body

I've been thinking lately about the division between mind and body and how much of the division exists only because of the way we conceive of the difference. Specifically, I've been considering the difference between the statements "I have a body" and "I am a body."

The former seems to imply that the body is a possession of the "I", the mind, or a vessel within which the mind resides.

I am still trying to comprehend the implications of the latter because it is so foreign to the usual way that the English language instructs us to speak about ourselves.

How does it change if we look at parts of the body?

Compare "I have two hands" to "I am two hands" or "Part of me is two hands"

I am trying to explore different ways to relate to the body and to the world.

Has anyone else thought about this sort of thing?

I am not interested in which way of viewing the body is more "correct" than the other, but rather how we can use many different ways of understanding to learn new things.

yeah when i am high i turn into some sort of genius..i solve the worlds problems linking them all together and eliminating them within a couple of minutes..although laziness kicks in and i dont write these things down...you're not alone though..i think of how everything is related and why shit means so much to people..and how things evolved into what they are..like cars..why do cars look the way they do..and why does it have to be a wheel that steers it...i dont know..im fucked.

uumm, i understand what your saying and all, but what did that have to do with the way human thought interprets its own body?

im right there with you on the stoned intellect though

yeah no doubt..i was wasted sitting in a food court yesterday chowing on some arbys when i examined everything around me...there is a hip hop store in my mall and i thought it was pretty interesting that in the food court there is...dream machine(arcade), orange julious, and some other cheesey store...the hip hop store is in the middle of this shit..and all the other clothes stores are like 10 stores down..i just thought it was interesting..

ehh it makes sense to you at the time, but then again... your stoned.

i dunno about the body stuff but if your gettin all intellectual on me, im currently reading http://www.psywww.com/mtsite/critpath.html

im not stoned....... 100% sober right now

im implying at the time these solutions come about. but just cause your stoned doesnt necissarily(sp?) mean your wrong either. it also doesn't make you right.

ITS GOOD SOME PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THAT SHIT

A lot of women obsessed with their appearance could benefit from this semantics exercise. You don't "have" a body, you ARE your body.

This brings up an odd philosophy/religion called hylozoism. I don't know a lot about it, but the one tenet I heard is something I already think may be true. The central tenet of hylozoism is: Life is a property of matter. That is, we are all purely physical creatures, and it was only natural that complex organisms should arise from a limited number of chemical elements. In a way it's the ultimate attempt to trump religion with science.

That's just my interpretation, though - I haven't researched hylozoism as a movement. I don't know anything more about it than what I've written here. Perhaps an investigation is warranted.

dos i think you basically stepped pass one area of dualism into a more unified approach to mind and body...afterall i always felt they were one and the same....but i dig your train of thought and the steps that brought you there...sometimes i feel thinking is mans worst trait, other times i thinks its his best....i guess both are right...

by the way cracked im scribbling hylozoism into my pad for my next trip to the borders...

r.

mind tricks the body, body thinks the mind's crazy

Some stuff on hylozoism

People are wholes, people are parts.

Human beings are both parts and wholes.

A healthy human being is a person whose parts have accommodated one another.

Accommodation can not occur without conflict.

A complete human being has also found his or her place in the greater scheme of things. Integration into the greater whole is likewise a process of accommodation.

Such an individual has therefore experienced two extended periods of conflict. During such periods, they have discharged innumerable potential differences which at the time placed them at odds with themselves and others.

Human beings who have accomplished this work of internal and external accommodation have achieved something of extraordinary value and worth. They exist in harmony with themselves and the world around them.

Materialism, in philosophy, doctrine that all existence is resolvable into matter or into an attribute or effect of matter. According to this doctrine, matter is the ultimate reality, and the phenomenon of consciousness is explained by physiochemical changes in the nervous system. Materialism is thus the antithesis of idealism, in which the supremacy of mind is affirmed and matter is characterized as an aspect or objectification of mind. Extreme or absolute materialism is known as materialistic monism. According to the mind-stuff theory of monism, as expounded by the British metaphysician W. K. Clifford, in his Elements of Dynamic (1879-87), matter and mind are consubstantial, each being merely an aspect of the other. Philosophical materialism is ancient and has had numerous formulations. The early Greek philosophers subscribed to a variant of materialism known as hylozoism, according to which matter and life are identical. Related to hylozoism is the doctrine of hylotheism, in which matter is held to be divine, or the existence of God is disavowed apart from matter. Cosmological materialism is a term used to characterize a materialistic interpretation of the universe.

Antireligious materialism is motivated by a spirit of hostility toward the theological dogmas of organized religion, particularly those of Christianity. Notable among the exponents of antireligious materialism were the 18th-century French philosophers Denis Diderot, Paul Henri d'Holbach, and Julien Offroy de La Mettrie. According to historical materialism, as set forth in the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, in every historical epoch the prevailing economic system by which the necessities of life are produced determines the form of societal organization and the political, religious, ethical, intellectual, and artistic history of the epoch.

In modern times philosophical materialism has been largely influenced by the doctrine of evolution and may indeed be said to have been assimilated in the wider theory of evolution. Supporters of the theory of evolution go beyond the mere antitheism or atheism of materialism and seek positively to show how the diversities and differences in creation are the result of natural as opposed to supernatural processes.