I think that when we use phrases like "my body", it's mostly indexical, and doesn't ned to have much metaphysical import. A reference mechanism to this body, the one which is typing this post, is what "my body" is, regardless of how I otherwise conceive it. — fdrake

Agreed, "my" in "my body" is indexical and could be replaced with "this body" in the same context. It would still make sense to say "I have a body," meaning that a body is a part of me, rather than being some external possession of mine.

I think this is very true. There are plenty of ways that every person is which are not just bodily or minded, even though the body and mind are involved. Anything the body does is somehow more than the body, but the body is not just a substantive part of the act - the body is not a "substance" of walking.

The person may also be identified with a role they play, irrespective of their body's nature - a barista, a lawyer, a cook. It is the person which is those things, and not the body. — fdrake

By the same token, a person is bodily. Here "is" does not indicate identity, but rather serves to relate a predicate to the subject, as in "Socrates is a man."

I noticed that you have a strong interest in the work of Ayn Rand. — Joshs

what

I noticed that you have a strong interest in the work of Ayn Rand.
— Joshs

what — SophistiCat

This is from his public webpage:

For many years I wrote very few essays, but instead made thousands of pages of notes on things I noticed about ideas, other human beings, and art. I studied Ayn Rand's essays, and they meant a lot to me.

By the same token, a person is bodily. Here "is" does not indicate identity, but rather serves to relate a predicate to the subject, as in "Socrates is a man." — SophistiCat

I agree. The predicate "is bodily", maybe even "involves this person's body" or "is embodied" generically apply to anything the person does. But seemingly not to all things they are involved in. Compare signing a contract to being bound by it. The former is an act done with the body, the latter commits the person to specified acts in specified conditions. The former is bodily because signing is, the latter is not bodily it is institutional or social or normative.

We perhaps could even say that signing a contract does not commit a body to any specific action, just a specific type of action. You can write your signature in a variety of slightly different ways, all that matters is that you have done an act which counts as signing in the appropriate way. Even if it's the body's hand that moves, it's the person that the contract binds upon the dotted line.

In that regard, the person partakes in actions which are not individuated by their bodily movements, they are individuated by the broader context of the body and the world we're in. The body must also, therefore, be able to incorporate, act upon and modify this context and its world (in a circumscribed fashion).

If I should wish to include legal personhood, institutional roles and other social functions as part of personhood, I believe it would be necessary to say that each person is not "just" their body. But perhaps that their body has several privileged roles in determining who and how they are. It has the job of functioning in accordance with roles in other registers - social rather than ambulatory, normative rather than sensory - by coordinating itself to count as according with them.

Which is to say, a body generates its personhood but is not coextensive with it.

Although MP's statement is, in my opinion, a necessary corrective, I still think it falls short. I would say that I am a person. I am conscious and bodily to be sure, but I am not a mind or a body, and I don't have a body.

While we're at it, I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit.

Fair point. We are our consciousnesses, and we do not experience consciousness without a body (at least in this life). We are not "just brains," although many writers try to frame things in this way. Brains never produce experiences without bodies. We could imagine some sort of incredibly advanced sci-fi situation where our brains might be transferred into some sort of synthetic body and "go on experiencing," but this is:

A. To elevate potency over act in our analysis, such that we trying to define things in nature in terms of science-fiction technology bordering on magic, rather than how things actually are; and

B. Still supposing that some other system essentially mimics what our body does for us.

Thus, it's still the case that brains don't produce experiences without bodies (synthetic or otherwise).

Nor do bodies produce experiences without an environment. There are no truly isolated systems, and a human body could not produce experiences if it existed in one. Even something like human body suspended in a vacuum in a heatless environment is going to produce a corpse, not an experiencing person.

Nor is the environment irrelevant. A human body will produce no experiences in most of the environments that exist in the cosmos or on Earth. Were a healthy body teleported onto the surface of a star, the bottom of the ocean, the surfaces of most of the planets we know of, inside the Earth's core or mantel, etc. experience would cease essentially instantly.

Consciousness is produced by brains in bodies in a select range of environments. You need all of these, not just a body. And you need a body where activity is in a very narrow range, since there are far, far more ways for the body to be arranged such that it is dead or unconscious than alive.

Hence, being a person, or any organism, is a continuous activity to preserve form. As Sachs translates Aristotle's entelecheia, "being-at-work-staying-itself."



It depends on the level of specificity you want in an answer. Corpses are human bodies, no? Do corpses have minds or experiences? It would appear not. So, the one can exist without the other.

Likewise, it is at least conceivable that one's consciousness could exist outside the body, or be transferred to other bodies. Personally, I think that conceivability is a very weak standard for possibility, since we can often conceive the impossible as possible due to not understanding what we are talking about, but at the very least the two don't seem as essentially linked as say, a triangle and its lines.

---
Anyhow, I think the better arguments for the existence of incorporeal souls' existence outside the body tend to rely on a very particular metaphysics, and presenting them in a coherent manner is going to require extremely large detours into concepts like vertical reality, the nature of being/God, Logos/logoi, etc. But when people try to copy these arguments into the context of prevailing contemporary metaphysical assumptions I think they almost always fall incredibly flat, and I don't think they can be justified as part of a philosophy of nature.

I think Rand might agree with MP in a very general way. He says "I am my body," but he means a conscious body. Rand says that a human is an indivisible being with two attributes: matter and consciousness. She never talks about brains in a metaphysical way, only epistemologically, e.g. the brain integrates sensations into percepts automatically.

In her journals she flirts with vitalism and some kind of spirit, but this never makes it into her published work. She did not like doing armchair science, and in a sense, this would be science.

She does say that the concept of consciousness presupposes a self that is conscious. Consciousness is not a "primary object" unto itself. The self in question she identifies as an animal. (This is before AI got to be a big thing.) So that suggests that she means more than just a brain, but she never offered a definite opinion on the subject.

I am working on an essay to be called "I am not my brain." In other words, I am the whole bodily, conscious person. Just what a person seems to be. I am not appealing to the idea of a soul.

I have very strong intuitions on this subject. I am aware of the arguments on the other side, but I think maybe I can address them.

It depends on the level of specificity you want in an answer. Corpses are human bodies, no? Do corpses have minds or experiences? It would appear not. So, the one can exist without the other.

Likewise, it is at least conceivable that one's consciousness could exist outside the body, or be transferred to other bodies. Personally, I think that conceivability is a very weak standard for possibility, since we can often conceive the impossible as possible due to not understanding what we are talking about, but at the very least the two don't seem as essentially linked as say, a triangle and its lines.

---
Anyhow, I think the better arguments for the existence of incorporeal souls' existence outside the body tend to rely on a very particular metaphysics, and presenting them in a coherent manner is going to require extremely large detours into concepts like vertical reality, the nature of being/God, Logos/logoi, etc. But when people try to copy these arguments into the context of prevailing contemporary metaphysical assumptions I think they almost always fall incredibly flat, and I don't think they can be justified as part of a philosophy of nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The corpse example does not say much. I mean, if the body is dead then the mind is dead too. You would have to show how a mind can exist outside a corpse, which is crucial evidence that is missing. That would be a very strong indication that mind and body are different categories.

Conceivable, yes. But very weak, as you say.

You could attempt to give a naturalistic account of mind being separate from body, without going into Platonic metaphysics. You could say that the laws or habits of mind are, in principle, different from the laws of physics and heavenly bodies. Maybe that's true. Maybe not.

But I don't think we know nearly enough about body to say that the mind cannot be a body modified in a specific way.

I limit myself to monism, and I call it "materialism", but it can be called "naturalism" or "mentalism", it doesn't matter much. I very much admire the Platonic tradition, and I think it has a lot of value, but it also needs to be modernized a bit.

While we're at it, I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit. — Kurt Keefner

It's complex, but I'll be as simple as I can.
I agree, except that, if the soul part--call it, also, the 'mental'--is not real, but only perceived (for several reasons) to be real; if the mental is 'actually' a system of codes to which the body responds with feelings and action (and only the latter is real, albeit not in a form we are familiar with, i.e., not narrative, and so, necessarilyoverlookedby the narrative); if the narrative form of that code, the part to which we desperately attach, is not real, then it can be acknowledged as 'other' than the body, to exist, and still, it can be eliminated from that category we think of as 'real.'

It is in that sense that I agree with and understand MP's Hypothesis. In fact, I think his side notes on the mental unwittingly cling to what his Hypothesis rightly resists. I mean he doesn't go far enough in dismissing the mental as, though effective, ultimately nothing.

I agree, except that, if the soul part--call it, also, the 'mental'--is not real, but only perceived (for several reasons) to be real; if the mental is 'actually' a system of codes to which the body responds with feelings and action (and only the latter is real, albeit not in a form we are familiar with, i.e., not narrative, and so, necessarilyoverlookedby the narrative); if the narrative form of that code, the part to which we desperately attach, is not real, then it can be acknowledged as 'other' than the body, to exist, and still, it can be eliminated from that category we think of as 'real.' — ENOAH

I have two questions on this post.

1. Are mental and soul different? How are they different?
2. What do you mean by "we think of as real"? What is real?

One aspect that is often ignored is that we are historied and encultured beings.

I am not a soul, and I am not my brain. I am a whole, conscious, physical unit. — Kurt Keefner

With all scientific research at the moment behind it... yes.

Like with the recent reconstructed fly brain in a computer that's been in the news; it seems that the only way to "upload" this consciousness or "soul" is to copy all aspects and simulate the whole entity of the fly, in order for it to be a direct copy of its consciousness. In essence, the idea of separating the conscious mind, the "soul" require to copy the "body" as well, and so we can only copy our consciousness by copying the whole.

Either mind is part of body, or body is part of mind. The point is the distinction needs to be made as to what the difference between these two are - IF it can be stated. — Manuel

I'd say that the problem essentially lies in how we linguistically differentiated between mind and body in a time of religion. The consequence of this echoes far into modern science where we still treat the two as somewhat separate. But the arguments for separation comes from the illusion of separation; the emotional sensation of our body being something other than our ethereal and abstract "inner self". And as we all know, our senses and our emotions are the worst foundation for rational reasoning.

In medicine, we've seen this separation play out to the detriment of patients. On one hand, therapists and psychologists or doctors have given them prescription medicines which alter the chemicals in the brain, but that's not enough. On the other hand they've attempted to just treat the mind through rational reasoning and therapy, ignoring the effect that the chemical system has on the mind.

Both of these sides ignoring the other have failed to fully treat people with mental illness. It's only just recently we've been handling both as a single treatment seriously. Treating the body and mind as a whole entity.

Because it's an ouroboros. The physical body influences the mind through its genetics, chemicals and substances; and the mind influences the body's functions. It's a closed loop that cannot be separated without severely altering the psychology of the being.

Imagine someone with a healed serious injury to his body. It affects his personality, his opinions, his social sphere and experience of himself. If you were to cut off his head and place it on another body (if that would work), the entirety of his consciousness will alter through this new body. All of a sudden there are functions that work that didn't before, a body shape that is different as an experience, chemicals that affect the mind based on the genetics of that body and so on. It would alter that person's mind to the point of the original consciousness not being the same anymore. We know this due to what we know about how the physical body affects the mind.

What then is the mind separated from the body, if that happens? Only an empty template; a prediction system that cannot value its predictions through chemical feedback.

That's fine and a lot of it true. However, it seems to me to be the same issue Descartes pointed to back in his day. He had scientific and religious reasons to make such a distinction.

We no longer (of very few of us do) speak of substance dualism, of a body being a substance and the mind being another different substance. We speak now of the so called "hard problem", which is that we can't explain in scientific terms, subjectivity in essence.

The tone and perspective are secular, the problem is similar in most respects.

The issue, if I understood you correctly, is merely a linguistic one. What we choose to call "mind" or "body" and what is it that you want to include (or exclude) in the definition. But I don't see any logical problem in saying that mind is part of a body.

Or alternatively, that body is perceived through mind. I don't see a dualism here.

You don't hear people saying there is a body gravity problem or a biological mental problem. Which you could choose to make a problem quite legitimately.

1. Are mental and soul different? How are they different?
2. What do you mean by "we think of as real"? What is real? — Corvus

From my pespective:
1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body.

2. If there is such a category as Real, then, I'm referring to ultimate, unqualified, unconditioned "reality." Without getting into science or religion, if I were born into this world, with the concept of ultimately real, it is prima facie apparent that the physical universe is real. I cannot go into further reductions, like cells or atoms, space, time, or gravity, for e.g., because these bring me outside that prima facie Reality, and into conditions which are ultimately just made up and believed.

The reason for our pursuit for Reality beyond the prim facie stems from the seduction of such make-believe, the world which has displaced the prima facie, only for humans, with its imagined constructions and projections.

I'm suggesting in response to Merleau-Ponty and the OP (an open wondering, more accurately) that both can be 'factual.'
1. there is no mind body dualism, there is only the body including the so called mental, and
2. That

I am my mind and my body is intrinsically different from me. — Kurt Keefner

. Because #2 is an illusion. The make-believe constructed and projected over/as history, moves on its own, with its own laws and mechanics. It has displaced our organic and [really] Real consciousness so that experience (our day to day "reality") has replaced nature, but ultimately it is empty projections of the imagination and not "what we think of as" ultimately Real.

asking am I my body is problematic. — Manuel

Not if this "mind" you assume to be distinct, is distinct, and does exist, but not in the real world. Rather, it exists as fleeting images which have developed over millenia into such complexity, and which has such an effect on reality through its 'host' bodies, that it has (been) included (itself) into this category, "reality" which paradoxically, it makes.

"I" am not my body; because "I", like reality, is a constructed mechanism in that autonomous process of the imagination.

But [my] body, alone, is real; my mind is a Fictional layer occupying the space where my body's natural aware-ing "is".

That's the grand old problem of the self. It could be an illusion, of course. It may not be one, also possible. We don't know enough to establish this one way or the other.

But I do agree that we cannot detach mind from body, as if it were a spirit animating otherwise dead matter.

Now, you say that "I" is a construction, which, is in a sense true: everything we analyze is a construction, including what we call our "body".

Nature does not distinguish.

I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body.

I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body. — Manuel

On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.

I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc

Ran a search and found only one paragraph with the phrase. Is this the one you mean to reference?

We have become accustomed, through the influence of the Cartesian
tradition, to disengage from the object: the reflective attitude simultaneously purifies the common notions of body and soul by defining
the body as the sum of its parts with no interior, and the soul as a being
wholly present to itself without distance. These definitions make matters perfectly clear both within and outside ourselves: we have the
transparency of an object with no secret recesses, the transparency of a
subject which is nothing but what it thinks it is. The object is an object
through and through, and consciousness a consciousness through and
through. There are two senses, and two only, of the word ‘exist’: one
exists as a thing or else one exists as a consciousness. The experience of
our own body, on the other hand, reveals to us an ambiguous mode of
existing. If I try to think of it as a cluster of third person processes—
‘sight’, ‘motility’, ‘sexuality’—I observe that these ‘functions’ cannot
be interrelated, and related to the external world, by causal connections, they are all obscurely drawn together and mutually implied in a
unique drama. Therefore the body is not an object. For the same reason, my awareness of it is not a thought, that is to say, I cannot take it to
pieces and reform it to make a clear idea. Its unity is always implicit and
vague. It is always something other than what it is, always sexuality and
at the same time freedom, rooted in nature at the very moment when it
is transformed by cultural influences, never hermetically sealed and
never left behind. Whether it is a question of another’s body or my
own, I have no means of knowing the human body other than that of
living it, which means taking up on my own account the drama which
is being played out in it, and losing myself in it. I am my body, at least
wholly to the extent that I possess experience, and yet at the same time
my body is as it were a ‘natural’ subject, a provisional sketch of my total
being. Thus experience of one’s own body runs counter to the reflective procedure which detaches subject and object from each other, and
which gives us only the thought about the body, or the body as an idea,
and not the experience of the body or the body in reality. Descartes was
well aware of this, since a famous letter of his to Elizabeth draws the
distinction between the body as it is conceived through use in living
and the body as it is conceived by the understanding.40 But in Descartes
this peculiar knowledge of our body, which we enjoy from the mere
fact that we are a body, remains subordinated to our knowledge of it
through the medium of ideas, because, behind man as he in fact is,
stands God as the rational author of our de facto situation. On the basis of
this transcendent guarantee, Descartes can bllandly accept our irrational
condition: it is not we who are required to bear the responsibility for
reason and, once we have recognized it at the basis of things, it remains
for us only to act and think in the world.41 But if our union with the
body is substantial, how is it possible for us to experience in ourselves a
pure soul from which to accede to an absolute Spirit? Before asking this
question, let us look closely at what is implied in the rediscovery of our
own body. It is not merely one object among the rest which has the
peculiarity of resisting reflection and remaining, so to speak, stuck to
the subject. Obscurity spreads to the perceived world in its entirety. — MMP Phenomenology of Perception, end of chapter 6

It seems like the whole paragraph gets along with your notion to me. But I just ran a quick search out of curiosity.

On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.

I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc — ENOAH

I am of the opinion that what we have access to are representation (or notions or anticipations) on the occasion of sense. There are "real", as real as anything could be.

Whatever may be the ultimate cause of these representations, is beyond our knowledge.

So, I think the senses do give us access to reality. But that reality is a notion, which is the only reality any creature can have, as I see it.

Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body.

Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body. — Manuel

In fairness, it is more complicated than can be explained by someone with my skill level with language. This is necessarily over simplified and one-dimensional. And yet, I'll deliver it complicated.

I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body.

Ok, let's me take it piece by piece, see if I follow.

I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. — ENOAH

That already has some important mental components, which, though appear to be given (that is, self-evidently "there"). If correct, then by already stating that a sense induces a creature to run, or attack a prey, or indicating mating season, you have built in a sensation as representation. Sensations "by themselves" are just noise, photons bouncing off objects, molecules hitting our nose, etc.

The "run", "see prey", etc. Are already transformed.

It's not clear at the outset, that a sensation caused us to develop language, it appears to be a genetic mutation that spread to the species very quickly.

The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. — ENOAH

So, we get feelings directly, no mental component is involved, but somehow when it comes to mind or intellect, then we do add this component.

But if we look at animals, who lack language, they don't merely take a flash of light, or a moving bush and stay still, they react to it in a manner which is appropriate to the situation, they may run, or freeze for a moment, but this is interpreting what is going on, this has some mental properties.

Only if they did nothing, and did not react to stimuli, could you make a case that there is just senses and nothing else, as I see it.

Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body. — ENOAH

Here is the issue again, sensations are not unfiltered. If they were unfiltered, we wouldn't have them.

You can say that with human language, we do add meaning to things, but I don't see that as being less "real" than sensations. It's a faculty we have, that other animals lack.

Hence sensations and "narratives" are both constructions of the occasion of sense. Again, a sense of burning, is particles moving quickly, but creatures react far more richly than the stimuli would lead is to believe.

I really like your points, and they deserve deeper consideration. But, I think your (?) earlier question applies: where does body stop and mind begin?

(Kindly allow for extreme looseness in use of terms)

The stuff you rightfully point out, as it relates to mind and my allegations about fiction, is describing the real infrastructure. Sophisticated animals like birds and humans have imaging 'organs' which function on representation. That is still a reality in the real world.

At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings.

Anyway, that was an impatient reply. Your points are deserving of a few reads and more thought. Thanks

MMP uses "I am my body" or phrases like it several times in PoP.

BEGIN QUOTE

Insofar as it stands before me and presents its systematic variations to the
observer, the external object lends itself to a cursory mental examination of its elements and it may, at least by way of preliminary
approximation, be defined in terms of the law of their variation. But I
am not in front of my body, I am in it, or rather I am it. Neither its
variations nor their constant can, therefore, be expressly posited. We do
not merely behold as spectators the relations between the parts of our
body, and the correlations between the visual and tactile body: we are
ourselves the unifier of these arms and legs, the person who both sees
and touches them.

END QUOTE

Note that he says that "I am in it, or rather I am it." What he means is "I am my body," and the modern translation puts it that way. Unfortunately, Kindle won't let me copy/paste from the text, so I am using the older online version.

I don't find MMP's writing to be very clear, which is why I quoted a secondary source in the OP.

M'kay, cool.

I was looking for uses to get an idea of what you meant, and the one use-case I found looked like it fits with your idea of being a person -- not just the body, not just the mind, but the whole.

At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings. — ENOAH

I think a lot of these issues arise from taking the given for granted: C.I. Lewis and Raymond Tallis discuss these topics very lucidly. As it stands, the issue of sensations being more true or real can be misleading, to my eyes anyway.

where does body stop and mind begin? — ENOAH

I think there is good evidence that indicates that we don't know what a body is. If we don't know what a body is, then I don't think it makes much sense to say that a mind is a thing distinct from a body, or an additional stuff to body.

Mind is part of body and body is part of the world.

From my pespective:
1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body. — ENOAH

But aren't there different stages in mind? From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, they seem all different in complexity and capabilities.

And even in humans, we can differentiate different types of mind sets of people depending on who they are, what social background they are coming from, or what religious background they come from, and what types of beliefs they have, they would have different states of minds. Some folks believe they have souls, and some would totally deny existence of souls.

Souls have long history in human cultures and studies, which seems suggest its relationship with the religious beliefs and concepts. Whereas mental is the state of mind which is the basic functions of the brain of all living organism.

we don't know what a body is — Manuel

Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing.

But I still need to give due consideration to your specific counter points.

Mind is playing the same music while it keeps us on hold.

From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, — Corvus

I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating.

Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing. — ENOAH

It's not that we can't know. Maybe we in principle can't know, that is yet to be established. We may never know what a body is. It's also possible that we may someday be able to postulate what a body is, and then we can formulate body problems.

Hence attributing a "x-ing" activity to a body, suggests there are other "x-ing" activities that are not body.

Ok. And applying the rules of this game (not meant to be disparaging, Im a participant), your points are likely, in the end (I still haven't considered them, looked at the authors you suggested. Narrowing the scope of respective and mutual understanding, with the hope of aligning the two will allow for a more 'accurate' review, anyway), convincing.

But, in case from your p.o.v., I'm not being clear. It is likely my understanding and my expression are misaligned. I will resort to metaphorical illustrations which I acknowledge are not valid arguments (I don't view my exercise as an attempt to promote an argument so much as to broaden my understanding of a hypothesis).

Think of the human on that hypothetical day before we first developed a mind that would start inquiring into the matters here. What did she think she was? Either, nothing, she didn't think (my preference); or, the body allegedly thinking. I think our inquiries--that is, our desire to know, and the corresponding illusions that we can know, and that there is something to know, outside of our constructing it--are only there because they are part of the constructing that started take place the day after that hypothetical human thought nothing of her being; just was her being.

Unless you are suggesting that the same organism, prehistorically, was born with those queries 'genetically' built in. But, that is what I am skeptical of. We weren't born into a reality with questions or answers. We, uniquely, make them, and they are other than the reality we were born into.

I suppose some kind of answer to this would arise if you look at our closest genetic creatures, namely primates.

There have been studies done on different kinds of them, and they show varying levels of cognition. They can solve some problems, but nowhere near close to what we can do.

You mention another issue which is problematic to this day, thinking. We don't know what it is, nor what it consists of in. When we attempt to say something about it, we are separating several cognitive components that may be deeply intertwined.

Yes, language is a very important - perhaps a crucial component. But when we go on to speak of non-linguistic thought, here we are really lost and have been for thousands of years.

I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating. — ENOAH

I know body exists confirmed by the mental (perception and thoughts - "Here is a hand. Here is another hand. I have two hands."). But souls? How do you prove souls exist?