Embodied Minds in ActionIn Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitution. So minds like ours are necessarily alive. The second claim is that essentially embodied minds are self-organizing thermodynamic systems. This entails that our mental lives consist in the possibility and actuality of moving our own living organismic bodies through space and time, by means of our conscious desires. The upshot is that we are essentially minded animals who help to create the natural world through our own agency. This doctrine—the Essential Embodiment Theory—is a truly radical idea which subverts the traditionally opposed and seemingly exhaustive categories of Dualism and Materialism, and offers a new paradigm for contemporary mainstream research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Basics | 19 |
Types and Structures | 59 |
Actions Causes and Reasons | 101 |
Guidance and Trying | 159 |
Emotive Causation | 195 |
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active guidance Agency Theory akrasia argument basic brain Cambridge causal powers causally efficacious cause classical cognitive concepts creature Descartes Dualism dynamic systems dynamically emergent effective first-order desire effortless trying Embodied Agency Theory emergent properties entails Epiphenomenalism essentially embodied Essentially Embodied Agency fact feeling finegrained fundamental mental properties fundamental physical properties hylomorphism hyper-finegrained identity impulsively inherent or intrinsic instantiated intentional action intentional agent intentional body movements intentional minds intentionality intrinsic structural irreducible living body living organisms logically possible mental causation metaphysical a priori mind-body minded animals modal Multiple Realizability necessarily necessity neurobiological processes non-conceptual non-logical or strong non-reductive non-reductive materialist overt body movements Phenomenology philosophical Philosophy of Mind physical events pre-reflective or spontaneous pre-reflectively conscious effective primitive bodily awareness proposition Qualia rational reasons Reductive Materialism relation Robby self-conscious or self-reflective sense strong metaphysical strong supervenience subjective experience Substance Dualism supervenience synchronous theory of action thermodynamically Thesis World picture