Let me be clear: the claim is, a mind is not a thing.
A mind is a process of a thing.
Tag: embodied mind
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Looking at another thinker I see an external object. And yet I see an internal in the external. My mind is therefore someone else’s external as well. A further example of problem of internal/external duality.
In other words, internal and external are relative terms with an impossible basis. My internal is someone else’s external.
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There are two objects. One is similar to the other. From experience I assume their characteristics are similar to one another as well.
This body has a mind. It is therefore reasonable to assume other similar bodies have minds as well.
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Earlier I said I have direct perception to my thoughts but it is more accurate to say that I have perceptual access to my thoughts.
In the view of Descartes to think is to know that one exists. But the question is to exist as what, as mind or as mind in body? In some ways dualism is correct. There does seem to be these two separate “things”. I will argue that one is an illusion. I will argue that one relies on the other.
The way we have access to the mind is important. I believe without the body we have no mind. I believe this because of the evidence, not because of blind faith.
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I believe many philosophers and philosophies perceptually mis-arrange the internal and external worlds.
This mis-arrangement can be evidenced from their language. The descriptions given usually speak of separate worlds. This in itself is not a problem. The problem is in what way are they separate. The common mis-arrangement is one of internal and external worlds being exclusive, when in reality, the external world, by definition, includes the internal world.
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The theory of an embodied mind is neither new nor original. It is a staple of cognitive linguistics beginning with perhaps Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. The mind is never from any other perspective than the body within which it functions.
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There is no evidence that we can have any kind of knowledge outside of or prior to sensory knowledge.2.
If only the mind (whatever the word means) is necessary then we should be able to have knowledge through it alone. That is, a person born with no other sense other than the mind (following Buddhism, I take the mind to be the sixth sense) then this person’s mind should be sufficient to allow him access to knowledge.3.
There is also no evidence of a mind independent of the body, either before one is born or after one has died.
theoria 