coberst Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemeses? Theology and philosophy are guardians of the human urge to separate itself as much as possible from its animal heritage and to move closer toward being god-like. The overt effort of theology is to accentuate the misconceived mind/body dichotomy while the covert effort of philosophy is to accentuate this same mind/body dichotomy. Theology does this legitimately because it believes that humans are both body and soul. The body is what we must put-up-with for our short stay on earth while the soul will last through eternity in an environment determined by our brief stay on earth. I claim that philosophy does this illegitimately because it vainly wishes to be respected in the manner like mathematics or physics. Philosophy wants to use word symbols to describe truth in much the same way as math uses their particular symbols of equality, greater than, minus, plus, differential, exponential, etc. It appears to me that analytic philosophy is being challenged by SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) Philosophy in the Flesh 1999, by Lakoff and Johnson ; by meaning philosophy The Meaning of the Body 2007, by Johnson; by visual art Art and Visual Perception 1954, by Arnheim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemeses? Theology and philosophy are guardians of the human urge to separate itself as much as possible from its animal heritage and to move closer toward being god-like. The overt effort of theology is to accentuate the misconceived mind/body dichotomy while the covert effort of philosophy is to accentuate this same mind/body dichotomy. Theology does this legitimately because it believes that humans are both body and soul. The body is what we must put-up-with for our short stay on earth while the soul will last through eternity in an environment determined by our brief stay on earth. I claim that philosophy does this illegitimately because it vainly wishes to be respected in the manner like mathematics or physics. Philosophy wants to use word symbols to describe truth in much the same way as math uses their particular symbols of equality, greater than, minus, plus, differential, exponential, etc. It appears to me that analytic philosophy is being challenged by SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) Philosophy in the Flesh 1999, by Lakoff and Johnson ; by meaning philosophy The Meaning of the Body 2007, by Johnson; by visual art Art and Visual Perception 1954, by Arnheim. Ok, nice post... if I understood it correctly. I had to read it 10 times before I understood it. It took me a long time to figure out the point you try to make... and I believe that it is: Philosophy should not regard the mind as a separate thing, separate from the body. But instead, it should regard the human as a whole. Correct? Essential background info: definition of dichotomy, philosophy and the mind. I think you should explain why you think that philosophy makes that split. I always understood that philosophy regards the human as a whole. It may have attributed some types of behavior to the conscious mind, while it was actually the unconscious part of the mind that caused it... but I don't understand why you use the word "dichotomy". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ydoaPs Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemeses? Theology and philosophy are guardians of the human urge to separate itself as much as possible from its animal heritage and to move closer toward being god-like. The overt effort of theology is to accentuate the misconceived mind/body dichotomy while the covert effort of philosophy is to accentuate this same mind/body dichotomy. Theology does this legitimately because it believes that humans are both body and soul. The body is what we must put-up-with for our short stay on earth while the soul will last through eternity in an environment determined by our brief stay on earth. I claim that philosophy does this illegitimately because it vainly wishes to be respected in the manner like mathematics or physics. Philosophy wants to use word symbols to describe truth in much the same way as math uses their particular symbols of equality, greater than, minus, plus, differential, exponential, etc. It appears to me that analytic philosophy is being challenged by SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) Philosophy in the Flesh 1999, by Lakoff and Johnson ; by meaning philosophy The Meaning of the Body 2007, by Johnson; by visual art Art and Visual Perception 1954, by Arnheim. I don't follow. It seems that you're saying theology is more legitimate than philosophy, because they just make stuff up. How is starting with more assumptions better? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bascule Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 the covert effort of philosophy is to accentuate this same mind/body dichotomy Umm, as someone who came to eliminative materialism through the reading of philosophy, I strongly disagree. If you're actually here to discuss, perhaps you'll respond. But judging from your posting history, you're just here to spam the forums, not to discuss. Also, why is this in Politics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coberst Posted October 17, 2009 Author Share Posted October 17, 2009 I claim that we humans created this dichotomy when we discovered that we are mortal. We could not accept this fact without great anxiety and thus created soul as a means for an after life and thus immortality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JillSwift Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 I claim that we humans created this dichotomy when we discovered that we are mortal. We could not accept this fact without great anxiety and thus created soul as a means for an after life and thus immortality. Where I suspect your conclusion is correct - what does this have to do with politics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reaper Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 It doesn't. This guy is just a spammer. He posts threads like these, where he plagiarizes some book or article, and then doesn't really discuss the topic at hand. This post from another forum speculates on what, exactly, coberst is: http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/poll-what-coberst-t76295.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 You might be right that he's a spammer. He posted the exact same post on about 85 (!!) other places. Funny thing is that there seems to be no commercial incentive... or, at least, there are no links to books we must buy or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StringJunky Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 You might be right that he's a spammer. He posted the exact same post on about 85 (!!) other places. Funny thing is that there seems to be no commercial incentive... or, at least, there are no links to books we must buy or something. Like you said, given that there aren't any links, it is hard to discern his/her motive. This coversation concerning Coberst is being replicated all over the internet on a diverse range of forums. It looks like some weird form of attention-seeking to me where he/she is some sort of enigmatic character that everyone is talking about...the mystery is the end in itself to that person. The easiest solution would be to ban him and see if there is a response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 Ban him? Why? It actually does not say in the forum rules that you cannot post the same message somewhere else on the internet... as long as it's no plagiarism. I don't like the idea of answering to a copy-pasted message, but it's allowed as far as I know. I would like to ask coberst to write more clearly. I can see that it's lots of fun to show off some skills in writing, but it's not useful if your goal is to have a discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coberst Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share Posted October 19, 2009 We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals. This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind. The three major findings of cognitive science are: The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. “These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.” All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps. Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories. Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 Ban him?Why? ... how about the fact he doesn't interact with other members. he's soapboxing. just going on and on without bothering to respond to anything other people have said. that is against the rules. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sisyphus Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 I would like to ask coberst to write more clearly. I can see that it's lots of fun to show off some skills in writing, but it's not useful if your goal is to have a discussion. If it's counterproductive to communication, then it's not skill in writing, is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bascule Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 Ban him?Why? Because he's a spambot and won't actually discuss his spam. It's just fire and forget. coberst, do you mind being banned? Just say you do and I'll at least reconsider my position Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Ok, I see the light. I always believe people innocent until proven guilty - even though the majority on this planet unfortunately doesn't seem to see the importance of that anymore. (That is a comment about the average person on this planet, not about the people on this forum in particular!). That last post by him was not a reply to anything any of us said. It was a copy pasted follow up on the 1st post. And just like the first one, this one appeared (according to Google) on 228 different websites. That's not communication, that's just "soapboxing"... and I believe it to be against the rules (section 2, point 8). Move on to section 3 of the rules where sanctions to rule violations are described. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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