Mental experience occurs in the context of the physical body and is severely constrained by the body. What is the relationship between the mind, introspectively understood, and its extremely intimate but uncommunicative partner, the body?This essay proposes that what is taken for granted as the self-existent, biological body is instead a concept, a projection of mentality. The physical body is a mistaken, or at least badly articulated conceptualization, by the linguistic and self-aware Social Self strand of consciousness, of the non-self-aware Sensorimotor Cycle strand of consciousness. From that confusion, the concept of the body is projected outward, away from subjectivity, and reified into a self-existent object.
But what then is the purpose of the body? Mentality needs its projection of embodiment to guarantee its psychological individuality, and thus its very survival. Is there any way this new thesis can be reconciled with the theory of evolution? Some suggestions are offered. Consequences of re-thinking the relationship of mind and body include a reconsideration of cognitive information processing, death, and metaphysics.
ISBN 978-0-9837177-3-7 Approx. pages: 65.
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