 'collective unconscious' which imbues us with a cultural memory and sense of identity, carrying forward memories which have been formed through many generations. Then also there are inborn proclivities, talents, dispositions, and so on, not all of which are beneficial, but which appear strongly ingrained in people. (Whence musical prodigies, for instance? Or those with other uncanny talents?)
So I take 'soul' to mean precisely 'the whole being' in that sense, comprising, but not limited to, the conscious mind. Which I think is conveyed in the popular description of shallow or merciless or mercenary types as being 'soul-less' (even if we don't nowadays believe in the soul.)
I will add, I think the phenomenological attitude is one of avoiding theoretical explanations of these factors, but exploring them through awareness of how they appear in actual life. Not trying to create a kind of theoretical superstructure to account for them.
Welcome to the Forum.
I'm not quite clear about how you can be conscious and bodily--all that requires flesh, blood, nerves, digestive juices, et al--and not be or have a body. If you have no body, then are you not a nobody? Not your brain? Well, where exactly are you, then?
Getting away from mind/body dualism is a very good idea. The idea that there is a mind, on the one hand, and a body on the other and maybe a soul on the third hand, strikes me as false, BEAUSE (this is my take) we all are bodies, period, which is in no way a diminution of personhood. Persons have bodies. Everything we are -- eating, breathing, drinking, pissing, shitting, thinking, poetry scribbling, sex seeking metabolic machines is physical body business.
Because we are physical, we experience the joys and sufferings of this world first hand, in the flesh, and that's real.
If one believes we are created by God, then we are creatures of God -- and embodied in animal flesh.
Not to hijack the thread, but I always want to drill into this. What do you think mind is on that account?
My point of view is difficult to see outside of the context of my whole theory, but I think we have to shift the focus away from minds and bodies to a more comprehensive and substantive entity. That's what I mean when I use the term "person."
You can say things about persons: They're conscious. They have volume and mass. They have physical life functions. They live in a world they perceive directly. Minds and souls aren't entities. They are just grammatical conveniences. The brain is an entity, but it is conceptually, organically, and functionally subordinate to the whole person.
I have provisional answers to the "would I still be me if I had a limb amputated?" question, but I don't have a good formulation, so I'll have to beg off. For now.
I think "mind" is what the brain and body does, and brain and body are intimately connected in the body-enclosure. The body's sensory organs deliver more or less satisfactory input to the brain, given a properly functioning body. If eyeballs and optic nerves, ear drums and inner ears, skin and sensory nerves, etc. are not in good order, then the information the brain has to work with is decreased. People who have always had poor vision or poor hearing, for instance, are missing information they would otherwise have, and this affects thinking. Of course we can compensate for deficient input. Whatever is going on in the body -- disease, chewing on a chicken leg, smoking dope, or drinking gin and tonics -- affects how the body functions, and that includes how the brain gets along.
The relationship between language and thought perhaps underlies some of the ideas about disembodied mind. An infant and its new brain acquire language from a ubiquitous exterior environment. To the extent that the external language is acquired, thought becomes possible for the new brain. So, in a sense, 'thought' is external.
It seems like separating "mind" and "body" requires some sort of unseen and unseeable world where mysterious thinking occurs. It's too 'otherworldly' for my taste.
https://www.amazon.com/Out-Our-Heads-Lessons-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B003D0B83M/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3HAAU6MSMU0TY&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.98JGpD7qfhVLapJsjQ5tRn8ap4zHbrWfAT0FasfA4McA5HE7IAOtSNq8XsNIhLl84y855YBn0dlF9SdyK4FY4mQ303CNfENElEANb5D9B1T1iUISNrn2SCmwLEI_KrUE0HfQK5mWqbNga7Zi8V1H8fJhJwXhQgY0jUXqA6fbD9s4tn9o6SIMKAqqkSGlBtf7S29OfIqwm-aTQ4HD4I8CB_1DqyLgrSm9W4kpCqNohAQ.v9_g46ryJOZM_wDQpasgXLHZx6dQZuJfKwbFYCM14lU&dib_tag=se&keywords=alva+noe&qid=1728448967&sprefix=alva+noe%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-2
Yes, rather you are a body (i.e. metacognitivrly self-aware, decaying flesh & bone; once an unviable foetus and not yet a rotting corpse) at the very least.
Quoting Wayfarer
:clap: :fire:
Quoting BC
:100:
No doubt someone is going to bring up the possibility of an artificial eye. I would say that if it is organically integrated in you, it's as much a part of you as a transplanted organ. But if it is just a machine hooked up to your optic nerves, then it is no more a part of you than the blind man's cane.
Our individual personhood and our embodiment are one and the same. If your leg is blown off by a land mine, your sense of personhood / embodiment will likely change. If you experience epileptic episodes, or bi-polar disease, your sense of of personhood / embodiment will likely change. Good health is likely to affect our sense of personhood and embodiment.
With respect to "Out of Our Heads..." my brain likes being the location of thought. It seems like a demotion to have thought located somewhere else, and it's insistent on maintaining its status.
Thank you - appreciate the elucidation.
Fair enough. The brute acceptance of a connection between the two, in lieu of anything to substantiate it, does the same for me. It's either spooky action between two things claimed to be physical, or spooky action between one physical and one non, as far as I can tell. I'm not 'comfortable' with either, though, tbf. Hmm..Perhaps there's a Masters in this lol
But can you be conscious without your body? Isn't body the precondition for being conscious?
I understood what you meant by "I don't have a body," and I agree. It's all one being. Everything develops together. My mind is what it is because of my body. First, in the general sense, because it [I]is[/I] a body. The sensory input we receive in the beginning of our lives plays a huge roll in shaping our minds. Both the things we sense [I]and[/I] the brute fact that this kind of input is the foundation. Minds that develop in a different medium - scifi ideas like mechanical or silicon-based - would not necessarily be like our minds.
Second, because of my body's specifics. At 6' 3", I literally think different things than my 5' 2" wife. The fact that I'm male and she's female means we think different ways. And a blind or deaf person and I have different thoughts, and go about most aspects of life in different ways.
But I don't know how much we disagree. Despite the absolute necessity of a body for the development and continued existence of a human mind, the body is not our identity. When asked what I think of John Doe, I don't say, "I really like him. He's a great guy. He's 6' tall, has long blond hair, and great reflexes." Or, I don't say, "I don't much like him. He's 6' tall, has long blond hair, and great reflexes." The physical body is essential for the development and continued existence of the mind, but I don't think of myself, or other people, in terms of the physical body. Despite having played a huge roll in shaping the most important aspects of who I am, my body isn't who I am. A 7' man who loves basketball, plays it with great joy, and treats people well does not in any meaningful way resemble his identical twin brother who hates basketball, doesn't play it, or do anything else, with great joy, and treats everyone work contempt.
I think it might be a paradox. My body is, to put it mildly, beyond necessary for making me who I am, and for my continued existence. But it is not who I am in any meaningful way.
Not sure how to describe it clearly though. It's almost like a platonic form that's made real by a physical manifestation - but also the platonic form I am now is not the platonic form I was 5 seconds ago... Idk if that makes sense. Probably not.
Quoting Kurt Keefner
No, to have something doesn't necessarily imply that the something is separate from yourself - hence why we say things like "my body" - or, for that matter, "my mind." Yes, you are a whole person, with a body, and its various parts, and a mind, and its various aspects.
I understand that the outliers are not the subject of your OP, but I do want to point out that this view of personhood, based as it is on a capacity for conceptual rationality, may result in some unpleasant ethical implications. My query about animals was aiming in that direction. And infants, of course . . . But you may not mean that personhood is a requirement for being included in the ethical community.
Also @Kurt Keefner. I'm just riffing with both of you, I don't think I really disagree with either of you, your posts were thought provoking so I wanted to share the thoughts I had.
I think that when we use phrases like "my body", it's mostly indexical, and doesn't ned to have much metaphysical import. A reference mechanism to this body, the one which is typing this post, is what "my body" is, regardless of how I otherwise conceive it.
But the phrase does enable unfortunate predications. You might want to say that you move your body, or that you have control over your body, and that kind of phrasing engenders a distinct term - a you - which somehow nevertheless has something like motor control over your body, even though motor control is some kind of part of your body, and thus not distinct from you, control and autonomy, and your body.
Quoting Kurt Keefner
I think this is very true. There are plenty of ways that every person is which are not just bodily or minded, even though the body and mind are involved. Anything the body does is somehow more than the body, but the body is not just a substantive part of the act - the body is not a "substance" of walking.
The person may also be identified with a role they play, irrespective of their body's nature - a barista, a lawyer, a cook. It is the person which is those things, and not the body.
Quoting Kurt Keefner
I noticed that you have a strong interest in the work of Ayn Rand. Do you think that her ideas on selfhood are compatible with those of Merleau-Ponty?
What is a body? Can you specify when a body "ends" and a mind "begins"?
I can't. Either mind is part of body, or body is part of mind. The point is the distinction needs to be made as to what the difference between these two are - IF it can be stated.
So, asking am I my body is problematic.
Agreed, "my" in "my body" is indexical and could be replaced with "this body" in the same context. It would still make sense to say "I have a body," meaning that a body is a part of me, rather than being some external possession of mine.
Quoting fdrake
By the same token, a person is bodily. Here "is" does not indicate identity, but rather serves to relate a predicate to the subject, as in "Socrates is a man."
Quoting Joshs
what
Quoting SophistiCat
This is from his public webpage:
I agree. The predicate "is bodily", maybe even "involves this person's body" or "is embodied" generically apply to anything the person does. But seemingly not to all things they are involved in. Compare signing a contract to being bound by it. The former is an act done with the body, the latter commits the person to specified acts in specified conditions. The former is bodily because signing is, the latter is not bodily it is institutional or social or normative.
We perhaps could even say that signing a contract does not commit a body to any specific action, just a specific type of action. You can write your signature in a variety of slightly different ways, all that matters is that you have done an act which counts as signing in the appropriate way. Even if it's the body's hand that moves, it's the person that the contract binds upon the dotted line.
In that regard, the person partakes in actions which are not individuated by their bodily movements, they are individuated by the broader context of the body and the world we're in. The body must also, therefore, be able to incorporate, act upon and modify this context and its world (in a circumscribed fashion).
If I should wish to include legal personhood, institutional roles and other social functions as part of personhood, I believe it would be necessary to say that each person is not "just" their body. But perhaps that their body has several privileged roles in determining who and how they are. It has the job of functioning in accordance with roles in other registers - social rather than ambulatory, normative rather than sensory - by coordinating itself to count as according with them.
Which is to say, a body generates its personhood but is not coextensive with it.
Fair point. We are our consciousnesses, and we do not experience consciousness without a body (at least in this life). We are not "just brains," although many writers try to frame things in this way. Brains never produce experiences without bodies. We could imagine some sort of incredibly advanced sci-fi situation where our brains might be transferred into some sort of synthetic body and "go on experiencing," but this is:
A. To elevate potency over act in our analysis, such that we trying to define things in nature in terms of science-fiction technology bordering on magic, rather than how things actually are; and
B. Still supposing that some other system essentially mimics what our body does for us.
Thus, it's still the case that brains don't produce experiences without bodies (synthetic or otherwise).
Nor do bodies produce experiences without an environment. There are no truly isolated systems, and a human body could not produce experiences if it existed in one. Even something like human body suspended in a vacuum in a heatless environment is going to produce a corpse, not an experiencing person.
Nor is the environment irrelevant. A human body will produce no experiences in most of the environments that exist in the cosmos or on Earth. Were a healthy body teleported onto the surface of a star, the bottom of the ocean, the surfaces of most of the planets we know of, inside the Earth's core or mantel, etc. experience would cease essentially instantly.
Consciousness is produced by brains in bodies in a select range of environments. You need all of these, not just a body. And you need a body where activity is in a very narrow range, since there are far, far more ways for the body to be arranged such that it is dead or unconscious than alive.
Hence, being a person, or any organism, is a continuous activity to preserve form. As Sachs translates Aristotle's entelecheia, "being-at-work-staying-itself."
It depends on the level of specificity you want in an answer. Corpses are human bodies, no? Do corpses have minds or experiences? It would appear not. So, the one can exist without the other.
Likewise, it is at least conceivable that one's consciousness could exist outside the body, or be transferred to other bodies. Personally, I think that conceivability is a very weak standard for possibility, since we can often conceive the impossible as possible due to not understanding what we are talking about, but at the very least the two don't seem as essentially linked as say, a triangle and its lines.
---
Anyhow, I think the better arguments for the existence of incorporeal souls' existence outside the body tend to rely on a very particular metaphysics, and presenting them in a coherent manner is going to require extremely large detours into concepts like vertical reality, the nature of being/God, Logos/logoi, etc. But when people try to copy these arguments into the context of prevailing contemporary metaphysical assumptions I think they almost always fall incredibly flat, and I don't think they can be justified as part of a philosophy of nature.
In her journals she flirts with vitalism and some kind of spirit, but this never makes it into her published work. She did not like doing armchair science, and in a sense, this would be science.
She does say that the concept of consciousness presupposes a self that is conscious. Consciousness is not a "primary object" unto itself. The self in question she identifies as an animal. (This is before AI got to be a big thing.) So that suggests that she means more than just a brain, but she never offered a definite opinion on the subject.
I am working on an essay to be called "I am not my brain." In other words, I am the whole bodily, conscious person. Just what a person seems to be. I am not appealing to the idea of a soul.
I have very strong intuitions on this subject. I am aware of the arguments on the other side, but I think maybe I can address them.
The corpse example does not say much. I mean, if the body is dead then the mind is dead too. You would have to show how a mind can exist outside a corpse, which is crucial evidence that is missing. That would be a very strong indication that mind and body are different categories.
Conceivable, yes. But very weak, as you say.
You could attempt to give a naturalistic account of mind being separate from body, without going into Platonic metaphysics. You could say that the laws or habits of mind are, in principle, different from the laws of physics and heavenly bodies. Maybe that's true. Maybe not.
But I don't think we know nearly enough about body to say that the mind cannot be a body modified in a specific way.
I limit myself to monism, and I call it "materialism", but it can be called "naturalism" or "mentalism", it doesn't matter much. I very much admire the Platonic tradition, and I think it has a lot of value, but it also needs to be modernized a bit.
It's complex, but I'll be as simple as I can.
I agree, except that, if the soul part--call it, also, the 'mental'--is not real, but only perceived (for several reasons) to be real; if the mental is 'actually' a system of codes to which the body responds with feelings and action (and only the latter is real, albeit not in a form we are familiar with, i.e., not narrative, and so, necessarilyoverlookedby the narrative); if the narrative form of that code, the part to which we desperately attach, is not real, then it can be acknowledged as 'other' than the body, to exist, and still, it can be eliminated from that category we think of as 'real.'
It is in that sense that I agree with and understand MP's Hypothesis. In fact, I think his side notes on the mental unwittingly cling to what his Hypothesis rightly resists. I mean he doesn't go far enough in dismissing the mental as, though effective, ultimately nothing.
I have two questions on this post.
1. Are mental and soul different? How are they different?
2. What do you mean by "we think of as real"? What is real?
With all scientific research at the moment behind it... yes.
Like with the recent reconstructed fly brain in a computer that's been in the news; it seems that the only way to "upload" this consciousness or "soul" is to copy all aspects and simulate the whole entity of the fly, in order for it to be a direct copy of its consciousness. In essence, the idea of separating the conscious mind, the "soul" require to copy the "body" as well, and so we can only copy our consciousness by copying the whole.
Quoting Manuel
I'd say that the problem essentially lies in how we linguistically differentiated between mind and body in a time of religion. The consequence of this echoes far into modern science where we still treat the two as somewhat separate. But the arguments for separation comes from the illusion of separation; the emotional sensation of our body being something other than our ethereal and abstract "inner self". And as we all know, our senses and our emotions are the worst foundation for rational reasoning.
In medicine, we've seen this separation play out to the detriment of patients. On one hand, therapists and psychologists or doctors have given them prescription medicines which alter the chemicals in the brain, but that's not enough. On the other hand they've attempted to just treat the mind through rational reasoning and therapy, ignoring the effect that the chemical system has on the mind.
Both of these sides ignoring the other have failed to fully treat people with mental illness. It's only just recently we've been handling both as a single treatment seriously. Treating the body and mind as a whole entity.
Because it's an ouroboros. The physical body influences the mind through its genetics, chemicals and substances; and the mind influences the body's functions. It's a closed loop that cannot be separated without severely altering the psychology of the being.
Imagine someone with a healed serious injury to his body. It affects his personality, his opinions, his social sphere and experience of himself. If you were to cut off his head and place it on another body (if that would work), the entirety of his consciousness will alter through this new body. All of a sudden there are functions that work that didn't before, a body shape that is different as an experience, chemicals that affect the mind based on the genetics of that body and so on. It would alter that person's mind to the point of the original consciousness not being the same anymore. We know this due to what we know about how the physical body affects the mind.
What then is the mind separated from the body, if that happens? Only an empty template; a prediction system that cannot value its predictions through chemical feedback.
That's fine and a lot of it true. However, it seems to me to be the same issue Descartes pointed to back in his day. He had scientific and religious reasons to make such a distinction.
We no longer (of very few of us do) speak of substance dualism, of a body being a substance and the mind being another different substance. We speak now of the so called "hard problem", which is that we can't explain in scientific terms, subjectivity in essence.
The tone and perspective are secular, the problem is similar in most respects.
The issue, if I understood you correctly, is merely a linguistic one. What we choose to call "mind" or "body" and what is it that you want to include (or exclude) in the definition. But I don't see any logical problem in saying that mind is part of a body.
Or alternatively, that body is perceived through mind. I don't see a dualism here.
You don't hear people saying there is a body gravity problem or a biological mental problem. Which you could choose to make a problem quite legitimately.
Quoting Corvus
From my pespective:
1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body.
2. If there is such a category as Real, then, I'm referring to ultimate, unqualified, unconditioned "reality." Without getting into science or religion, if I were born into this world, with the concept of ultimately real, it is prima facie apparent that the physical universe is real. I cannot go into further reductions, like cells or atoms, space, time, or gravity, for e.g., because these bring me outside that prima facie Reality, and into conditions which are ultimately just made up and believed.
The reason for our pursuit for Reality beyond the prim facie stems from the seduction of such make-believe, the world which has displaced the prima facie, only for humans, with its imagined constructions and projections.
I'm suggesting in response to Merleau-Ponty and the OP (an open wondering, more accurately) that both can be 'factual.'
1. there is no mind body dualism, there is only the body including the so called mental, and
2. That Quoting Kurt Keefner. Because #2 is an illusion. The make-believe constructed and projected over/as history, moves on its own, with its own laws and mechanics. It has displaced our organic and [really] Real consciousness so that experience (our day to day "reality") has replaced nature, but ultimately it is empty projections of the imagination and not "what we think of as" ultimately Real.
Not if this "mind" you assume to be distinct, is distinct, and does exist, but not in the real world. Rather, it exists as fleeting images which have developed over millenia into such complexity, and which has such an effect on reality through its 'host' bodies, that it has (been) included (itself) into this category, "reality" which paradoxically, it makes.
"I" am not my body; because "I", like reality, is a constructed mechanism in that autonomous process of the imagination.
But [my] body, alone, is real; my mind is a Fictional layer occupying the space where my body's natural aware-ing "is".
That's the grand old problem of the self. It could be an illusion, of course. It may not be one, also possible. We don't know enough to establish this one way or the other.
But I do agree that we cannot detach mind from body, as if it were a spirit animating otherwise dead matter.
Now, you say that "I" is a construction, which, is in a sense true: everything we analyze is a construction, including what we call our "body".
Nature does not distinguish.
I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body.
On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.
I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc
Ran a search and found only one paragraph with the phrase. Is this the one you mean to reference?
[quote=MMP Phenomenology of Perception, end of chapter 6]
We have become accustomed, through the influence of the Cartesian
tradition, to disengage from the object: the reflective attitude simultaneously purifies the common notions of body and soul by defining
the body as the sum of its parts with no interior, and the soul as a being
wholly present to itself without distance. These definitions make matters perfectly clear both within and outside ourselves: we have the
transparency of an object with no secret recesses, the transparency of a
subject which is nothing but what it thinks it is. The object is an object
through and through, and consciousness a consciousness through and
through. There are two senses, and two only, of the word exist: one
exists as a thing or else one exists as a consciousness. The experience of
our own body, on the other hand, reveals to us an ambiguous mode of
existing. If I try to think of it as a cluster of third person processes
sight, motility, sexualityI observe that these functions cannot
be interrelated, and related to the external world, by causal connections, they are all obscurely drawn together and mutually implied in a
unique drama. Therefore the body is not an object. For the same reason, my awareness of it is not a thought, that is to say, I cannot take it to
pieces and reform it to make a clear idea. Its unity is always implicit and
vague. It is always something other than what it is, always sexuality and
at the same time freedom, rooted in nature at the very moment when it
is transformed by cultural influences, never hermetically sealed and
never left behind. Whether it is a question of anothers body or my
own, I have no means of knowing the human body other than that of
living it, which means taking up on my own account the drama which
is being played out in it, and losing myself in it. I am my body, at least
wholly to the extent that I possess experience, and yet at the same time
my body is as it were a natural subject, a provisional sketch of my total
being. Thus experience of ones own body runs counter to the reflective procedure which detaches subject and object from each other, and
which gives us only the thought about the body, or the body as an idea,
and not the experience of the body or the body in reality. Descartes was
well aware of this, since a famous letter of his to Elizabeth draws the
distinction between the body as it is conceived through use in living
and the body as it is conceived by the understanding.40 But in Descartes
this peculiar knowledge of our body, which we enjoy from the mere
fact that we are a body, remains subordinated to our knowledge of it
through the medium of ideas, because, behind man as he in fact is,
stands God as the rational author of our de facto situation. On the basis of
this transcendent guarantee, Descartes can bllandly accept our irrational
condition: it is not we who are required to bear the responsibility for
reason and, once we have recognized it at the basis of things, it remains
for us only to act and think in the world.41 But if our union with the
body is substantial, how is it possible for us to experience in ourselves a
pure soul from which to accede to an absolute Spirit? Before asking this
question, let us look closely at what is implied in the rediscovery of our
own body. It is not merely one object among the rest which has the
peculiarity of resisting reflection and remaining, so to speak, stuck to
the subject. Obscurity spreads to the perceived world in its entirety.
[/quote]
It seems like the whole paragraph gets along with your notion to me. But I just ran a quick search out of curiosity.
I am of the opinion that what we have access to are representation (or notions or anticipations) on the occasion of sense. There are "real", as real as anything could be.
Whatever may be the ultimate cause of these representations, is beyond our knowledge.
So, I think the senses do give us access to reality. But that reality is a notion, which is the only reality any creature can have, as I see it.
Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body.
In fairness, it is more complicated than can be explained by someone with my skill level with language. This is necessarily over simplified and one-dimensional. And yet, I'll deliver it complicated.
I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body.
Quoting ENOAH
That already has some important mental components, which, though appear to be given (that is, self-evidently "there"). If correct, then by already stating that a sense induces a creature to run, or attack a prey, or indicating mating season, you have built in a sensation as representation. Sensations "by themselves" are just noise, photons bouncing off objects, molecules hitting our nose, etc.
The "run", "see prey", etc. Are already transformed.
It's not clear at the outset, that a sensation caused us to develop language, it appears to be a genetic mutation that spread to the species very quickly.
Quoting ENOAH
So, we get feelings directly, no mental component is involved, but somehow when it comes to mind or intellect, then we do add this component.
But if we look at animals, who lack language, they don't merely take a flash of light, or a moving bush and stay still, they react to it in a manner which is appropriate to the situation, they may run, or freeze for a moment, but this is interpreting what is going on, this has some mental properties.
Only if they did nothing, and did not react to stimuli, could you make a case that there is just senses and nothing else, as I see it.
Quoting ENOAH
Here is the issue again, sensations are not unfiltered. If they were unfiltered, we wouldn't have them.
You can say that with human language, we do add meaning to things, but I don't see that as being less "real" than sensations. It's a faculty we have, that other animals lack.
Hence sensations and "narratives" are both constructions of the occasion of sense. Again, a sense of burning, is particles moving quickly, but creatures react far more richly than the stimuli would lead is to believe.
(Kindly allow for extreme looseness in use of terms)
The stuff you rightfully point out, as it relates to mind and my allegations about fiction, is describing the real infrastructure. Sophisticated animals like birds and humans have imaging 'organs' which function on representation. That is still a reality in the real world.
At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings.
Anyway, that was an impatient reply. Your points are deserving of a few reads and more thought. Thanks
BEGIN QUOTE
Insofar as it stands before me and presents its systematic variations to the
observer, the external object lends itself to a cursory mental examination of its elements and it may, at least by way of preliminary
approximation, be defined in terms of the law of their variation. But I
am not in front of my body, I am in it, or rather I am it. Neither its
variations nor their constant can, therefore, be expressly posited. We do
not merely behold as spectators the relations between the parts of our
body, and the correlations between the visual and tactile body: we are
ourselves the unifier of these arms and legs, the person who both sees
and touches them.
END QUOTE
Note that he says that "I am in it, or rather I am it." What he means is "I am my body," and the modern translation puts it that way. Unfortunately, Kindle won't let me copy/paste from the text, so I am using the older online version.
I don't find MMP's writing to be very clear, which is why I quoted a secondary source in the OP.
I was looking for uses to get an idea of what you meant, and the one use-case I found looked like it fits with your idea of being a person -- not just the body, not just the mind, but the whole.
I think a lot of these issues arise from taking the given for granted: C.I. Lewis and Raymond Tallis discuss these topics very lucidly. As it stands, the issue of sensations being more true or real can be misleading, to my eyes anyway.
Quoting ENOAH
I think there is good evidence that indicates that we don't know what a body is. If we don't know what a body is, then I don't think it makes much sense to say that a mind is a thing distinct from a body, or an additional stuff to body.
Mind is part of body and body is part of the world.
But aren't there different stages in mind? From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, they seem all different in complexity and capabilities.
And even in humans, we can differentiate different types of mind sets of people depending on who they are, what social background they are coming from, or what religious background they come from, and what types of beliefs they have, they would have different states of minds. Some folks believe they have souls, and some would totally deny existence of souls.
Souls have long history in human cultures and studies, which seems suggest its relationship with the religious beliefs and concepts. Whereas mental is the state of mind which is the basic functions of the brain of all living organism.
Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing.
But I still need to give due consideration to your specific counter points.
Mind is playing the same music while it keeps us on hold.
I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating.
It's not that we can't know. Maybe we in principle can't know, that is yet to be established. We may never know what a body is. It's also possible that we may someday be able to postulate what a body is, and then we can formulate body problems.
Hence attributing a "x-ing" activity to a body, suggests there are other "x-ing" activities that are not body.
But, in case from your p.o.v., I'm not being clear. It is likely my understanding and my expression are misaligned. I will resort to metaphorical illustrations which I acknowledge are not valid arguments (I don't view my exercise as an attempt to promote an argument so much as to broaden my understanding of a hypothesis).
Think of the human on that hypothetical day before we first developed a mind that would start inquiring into the matters here. What did she think she was? Either, nothing, she didn't think (my preference); or, the body allegedly thinking. I think our inquiries--that is, our desire to know, and the corresponding illusions that we can know, and that there is something to know, outside of our constructing it--are only there because they are part of the constructing that started take place the day after that hypothetical human thought nothing of her being; just was her being.
Unless you are suggesting that the same organism, prehistorically, was born with those queries 'genetically' built in. But, that is what I am skeptical of. We weren't born into a reality with questions or answers. We, uniquely, make them, and they are other than the reality we were born into.
I suppose some kind of answer to this would arise if you look at our closest genetic creatures, namely primates.
There have been studies done on different kinds of them, and they show varying levels of cognition. They can solve some problems, but nowhere near close to what we can do.
You mention another issue which is problematic to this day, thinking. We don't know what it is, nor what it consists of in. When we attempt to say something about it, we are separating several cognitive components that may be deeply intertwined.
Yes, language is a very important - perhaps a crucial component. But when we go on to speak of non-linguistic thought, here we are really lost and have been for thousands of years.
I know body exists confirmed by the mental (perception and thoughts - "Here is a hand. Here is another hand. I have two hands."). But souls? How do you prove souls exist?
I don't think souls/spirit are real distinct beings. We apply those terms to the nonphysical, 'mental' processes which ultimately cause/include the illusion of being, although they are actually fleeting and empty processes.
Perhaps it is our own definitions creating obstacles to further "discovery." Take non linguistic thought. I might argue that even the seemingly nonlinguistic, is linguistics, if the latter has as its common feature a Signifier/Signified, ie. 'meaning-construction' function. What nonlinguistic thought is not yet, primarily about meaning?
That would have to be proved, not stipulated.
Or you can make the terminological choice of putting things this way, which is fine.
Isn't that inescapably the case? Some adopted by convention for various reasons, including, as you say, proof; some fringe applications of the terminology, and not adopted. That is a mammoth question, I know. My point brings me back to what is the body? Not a thing to best access with knowledge, but rather the thing we are [isolated from knowledge].
Hard to compress evidence for anything into three words :-)
Regardless, welcome to the Forum.
Do you mean then souls / spirits are something that we apply to the illusion of being? That sounds like souls / spirits are illusions.
We could, if we so choose, go back and use Descartes definition of body, which is extended substance. And mind would be non-extended.
The problem is that we now know that a body is not an extended substance, it no longer holds.
What should be done is to say which are properties unique to bodies and how these properties cannot be mental in any way. Then you could have an argument.
Incidentally, this is for philosophy. In ordinary talk, when we are talking to other real-life people, we use "body" and "mind" rather loosely, but it serves the purposes of the everyday.
That's not what we are doing here, which is being technical and trying to get at what a body is. As I've said, I don't think we know what it is.
That is excellent. Granted that the mental (for humans) 'uses' matter/energy (whatever it's called, currently) to 'generate'. But, simply put, that which is generated--Signifiers--is not matter/energy. To classify it objectively is the challenge, given it is really classifying itself. But the mental is more like the direction in which a finger is pointing (rather than the finger, or what it is pointing to (unless it happens to be pointing to another direction--which is often the case)); so as opposed to the body (including the nervous system, synapses etc.; including mood, sensation, drives--all presumably material processes) the mental is empty, a 'thing' totally other, yet not real in the way we prima facie receive the material, I.e., the body, as real.
I realize that my loose terminology may need tightening. I can see you've been doing that. Hopefully, you can read my question for what it is really asking, rather than what it might accidentally appear to be asking, given terms (mis)used.
In my opinion, not just illusions (that's ultimately what I would call the spin which human mind superimposes onto reality) but 'soul/spirit' are misunderstandings: illusions within the illusion, about what the illusion might be.
Surely the concepts of souls / spirits have existed for thousands of years. If you are religious believing in after life, resurrection or the heavenly world and God, wouldn't soul be the essential being for the belief?
Bodies get old and die through time. Minds die too. But souls supposed to survive after death to be identified for what the being had done, and how it lived to be placed in the different parts of the heavenly world, or the hell. To be able to keep continue the life after death according to the holy scriptures.
Without soul, the old body disintegrated, and mind evaporated, the system wouldn't work, or wouldn't make sense.
I would say that i am a body that has a mind, not a mind that has a body.
But the i am that i am is not the body that is. I am an activity, a continuous dynamic adaptive complex event that started at some point in the past between my conception and birth, and will end when my body ceases to function (particularly my brain), unless of course the mind can be translated away from the old body or brain and reinstantiated in a new one in some way. This is why i believe it is called 'being'. I am being in the body, and without the body i am not.
The mind is the dynamic adaptive activity between the parts of a system or body. Note that the brain is the body proper of the mind we are usually referring to in these discussions. There are different kinds of bodies for different kinds of minds.
If the coherent flow of activity alone of the brain can be abstractly isolated and separated from the brain body then that by itself can in my view be considered who you are in essence. That is your "I am being", your "soul". This is just a thought experiment to illustrate what/who you essentially really are from the perspective of this theory at least, not that the mind can be literally separated from the body in reality. Your mind needs your body, but your body does not necessarily need your mind. Your body can indeed survive without your mind as evidenced by cases of brain dead living people.
The first, I agree without reason to disagree; the second, I agree, with the qualifier that I go a step further and doubt that Mind ever lived in the first place; the third I have no reason to believe.
Why is the body not enough. I don't approach these things religiously (as in conventional religions), but even if I did, God created the natural universe, we created the spiritual to answer questions which from God's perspective we have no business asking. For so called Abrahamic religions, these questions are humans eating knowledge not life. For so called Vedic-Buddhist religions these questions are us consumed by the fruits of our works, rather than just doing our works because it is within our natures to do.
I do think so, but it has to be done in a very specific way in order to maintain continuity of being. What do you think?
Could it be because body is temporal? As we all know, bodies get old, die and becomes dust. Bodies don't last too long.
The issue is that body is being treated here as if you are attempting to give properties to bodies which belong to them, independent of what we attribute to them (nervous system, synapses, etc.) and somehow saying that this makes it "more real" or more concrete or something along these lines.
I'm not sure what this amounts to. A body being more real than mind is a sentence I can't make sense of.
As for the mind being an empty thing, something that merely points, I don't think this is factually true. That is, the very fact that it even points to something is already an activity the mind has. So, it can't be empty in this way.
I suppose the question to ask would be, what are you attempting to prove or what would be advanced or made clearer by supposing that body and mind are so different?
Quite coincidentally, this video interview just came out a few hours ago that kind of addresses or relates to the subject of this thread, particularly my post. You might find it interesting. check it out:
Michael Levin - Why Intelligence Isn't Limited To Brains.
I'd say, it is because of the structure of our "thinking" that we even "desire" eternity/immortality. Of course our bodies are "temporal" in their lived forms. That, to me, doesn't prohibit them from being our only "reality"
To answer that question, because the others require more focused attention, I'm trying to get at the fallacy we have trapped ourselves in because mind emerged, with 'unique' structures etc., which is, that it is the 'seat' of our being/reality/truth, at the expense of what is already a prima facie given. Not I think therefore I am, but rather it thinks therefore it exists...but what is it? Whereas body lives, therefore it is. The latter can at least be shared with the rest of the universe. It is this oddity, Mind, that only humans seem to have, and that has 'fooled' us 'narcissistically, into wanting it to be special, more real, the being within the being etc
Because there is no language accessible to precisely express the point, these metaphors might be helpful, although also tricky.
In my metaphor Mind doesn't point, it's the finger (body) which points. Mind isn't even the thing it is pointing to. Mind is the direction in which it is pointing. That is how mind is empty. And in that sense is the body 'more' real. The finger is more real than the direction in which it is pointing.
This I agree with. It's just that I go further than what is implied. I think Body is the only condition for being conscious. Mind are the projections which emerged/evolved and now operate out of that Consciousness, displacing the organic system of, more or less stimulus and response, with stimuli which have been so over produced (maybe kickstarted/driven by language), that an autonomous process takes place which we take to be our experience; assuming an agent/experienced, and from there, concluding a real and separate being (even those who insist they aren't dualistic yet speak of mind as if it has a reality distinct from the body's--forgive the non-technical language).
Ok. So, it's kind of like trying to push down or put into context that in having minds, we are not "extra special" and so those features of the world that lack mind - which you are calling body - are "me", more so than this mysterious mind, which is misleading.
You can say that I would only note that you are mentalizing the body with properties which are not clear it could possess absent minds - me-ness and being "central".
I would add that it is very far from evident if we can say that the stuff physics describes "bodies" of being made up of, fundamental particles and quantum phenomenon are like or unlike minds. It's very obscure, and I don't think it's a trivial answer (if one can even be given at all).
Quoting ENOAH
Yep, it is hard to talk about this stuff, for sure. Here's how I see it, I don't think it's true to say that "fingers point", because they don't. People point, using fingers and many other gestures. A pointing finger absent an interpreter like us, is quite meaningless, so far as I can see.
Ah, ok, so the finger is "more real" because a kind of more "concrete" feeling, as bodies appear to have.
Well, I'd say that "concrete things", things that can be touched with our hands, are almost absent in the universe, especially if you consider how many things exists which we cannot touch, which is almost everything.
You're definitely challenging my, beyond complacent, settlements, which is good.
But OK, please let me know what you think of this baby step. Even if so called concrete things turn out to be other than as they appear, perhaps also evasive, etc. Are they not yet, all of them together, bodies, trees, oceans, and rocks, something physics explores differently than it does the ideas which appear to shape our experiences and are not constructed out of matter. I get that we have dreamed that they might be, but if we are being fair, a thought might require matter to generate it, but once projected and gone, it is gone. Because it never really was.
If your body has lost all the contents of your memory let us suppose, but it still functions biologically. Would you be able to know then, your body is you?
Things that affect the body affect the mind. For example, drinking alcohol changes what we feel. Construct a long list of such examples. Inference to the best explanation suggests that therefore the body is the mind, or perhaps the functions of the body is the mind.
That is exactly my point; there is no real "you" and "your" body is not "yours". The question dualists need to consider is why a human body wouldn't be itself without the constructions and projections we classify as a separate entity and call mind. Why is a lizard still a lizard without thought and language, but only humans have a soul? Sure, we claim that God prefers us and gave us a soul. But I think we've grown up enough to stop clinging to that.
We may be immortal for all that. (EDIT: And it looks like a cool book that I'd enjoy reading)
Blasphemy!
Quoting Moliere
Could be. Maybe we're uploadable.
I mean I have a type of thinking I keep going back to and it's often labeled as Blasphemy :D
Taking this one up in favor of the OP:
If we invented a Transporter in the way Star Trek seems to indicate I would not enter it.
It's science fiction so we can invent whatever: My understanding is that the Transporter converts your physical make-up into "information", and then translates that information into light which can quickly travel to the surface of a planet and re-create you.
But I think the "new you" would behave exactly like you, but the you which experiences things would disappear. It's basically a death machine for convenience, by my guess. (which is only a guess -- this is somewhat a pop-sci explanation of the problem of consciousness in a nutshell)
But your body is in a constant state of flux. Every seven years, all the cells (except neurons) have been replaced with new ones. So are you saying that you're constantly dying? How many people named Moliere have there been since .. not your birth, but that original birth?
And I can say that I have a body, and have had a body the entire time, and that when my body is gone I believe that I'll be gone too.
So -- going into the transporter may turn me into light and recreate me on the other side, but my folk belief about the metaphysics of consciousness is that the "I" I'm experiencing now would cease to exist.
In that sense then only one person named Moliere has been on TPF, and the old PF. The ship of Theseus still belongs to Theseus -- but not because of the bits we can name.
"Inference to the best explanation suggests that therefore the body is the mind, or perhaps the functions of the body is the mind."
Why, without assuming that materialism is true, is that the best explanation?
What's evidence to you?
That's probably where disagreement lies, by my guess.
The evidence I'd point to with respect to the mind being a part of the body -- and only a part (my foot is not a mind) -- is that what we normally think of as mind is influenced by physical things. The world feels different when drunk. If I've eaten a big meal that I ought not to have I get feeling tired and want to sleep. Even the smells and sounds of an environment seem to effect my mind. (you need not trust my word on it: fast for several days and you'll see what I'm talking about, if you desire not to utilize these various methods and want to rely upon your body and your body alone for feedback)
When I pay attention to why I'm doing what I do it's hard to rule out that the body does not relate to what we like to call the mind.
Is it because your body changes slowly, that your consciousness is unified over time? But an abrupt lack of body would obliterate your identity?
So, the donut affects what goes on in my mind....therefore i am a donut?
I'm still interested in the problem of consciousness, and slowly reading Sartre's B&N as an effort to think through the metaphysics of consciousness (cuz Chalmer's kind of just leaves it in the air)
For instance if I'm looking for some keys then my mind is occupied with keys, but I am not the keys.
Ok. Please report back your findings.
I hope to do so :).
My thinking is that the mind is not the body. My foot is not my mind. I still have a mind for all that. And when I think about a donut that does not make me the donut. Thus far I believe we agree.
The part I'd point out is that my mind is influenced by whether my foot itches, hurts, etc -- and is even influenced by things like how much sugar or water I presently have in my body. It's much easier to be amiable when I'm feeling pleasure than it is when I'm feeling pain.{
so I conclude that my body and mind, while not being one, are connected.
After that it has to do with stupid theological shit that need not be brought up in this question.
EDIT: I ought say that "stupid theological shit" includes my own atheism and all that.
Physics does not explore oceans, trees, rocks, that belongs to oceanography, arborists and geologists respectively. If we are going to use physics in applied form, then we do an abstraction to apply it to things like rocks. Ocean movement and trees are way too complicated for physics.
We can't use physics to study ideas. That's in part because these are different domains: physicists study the simplest things and ask difficult questions about these. Ideas or at least, the consequence of some ideas might fall on the psychologist, even though they deal with behavior, strictly speaking.
The issue is: are our ideas different in kind to the nature of the stuff physics says there is?
Here I am probably and outlier. Physics tell us a bit about the structure of matter but leaves its intrinsic nature untouched.
I think we just don't know enough about the nature of matter in general to say conclusively if there is a difference in kind between our ideas and physics or not.
Interesting. An admirable open pov, but if I needed that hurdle resolved to proceed, I'd say matter is matter, mind is Mind, and never the twain shall meet.
Why do amputees experience phantom limb? Why does a limb they don't have anymore seem to hurt, and get muscle cramps where there are no muscles to cramp?
I don't know. Why do you think it is?
But it is one explanation. If we want to answer the question "How is it that when I drink alcohol (a physical thing) a mental thing results (feeling drunk)?" One answer is to say that the mental just is the physical, so there is no mystery, no interaction problem. Its a simple and obvious explanation. I agree with you that it is wrong (or perhaps partly wrong) but you asked for arguments, and this is one.
Quoting Clearbury
It's monistic. Consider that we know there are physical things. Also consider that two fundamentally different kinds of thing cannot interact. Our minds are affected by physical things, therefore our minds must be physical too. So let's look around for physical objects (or functions thereof) that could be minds. A rock? Presumably not, because when a rock is struck I feel nothing, so the rock isn't my mind. A body? Well, not all of it, fingernails and some internal processes are not felt. But whenever we feel something there is always some correlation with brain activity. The simplest way to explain a correlation is identity, as one thing always occurs with itself. So it's a monistic and simple theory which fits the data, which are traditional hallmarks of a good theory.
I don't agree with it, but that's perhaps one main prima facie case for it.
Well, because there are regions in the brain that model your body, there exists a neural simulation of yourself within your brain. When someone loses a limb, those brain regions stop receiving signals from the body, but the neural simulation of that limb continues. That part of the brain was not amputated; only the actual limb was. When these regions try to communicate with the missing limb, they do not receive feedback from it (broken feedback). The brain attempts to send signals to move the limb but does not get confirmation signals in return. The muscles that it is trying to contract to move the limb fail to send back signals indicating that the limb has moved. As a result, that part of your brain intensifies its efforts (essentially "yelling") at the part it is still trying to model. This leads to phantom cramps generated in your brain as a component of your mind.
You don't experience "your" actual body; you only experience a simulated model of it. Your identity is formed in the context of your body, but once it is established, it can theoretically be separated from your physical form. If one were to place your living brain in a vat, you would still have a sense of your body, even though you wouldn't have a physical body (apart from the brain itself). You could call this a phantom identity.
This may be true, but I don't think we know enough about how consciousness works to make any assertions one way or the other.
But it's entirely conceivable that property dualism exists. That means that those who claim such a separation is impossible have the burden of proof.
Okay, but we can know some things, and we do. What do you think the implications are of the "phantom identity" i described? You seem to agree with the veracity of the description i gave. Do you believe that this "phantom identity" is identical with what you call your identity, or is there another identity behind the phantom identity?
Quoting frank
So you believe that there is one substance, but two properties: physical and mental? If so, then we may be in agreement, but to be sure: what do you think the nature of the mental property is? Is it contingent upon the physical, or can it exist in isolation from the physical?
I really don't know. Somewhere along the line I started thinking of identity as analogous to music. The bass notes are physicality, the middle tones are emotions, and the high notes are the intellect. Themes play out and change over time. The intellect is the only part that deals with ontology. To the rest of the psyche, everything encountered is real, so "real" is meaningless.
Quoting punos
I think the mental is the high notes on the piano, present in some other animals, but more sophisticated in humans, maybe because of the big brain. It's a worldview mashup. :grin:
Which is fine. But the task is to say what is unique to physical stuff alone, which cannot include mind.
The problem is in arguing why the physical cannot be mental without it turning into stipulation: the physical is not mental because physical stuff cannot be mental stuff.
You'd have to show how this could be possible. That's the problem. And it's far from trivial.
You are absolutely right. Admittedly, I'm still at the stage of working out hypotheses.
A problem, I suspect, is that we have become so sophisticated in our accumulation and methods, that if the Hypothesis were simply--mind consists of signifiers operating autonomously by an evolved law and dynamic, it would involve many disciplines over many decades to prove/disprove, with the likely conclusion that it is inconclusive.
You're points have been guiding. Many of which; I need to revisit.
That's a beautiful way to look at it. So within the context of your analogy; what would you say is vibrating to produce the sound of music?
Quoting frank
I agree, which is why i think people generally accept the reality they present themselves with in dreams, believing it all to be true and normal, even in cases of absolutely bizarre dreams. The critical-thinking areas (intellect) of the brain are dampened during sleep, and in that condition, all things appear as real as can be to the rest of the brain (without the aid of intellect), as you stated. But this is all happening because there is a kind of neural self-simulation still going on in the brain even when sleeping. If the intellect wakes up in the middle of the dream, that's when you get lucid dreams.
Edit:
Notice also that in the dream, you have a visible body, and a sense of you body in the dream. A copy of your real body in the dream.
Quoting frank
Same here. :wink:
As a metaphorical recap of tge Hypothesis, think of cats and dogs, how we imagine them with personalities, dogs are loving and loyal, cats are aloof and selfish, and so on individually; but thats not what they are. Theyre dogs, dogging and cats catting, whatever it is tgeir bodies and species do. it's possible for us to see, though not easy, that the personalities are superimposed from our 'world' and that they're not real. But that's obviously what we are, our so called world, just a superimposition onto our bodies and our species. I think my point being we can't know what body is, but it's not that personality having imposed itself. Just like a dog is just dogging. A human is just is-ing. Our only access to the truth of what we are is not by proving it and knowing it--that's where the distraction lies; the one creating the illusion of duality--it is just being it, the human body.
Which brings us to MP and this OP.
How is it then that in the dream state, things appear as real physical stuff, even though it is all dream stuff or mind stuff? Is it possible that the "real" world operates in a similar way? How would one be able to distinguish physical stuff from mental stuff in these two scenarios? What if all there is is mental stuff at different levels, but that mental stuff only appears physical to other mental stuff?
Although a monistic view is inevitably simpler than a dualist one, it is question begging to assume the kind of monism that turns the mind into a sensible object, as opposed to assuming the kind that turns sensible objects into mental states. It would be equally question begging to go the other way. That is why I do not think appeals to simplicity favor materialising the mind over mentalizing the sensible.
That applies as well to the claim that material entities cannot causally interact with immaterial ones. As well as being a claim that - to my mind anyway - is not self-evident to reason and so seems no more than a dogma, it leaves open whether the fact of interaction should lead us to conclude that the material is mental, or that the mind is material.
This is why I think appeals to such arguments are question begging. They will only seem to have evidential value to those who are already convinced that really only material things exist (and thus are already convinced the mind is material).
None of this is evidence that the mind is immaterial, but it doesn't seem to rise to being evidence that the mind is material either. The matter seems left open.
I should say that I am not arguing that monist immaterialism is true - though I don't dismiss it either - just that there still seems no real evidence that the mind is material
What do you think about neutral monism? I believe neutral monism is a better interpretation of monism than materialistic or idealistic monism. In my view, the choice between materialism and idealism is arbitrary. Let me try to explain:
If one assumes substance to be fundamentally physical, then things appear to be physical as you would expect according to one's own definition or assumption (you expressed the same thought as well). Conversely, if one assumes substance is fundamentally ideal, things still seem to appear physical regardless of one's definition or assumption. In either case, materialistic or idealistic monism appears to result to our subjective senses in the same experiences of the physical and the ideal. It is a difference that makes no difference.
For this reason, i tend to lean towards a kind of neutral monism, which proposes one substance with two potential relative fundamental expressions. I think i would venture to say that this neutral substance is most probably spacetime itself. Thoughts?
To lose any aspect of myself would be to become less than what I was. Every forgotten memory, bad relationship, failed project, every single aspect lost is a reduction of who you were. There is no core, there is simply an experience that changes. The notion that any aspect is more central than another is a valuing you place upon those aspects, not evidence of a metaphysical reality.
The self is a pattern of value, not substance. If you replaced me with a perfect replica, this would not be me, because I value the un-ending and dynamic pattern. I am myself now, because I was myself a second ago, and my experience links the past and future into a chain.
So you must be an atheist and materialist, is it correct? If you are, of course that would be your view.
But there are spiritual and religious folks who believe that body means nothing, and souls and mind are the true selves. They would also likely believe eternal life, after life or resurrection into the material world (in case of buddhists), existence of God, heaven and hell ... etc.
In my view, body is the precondition of mind, and mind is a part of body. Body can lose some of its parts. You see some folks with no leg, arms or fingers. When you shave your hair, you have no hair.
Just like that, body can have no mind. You see on TV unconscious folks or dead bodies with no mind in the movies and dramas due to sleep, drugs, illness or accidents. But you have never seen in your whole life, souls or minds without body, I dare to guess.
Therefore, body is you. Mind emerged from body, as body grew up and developed biologically. When body dies, the mind in the body also dies.
I don't know. Maybe the piano is the universe.
Quoting punos
What's odd is that we can detect this. The simulation has to be calibrated to the world. We can tell when it's off. Dementia is a case where the simulation is still working, but there's little to no calibration anymore.
I consider myself religious; however, I suspect that unlike science which requires empirical or mathematical proof to support fact claims, religion has no business in facts or proof, but is rather, related to being [whatever it is God/Nature/Reality 'designed/evolved' us to be] and not knowing. Tree of Life, not of knowledge (of good and evil).
Yes. I believe that too. Only the emergent mind is not real like the body is.
I think the issue of whether materialist monism or idealist monism is the correct view is another matter. The point I was making is that it is question begging to assume materialist monism for the purposes of refuting the view that the mind is immaterial.
If someone argues that the simplest thesis about why the sensible affects the mental is that the mental is sensible, then they are begging the question as it is equally simple to suppose the sensible is the mental.
Why is the emergent mind not real? What do you mean by "real" and "not real"?
Very simplified:
Obviously speaking hypothetically from what I have gathered and without any authority nor claim thereto, that is exactly the point I am following in the OP. Not necessarily adhering to Merleau-Ponty's reasoning, I agree that we have gotten it all wrong. We have privileged the Mind (unique to humans), unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity; relegating the flesh to a category shared with 'animals' as if we are superior to 'them', and worse, relegating it as the source of evil. Yet, prima facie, any animal born into this world has no 'cause' to question it's reality nor that of the natural Universe. Then why do we question reality? Because the 'we' doing the questioning is not our bodies, but this process of constructing and projecting (emerging out of our real imaginations--a thing we presumably share with primates, elephants, and sea mammals for e.g.) which has developed over generations, is transmitted with socialization, and has displaced our natures with--admittedly very functional--fictions. The subject, arising out of the need to unify the 'stories' arising from a single locus or embodiment, stands in for the body; but we have displaced the body with this mechanism. This 'illusion' though it has created another world, layered for humans, on top of the real one, has also caused much suffering, due primarily to the attachment to the world which is fictional, and ignorance about the one which is natural. A simplified solution is not to call for the extinguishing of mind, which would mean tge same for history, but a recognition that when we speak of I or Mind, we are referring to an excellent tool, our true nature remains that animal which God created/Nature evolved.
I am not sure if the emergent mind is not real. It is utterly real in that it knows, observes, feels, predicts and feels. How can the mind be not real?
Enoah has a mind and body. The body has a head, arms, feet and hands etc etc. The mind can feel, know, observe, recall, predict, reason ... etc etc.
The mind is a part of the body, which is invisible not only to other minds, but even to the mind itself. But it is as real as the body so long as it operates with its expected functions.
Mind dies when the body dies, because it is a part of the body.
Mind asks about the world and also about reality, because it is one of the nature / functions of mind i.e. curiosity.
Saying other animals are not the same as humans in reasoning is not placing the animals into the lower level out of arrogance of the human mind. It is just telling the truth and reality out of observations on nature and the world. It would be like saying the Sun is brighter than the Moon. It is just stating the fact, not making the Sun any superior to the Moon, or trying to make the Sun feel proud.
If mind believes in God, after life, resurrection, the heaven and hell etc, then it needs to postulate the existence of soul or spirit, so that it will unite with divine when it dies. We could say that soul or spirit is a postulated entity for a mind, like Thing-in-Itself is a postulated entity in Kant's system.
Knows=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good' [about it]
Observes=the aware-ing body observes, attaching no words to the observation; mind constructs perceptions to layer over the observations
Feels=body feels, attaches no word to the feelings; mind constructs emotions using words to layer over the feelings
Predicts=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good;'
Quoting CorvusQuoting Corvus
The body is plainly real in every sense of the word real. You're offering that in your statement.
All of the enumerated things mind can do are what we (mind) ascribes to itself as proof of its reality 'beyond' the physical body. But these are just functions being carried out by a system of stimulus and response. Just happens the functions have evolved to act in such a richly complex and sophisticated way, with a narrative form, mechanisms like the ones we call logic, grammar, reason, etc., that the body observing these functions and responding, triggers good feelings when tge system classifies itself as "real"
Quoting Corvus
We are a conceited ape. The conceit is the illusion that our imaginations are special beyond their function (yes, that is impressive) but somehow as an eternal truth
Remember, just hypothetical.
Mind craves an afterlife because the mechanism of the subject creates the illusion of continuing. I think, harsh as it is a pill to swallow, the so called subject doesn't really exist, and as for we tge body, it dies and is reborn in tge incessant present. If we want to put it into religious terms, There's God's gift to us, the eternal present, life, our fall is ignoring life and opting for knowledge and our own world that we built with it.
Your problem seems to stem from conflating mind and body at times, and then looking at mind and body separate entities as you go along. Constancy and coherence are lacking in your argument.
Mind and body are the same. Mind is is a part of the body. You are born in your body with little or no mind, then as your body grows, your mind emerges from the body. If you look at the mind as one of the organs of the body, then things get clearer.
Body has different parts, and the different parts do different things. Mind and body work together to function properly. If you had no eyes, then you won't have sights. If you have no ears, you won't hear. If you had no mind being unconscious, you will not see or hear even if you had eyes and ears. It is that simple.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, humans have logic, grammar and reasoning, which are handy for delving into more sophisticated tasks for survival in nature and the real world. All other animals which are non-human lack the capacity, and even humans have different levels in logic, grammar and reasoning. It is just a fact, nothing to do with conceit.
You can call humans as apes, because they share some biological mechanisms in life. They both have to be born, eat and drink, sleep, get old and die eventually. But that is where the common features exist and end as beings with the biological bodies. But they are not the same, when you look into their capacity of minds i.e. logic, grammar and reasoning. Saying that they are the same sounds over simplification of the beings in categorization trying to brush them under the same carpet for some peculiar reason.
It is a bit strange that you seem to acknowledge the existence of God, and creation of the universe and humans by the God. But at the same time you deny the existence of souls and spirits, and brush aside death as the final page of the chapter for the beings.
Souls and spirits are the essential elements in most religions. They are not for those non-believers. But if anyone is religious, then souls and spirits are the important existence which are real as the mind and body in the real world.
I agree it appears that way. Thats because Mind requires Body as its infrastructure and response; there is a seeming grey area with an apparent overlap. But there is no overlap, the appearance is owing to the limitations of Mind in both discerning where one ends and tge other begins, and, insisting upon such discernment.
Quoting Corvus
I'd like to. Please show me, where is that organ Mind?
Quoting Corvus
I recognize the empirical differences, by the same, to stick with the religious, I mean, we think our minds, aka souls, make us more valuable to nature/God. But I hypothesize that that is what alienates us from nature/god; in n/g eyes what makes as valuable is tge same as what makes a squirrel valuable, that we are living.
Quoting Corvus
I understand why the two seem to go hand in hand--God and spirit--but I do not see why it is necessary, or why, other than desire for immortality of a narrative the spirit is necessary
It is not a physical organ, but conceptual and functional organ. All your thoughts, feelings, emotions and senses i.e. the bundle of perceptions are your organ of mind, which emerged from your brain.
You cannot see it of course. It is conceptual and functional, hence even Hume couldn't see it, and he had to conclude the existence of self doesn't exist. There is only a bundle of perception when looking at the idea of self.
I will do some thinking for my reply to your other points. Later~
Ok. Yah. Splice that sentence from our entire exchange, and you and I agree generally on what Mind is and how it's different from Body, though it emerges therefrom.
EDIT: if I am incapable of leaving well enough alone, which, to wit, I am incapable, then the potential locus of our divergence is I say that emergence which is conceptual and functional does not share one and the same claim to reality as the body--unless it is a Spirit, which you seem to be saying. While your position is not only reasonable, but seems to be conventional, even to those who claim to be rejecting duality, I just am convinced of a different conclusion, I.e. that it exists, is not body, but is not spirit either, is just the imagination having emerged into something we both utilize and are tricked by.
:up: :cool:
No where is this more clear than in the case of transgender persons.
Both body and brains are dimorphic. (two possible sexes). Two separate processes produce either.
In the first trimester of fetal development, the body, under the influence of genes, differentiates to male (penis and testes) or female (vagina and ovaries).
In the last trimester of fetal development, the brain, under the influence of genes and hormones, differentiates to male or female.
Usually, these two processes are co-incident, and a cisgender person is born.
But sometimes, the brain develops an opposite sex from the body and a transgender person is born.
Their experience of life is what the brain tells them they are.