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The Mind-Body Politic pp 1–33Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction: Political Philosophy of Mind

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Abstract

What we call political philosophy of mind fuses contemporary philosophy of mind and emancipatory political theory. On the philosophy of mind side, we draw from our own previous work on the essential embodiment theory and enactivism, together with work by Jan Slaby, John Dewey, Pierre Bourdieu, and J.J. Gibson. On the emancipatory political theory side, we draw from Kant, Schiller, Kierkegaard, early Marx, Kropotkin, Foucault, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. We begin with the claim that human minds are necessarily and completely embodied, and inherently enactive, social, and environmentally embedded, and proceed from there to argue that social institutions partially determine and literally shape our essentially embodied minds, and thereby fundamentally affect our lives. Our focus is on social institutions in contemporary neoliberal societies, specifically higher education and mental health practice. We hold that although these social institutions shape our essentially embodied minds in a destructive, deforming, and enslaving way, it’s possible to create social institutions that are constructive, enabling, and emancipatory. According to our proposed enactive-transformative principle, enacting salient changes in the structure and complex dynamics of a social institution produces corresponding salient changes in the structure and complex dynamics of the essentially embodied minds of the people belonging to that institution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are, of course, other concepts of democracy, for example, democracy as an open social process, or democracy as a commitment to certain moral values such human dignity , autonomy, mutual aid, and ending human oppression . And these concepts of democracy are each logically independent of one another, even if consistent. But democracy as majoritarian, representative rule suffices as a minimalist conception.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, Slaby (2016a, 2016b); Slaby et al. (2017); Slaby and Gallagher (2014); and Gallagher (2013).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Kant (1996, 17–220); and Kant (1979, part 1, section 2, pp. 43–47).

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Horkheimer (1947); Marcuse (1964); Geuss (1981); Hartmann and Honneth (2006); and Honneth (2009). See also Mills (1956/2000).

  5. 5.

    In Consciousness Reconsidered, Owen Flanagan describes and recommends what he calls “the natural method,” which uses Rawlsian reflective equilibrium to triangulate phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience (1992, pp. 11–20). Our methodological triad intersects with Flanagan’s on phenomenology, but, following various unifying tendencies in the sciences of the mind over the last 25 years, we also combine cognitive psychology and neuroscience into a single empirical science of the mind, cognitive and affective neuroscience, and assign it to one corner of the triangle. Moreover, as against Flanagan’s Quinean radical empiricist, broadly pragmatist tendencies, we also reserve the third corner for classical a priori philosophical reasoning, both analytic and synthetic.

  6. 6.

    For simplicity’s sake, we leave aside classical idealism, which holds that the physical asymmetrically ontologically depends on the mental. Ironically enough, classical idealists like Berkeley, and subjective or phenomenal idealists more generally, in covert agreement with materialists or physicalists, are also committed to Cartesian Fundamentalism. It should also be noted that Kantian transcendental idealism, Hegelian absolute idealism, and panpsychism, although all importantly related to classical idealism, are metaphysically different kettles of fish that we will leave aside too, again for simplicity’s sake.

  7. 7.

    On the concept of supervenience and the standard distinction between “logical” supervenience and “natural” or “nomological” supervenience, see Kim (1993); and Chalmers (1996).

  8. 8.

    See note 7 above.

  9. 9.

    See, for example, Clark and Chalmers (1998); Clark (2008b); and Gallagher (2011).

  10. 10.

    Other varieties of enactivism include “sensorimotor enactivism” (O’Regan and Noë 2001; Noë 2004), which centers on the way in which perception rests on knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies; “radical enactivism” (Hutto 2011; Hutto and Myin 2013), which characterizes basic cognition as non-representational and constituted by situated organismic activity; and “computational enactivism,” which centers on predictive processing and the free energy principle (Kirchoff 2016; Kirchoff and Froese 2017; Ramstead et al. 2017).

  11. 11.

    Unlike Rupert’s view and our view, however, Sterelny’s view does not rule out the possibility of genuine instances of mind-extension.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emmanuel College, Boston, MA, USA

    Michelle Maiese

  2. Independent Philosopher, Boulder, CO, USA

    Robert Hanna

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  1. Michelle Maiese
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Maiese, M., Hanna, R. (2019). Introduction: Political Philosophy of Mind. In: The Mind-Body Politic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19546-5_1

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