Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Annotated Bibliography | Class on Nature of Mind
These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Largely inspired by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a number of US philosophers, such as Mark Johnsonand Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, have "rediscovered" the body. Cognitive scientists tend to focus on the input (perception) and neglect
the output (action). Most models of the mind have been built by concentrating
on perception: how the world is perceived by the mind. Very little is usually
said on how the mind acts on the world. But action (movement) is no less
important a part of our experience. Sheets-Johnstone retraces Merleau-Ponty's philosophy in claiming that thinking is modeled on the body and
grounded in animate form. The "tactile-kinesthetic body" is the
source of corporeal concepts. All our cognitive life is grounded in movement.
Consciousness does not arise from matter, but from self-movement. Even the
simplest forms of life enjoy a "meta-corporeal consciousness of the
chemical constitution of the environment". Back to the beginning of the chapter "Cognition: A General Property of Matter " | Back to the index of all chapters |
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