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Consciousness
Published in Justin Amery, The Integrated Practitioner, 2022
Descartes (in The Description of the Human Body, published in 1647) famously distinguished between two substances: mind and body. In so doing he lent his name to the ‘Cartesian dualism’ that dominated philosophy up until the post-modern era, and arguably still dominates medical thinking to this day. A dualist philosophy of mind and body has, however, been pretty well fatally undermined by the mind-body problem which is this: if the mind and body are of fundamentally different nature, how do they communicate with each other?
In support of physical literacy throughout life
Published in Margaret Whitehead, Physical Literacy across the World, 2019
Set out above briefly are pointers to the way philosophy legitimates attention to the human embodied dimension, and thus physical literacy. Legitimacy rests to a considerable extent on the rejection of dualism. This is supported by Claxton (1997), who dismisses mind–body dualism as ‘philosophically bankrupt and scientifically discredited’ (p. 223).
Imagination in Disease and Healing Processes: A Historical Perspective
Published in Anees A. Sheikh, Imagination and Healing, 2019
Carol E. McMahon, Anees A. Sheikh
The medical tradition of regarding the image as possibly pathogenic ended in the late seventeenth century. At this point Cartesian dualism of mind and body became a preeminent determining philosophical basis of medical and psychological theory. Before examining the impact of dualism on the traditional theory, it is necessary to understand the revolutionary nature of this philosophical redefinition of the biological soul.
From embodiment to emplacement: Toward understanding occupation as body-mind-environment
Published in Journal of Occupational Science, 2023
Antoine Bailliard, Susan Agostine, Stephanie Bristol, Ya-Cing Syu
Many cultural idioms (e.g., ‘mind over matter’) reinforce the mind-body dualism and cultural expressions romanticizing the idea of transcending one’s body (e.g., Thoreau’s Walden, Emerson’s Nature, the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix) have galvanized its hold on our psyche (Cella, 2017). Yet, our everyday lived experiences are antithetical to it because life is experienced as a gestalt constituted by both mind and body in an inseparable union – not as ungrounded mind occupying a separate bodily vessel (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). Our sensory experiences of the environment (i.e., exteroception) and our internal bodily states (i.e., interoception) are inextricably linked to our cognitive processes and emotional regulation (Barrett & Simmons, 2015; Zamariola et al., 2019). Indeed, research across disciplines is increasingly challenging the conceptual foundations of the mind-body dualism in favor of the concepts of embodiment and emplacement. This paradigm shift shows significant promise for achieving new understandings of human behavior and participation in meaningful occupation.
Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2021
In the second chapter Goff addresses dualism, including naturalistic dualism, in which the mind is not something outside the ballpark of science but is different from objects that follow the laws of physics. The “hard problem” for dualism is not to explain how brain activity produces overt behavior but, rather, how it gives rise to experiences and feelings. According to naturalistic dualism, there must be psycho-physical laws that explain the interaction between the nonphysical mind and the physical world. Here Goff refers to the Integrated Information Theory (ITT), developed by Italian neuroscientist Giulio Tononi in 2004. Goff argues that ITT can explain much of the empirical data about consciousness (p. 33). According to Tononi’s mathematical theory, phi corresponds to the feedback between and interdependence of different parts of a system, be it a biological or nonbiological system. In consciousness, phi represents “synergy,” the degree to which a system is more than the sum of its parts. Goff finds this approach attractive and will come back to it later in his book. But in the end, he argues, a natural dualistic approach will always remain correlational. ITT addresses the easy problem—which kinds of brain activity are associated with consciousness—but it says nothing about why these associations exist (p. 35).
The Entanglement of Being: Sexuality Inside and Outside the Binary
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2021
By nature, we always step outside of our bodies and are always pulled back in. To grasp this dualism, we are obliged to hold, rather than resolve, the tension—we contend with, rather than disavow, the powerful impact of both subjectivity and materiality. The dualism between mind and body is our very humanity, our being-in-the-world. We are always a relation both inside and outside ourselves. In the end, we must own and live this duality, not escape it. When this duality is split and codified through hierarchical binaries and reinforced through biological determinism, we must challenge it, as our full humanity is at stake. Alternatively, when this duality is rendered immaterial and being is represented as sexless, we are called again to embrace, rather than erase, embodiment. To resist the splitting off of ourselves and those who become otherized, we can actively pay attention to what goes astray, to what is unfamiliar, strange, and different, and to the curved or queer, rather than straight, lines of existence. Through this queered and embodied theorizing, we create habitable space, making it possible to be in our bodies, bond through our bodies, and create a culture that elaborates the truth and artful beauty of our shared yet differentiated existence.