"In Zen training one has to strive with soul and body to transcend his/her dualistic discriminating (thinking) consciousness. One has to come to the ultimate extremity where any slightest touch may effect a great change in his/her personality, so fundamentally as to be described by saying that 'the earth splits and the mountains collapse.' (S/he) has to plunge into the abyss of 'sheer darkness altogether,' as an old Master expressed it." (Shibayma, 44)
| 8.000 | The Mind-Body Relation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 8.001 | The Mind-Body relation as a concept in and of itself is a Western proposition. | ||
| 8.002 | It has been so since the l7th Century and the philosopher Descartes (cf. 8.3400), whose line of reasoning and experience we will delineate. | ||
| 8.003 | The Eastern conception, in general, makes it a sine qua non of the human experience that the mind and body are one in the same. Enlivening this mind-body composite is who we are making ourself present in the phenomenal realm, thewhat of our being-in-the-world. Who we are we know as being infinite and eternal in character with properties of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. Our experience in the phenomenal realm is an instruction in Karma. The purpose of Karma is to fully realize and actualize the absolute and unconditional character of who we are in the stream of cosmic reality. All else is accidental, secondary in nature and purpose to our true purpose, realizing our divinity in the actuality of our Godhead. | ||
| 8.0004 | As an editorial note, unless otherwise cited, the cognitive structural design, a conceptual genealogical progression, for this section we have based on Hunnex and its content, on Runes. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.0010 | How we describe the mind-body relation rests in our point of view about the mind itself. The mind-body relation explains how phenomena we usually identify as mind associates with the body and vice versa. | ||
| 8.0011 | The mind within the context of the mind-body relation refers to the mental activities of: | ||
| 8.0011a | conation — desiring or willing, | ||
| 8.0011b | adaptive behavior — reasoning and problem solving, | ||
| 8.0011c | consciousness — simple awareness, self-consciousness; denied by some schools, i.e., behaviorism; supplemented by others as the unconsciousness of depth psychology. | ||
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| 8.0020 | When we experience our conscious mental life phenomenologically, we realize a constellation of seven aspects: purposefulness, intentionality, consciousness itself, personality, personal change, personal continuity, and selectivity. | ||
| 8.0021 | Purposefulness we observe as the property of the instrumentality of our behavior. We see ourself mentally representing a goal. We then see ourself choosing a means to realize our goal in the phenomenal realm. We then find that we actualize our chosen means in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.0022 | Intentionality we observe in our act of giving meaning to the contents of our consciousness. When we bracket our mind knowing and then discriminating and the thing known, we then emerge the meaning we have given to the content of what we are aware. | ||
| 8.0023 | Consciousness we observe as the epistemic feature of our sentience or awareness. | ||
| 8.0024 | Personality we observe in perceiving our realization that our consciousness is private and uniquely our own. We experience our own integrity and identity as a person. Thus, do we experience ourself as the location of a mental life and thus, as a personality. | ||
| 8.0025 | Personal change we observe in the sensible continuity of our consciousness, like a stream, it flows. In this context, we observe two states of being-in-the-world: | ||
| 8.0025a | Substantive states we experience when we perceive our mind resting in some stable configuration, for example, when we perceive ourself perceiving a room. | ||
| 8.0025b | Transitive states we experience when we experience our mind in between stable configurations, for example, when we move from our perceiving the room to perceiving a chair in the room. | ||
| 8.0026 | Personal continuity we observe when we perceive the selectivity, attentiveness, and interestedness of our being-in-the-world. Somethings we attract ourself to, others not. We experience, thus, the phenomenal realm as we have chosen to experience it. This is so, we know, in that our personal aims, interests, and expectations that we have established limit our perception of the phenomenal realm. In addition, we also know that our personal experiences also can cloud our perception. Thus, do we see the pluralistic nature of our experience in and of the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.0030 | In our following inquiry we experience over time that the more contemporary the psychology, the more eclectic is its content. Our following inquiry is a general orientation. Thus our intention is not to even approach exhausting each field of our discussion. Progressively through time we will notice that we describe mind as "soul," "substance," and "behavior." Today (1986), we tend to describe mind in terms of what it does, rather than what it is. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.0100 | Overview of Theories of The Mind-Body Relation: | ||
| 8.0110 | Materialistic theories subordinate the mind to matter, body, or society. We find materialistic theories in such fields as: | ||
| 8.0111 | Epiphenomenalism that holds conscious mental life as being a causally non-important and of no consequent by-product or side effect, of physical process in our brains. This school we describe as the "conscious automan theory" that speaks of "the inert spectator view of mind." (Flanagan, 38) | ||
| 8.0112 | Group Mind Theories that hold that our individual mind simply mirrors the mental activities of the group or class to which we belong. The group determines our individual behavior. | ||
| 8.0113 | Behaviorism and eventually Functionalism that abandons all reference to mind. Thought or mental activity is implicit behavior. | ||
| 8.0114 | Associationism and eventually Functionalism hold that the mind or self is just a notion emerging from the association of ideas and experiences. This emerging activity occurs so fast that it suggests some entity, i.e., the self or mind. | ||
| 8.0114a | Associationism itself holds that we can reduce the mind and its content to simple, discrete experiences that combine to form all aspects of the life and, therefore, of the mind. | ||
| 8.0120 | Functionalistic Theories consider the mind a function or vital principle of the body. We find functionalistic theories in: | ||
| 8.0121 | Holism of Gestalt Psychology that treats the mind in terms of its total organization. | ||
| 8.0122 | Emergentism of the process philosophies considers the mind and other new realities as products of evolution that we cannot reduce to lower levels. | ||
| 8.0123 | Functional Psychology joining Associationism and Behaviorism considers the mental to be generally the organizing and directive tendency of the material. | ||
| 8.0130 | Spiritualistic Theories hold the mind to be a mere substance, soul, or independent reality. We find spiritualistic theories in: | ||
| 8.0131 | Personalism and personalistic psychologies that stress the central reality of self or personality. | ||
| 8.0132 | Voluntarism that says the will is the ultimate constituent of reality. Human will, or some force analogous to it, is the primary stuff of the universe; that blind, purposive impulse is the real nature in nature. | ||
| 8.0133 | Objective and Absolute Realism that gives the mind a metaphysical status that subordinates all material activity as manifestation of Absolute Mind. | ||
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| 8.0200 | We now enter a phenomenological mode we know as a Phenomenology of Appearances. Within this mode, using a Descriptive Phenomenological method, we will experience our perception of the mind-body relation from the materialistic, functionalistic, and spiritual theoretical points of view. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.1000 | Materialistic Theories of the Mind-Body Relation: | ||
| 8.1001 | We synthesize our materialistic perception of the mind-body relation by perceiving the mental as a manifestation of the material. | ||
| 8.1100 | Our perception of our materialistic point of view we source in two early Greeks. | ||
| 8.1110 | In Leucippus we experience our mind as a moving force of fiery atoms. We observe these fiery atoms to be an infinity of equally homogeneous particles. We further observe these particles in an infinite variety of forms occupying infinite space. We see that empty space or not-Being separates each of these particles of Being. We experience the coming into being of things, Becoming, as the result of the motion of these firey atoms in space and their accidental coming together. | ||
| 8.1120 | In Protagoras we experience our mind as a moving force of perceptions. We experience that as humans we are the measurement of all things that are and are not. Thus, do we find ourself only coming to gain knowledge about what we perceive and not the thing we are perceiving itself. | ||
| 8.1200 | From Leucippus and Protagoras in Democritus we again experience the atomic structure in all substances. We observe these atoms to be indivisible and imperceptibly small particles. We observe a variety of material qualities. When we experience these qualities we find atomic forms as their substrata. | ||
| 8.1201 | When we experience our mind, we perceive the finest, smoothest, and most agile of all the atoms. When we experience our perceiving, we find tiny copies (eidola) emanating tiny copies of themselves. These tiny copies we experience having an impact upon the atoms of our mind. We observe that their impact is responsible for the facts of our memory. | ||
| 8.1300 | From Democritus in Epicurus we experience a similar conception of atomic structures permeating our phenomenal realm. We observe in this conception a greater play of chance in atomic movement, making for a lot of deviation from their course of activity. | ||
| 8.1400 | From Epicurus in Hobbes we experience matter and motion as the least common denominator of our percepts. Bodies and their movements we find as the subject matter of our perception of the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.1401 | We experience consciousness in two general modes: | ||
| 8.1401a | 1) as a jarring of our nervous system in its sensitive and cognitive aspects and | ||
| 8.1401b | 2) as a kick-back to the jarring in its affectional and volitional, motor aspects. | ||
| 8.1402 | We observe that we can perceive all physical and psychological events in one of four areas: | ||
| 8.1402a | In geometry we can define the spatial movements of bodies. | ||
| 8.1402b | In physics we can define the effects of moving bodies up on one another. | ||
| 8.1402c | In either we can define the movements of our nervous system. | ||
| 8.1402d | In politics, we can define the effect of our nervous systems upon one another. | ||
| 8.1403 | We observe that bodies move according to two laws: | ||
| 8.1403a | Every organic body tends toward self-preservation and self-assertion. | ||
| 8.1403b | Every organic body relinquishes a portion of its tendency for self-preservation and self-assertion in return for some relinquishment of another like-in-kind body. | ||
| 8.1410 | From Hobbes in T.H. Huxley we emerged a perception of the mind-body relation we label epiphenomenolism. In T.H. Huxley we experience our mind as an epiphenomenal reality. In other words, we experience our mind as a by-product of a basic process in the phenomenal realm. This by-product we observe has no influence of any great merit on our present or future development. We experience our being thoroughly grounded in matter, the material realm of being in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.1411 | From T.H. Huxley in Haeckel we experience our essential unity of the organic and inorganic. We experience this unity materialistically and not according to the tenants of revealed religion. | ||
| 8.1412 | From Haeckel in Broad we experience everything happening according to the blind combination of matter and energy. We do not observe any guidance to this combining process, giving us no experiential ground to assume a non-material component. We perceive primary qualities as physical emergents and secondary qualities (color, taste, smell, etc.) as transphysical emergents. We observe that the life of our mind results from the combining of a physical psyche in nature with other material factors. Thus, we experience in our consciousness a generative quality. | ||
| 8.1412a | We perceive our psyche persisting after the death of our body. We perceive it floating indefinitely about in cosmic space, waiting to combine with a material body under suitable conditions. We label this theory The Compound Theory of Materialistic Emergency. | ||
| 8.1412b | We experience sense data as real, short-lived existents. We perceive this data as neither physical nor mental, but only as an epiphenomenal event. | ||
| 8.1413 | From Broad we emerge what we call Contemporary Epiphenomenal Theories of Mind. In these theories we play variations on the same theme. We perceive our consciousness simply an epiphenomenal reality related to our neural processes underlying it. | ||
| 8.1420 | From Hobbes in Saint-Simon and Comte we have emerged Marx and Group Mind Theories. In Saint-Simon and Comte we perceive every bit of our knowledge that is factual connecting with our here and now experience. We perceive this knowledge connecting in such a way that we can verify it or directly or indirectly confirm it. | ||
| 8.1421 | From Comte in Marx we perceive our mind as a mirror of the socio-economic class mind. We perceive that our experience in this matter indirectly confirms our knowledge of our mind. We ground our experience in the scientifically evident fact that matter exists temporarily and logically before our mind. We experience verification of this prioritization because we never experience of our mind appearing except as an outgrowth of matter. | ||
| 8.1421a | We experience our brain forming ideas not before or independently of the phenomenal realm, but only in relation to it. We experience the manifold content of the phenomenal realm moving and stimulating our brain to thought formation. Our ideas, we observe, reflect things. We observe, furthermore, that this reflection, like everything else, is dialectical (cf. 8.1422), not inert, but active. | ||
| 8.1421b | We emerge our ideas from things. We observe our ideas lead back to things, albeit, sometimes very circuitously. We observe that we can reflect things in fantasy, by abstraction, in a new combination, or even directly. We experience our perception of a perfectly objective phenomenal realm to be reflective itself. Thus, we observe that our reflections are never perfect. Hence, we conclude that truth is absolute and our knowledge is relative. | ||
| 8.1422 | From Marx we emerge what we label Contemporary Marxist Theories of The Mind-Body Relation. These theories we play on variations of the same theme of Dialectical Materialism, a way of thinking we have evolved from a particular perception of the phenomenal realm that we maintain. | ||
| 8.1422a | By dialectics we express the dynamic interconnectedness of things, the universality of change, and the radical character of change. We experience anything and everything possessing every sort of reality in a process of self-transformation. We experience the content of change to be composed of opposing forces. We observe this internal movement of these forces to be the interconnection of everything. Thus, we experience these forces changing each thing into something else. | ||
| 8.1422b | From our direct experience of change operating in the phenomenal realm in its every level of existence, we observe three basic laws: | ||
| 8.1422c | 1) The Law of Interpenetration, Unity, and Strife of Opposites. We observe that all things that exist are composed of complexes of elements and forces in opposition to each other. We observe that all things have the character of a changing unity. We experience the process of change, expressed by interpenetration and strife, to be continuous and absolute. | ||
| 8.1422d | 2) The Law of Transformation of Quantity and Quality (and vice versa). We observe that the changes taking place in nature are not just quantitative. We observe that as change reoccurs time and time again, new qualities appear suddenly when we compare them with the quantitative changes up to that point. We observe that the new quality is just as real as the former. We observe that this new separate quality is the outgrowth of a developmental process of the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.1422e | 3) The Law of Negation of Negation. We observe that the series of quantitative changes and emerging qualities is unending. We experience each phase of development as a synthesis. We observe that this synthesis resolves the contradictions contained in the preceding synthesis. At the same time, we observe that the new synthesis generates its own contradictions on a different qualitative level. | ||
| 8.1422f | We experience these three laws qualitatively enriched reconstructions of our formalistic laws of identity (i.e., A is A), difference (A is not-A), and excluded middle (A is B or A is not-B). The transposed law states: A is A and cannot be non-A. We reconstruct this law to now state: A is A and also non-A (and B). | ||
| 8.1423 | From Comte in Durkheim we experience our mind as a mirror of the group mind. We observe the group mind as our only reference point for our human knowledge. We experience the group mind as the directive force for us as individual agents who make-up our society. We experience this group mind to be reciprocal and non-subjective in character. | ||
| 8.1424 | From Durkheim have we emerged Group Mind Theories and Contemporary Social Psychologies. Herein, we experience society as a reality and the group mind as an actual fact. We observe that the action of the total group forms a mind that determines our individual human behavior. | ||
| 8.1430 | From Hobbes in Pavlov we experience our mind as a switchboard for our behavior. We observe the switchboard activity in the conditioned response of the organism. We observe that when we feed a dog food, the dog salivates. While the dog is fed, we ring a bell. Eventually we stop giving the dog food, yet keep on ringing the bell. We observe that the dog continues to salivate — even though we have stopped feeding. We conclude we have conditioned the dog to respond to a new stimulus. We experience we can do the same in the phenomenal realm of humans. Thus, we conclude that there is no mind as such. There is only a switchboard of neuronic patterns that we can program and reprogram from outside the human organism. | ||
| 8.1431 | From Pavlov in Watson we observe that thinking and emotion are implicit in our behavior. We observe our thinking is implicit in our sub-vocal speech patterns and our emotions are implicit in our visceral reactions. | ||
| 8.1432 | From Watson in Skinner we observe that if we immediately reward a desired behavioral response, the human being conditioned would tend to continue to execute the desired behavior. A simple smile or nod is often enough, we observe, sufficient reinforcement to continue a behavior. | ||
| 8.1432a | Even emotion we experience we learn. We perceive emotion to be a response to an antecedent stimuli and as a stimulus for consequent responses. This operation we label operant conditioning. We even experience love as a product of what our nurturing environment has taught us by its reward system and associations with the verbal expression, "I love you." As with love, we find the same with "God," or even what we label "mental illness," "mind," and "body." We experience that these realities or possibilities have no intrinsic meaning in themselves. The meaning we give them is their reality and is the learned behavioral response we have learned. Our learning schedule we experience as a matrix of positive and negative reward systems that encourage our continued behavior or its cessation. | ||
| 8.1432b | In Skinner we observe the "behavioristic model is only an attitude." We see that it is made-up of epistemololgical conservatism. We base our perception on the evidence we have from our own behavior. We experience, when we engage in the behavioristic model, that we are displaying "the attitude that reference to private phenomena — even if (we construe) these phenomena as physiological events or behavioral processes is, by and large, more trouble than it is worth, and is avoidable whenever possible. (Flanagan, 89f) | ||
| 8.1433 | From Skinner we have emerged Contemporary Neo-Behaviorism. We perceive behavior within the context of prediction and control and not in understanding the behavior. Second, we perceive all forms of behavior as products of the S-R (Stimulus-Response) bond. We include even complex behaviors we might have labeled intrinsic. We observe on the human level, a whole matrix of genetically transmitted unconditioned reflexes that we have no evidence that we cannot recondition them. We observe and experience the sophistication of S-R technology in the control of the political climate, mass-marketing techniques, and shaping of public opinion. Not new, indeed, but we experience the S-R model highly defined and refined in our phenomenal realm — even to allowing/conditioning the populace to think it (individually) expresses free will in its behavior rather than making a conditioned response attributable to the operant conditioning of the master programmers, those who control the purse strings of Earth. | ||
| 8.1433a | Thus, we experience our thoughts as actions rather than as immaterial predecessors of material actions. We experience our "behavior both as overt and covert, public and private. The difference between (our) mental phenomena and physical phenomena is not a metaphysical one, it is an epistemological one. Private mental events are simply less accessible than public events." As a result, we perceive behaviorism as a "materialistic metaphysical stance." (Ibid., 24) | ||
| 8.1433b | In our current overview of neo-behaviorism from within the context of philosophical psychology, we find we have been substituting an "objective concept of need for the real thing, in order to have nothing left" which we cannot reduce. | ||
| 8.1433c | We acknowledge that we now have no clue about how to account for the subjective character of our experience in physical terms. (Nagel, 399) | ||
| 8.1433d | In sum, we observe our situation in the Mind-Body relation from the behavioristic model consonant with Godels Theorem. In this theorem we observe, for example, that we cannot grasp what it is like to be a bat. We find all we can do is to approach the experience by "an infinite sequence of an ever-more-accurate simulation process that converges towards, but never reaches emulation." We experience ourself trapped inside ourself. We, therefore, cannot see how other systems are to us. Thus, we experience "the objectivity-subjectivity dilemmas as somehow related to epistemological problems in both mathematical logic and the foundation of physics. (Ibid., 414) | ||
| 8.1440 | From Hobbes in Hume we experience the source of our cognition in our impressions we glean upon sensation and reflection. We observe that we accomplish this through three structural principles: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. We label these laws The Laws of Association. Our mind we perceive having a structure, "wired to process experience in certain ways." (Flanagan, 122) | ||
| 8.1440a | We derive from and copy our simple ideas from simple impressions. We observe that our complex ideas are copies of complex impressions or result from our imagination combining simple ideas. | ||
| 8.1440b | We glean knowledge from our comparison of ideas. We experience our knowledge solely consisting of the intrinsic resemblance between ideas. We perceive this resemblance to be nothing more than the resembling ideas. Thus, we conclude we do not experience any abstract general ideas. We observe that our habitual use of these resembling ideas as representations of all ideas and impressions similar to the representative idea gives way to our sense of the generality of ideas. Thus, we experience our mind as an association of physical experiences. | ||
| 8.1441 | From Hume in Hartly we emerge a perception of the mind-body relation we label as associationism. We perceive every one of our mental states resolvable into simple, discrete components. Second, we perceive that when we combine these elemental states, we can explain the whole of our mental life, which is a physical phenomenon. | ||
| 8.1442 | From Harley in J.S. Mill we perceive all inference as basically a product of induction. We base our perception in our experience of the uniformity of nature we observe from one particular event to another or group of others. Thus, we experience our knowledge resting in our empirical induction. We perceive the cause of an event to be the sum total of positive and negative necessary conditions. | ||
| 8.1442a | We observe we can make our induction in one of four ways: | ||
| 8.1442b | 1) Method of Agreement: The circumstance that alone contains all the instances of a phenomenon is the cause (or effect) of that phenomenon. | ||
| 8.1442c | 2) Method of Difference: The circumstance that alone contains a difference of non-instance of a phenomenon is the cause (or effect) or indispensable part of the cause of that phenomenon. | ||
| 8.1442d | 3) Joint Method of Agreement or Difference: The circumstance that alone contains the difference between two sets of instances of a phenomenon is the cause (or effect) or an indispensable part of the cause of that phenomenon. | ||
| 8.1442c | 4) Method of Concomitant Variations: "Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of the phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation." (Runes, 197) | ||
| 8.1442f | 5) Method of Residues: Subtract from any phenomenon a part known by previous inductions as the effect of certain antecedents and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents. | ||
| 8.1442g | We experience induction following these laws that are the structural component of our empirical experience, of our mind, knowing empirical reality, the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.1443 | From J.S. Mill in James we perceive the interpretation of each notion as a tracing of its respective practical consequences. When we experience no practical difference whatever between two alternatives, we perceive them as particularly being the same thing. Thus, we experience no need to dispute a matter further. As a result, we experience our mind a "stream of consciousness" engaged in adaptive behavior. | ||
| 80143a | As a side note, today, from the perception of the naturalist, we tend to favor this adaptive stance. We perceive mentality as we experience it. We experience our mental life to be a "causally effective functional feature of incredibly complex interactions that we humans, considered biological organisms, have with the natural and social environment." (Flanagan, 24) | ||
| 8.1443b | We experience in James an attraction to "the charms of virtually every conceivable solution to the mind-body problem, including the position that, fortunately, the psychologist is probably better off not carrying about it." (Ibid., 43) | ||
| 8.1444 | From James in Dewey we experience our mind as intelligent, meaning adaptive, behavior. We observe when we act upon a plan, the plan leads us to or away from the realization of the plan itself. We experience the truth or falsity of the plan in the quality of activity we engage in realizing its objective. We find that the hypothesis that works is the true one. We experience truth in the collection of confirmed cases. We observe that our process of inquiry is one of experimentation. Thus, we perceive caused propositions to be prospective, heuristic and teleological and not retrospective, revelatory, or ontological. Hence, we experience laws as predictions of future occurrence given we carry out certain operations. | ||
| 8.1445 | From Dewey we emerge what we label Functionalism (cf. 8.2000) | ||
| 8.1500 | Our focus in our materialistic perception of the mind-body relation is more on the body, its physicality and the materiality of the phenomenal realm. We find that from the physical behavior of physical realities we extrapolate mind. We use this extrapolation as an umbrella for personal events in such experiences we cannot, according to our materialistic protocols, experience directly. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.2000 | Functionalistic Theories of The Mind-Body Relation | ||
| 8.2001 | We synthesize our functionalistic perceptions of the mind-body relation by making the mental a function of the material. | ||
| 8.2100 | We establish our functionalistic perception in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in whom we perceive our mind as the vital force of our body. | ||
| 8.2101 | In Socrates, we term this force daimon, from which, Plato tell us, Socrates received warnings against what was wrong. | ||
| 8.2102 | In Plato, we experience our knowledge of the phenomenal realm through our cognition of sense perception. Such knowledge we describe as opinion (doxa). Opinion we experience as being more or less clear. We know, though, that our opinion-knowledge never rises to the level of true knowledge. We experience true knowledge through intellectual or rational cognition. We experience the reality of immutable essences, intelligible realities, Forms or Ideas. This world we observe contains the ultimate realities from which we pattern the world of sensible things. | ||
| 8.2103 | In Aristotle we experience matter as a locus of determinate potentialities. We observe that the activity of form actualizes these potentialities. We observe further that every object in our sensory realm is a union of two ultimate principles, matter (hyle) and form. Hyle, we observe possesses the capacity for the form. Form, we also observe, has being only in the succession of its material embodiments. The soul or mind we experience as the principle of life, the primary actualization of the material body. | ||
| 8.2104 | From Aristotle, our conception of the mind-body relation flows into two general functionalistic streams. In one we move toward Spinoza; in the other, toward Aquinas. | ||
| 8.2105 | We can also locate Augustine, Descartes, Kant, and Lotze in our functionalistic stream. We note here our recognition of the functionalistic influences in the development of Spiritualistic Theories. | ||
| 8.2110 | In Spinoza, we observe our mind to be an attribute or function of Absolute Substance, a view we also observe as roots in the traditions of Jewish Philosophy. In order to make an inquiry, we observe that our mind must discover within itself and disclose to itself whatever authoritarian guidance it can assure for making a reasonable inquiry. We experience upon reflection Absolute Substance, Causa sui. We experience it as being all-inclusive. Thus, we observe causality as immanent causality. Thus, we experience that every determinative being lies within one substantial being. | ||
| 8.2111 | From Spinoza in Fechner we experience everything as consciousness. We do not perceive any substance or things-in-themself. Everything we experience as sharing the life of the mind. We observe our mind as a simplifying power in contrast to a form diversifying the physical. Mind we observe as appearance to ourself. Matter we observe as appearance to others. We experience both mind and matter as functional components of the same reality that we differentiate only according to our point of view. | ||
| 8.2112 | From Fechner through Herbart to Wundt (cf. 8.3670) do we emerge Experimental Psychology. In Herbart, we (in the West) grasp a basic Zen appreciation (yet not necessarily the experiential understanding) of the Principle of Identity: Everything is what it is. | ||
| 8.2112a | We observe that behind and underlying the phenomenal realm of appearance we find a plurality of real things in themselves. These real things we observe are independent of the operations of our mind upon them. We find that when we predicate unity and multiplicity of an object we predicate a contradiction. Thus, we experience ultimate reality as absolutely unitary and without change. | ||
| 8.2112b | Ideas we observe emerge from the collision between things. Thus, we experience their functionality. Being centers of force, we observe ideas always in our mind. The energy, we experience, of these forces determines, we observe, what these ideas are. We observe these forces come to our mind through our senses and are never lost. | ||
| 8.2113 | From Wundt in James and Dewey we recognize our mind as adaptive behavior, a function of the environment. In the Behaviorism of Watson we recognize our mind as simple behavior, a function of physical activity. In Darwin, we experience our mind to be a product of evolution, a function of the process of natural selection. | ||
| 8.2113a | We find synthesis in these emerging conceptions in our assertion of the programmatic method. The meaning of a proposition we find in its physical consequent. Whatever meaning we give to the mind-body relation is what we see the body-mind doing. Our meaning is a function of our doing and in itself has no reality. | ||
| 8.2114 | From Dewey we emerge Functional Psychology. In this perception of the mind-body relation, we perceive our mental processes as sense perception, emotion, validation and thought each as a function of our biological organism. Through its function, we experience our physical organism adapting to and controlling the environment. | ||
| 8.2120 | The second functionalistic stream from Aristotle flows to Aquinas from Avicenna. | ||
| 8.2121 | In Avicenna we establish a fundamental principle of our medieval look at mind-body. We observe the universal existing ante res in God. The universal exists in rebus as the universal nature of particulars. The universal exists post res in our human mind by way of abstraction, after the fact of our being-in-the-world. | ||
| 8.2122 | In Acquinas, we observe the mind as the vital principle of our body. We conceive our mind as the vital principle of our body throughout our Scholastic mode. | ||
| 8.2123 | From Scholasticism, we experience our mind not only as a vital principle, but also as the unity in a number of our special faculties. We experience our sensibility, intelligence, and validation as special faculties. We experience that we can explain to ourself our own individual process of sensation, thought, and will by referring to them as special faculties, by functionalizing their reality in relation with the body. | ||
| 8.2124 | From Scholasticism and Faculty Psychology, in Brentano we observe only three forms of psychic activity: representation, judgment, and the phenomena of love and hate. Each of these functions we experience as being a mode of intentionality. | ||
| 8.2124a | By intentionality we experience ourself giving meaning to the intended object. We observe that in our mental experience, the content of our mental experience is just a physical phenomenon, real or imagined, to which we intend to refer. We observe that what is psychic is just our act of representing, judging (denying or affirming), and valuing (hating or loving). We further observe that these functions are evidently immaterial and from this observation, conclude our mind to be a purely spiritual, imperishable, functional substance. | ||
| 8.2125 | From Brentano in Meinong we experience as an object anything we intend through our thought. We observe that these objects can either exist as physical objects or subsist as mathematical entities. In either case, we experience them as a function of thought, thought being a function of intention, intention being a function of the object intended. | ||
| 8.2125a | As mathematical entities, we observe that they can be either possible or impossible. Their possibility or impossibility again being a function of the original intention we make early on in our observation process. | ||
| 8.2125b | Additionally, we see that they can belong to a lower or higher level, i.e., functional relations and complexions based upon their simple terms or elements. We find that we can abstract existence from objects and consider the abstracted existence their essence alone. | ||
| 8.2126 | From Meinong a side stream we label Holism and eventually Emergentism evolves. | ||
| 8.2126a | In Whitehead we experience only one reality. We observe that whatever appears in our perceptual field is real. We see that we can experience nothing beyond the immediacy of our present in our experience of subjects. Hence, we find no static concepts or substances in the phenomenal realm. What we find we are observing, though, is a network of events. We experience these events as actual extensions or spatio-temporal unities. Thus, we experience all things as being sensitive to the existence of all others. We experience the relation between all things as feeling. Our mind, thus, as a function of our experience, we experience as a self-conscious event. | ||
| 8.2126b | In Alexander and Morgan we establish nature from the beginning as a four-dimensional matrix. We observe materiality, secondary qualities, life and mentality as emergent modifications of proto-space-time. Thus, we experience our mind as our nervous system emerging into the capacity of awareness. Thus, we experience two types of knowledge: a) contemplative knowledge wherein we set the object over against our mind and b) actual being, experiencing, enjoying a reality wherein we experience no duplication or subject or object. Our mind we experience, as a result, as emergent reality. | ||
| 8.2126c | In Bergson, we experience duration more than intention as our vital center and the vital center of other unities. Duration we experience in our immediate experience. We experience all things, consciousness, matter, time, evaluation, motion, and even the absolute as specialized transitional forms of duration. Thus, do we summarize our experience as the experience of the elan vital, the original life force giving meaning and actualization to all that is in the phenomenal realm. Our mind, we experience as a function of this creative cosmic force. | ||
| 8.2127 | In Naturalistic Emergentism we experience our world to consist of simple natural objects, events, and processes. With these natural things, we experience as well all their properties and relations. | ||
| 8.2127a | We experience all the novel features of the universe emerging in law-like ways from within simple, yet contentially considered, complex interactions of these natural objects, events, and processes. | ||
| 8.2127b | We sense, from this perception, our universe to be closed because we are unable to conceive of natural physical things giving rise to non-natural or unnatural things. Thus, do we experience our universe as being holistic. | ||
| 8.2127c | We engender this perception of our perception of things though the eyes of the evolutionary biologist and the contemporary scientist in general. | ||
| 8.2127d | Through these eyes we perceive the birth of a completely new, genetically distinct mammal, for example, to be the law-like combination of the sperm and ovum, neither of which, on their own, is that mammal. | ||
| 8.2127e | Thus, we experience even our morphology, behavior traits, and abilities as nothing more or less than the law like outcome of the process of natural selection. (Flanagan, 43f) | ||
| 8.2127f | Thus, what we know as our conscious mental life we experience as being the functional result of our brain and world interacting with each other. | ||
| 8.2127g | Our conscious mental life is not the brain, it is not the world. We experience our conscious mental life as a function of our being-in-the-world. (Ibid., 46) | ||
| 8.2127h | Our mental states, then, we experience as functional states in themselves as well as functional properties of our complex interaction with the "outside" world. (Ibid., 45) | ||
| 8.2127i | We experience ourself, when we so perceive ourself so experiencing, as a function in and of the space-time continuum. | ||
| 8.2128 | Returning to the mainstream, from Meinong in Husserl we emerge phenomenology and the phenomenological method. | ||
| 8.2128a | In order to engender a phenemonological sense of the mind-body relation, we reiterate the method from yet another point of view (cf. 7.5022ff). We experience every conscious process intending its object in context with others. Some we intend as presented, others we intend so as to become presented if our intended future consciousness takes a particular course of action. In other words, our consciousness is always an intentional predelinating of processes. In these processes, we can intend other objects, each being the same or different with an all-inclusive object context: the phenomenal realm, being-in-the-world. | ||
| 8.2128b | We experience ourself describing not only particular intended objects, but also the intended phenomenal realm, as intended — as part of our noematic objective sense that belongs to our consciousness by virtue of intrinsic intentionality of the phenomenal realm. (By noesis, in general, we are referring to whatever we are making current in our stream of consciousness. We make it intrinsically intentional in that we make it refer to an object beyond itself. By noema we refer to the objective sense of noesis. Thus, with every dimension of noesis we find a corresponding dimension of noema.) | ||
| 8.2128c | Thus, we find that when we abstract all the entities and relations, they reappear as noematic-intentional objects within our own particular perceptual (isolated) field. | ||
| 8.2128d | Thus, do we experience the intrinsic character of any actual consciousness, as intending a phenomenal realm and itself as in that phenomenal realm, as being an essentially necessary determination of any possible consciousness. | ||
| 8.2128e | We observe that we can abstract actual psychic subjectivity. We take the objects intended as the noematic-intended objects of our investigated psychic process. We find that we need to maintain an abstractive and self-restraining attitude if we were to isolate the psychic in its purity and yet preserve it in its full intentionality. We label the maintenance of this attitude "psychological epoche." The process effect upon the objects of psychic consciousness we label "psychological reduction." | ||
| 8.2128f | Thus, are we able to experience typical structures of the psychic process and the structure of noematic objects belonging to them because of their intrinsic intentionality. Thus, can we describe typical personalities and their habitually intended worlds. | ||
| 8.2128g | Now that we have acquired empirical knowledge of our purely psychic process, we can now relax our psychological epoche. Once relaxed, we now can inquire into the extra-psychic circumstances under which our psychic processes occur in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.2128h | We discover that we can observe not only empirical types, but essential psychic possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities in any possible phenomenal realm. We can observe, through our eidectic (i.e., ideally or purely possible) reduction the psychic and any other abstractive region of the world such as the physical, the concretely psychophysical, and the cultural. | ||
| 8.2128i | We further discover that when we refrain from participating in our inveterate (and justifiable) natural attitude of presupposing the phenomenal realm and the status of our subjectivity in the phenomenal realm, we can observe the phenomenal realm — and whatever else we may intend — as fundamentally a noematic-intentional object for transcendental objectivity. | ||
| 8.2128j | We can describe our actual psychic subjectivity, thus, we find we can describe our transcendental subjectivity as well. Thus, we experience as the domain of our observation and investigation the entire phenomenal realm and all its possible variants. | ||
| 8.2128k | Our process, thus, we experience as an analysis of the subjective structure in which we can construct the concrete individual world as an intersubjectively valid transcendent sense for transcendental subjectivity. We discover in the process that the alleged dichotomy in the relation between what are objects of consciousness and things-in-themselves is spurious. | ||
| 8.2128l | We sense the spuriousness of the alleged dichotomy from two stimuli: 1) we know as false from our direct experience that all directly presented objects of consciousness are immanent in our mind, and 2) we know as self-contradictory the concept of an entity that is not an intentionally constituted object of transcendental consciousness. | ||
| 8.2129 | From Husserl in Wertheimer we discover that our perception of movement is an integral experience. We no longer need to perceive our perception of movement as an uninterpretative combination of static sensation. | ||
| 8.2130 | From Wertheimer, our stream branches into three, with the main current flowing into Gestalt Psychology, the other two into Lewin and Field Theory and Koffka. | ||
| 8.2131 | From Wertheimer in Lewin in whom we focus in the immediate vicinity determining events rather than things at a distance determining events. We see that we must observe things as they are in real life situations or by a phenomenological reduction. We find that our language has two interpretations: one for description of actual events, and another to form theoretical constructs about the actual events. We find that we have to let go of our presuppositions entirely if we are to adequately describe psychological phenomena such as emotions, hopes, fears, and illusions. We discover that the concrete field of all our coexisting psychological facts is quite different from our quantified dimensions of that situation. We further discover that the time it takes us to be satiated with a task at-hand depends on the over-all meaning context of our activity, on how much we invest ourself into the task | ||
| 8.2131a | We observe that the totality of events or facts determine our behavior at a given time ("psychological life space"). We (through Ezriel) observe that our unconscious structures are active in the present and are not necessarily replicas of past realities. | ||
| 8.2131b | Thus, we find two components of our life space: 1) our own self, and 2) the psychological environment in which we find ourself as it exists for us. | ||
| 8.2131c | Within the process of our life space we experience the arrangement and relationship of parts of our life space (structure) and the tendency in the space, either emanating from us or from the environment, that deals with change or resisting change. | ||
| 8.2131d | We observe that in our experience of the structure of our life space both region and boundary. We find within region and boundary degrees of differentiation, centrality, path, and psychological distance. | ||
| 8.2131e | In the dynamic process we find interdependence, tension, force, field of forces, equilibrium, and power. | ||
| 8.2131f | We observe, through a phenomenological analysis of the dimensional ontological reality of this space, two dimensions. One we observe as a vertical dimension of degrees or levels of reality. The second we observe as a horizontal dimension of time perspective. | ||
| 8.2131g | We experience that our processes involving our assessment of facts or expectations differ from these involving fantasies and wishes. Thus, we identify experientially the real, actual, ideal, and desired. (Stills) | ||
| 8.2132 | From Wertheimer in Koffka we experience the essential role of insight in our learning. In other words, learning we find is more than trial and error. | ||
| 8.2133 | From Wertheimer in Kohler, as with Lewin and Koffka, we experience our mind as the organized structure of the whole of our experience. In these three individuals we emerge what we label Contemporary Gestalt Psychology. | ||
| 8.2133a | In Gestalt, we experience parts of a whole deriving their character from the structure of the whole. We observe that parts do not — cannot — exist before the whole exists. The whole, furthermore, we experience directly as being greater than the sum of its parts. Our mind as does our body derives from the organismic total structure we label human. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.2200 | Our perception of the mind-body relation from the functionalistic viewpoint does not allow our mind to be a separate thing or an entity in and of itself. We experience our mind as a process of life, a function of the life process, and therefore, not something separable from it or really identifiable apart from it. | ||
| 8.3000 | Spiritualistic Theories of the Mind-Body Relation | ||
| 8.3001 | We synthesize our perception of the mind-body relation by making the material a manifestation of the mental. | ||
| 8.3002 | In these theories, we find ourself experiencing our mind, by whatever name, possessing some degree, if not total, independence or reality apart from the body. | ||
| 8.3100 | We ground our spiritualistic theories in the pre-Socratics. Here we perceive our mind as a moving force of: | ||
| 8.3101 | perceptions in the view of Protagoras, | ||
| 8.3102 | fire in the view of Heraclitus, | ||
| 8.3103 | magnets in the view of Thales, | ||
| 8.3104 | air in the view of Anaximanes, | ||
| 8.3105 | Nous or World Mind in the view of Anaxagoras, | ||
| 8.3106 | blood in the view of Empedocles, | ||
| 8.3107 | bodily harmony in the view of Pythagoras. | ||
| 8.3107a | In the neo-Pythagorean view, we perceive our mind simply as spirit. | ||
| 8.3200 | Moving through Socrates to Plato we enter the domain of Platonism wherein we experience our mind as an immaterial as well as an immortal being. | ||
| 8.3201 | In the view of Plotinus we experience our mind as a self-conscious, autonomous spiritual substance. | ||
| 8.3300 | From Platonism through Augustinianism and the Scholastics we experience our mind as the principle of personality that informs the body. | ||
| 8.3400 | After the Scholastics we emerge into Dualism wherein we experience our mind as a thinking substance. It is here that we shall dwell for it is in dualism of Descartes that we in the West develop theories of the Mind-Body Relation, make it into an issue, and turn it into a problem. We find it interesting that we make what heretofore was a given, a propositional given, that the mind and body are related in their inherent unity, a problem. Until Descartes, we experienced the structure of a drinking glass to be composite with the form of a drinking glass: the form informing the structure and the structure receiving its definition by its form. We held our being-in-the-world a composite of structure and form (defining each in various ways, but essentially maintaining the same isomorphic relationship). We entered the realm of problem when we first thought we could think, the basic illusion of the West and an accepted illusionary fact of the East. We now thought there was a difference between thinking and thinking we are thinking. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am). | ||
| 8.3401 | In Descartes (Flanagan, 3-21), we perceive a three term causal sequence: | ||
| 8.3401a | First, we see the sequence beginning with the application of an external stimulus. | ||
| 8.3401b | Then, we experience, as a result of this application, activity in our nervous system. | ||
| 8.3401c | Finally, from this nervous activity, we find ourself making some overt physical response. | ||
| 8.3402 | We label this three-term causal sequence the Reflex Hypothesis that we experience holds for emotional, cognitive, and motor components of our being-in-the-world. | ||
| 8.3403 | We experience ourself initiating our action in the center of the arc. We do this initiating though our mind or res cogitans (thinking thing). In this regard, we know that all our self-defined human behavior requires a human body for us to execute that behavior. Additionally, we know that we do not initiate all our physical behavior at the behest of the stimulation of some other physical invitation, human or not. We know that some of our behavior we initiate from within our incorporeal mind. | ||
| 8.3404 | We experience our mind carrying out some form of psycho-kinetic activity every time we engage in voluntary activity. We can even experience, if we so perceive ourself to be so attuned, our mind developing its immaterial powers to move our material body. Contemporaneously, we experience our mind itself being able to move itself independently of materiality. | ||
| 8.3405 | We attempt to show the dualism between our mind (res cogitans) and our body (res extensa) by arguing from our intuitive experience of our being-in-the-world. We let ourself perceive that our intuition is somehow universal and that our mind is in some way essential to our existence and substantial identity in a way our body is not. | ||
| 8.3406 | Thus, did we reason to Cogito, ergo sum — that while everything else we can doubt, we intuitively know that we are because we can think that we doubt. | ||
| 8.3410 | The Three Cartesian Arguments for Dualism | ||
| 8.3411a | For the first argument we posit that we cannot possibly doubt that we exist as a thinking thing. (The certitude of this position we establish when we try to doubt our existence, we find ourself affirming it.) | ||
| 8.3411b | We can doubt, however, that we have a body, and thus, that we exist as a physical thing. | ||
| 8.3411c | Therefore, thinking is essential to what we are. Our body is not. Furthermore, we know our mind is a substance, the essence or nature of which is to think, and that for our mind to exist, there is no need of any one place, nor does our mind depend on any material thing. | ||
| 8.3411d | Therefore, our personal identity, that this, the mind by which we are what we are, is essentially distinct from our body, and is even more easy to know than our body. | ||
| 8.3411e | Therefore, even if our body was not, our mind would not cease to be what it is. | ||
| 8.3412a | For the second argument we posit that if we conceive of two things and perceive with certainty that they are separate, distinct kinds of things, then we find it obvious that they are separate, distinct kinds of things. For example, if we experience one thing having property A and another thing has property not-A, then we know that both A and not-A are distinct kinds of things. We base our knowing on our chosen perception of things that one and the same thing cannot possess a property and its opposite. | ||
| 8.3412b | We perceive with certainty that we exist as a thinking and unextended phenomenal reality. | ||
| 8.3412c | We perceive with near certainty that our body, or any body for that matter, is basically an unthinking, extended phenomenal reality. | ||
| 8.3412d | Therefore, we conclude that our mind and body are separate, distinct realities in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.3412e | Therefore, his I (that is to say, my mind), by which we know what we are, is entirely and absolutely distinct from our body and can exist without it. | ||
| 8.3413a | For the third argument we posit that an entity cannot possess a property and its opposite. | ||
| 8.3413b | Our body we experience as having parts, and therefore our body is divisible. We choose to perceive divisibility to be part of what it means to be a body. | ||
| 8.3413c | We choose to experience our mind as having no parts, therefore, it is indivisible. We do not experience any parts, experiencing our mind to be clearly one and whole. Even though we experience our mind also one with our body, we experience our mind maintaining its wholeness even if a arm or leg happens to be separated from our body. | ||
| 8.3413d | Therefore, our mind and our body are different kinds of phenomenal realities. | ||
| 8.3420 | Arguments against the Three Cartesian Arguments for Duality: | ||
| 8.3421 | For the first argument to hold, we observe that we must make two assumptions: | ||
| 8.3421a | We know that when we know with certainty that a phenomenal reality has property X, but we do not know for certain it has property Y, then X is essential to that phenomenal reality and Y is not. Yet we know this not to be the case. Thus, this assumption is false. Hence, the first argument is invalid and false as well. | ||
| 8.3421b | When we know for certain that we ourself have property X and do not know for certain that we have property Y, then X is essential to us and Y is not. This assumption we observe begs the question. Thus, the first argument is invalid and false. | ||
| 8.3422 | In the second argument we posit that our mind has two essential properties. These properties are thought and incorporeality that we reason our body necessarily lacks. On the other hand, our body, we experience, as having thoughtlessness and corporeality. | ||
| 8.3422a | Upon further reflection, we understand that we cannot know by clear intuition that our body or any other body is unthinking. We base our understanding upon the fact that the question of the nature of our body is experimental and not an intuitional, a priori issue. | ||
| 8.3422b | Upon reflection we also can wonder what it is like or what it would be like — for us to perceive with certainty that our essential self exists as an unextended thing. | ||
| 8.3422c | Thus, our second argument fails to hold in the first place due to the confusion in our terms, and second, due to an initial clouded perception of an equally clouded perception of our unextended nature. | ||
| 8.3423 | When we look at our third argument, we see that we have merely begged the question in the context of divisibility. Therefore, we beg the question in the context of the physicality of our mind. | ||
| 8.3423a | Behind our argument, we know that we are not being contradictory when we deny our mind is indivisible and assert that our mind is divisible. | ||
| 8.3423b | Also, when we imagine the amputation of one of our limbs, we fail to imagine a corresponding change in our mind. | ||
| 8.3423c | Thus, do we observe that our third argument for dualistic perception of our being-in-the-world also fails. | ||
| 8.3430 | Phenomenologically we know we can know about our mind without knowing anything in particular about our body. | ||
| 8.3431 | We know that referring to physical events does not particularly illuminate or enhance our analysis of mental events. | ||
| 8.3432 | Thus, have we been unable to date to make a fruitful analysis of our mental phenomenal activity in physical, mechanical, or scientific terms. | ||
| 8.3433 | In Descartes, we find we are only attempting to demonstrate that a part of us has the capacity for thinking. This capacity (res cogitans) we demonstrate consists of non-physical machinery. Also, we demonstrate a corresponding capacity (res extensa) consists of physical reflex machinery. | ||
| 8.3434 | We understand from this observational set that dualism is not false. We see that only our arguments for dualism are lacking. In the same moment, we evolve no evidence of demonstrable merit to posit dualism as true. | ||
| 8.3440 | We can make some further observations about the actual reality of our being-in-the-world. | ||
| 8.3441 | First of ll, we have irrefutable evidence that our body's cells keep on changing over the course of our lifetime. In this change, they die and replace themselves. On the other hand, we have equally irrefutable evidence that our brain cells, when they die, do not replace themselves. Our brain cells last our life time. | ||
| 8.3442 | Secondly, on a deeper level of our being-in-the-world, we have irrefutable evidence that our body's cells replace themselves with ells that contain the same DNA/RNA program. This basic DNA/RNA program maintains its absolute integrity throughout the generations of cells. | ||
| 8.4343 | We experience the continuity of their integrity in our consciousness and sense of who we are over the course of our life and aging process. We know that our perceptions (and bodies) change and even our perceptions of our perceptions change. Yet, we maintain an integrated sense of that we are who we are, even though how, when, where, and why do, in actuality, change. | ||
| 8.3450 | Perhaps we can better, yet not perfectly, describe our mind-body relation by making an even trade for our mind's non-physicality for its non-observability. | ||
| 8.3451 | If we do make this trade, then dualism is not necessarily out of sorts with a psychological science. | ||
| 8.3452 | We could, for example, reconstruct the mind-body distribution along the lines of the electron table distinction. We know now we have irrefutable indirect access to the electron and direct access to the table. We know that both the electron and the table are physical, yet we do not know what electricity is in itself — be it physical or spiritual — we only know how and that it works. We do not know what our mind is, we only know its effect by how our body works — to a degree. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.3500 | In our development after Descartes we evolve our concept of the mind-body relation in three related areas: | 8.3510 | We experience our mind being non-interactive with our body. Yet, we experience events in one realm being in correspondence with the other. |
| 8.3511 | We observe that our mind does not act on the body or vice versa because of their essential difference. We, then, reason that God takes one event, say one in our mind, as an occasion for producing a corresponding event in the other, our body. | ||
| 8.3512 | We also reason that God allows for a physical event to occur when we so incline our mind for it to be so. | ||
| 8.3513 | We label this line of reasoning Occasionalism, grounding our experience in the personage of Malebranche. | ||
| 8.3520 | We have become truly conscious in our awareness of the mind-body relation in our development in Leibnitz. The core of Leibnitzean thought rests in Monadology or Monadism. | ||
| 8.3521 | Monads we identify with metaphysical units (souls or minds), which we experience as unextended, active indivisible, naturally indestructible, teleological substances. These monads relate, we observe, in a system of pre-established harmony. | ||
| 8.3522 | We conceive these monads as the real atoms of nature, the element of things. Being a simple substance, we make them completely different from the material atom. | ||
| 8.3523 | We conclude that monads begin to exist or cease to exist by God's decree. We distinguish monads from one another in their character. We experience monadal substances to be a force. Thus, we find that they contain in themselves the principle of their changes. | ||
| 8.3524 | We experience the universe as an aggregate, the ideal bond of monads that constitute a harmonious unity that God, monas monadum, pre-establishes. Thus, we see this bond letting every simple substance have relation expressing all other monads. As a result, we experience every monad as a perpetual living mirror of the universe. | ||
| 8.3525 | Therefore, the monad we experience contains a plurality of modifications and relations even though it has no parts in its unity. God, the highest monad, we experience as both the creator and the unified totality and harmony of self-active and self-subsistent monads. | ||
| 8.3526 | We establish the Theory of Pre-established Harmony to show that matter and spirit, body and mind, the physical and moral are each a perfect "windowless," a perfect monad in itself. Matter and spirit, for example, are once and for all not one corresponding realities. God synchronizes them in their evolving states like two clocks. Thus, each renders the assumption of the other or their mutual influence upon one another nugatory. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.3530 | The third stream following our development in Descartes flows into Locke and Berkeley. | ||
| 8.3531 | In Locke we deny that in our mind exist innate ideas, categories, and moral principles. We posit, instead, that our mind is a blank tablet (tabula rasa). We derive the content of our mind from our sense experience. We construct the content in our mind by our process of reflection on sense data. | ||
| 8.3532 | In Berkeley we simply cancel out any aberrant problem between mind and body by denying the existence of an independent world of bodies. We experience the existence of these bodies consisting in their perceptibility (esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived). We attribute the cause of our mental ideas not to material substances, but to God, a spiritual being. We give to God the power to communicate these ideas to us. We establish through our perception a certain order according to which this communication takes place. We label this certain order The Laws of Nature. Thus, we experience that things, our body, for example, cannot exist unless some mind, i.e., our own individual mind, perceives it to be. | ||
| 8.3532a | Through the act of perception we emerge our trust in the external reference of our individual experience. From our external reference, we perceive the existence of a universal mind. The content of this universal mind (God) is, according to our experience, our so-called objective world. | ||
| 8.3532b | This universal mind we experience creating finite spirits. The varied experiences of these finite spirits represents the communication of the universal mind with them — so far as they are able to receive the communication. | ||
| 8.3532c | We experience reality, then, to be made-up of spiritual ideas. Thus, we reduce the apparent physical aspects of the phenomenal realm to mental, spiritual phenomena. Matter ceases to be a problem. It does not exist. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.3600 | From within Leibnitz, where we hold our mind as monad, we emerge in Kant our experience of our mind as a transcendental, unifying function. | ||
| 8.3601 | We take, in Kant, the function of reason to be relating and synthesizing sense data. We see that for our mind to effect any synthesis, it has to rely upon the validity of certain principles, such as causality. | ||
| 8.3602 | Causality, we experience, cannot be an induced generalization from our sense data. We see though that principles such as causality are, in the same moment, indispensable to and in any of our accounts of our experience which we experience as a co | ||
| 8.3603 | In that we cannot derive the necessary, synthetic principle from our sense data, we conclude that these principles must be a priori, logically prior to the material to which they relate. | ||
| 8.3604 | We experience space and time to be "empirically real" because both are present in our actual experience. Yet, in the same moment, they are a "transcendental idea" because they are forms that our mind "imposes" on the sense data. | ||
| 8.3605 | We conclude that without these forms, we cannot gain any knowledge or experience from Nature. | ||
| 8.3606 | We experience that we cannot use the forms of sensibility and understanding beyond our here and now experience to define the nature of metaphysical entities such as God, our mind, and the world taken as a whole. We understand our inability to use these forms because of our direct phenomenal observation of what is taking place. If these forms we make to be the necessary condition of our experience, then we find no way to judge their applicability to objects that transcend our experience. Thus, in Kant, we experience ourself denying the possibility of a science of metaphysics. | ||
| 8.3607 | Yet, just because these judgments we find indemonstrable, we do not find them totally useless. These forms of sensibility and understanding have "regulative use." They point to general objects that they cannot constitute. Thus, we establish that our theoretical knowledge we have to limit to the experiential realm. In this realm, we find that we cannot know things-in-themselves. We can know these things only in the way things would appear under a priori forms of reason. Thus, do we know things in the world only as phenomena. | ||
| 8.3608 | We find that we ourself as phenomenal beings are subject to the laws of natural reason. But, also being pure rational wills, do we experience ourself moving in the free, noumenal or intelligible realm. Thus, do we bound ourself by own self-imposed rational law to treat others and our-self in every case as an end and never as a means to that end (cf. Freedom of Will, 9.0000). | ||
| 8.3610 | In Hegel (cf. 7.5022) we experience our mind as Absolute Idea or Spirit. We find that our mind, who we are, participates in and is reality itself. | ||
| 8.3611 | From Hegel and through Bradley we experience our mind as Absolute Experience. | ||
| 8.3612 | From Bradley we emerge what we label Contemporary Idealistic Conceptions of the Mind-Body Relation. | ||
| 8.3612a | We note that much of Buddhist and Chinese thought we can label as idealistic. | ||
| 8.3612b | In Maitreya, Asagna, and Vasubandhu we emerge our experience of the Absolute as pure consciousness. | ||
| 8.3612c | In Santaraksita and Kamalasila, we emerge, the opposite experience of there being neither Pure Consciousness nor substantial souls. | ||
| 8.3612d | In China, we experience Heaven (T'ien) as the spiritual moral power of the cosmic and social order. From T'ien do we receive our allotted sphere of action. | ||
| 8.3612e | Also, we experience the Tao as the cosmic principle which is impersonal, immaterial World Ground. | ||
| 8.3612f | In Chou Tun I we experience matter, life, and mind emerging from Wu Chi, Pure Being. | ||
| 8.3620 | From Kant through McDougall we emerge Purpose Psychology. | ||
| 8.3621 | We experience that our active striving toward a goal is a fundamental category of our psychology. We experience this striving to be of a type that we cannot mechanistically explain or resolve. | ||
| 8.3622 | Thus, we experience our act of purpose is a genuine instance of teleological causation. | ||
| 8.3623 | Thus, we experience our mind as animate, living, and en-souled. We experience it letting our body be. We experience our mind, consequently, as psychic reality. | ||
| 8.3630 | From Kant, through Lotze, we experience our mind as the unity of our experience. We experience things not as a conglomeration of qualities, but as a unity we achieve through Law. We observe that mutual effect or influence is difficult to explain as is being. | ||
| 8.3630a | What we find, though, is a monistic Absolute working upon itself. This ultimate, absolute substance we experience as our goal. We experience it as our own individual personality, the highest value as well as being the most valuable and most real of all realities in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.3631 | From Lotze, we emerge in Stern (of Intelligence Quotient fame) our experience of our mind as personality. We experience ourself as a psychophysical unity. We characterize our unity by our purposiveness and individuality. | ||
| 8.3632 | From Stern do we further emerge our mind as personality in Allport and what we label Contemporary Personalistic Psychologies. | ||
| 8.3632a | Contemporary Personalistic Psychologies we find today exemplified in the domain of Humanistic Psychology, Maslow's Psychology of Self-Actualization, and, for the most part, what we label generically The Human Potential Movement. | ||
| 8.3632b | Although on the wane, our great concern for our individuality we expressed in what we labeled "The Me Generation." | ||
| 8.3632c | We also experience our individuality and personhood in "pop psychology" books such as Looking Out for Number One. | ||
| 8.3632d | As a philosophical psycho-political side-note, we observe that the current conservative political wave in the Western world is a natural psycho-historical emergent reality of Personalisitc Psychologies, wherein the "I" we elevate in place of the commonality of the "we," wherein ownership becomes possessive "mine" rather than the shared "ours," wherein the sacredness of the individual overshadows the divinity of the whole. | ||
| 8.3640 | From Kant we emerge in Jung our experience of our mind as a field-of-action of psychic energy. We label this field as The Collective Unconscious. We experience this field permeating all facets of waking and sleeping existence. This field exerts finality in our experience of death. | ||
| 8.364l | From Jung we emerge what we label Contemporary Depth Psychologies. We include herein Adlerian Psychologies and any other individual psychology other than that of the explicit Freudian Psychoanalytic variety. | ||
| 8.3650 | From Kant in Schopenhauer we emerge our mind as self-conscious objectification of Cosmic Will. | ||
| 8.3651 | We experience the world as our idea. This experience we know as the primary fact of our consciousness. Thus, do we experience the separableness of subject (mind) and object (body). | ||
| 8.3652 | The object we experience underlying the principle of sufficient reason and its four-fold root: 1) becoming or causality, 2) knowing, 3) being, and 4) acting (motivation). | ||
| 8.3653 | We experience the world as obstinate, blind, and impetuous will. We observe that the world objectifies itself in progressive stages in the world of ideas. We perceive it beginning with the forms of nature as gravity and ending in the expressed will to live and what it produces. | ||
| 8.3654 | This will, as a thing-in-itself, we experience as one through many in its phenomenal forms. Space and time serve as principia individuationis, the principle or beginning of individuation. | ||
| 8.3660 | From Kant through Schopenhauer we emerge in Freud our mind as Ego, Id, and Superego (cf. 1.2311). | ||
| 8.3661 | From Freud emerge what we label Freudianism and directly related Individual Psychologies (cf. 8.3632). | ||
| 8.3670 | Lastly, from Kant we emerge in Wundt our mind as an introspective analysis of our internal experience along with an exact physical and physiological measurement of our stimulus-response behavior patterns. | ||
| 8.3670a | This internal experience we observe supervenes between the stimulus and response. | ||
| 8.3670b | Thus, we affirm an exact parallelism or one-to-one correspondence between our physiological and psychological series. | ||
| 8.3671 | From Wundt we emerge the Structural Psychologies of Cattell, Hall, and Titchener. We experience our mental states as component sensations, images, and feelings. We experience these sensations distinct from our body as such, but measurable through their effect upon our body in our body's response mechanism. | ||
| 8.3680 | Our experience of our mind in relation to our body is most pronounced in the Spiritualistic Theories. Our mind is somehow, in some way, a separate reality from what we experience as our physical self. | ||
| Return to Index | |||
| 8.4000 | Concluding Remarks on the Mind-Body Relation | ||
| 8.4010 | We witness three major, primary cognitive structures in Spiritualism, Functionalism, and Materialism. We observe that our basic, primary, underlying personal or group philosophy predicates one upon the other our mode of behavior and our mode of thought. Sometimes we maintain one form for longer periods of time than the others. Sometimes we blend on form with another momentarily. | ||
| 8.4020 | When in our functional mode of being, we experience ourself as a function of the social group and/or fulfilling some function we believe in, real or imagined. We, then, perceive ourself, perhaps, as cogs in the wheel. We experience ourself as a willing or unwilling functionary in the Great Chain of Being, the Corporate Life Structure, or the Market Place of Commerce. We get our meaning from the function we are fulfilling in society. | ||
| 8.4021 | When in our materialistic mode we observe that we are more interested in quantity than quality. Value takes second place to cost effectiveness (the bottom line) and/or political expediency, and/or the pragmatic method. We perceive our existence to be composed of a series of bottom lines: cash-in, cash-out. People we experience, but we tend to perceive them as functions in our economic, political, or social advancement or displacement. We experience the materiality of the phenomenal realm in its cause-effect, stimulus-response nature. | ||
| 8.4022 | We find that we can move easily from the functional to material mode quite easily, as each complements the other. | ||
| 8.4030 | When in our spiritual mode, we experience ourself somehow part of the whole that is greater than our own individually perceived self. Value we experience as worthy as quality, quantity being the structure for the form of our reality. We recognize the material and functional aspects, but only as extensions of the spiritual. We acknowledge that we must deal with the material and functional as necessary aspects of our spiritual domain in order to fully actualize the reality of our spiritual, creative, self. | ||
| 8.4100 | We have used these three examples as primary underlying cognitive phenomenological structures so that we can interface within and integrate cognitively and responsibly within the holographic nature of our brain/mind/body. | ||
| 8.4110 | A basic structure of our cognitive functioning we take to be a prism. Through the facets of this prism we perceive life. As we enlighten a facet our thought behavior changes every so subtly as does the corresponding movements of our physical component structure (our body and its environment). Our nervous system enlivens the physical component structure by the electrifying force of our will (cf. 9.0000) that we actually source. | ||
| 8.4120 | We experience ourself directly, as a result, as the space within which the cognitive functioning and physical structures occur. We source the function/structures just as the void in the hub of the wheel sources the hub that contains the 30 spokes that make the wheel. | ||
| 8.4120a | "Thirty spokes are united around the hub to make a wheel, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the carriage depends." (from the Tao Te Ching in Chan, 144) | ||
| 8.4121 | We know ourself as the nothing that allows something to be. We experience ourself as the letting, the fiat, the same letting we know when we let ourself go to sleep. | ||
| 8.4122 | We are the power, the power that contemporaneously informs a structure with being and life according to the configuration of that structure. | ||
| 8.4122a | By structure we mean anything from organic DNA/RNA biochemical/genetic structuring instructions to so-called inorganic analogous DNA compositional fact. | ||
| 8.4123 | Thus, we are present to the basic given, which we assign in letting the phenomenal realm be, that the phenomenal realm and all within it has its own innate structure. We experience every structure having a form, which gives the structure its meaning in the phenomenal realm by the intentional act of the informer, who we are. | ||
| 8.4200 | And again, we experience our simplicity. The end of our phenomenological analysis of these states of mind and body is emptiness. From this emptiness we emerge how we view our experience of our perceptions and our perceiving our mind, ourself, the whole of the phenomenal realm, all that is and is not. We experience ourself as emptiness that emerges the question: are we our perception of our perception of who we are or are we our perception of who we think we are. Said in other words, do we source the perception of who we are or does our perception of who we think we are source us. | ||
| 8.4201 | We experience that even now we may be perceiving a particular image that may or may not be either true or false. We experience as well that it does not matter if our perception is true or false, as in our death we do let go of either and know that both are essentially false. | ||
| 8.4202 | We realize that we are the power of intention that governs our perception of and thus the creation of who and what we are phenomenally as well as others and the world. | ||
| 8.4210 | Having perceived that we are the power of our perception and having experienced our materialistic, functionalistic, and spiritualistic modes of being-in-the-world, we can let go of them. To the extent we fight them, we hold onto them and live in a clouded, deluded world of incomplete perception. | ||
| 8.4220 | We reconcile the three modes of perceiving into one new (synthetic) mode that we observe and experience as a more apt cognitive structure for realizing what the world is and actualizing our being in it. The teleological effect of this reconciliation within the context of the mind-body relation is our being true to who we are in the sense of conforming to the realization and actualization of our being in the phenomenal realm. | ||
| 8.4230 | With all of this said and done, phenomenologically having experienced how other like-in-kind organisms perceive the mind-body relation and having we ourself interposed our own phenomenological perception, we observe some existential realities emerge from our ground of being: | ||
| 8.4231 | We do not know what the mind is. | ||
| 8.4232 | We do not know that the mind is (except in our fantasy- creating imagination). | ||
| 8.4233 | We do not know that it is not (outside of our fantasy-creating imagination). | ||
| 8.4234 | Our empirical evidence (to date) demonstrates that our human body existed before mind's existence. We base our evidence on the apparent fact that before Homo sapiens our physical structure did not have the capacity for what describe as mind. | ||
| 8.4235 | We created the term mind (from its linguistic etiology) within the context of evolving use of language to describe our experience to one another. Mind seems to have been a convenient term to cover those internal experiences with which we have no external, direct empirical contact. | ||
| 8.4236 | Given someone unfamiliar with the field of philosophy and psychology who happened to come upon this section and was able to read and comprehend it, we wonder if this person would not read this material as some texts from a wizard's science fiction journal. | ||
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White Robed Monks of St. Benedict