A Healthy Body in a Healthy Mind (original) (raw)

A Healthy Body in a Healthy Mind: Striking Out in Time & Space

During a violent conflict, a combatant may find himself in a reality in which his “body becomes a mind,” since one’s mind actually envelops and prolongs the body within space-time. Therefore, the maxim “a healthy mind in a healthy body” must be inverted. From this point of view, the mind is not only located in the brain, it has ramifications, via the nervous system and the blood circulation, in the whole body and branches out in space and time to constitute in it a spielraum, i.e. a room to maneuver in. Borrowed from Heidegger (1977), the term spielraum represents the field of action generated by an individual involved in a situation (eg., combative encounter). Within this theoretical frame, the embodied mind is a minded body that constitutes the Self-prolongation within space and time. In this paper Self-prolongation is related to: • Mind availability and reality as a structural coupling • Distance and the invisible bubble in the Western tradition • Spielraum: spatial aspect of maai • The intentional threads of the karateka’s guard • Temporal aspect of Spielraum • The folding and unfolding spielraum, and decisive actions We argue that the adversary in martial arts and the spielraum in which he acts are not pregiven to a mind empowered to transform them in “representational knowledge”, as presumed by cognitivism. The combatant does not debate with the accuracy of his representations, he combats against the opponent facing him here and now. The combatant must “enact” the adversary by means of his minded guard. The guard is defined as a system of virtual actions whose intentional threads enable the combatant to existentially link himself with the adversary.

Pulverizing the Monopoly of Mind: Three Roles of the Body in Cognition

Tattva - Journal of Philosophy

For many decades, cognition has been viewed as a computational process in the brain. For cognition, the brain, body and the interaction with the environment are important. Conventional views are inclined towards the existence of discrete and internal representations realised by highly specific mechanisms in the brain. The Embodied approach challenges this view and accepts the evolution of cognitive abilities. There is a shift in focus from the belief that the brain is solely responsible for cognition to the thought that the body is somehow deeply integrated into cognition. However, it does not deny the central position of the brain in the process of cognition but opens the doors for other factors for integration. At the basic level, there are three ways in which an agent’s body can be utilised for the cognitive process. An agent’s body may help to generate, operate and distribute the cognitive processes. As a result, this approach tries to diminish the monopoly of the brain by taki...

The Mind-Body Problem: View Outside of the Subject-Object Opposition

The solution of the mind-body problem as the problem of interrelation and interconditionality of mental and physiological faces contradictions when one proceeds from the classical subject-object opposition. Accepting the subject-object opposition only as the convenient way for a scientist to speak about the phenomena of this world (the way that shouldn’t be equal to the world itself), it is already senseless to look for the reason of a mental event either in biology nor in sociality. The subject-object opposition itself is possible, because the event of proportionality of human being and world have happened. In this event the human being and the world are defined by a finite way and until it neither the human being, nor the world can’t be defined. The human physiology (as well as a sociality which is sometimes unfairly identified with spirituality) can be considered as a marker of such definiteness, it is minimum of the being of consciousness. However in addition to this minimum there is also another aspect. Indeed, in every act of perception two events are realized simultaneously (not in a sequence): perception of a certain seeming (what is possible if human being and world are already defined, i.e. the act of proportionality of human being and world have happened) and a certain content. The content is always related to a certain idea. Ideas, in its turn, can be subdivided into two classes. To the first we will attribute the ideas which are the result of generalization of preceding experience and which give an opportunity to speak in an ordered way about the phenomena of the surrounding world. But there are also ideas of another sort – those that give an opportunity to the human being to newly recreate himself each time in the complete and ordered state. These ideas organize human life as human one, they are initiated by culture, but they are not a result of generalization. Such are a conscience, good, moral, love and the similar phenomena for which there are no external reasons – here the basis of a phenomenon coincide with the phenomenon itself. So, human physiology (including work of human brain) is the only side which characterizes the minimum of life of consciousness, it is the marker of human being and world are defined now. We are always after this definiteness (or, more precisely, inside it) when we perceive events of the world, and one shouldn’t search the conditions of any event of life of consciousness (the point of interests of ontology) either in biology nor in sociality. Every conscious act is complete and self-sufficient, and the consciousness basis (being actually the basis of human being) can be found only in consciousness.

The self and its brain

Ethology and Sociobiology, 1989

In the last three decades we have seen the pendulum of scientific fashion rapidly swinging away from the austere tenents of behaviorist doctrines and back towards the legitimization of the inner life of the mind. In its wake it has brought with it both a renewed interest in "innate knowledge"-ranging from the linguistics of Noam Chomsky to the sociobiological theorizing of E. 0. Wilson-and an exploding science of cognition-ranging from the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget to the serious consideration of animal thinking by Donald Griffin. This revolution is also cross-pollinated by the all-pervading growth of the information sciences, especially by research in artificial intelligence. As a result whole realms of investigation which hitherto have been only the province of philosophers are now becoming serious concerns of scientists in many fields. In this context a book by two of the most influential scholars of our time purporting to provide a new approach to the relationship between the mind and brain should be greeted with great excitement. Sir Karl Popper and Sir John Eccles, each of whom is without peer in their respective fields (the philosophy of science and neurophysiology, respectively), bring into focus the most central and least understood problem in the study of cognition: the nature of the self. To this problem they each bring their enormous talents and complementary backgrounds, as well as providing their readers with a glimpse of their lively conversations on the topic. Here is an opportunity to observe two great minds at work critically reviewing the many philosophical perspectives and neuropsychological findings bearing on the problem. They have brought together a wealth of information from two very different disciplines and have made them accessible to a wide audience. Both writers have approached their subject with a sense of perspective and reflection that provides a rich sense of their personal involvement with the problem. Both have the gift of writing in a casual and nontechnical style, often rapidly summarizing complex topics in a few paragraphs, without completely sacrificing the subtlety of the arguments or losing the narrative flow amidst a flurry of technical jargon. Unfortunately, those readers who are looking for a fresh and powerful new vision of this question will be disappointed at yet another footnote to Plato and Descartes dressed up in antireductionist and neurophysiological terminology. The book is organized into three distinct sections. The first section, by Popper, presents his theory of mind-body interactionism, including an explanation of his three-world system and a critical survey of the mind-body Ethology and Sociobiology

Where is the mind? The extended mind reloaded

2017

The aim of this paper is to reshape the mind-body problem in the light of the theory of the extended mind and its relationship to recent technological developments. Rereading the mind-body problem implies returning to Descartes, as it is well-known that the crucial theoretical point of the contemporary philosophy of mind is the refusal of Dualism. Despite the philosophers of mind, on one hand, Descartes wasn't that is usually called dualist, and, on the other hand, reductionism does not work the way recent researches have shown. Taking seriously the relationship between the human mind, body and the technological developments we are facing, we claim for an account of the mind-body problem which includes biological aspects and society, such as the place in which technology reveals itself.