Tag: Mind

• May 20, 2014

  Healing the sickly vs. trying to understand another’s character

  Recall that this is the invalid and deleterious argument that I have sought to examine: 5.) Because the human mind, like the human body, tends to be sickly and ill, it seeks healing or cures. In the past couple of posts, I have been trying to say some things that I believe to be accurate…
• May 17, 2014

  3 poor questions to ask about ‘the’ mind

  A Joke Father: Point to where my left foot is. Son [points down and to the left]: There! Father: That’s right. Now point to where my right hand is. Son [points upward and to the right]: There! Father: That’s right. Now point to where my heart is. Son [points to chest]: In there! Father: That’s right. Now…
• May 16, 2014

  Category mistake: Mental illness

  Today, I begin to inquire into this strange, fascinating, and mistaken argument: 5.) Because the human mind, like the human body, tends to be sickly and ill, it seeks healing or cures. Here, we have a classic example of what the late philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category mistake’: the misattribution of the properties that…
• January 25, 2014

  Our minds aren’t in our heads

  Yesterday, I finished reading Alva Noë’s Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. The book is mainly a critique of research programs in the scientific study of consciousness and perception, and in this respect it does not intend to set out a full-blooded account…
• October 26, 2013

  ‘The morning tree wavers, but the mind does not…’

  A poetic chant that came to me before a philosophical conversation earlier today. * 1 The morning tree wavers, but the mind does not. The mind, unwavering, is full of stillness. 2 When one thing comes to it, the mind takes the thing in hand. That and that thing only. When another thing comes to…