The Essential Embodiment Thesis

Abstract

Many philosophers of mind and mainstream neuroscientists remain committed to the broadly Cartesian notion that there is a ‘thing’ inside us which allows us to think and feel and is responsible for the wide range of conscious states we experience. While Descartes identifies this ‘thing’ as a non-material substance that exists independently of the body, most contemporary theorists maintain that the thinking thing is the brain and that the brain alone (or the brain together with the central nervous system or CNS) is sufficient for consciousness. Many believe that, as we learn more and more about the brain/CNS, we will be in a better position to discover the neural correlates of conscious. According to proponents of what Alva Noë (2009) calls the ‘Foundation Argument’ and what Andy Clark (2008) identifies as the BRAINBOUND model, the effects in consciousness normally brought about through interaction with the world can be produced by direct stimulation of the brain/CNS, so that, when all is said and done, what we think of as ‘the mind’ is really just a matter of brain/CNS activity.¹ Often the idea is that the brain/CNS builds up an internal model of the world, or that mental capacities can be understood as computational processes realized by the brain. Although the non-neural body does act as the sensor and effector system of the brain/CNS, neural activity is only ‘instrumentally dependent’ on human bodily activity and input from the environment, and our mental lives are in no way constitutively dependent on the body. In short, the prevailing view in both philosophy and the mind sciences has been that consciousness is strictly correlated with brain/CNS activity, and that it alone provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for mental life.