Anti-Reductionist Theories of Mind and the Philosophy of Mind and Body

Abstract

The Cartesian model of mind slots behaviours expressive of our thoughts and feelings into the same category with their automatic counterparts. Yet, in contrast to the body’s involuntary and automatic behaviours, “shared perspectives on the world” empower us to recognize the human body as expressing the subject’s viewpoint on the world; a recognition that is not only about voluntariness and expressivity but also about the embodied nature of human behaviour: feeling, belief, action, and thought. Reasons as explaining behaviour have their roots in behaviour understood and explained in this embodied way. In consequence, it may be the case that it is because we have this “mode of embodiment” that we are subjects whose feelings and thoughts come from experience, represent a point of view on the world, and provide reasons for behaviour (Burwood, 157.)