• Streetlight
    9.1k
    One thing that annoys me about a great deal of contemporary materialist approaches to mind is an overemphasis on brains. Far from substantiating the materialist position however, I think the obsession with brains does materialism a vast disservice to the degree that it attempts to paradoxically do away with matter, or rather, corporeality altogether. 'The brain', in many of these discourses, stands less for the pulpy, folded-over flesh that resides in a cranial cavity than it does a set of functions or computational algorithms that are throughly incorporeal and ridden of any tangibility whatsoever. We hear this rhetoric in everyday speech too, as when pop-science articles speak of how ‘the brain’ does this or that, how ‘the brain’ - practically an agent endowed with autonomous power of it’s own - goes about perceiving the world, or ‘directs us’ in doing this or that activity. The body here is reduced to a vessel, a substitutable life support system for a neurophysiology that ultimately, can explain everything about who and what we are.

    Maxine Sheets-Johnstone makes this point forcefully in her magisterial The Primacy of Movement when she writes of how “our present-day love affair with brain neurophysiology is leading us astray. It blinds us to the fact that in the most fundamental sense, we are living bodies and that where goeth living bodies, so also goeth minds, not in the sense of a twosome, but a onesome.” S-J’s own argument for this takes place by way of attending to the developmental-evolutionary status of the human being: "The living body and its tactile-kinesthetic correlates are the basis of our ontogenetic conceptual and comportmental histories as well as of our phylogenetic ones. We learn to reach, and in the process measure shapes and distances; we learn to stand alone, and in the process gauge new spatial relationships, bodily alignments, balance, and weight”. She concludes: "brains do not think any more than brains perceive or judge. Such possibilities are the province of living bodies, of animate forms.”

    I think this analysis is exactly right. Too often thought is conceived of as an immaterial happening, taking place ‘inside’ a body, with the body here considered as simply something of a passive ‘material substrate’ or some such. Yet it is clear that thought operates not merely ‘in’ a body, but with a body; we situate ourselves in an environment among which we orient ourselves though moving about though it and with it; there is a sense that coheres in the very upright stance of my body, poised for movement, on the threshold of action. Distance, balance, weight, pressure and light are elements which we think with and not just of. They play an ontogenetic role in the becoming-thought of thought. In the words of Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, “what moves as a body, returns as a movement of thought.” Thinking here is always a thinking-with, a relational coupling which abjures the usual manners of speaking about 'thought' as a self-sufficient activity.

    Manning gives an example of this in terms of a certain phenomenology of dance. She writes: “Two dancers take a step forward. [They] begin to feel the dance take over. They feel the openings [of movement] before they recognize them as such, openings for movement that reach toward a dance of the not-yet. As [the dance] takes form, the intensity of moving together translates into a step, this time to the front and around. She moves around me, urging my moving body-form to propel her shifting axis into a turn as I step back, repositioning my axis in direct relation to hers. The interval moves with the music, with the shifting axes, moving us, creating a shared body. We move the relation" (Manning, Relationscapes). There is thinking here that takes place at the level of the body, a thinking with the movement of the steps, the shifting relation between bodies. Thought-as-movement: what must be considered to break the ‘neurological mecca’ (S-J’s term) that holds such disproportionate sway of contemporary approaches to mind.
  • BC
    13.5k
    The "disembodied" need to get re-embodied. (Fortunately, this is not a ghoulish problem with a ghastly solution.) Living flesh and its various needs, wants, capabilities, powers, and weaknesses, is what we are about. This is true whether we are chaste or wanton, hedonists or ascetics, anorexic or obese, smart or stupid, handsome or ugly, fit or fat, etc. Disembodiment is a piece of self loathing or at the very least, an unhealthy indifference to the manifestations of the physical self.

    It would do some philosophers good (and others who may not be "philosophers" per se) to spend some time in the fleshpots of the world. Too many people walk the strait and narrow path of physical self-denial. (It isn't that they are saintly; they are just out of touch.)

    Emotions may issue forth from the limbic system, which I think of as more "the body" than the brain. A lot of our emotions are just not worth having if we don't experience them in the flesh. Obviously, sexual arousal belongs to the flesh, but so does amazement, anger, awe, and so on through the alphabet.

    I probably wouldn't agree with everything Maxine Sheets-Johnstone says, but I think she is right about movement. There are movement therapies for sick brains. (Not talking about physical therapy for stiffened joints or paralyzed limbs.) The way people move in the world, even examined in a casual passing way, affects, reflects, and shapes the way they think. (That's one of the reasons teachers always tell you to SIT UP STRAIGHT.) Slouching, shuffling, mumbling, sort of 'crawling' through life -- all that -- is something that some able bodied people do to their detriment. Movement can be both symptom and cause at the same time.

    A dance teacher at the University once lamented that many of the men in the physical education program did not know how to skip! They either never felt like skipping, thought it was too feminine, or had forgotten how. Some men can't dance because they are too inhibited, and some men suffer from "pelvic lock" which makes it difficult for them to "get down and boogie" so to speak. There's nothing anatomically wrong with them: they just don't move very fluidly. (Women also express problems in the way they move -- different problems with different movement expressions.)

    (Full disclosure: I can't dance. I'm waaaaay too inhibited, and it isn't a "mental problem" it's a problem of the way I feel embodied. I'm not talking about dancing tangos. I'm talking about free-form disco dancing. On a few occasions, sufficiently lubricated, I made a stab at it; fortunately this was before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous. At least I can skip.)
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Manning gives an example of this in terms of a certain phenomenology of dance. She writes: “Two dancers take a step forward. [They] begin to feel the dance take over. They feel the openings [of movement] before they recognize them as such, openings for movement that reach toward a dance of the not-yet. As [the dance] takes form, the intensity of moving together translates into a step, this time to the front and around.StreetlightX

    It's fairly clear, though, that the movement of the leg is determined by the stimulus it receives from the brain. If we severed the spinal cord so that the brain couldn't cause the leg to move a certain way, the leg would remain lifeless.

    That is, thought does occur in the brain. That seems to be a rudimentary fact.

    Regardless, of what significance is this in the metaphysical debate? If we were to determine that thought does occur in other areas of the body (and I think someone once posted a link showing that hunger occurred in the stomach without the brain's assistance or some such), how would that affect the materialist position in any real way? Whether my pain is in my head or my arm, as long as we're limiting it to a physical event, then we're sufficiently materialist to contradict the dualist positions suggesting that the pain occurs in some non-physical realm.
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    Some men can't dance because they are too inhibited, and some men suffer from "pelvic lock" which makes it difficult for them to "get down and boogie" so to speak.Bitter Crank

    I don't think it's just lack of inhibition. I think it's lack of natural skill and probably practice and training. The same would hold true of an inability to play tennis or golf. I'm a very uninhibited tennis player, yet I suck just the same. My pelvis gyrates freely as I play, offering a treat for the ladies.

    On a few occasions, sufficiently lubricated, I made a stab at itBitter Crank

    It is important to lubricate before stabbing away.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    It's fairly clear, though, that the movement of the leg is determined by the stimulus it receives from the brain. If we severed the spinal cord so that the brain couldn't cause the leg to move a certain way, the leg would remain lifeless.Hanover

    And if there were no environment for a leg to move - to exert pressure against, to be oriented amongst - there would be no such stimulus from the brain. Of course it's hard to think this way because in 'the environment' is a hard variable to isolate - unlike the spinal cord. But experiments with phantom hands, for example, show that the experiences of movement can well 'trick' the brain into 'feeling' limbs where there are none (other experiments involving zero-gravity and the loss of bodily orientation show attest to the same thing). The point goes beyond establishing a 'two-way street' (brain <-> environment) over the traditional 'one way street' (brain -> environment). It's rather that movement itself presides over the demarcation between body and world, and that there is a co-constitutive body-worlding (or worlding-body) which has it's genesis in movement, which in turn is generative of thought. Thought in this case is not something that occurs 'in' anything. It rather occurs-with: one thinks by moving, not 'in' a discrete parcel of space and time (known traditionally as 'the body'), but according to an event which spatializes and temporalizes: 'in' movement.

    Metaphysically, it's the difference between considering thought in terms of a substance or mereological ontology, or a processual one. The body's significance for me has less to do with it's flesh and blood than it's kinesthetics capacities; there's a reason thought is not associated with inanimate objects. It's animation, motility and the ability to engage in encounters that form the basis of thought. This ins't to say that brains are 'irrelavent': only that they are as relavent as the encounters which force them to do their work as brains - no more no less. They occupy equal footing, rather than being a locus out of which thought somehow radiates - not unlike a little homunculus which simply displaces or defers the question of thought ('what thinks? The brain. How? By doing brain things').

    (I sometimes wonder - if by evolutionary chance our mouths were in our feet, would we not 'hear' our 'internal voice' in our feet? That we attribute 'thinking' to the brain and not the body might just be a unlucky quirk of developmental history where our mouths and vocal tracts so happen to be close to our brains - a quirk which has resulted in some very unfortunate philosophy. That said, this is probably more than just an accident - the closer a mouth is to a brain, a faster it can vocalize the presence of danger, or indeed, interact with the environment. This goes for all the other 'senses' as well, which is why they all seem clustered in and around the head. These are probably all evolutionary advantages - if not disadvantages when it comes to doing philosophy!).
  • Mayor of Simpleton
    661
    Less Brains, More Bodies...

    Why was this the first thing to pop into my head?



    ... I'm a bad putty cat! :D

    Meow!

    GREG
  • Hanover
    12.8k
    And if there were no environment for a leg to move - to exert pressure against, to be oriented amongst - there would be no such stimulus from the brain.StreetlightX
    But this is just to say that the brain is the center of the nervous system with nerves extending out to the legs, with those nerves communicating input back to the brain. Nothing here suggests that thought is occurring outside the brain anymore than it would make sense to say that my thinking of my desk occurs at the desk simply because the light rays have bounced off them and then back to my eye and then my brain. That is, the stimulus is "out there" and it somehow interacts with a sensory organ and then it is processed by the brain. With touch, the sensory organ is the body making contact with the object. With sight, it's the light coming off the object back to the eye.
    The body's significance for me has less to do with it's flesh and blood than it's kinesthetics capacities; there's a reason thought is not associated with inanimate objects. It's animation, motility and the ability to engage in encounters that form the basis of thought.StreetlightX
    But you could think without having any movement outside the brain, as a quadriplegic would. What makes an inanimate object unable to think is the fact that there must be certain matter in motion to bring about thought. The movement that occurs within a rock on the subatomic level is actual movement; it's just not the sort of movement that leads to thought. We could quibble over the term "animate" I suppose, but things like cockroaches, oysters, and worms all move about, but I don't know how much thought we might attribute to them. There are even plants that move, and as I noted there are humans that can't move, so it's hard to relate movement to thought.
    (I sometimes wonder - if by evolutionary chance our mouths were in our feet, would we not 'hear' our 'internal voice' in our feet?StreetlightX
    If for some reason we believed our thought occurred in our feet, it would only mean we would be wrong. Thought occurs in the brain. We can test that theory by first crushing our foot and then crushing our brain and then measuring which resulted in a greater decreased loss of thought.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    One thing that annoys me about a great deal of contemporary materialist approaches to mind is an overemphasis on brains.StreetlightX

    You seem to be confused. You see, this annoys the authors you read, and from which you gleaned this opinion. If it annoyed you, you would have to have some particular opinion of your own on the subject.
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    Isn't this a version of the good old mind-body distinction? But there seems no great difficulty in saying, e.g., that evidence indicates regions of the brain are active when we do certain things or have certain feelings, as this seems to be the case.
  • YIOSTHEOY
    76
    Gabby Giffords is a very recent example that the brain can heal itself and that extensive physical therapy can re-teach it how to communicate, etc.

    I would love to be able to interview her and ask her questions about how the brain injuries she received affected her consciousness, thought process, and beliefs.

    In the meantime I can only assume that her mind and her brain are two different things.
  • jkop
    890
    Most sea urchins have no brains, nor eyes, yet they behave as if they would be somehow aware of themselves, their environment, and of ways to hide from predators. The entire body seems to function as a "compound eye".
  • IVoyager
    13
    If the brain is a composite of parts exchanging information cyclically, it's difficult to gauge where one process ends and other begins. I have an ongoing sense of self, but my sense of self isn't always in control of what I do or what I want to do or even how I feel about going about it. I am experiencing the world around me, I respond to the stimulus, I think. Both those acts affect my disposition. I am changed and now act differently. My sense of self is just some part in the whole, as in control as it can be but no more in control then that.

    We know from computer science that changes in the disposition of a learning machine can happen quite fast. The right re-enforcement learning algorithm can play through round after round of a game its never known and learn how to play it flawlessly, quickly. Our brains operate more slowly, but there still is a sense in which the overall processing is quite fast. Yet my sense of self seems much slower... I must invest more than a computer in effort and time to read a sentence, and then to comprehend it. It is as if information from my conscious experience trickles into my sense of self. But if suddenly a car flies out at me, or I am forced to defend myself with a sword, an instinctive part of me takes over and does the work without consciously thinking. In fact my sense of self feels propelled on a gust of impulse, a stray word or thought flying out of the sense of "!"

    I want to ask you a question... Imagine a person who has never had any experiences. Since the day they were born the only sensory signal they received was blank whiteness. They are incapable of motion of any kind from blinking to twitching, let alone muscle spasms of any kind. They experience neither pain, nor pleasure nor hunger. They're just on. I wonder, if you let that mind just operate for twenty years and then thrust it into a fully functional human body, what would that person be? Would they have any personality, impulse or skill? Would they just die on the spot, or if their life was preserved, be a vegetable with minor reactions to things? Or would even their capacity to learn and respond be atrophied by their non-experience?
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