[FRIAM] The equations of the mind

[Prof David West]

Descartes' "joined and intermingled" view is actually very ancient. The Vedas are the oldest known "philosophical" writings and they put forth the notion that 'Mind' (Purusa) and 'Matter' (Pkrati) are infused from the tiniest atom to large structures. 'Mind' is complex, matter is not, and mind can "self-organize" in a manner akin to biological self-organization: such that, in an organism like a human being, mind is emergently "intelligent" and capable of 'putting itself into a state' whereby it can escape the entanglement and achieve Nirvana.

You are correct is feeling that idea is modern, especially from embodied mind and altered states research of the past 70 years.

davew

On Tue, Sep 6, 2022, at 10:12 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Metaphors are in a sense the equations of the mind. At the core of many good books there is a single metaphor (for instance "The Selfish Gene" from Dawkins), or multiple ones (for example "Metaphors we live by" from Lakoff & Johnson). This week I have found a nice metaphor site..
> http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/metaphors
> 
> ..when I googled the sailor metaphor from Descartes (which I saw in a Retweet of Keith Frankish from Theodore A. Hoppe). Descartes said "The "I" is not present in the body as a sailor is in a ship but is joined and intermingled with it"
> http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/metaphors/9253
> 
> It is a remarkable quote from Descartes. To view the mind as an interwoven, intermingled and entangled substance sounds very modern to me. Maybe Descartes was not as wrong as Dennett claims in his book "Consciousness Explained"? If I recall correctly the whole book is based on dismissing the idea of a Cartesian Theater from Descartes 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater
> 
> -J. 
> 
> 
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