Abstract

I propose a new theory for the embodiment of mind: That mind is not identical to the brain but to a pattern that emerges from the activities that unify a brain, body and world. I show how Rylean behaviorism and the mind-brain identity theory both capture certain truths about the relationship between mind and body, and that the weaknesses of the former can be dealt with by saying that the mind can be an abstract "behavioral field" rather than a collection of individual acts of behavior. I then examine certain data from contemporary physiology that provides evidence against the view that the self is in the brain, and the rest of the nervous system is mere message cables and The rest of the body is an unconscious support system for a conscious nervous system and/or brain. ;Once we acknowledge that the question of what embodies consciousness does not have a simple answer, the "hard problem" about the relationship between matter and consciousness becomes not only hard, but scientifically important. I propose an answer to the hard problem which requires new theories for both epistemology and metaphysics. These new theories require accepting that the structures that make knowledge possible are different in kind from those that make experience possible, which is why knowledge can never totally account for experience. I also show why the mind/brain identity theory requires an unjustifiable distinction between causation and embodiment. ;I conclude with a description of why recent developments in Artificial Intelligence research show why computers modeled after the Cartesian materialist view of the self as an autonomous brain have run into failures, and how the development of dynamic systems theory is a new model of mind which avoids those failures because it considers brain, body and world to all contribute in important ways to the embodiment of mental activity