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 Mason's
Meditations
If
you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds
for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly
meditations. To think in or take away...
Number
Twenty-Nine: Complex Subjectivities
The
modern age kicked off with a distinction between the human mind
and body. The body exists in space and moves around from place to
place and posture to posture. It is a very complex machine in which
millions of parts all have to function together to make up a living
body. Strong and weak atomic forces act on it, gravity acts on it,
and so do all the forces of the physical universe. Inside the body,
it is a caldron of electro-mechanical-chemical activity that only
the physiologist knows in any detail. In sum, the body is objective
and can be objectively described in scientific language.
Opposing
this mindless body stands the bodiless mind, earlier called the
immortal soul, which has no physical parts and thus cannot fall
apart and die. This mind has no spatial dimensions, and though it
seems closely tied to the senses, removing the senses one at a time
does not seem to destroy the mind. Even if I became deaf and blind,
I would still be able to think.
The
problem with mind is that it is only observable through its effects.
We tend to believe that people have access to the contents of their
own minds in a way no one else can. These contents, in their immediacy,
cannot be objectively described in scientific language. We are left
with a subjectivity that exists in simple opposition to body and
all forms of objectivity.
The
trouble with distinguishing mind and body in this way is that it
is difficult to understand how they relate to each other. Much of
modern philosophy has been the attempt to overcome the mind-body
split. What has emerged is a an understanding that while subjectivity
exists, and each of us is one, it does not exist simply in opposition
to the body or objectivity in general. Our subjectivity is a complex
layering of meanings that has its focus in our bodies and our bodily
existence, our past, our family, our friends and enemies, and in
our natural and political history. Although a conscious being must
grasp the world in some way or another, its grasp is nonetheless
modifiable. Our subjectivity can be educated by experience and thought.
The simple opposition of mind and body can be overcome, and a complex
whole emerge in which both mind and body are thought constituted
distinctions that we make for various reasons, but which do not
reflect some metaphysical split in reality.
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Mason's
Meditations will next be updated early February 2003
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