Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemises?

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coberst
Posts: 1516
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 6:30 am

Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemises?

Post by coberst »

Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemises?

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.
Clodhopper
Posts: 5115
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:11 pm

Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemises?

Post by Clodhopper »

As Andrew Marvell put it in the early C17th, a human is:

"A soul hung up as it were in chains

Of nerves and arteries and veins"
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"

Lone voice: "I'm not."
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