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    Thinking cannot be fundamentally understood as a spatial ... — Carmelics
    Home/Consciousness & Mind
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    Thinking cannot be fundamentally understood as a spatial process

    Consciousness & Mind
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The essence of res extensa (matter) is extension — i.e., spatial occupation
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    • 2.Res cogitans (mind) and res extensa are different substances existing independently
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    • 3.That which is not constituted by extension cannot be understood in spatial terms
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Cognitive processes are constituted by physical brain states, which are irreducibly spatial and extended in neural architecture.
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    • 2.If thinking is identical to or supervenes on neural activity, then spatial properties of that activity are partly constitutive of thought.
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    • 3.Eliminativist and identity-theory traditions (Place, Smart, Armstrong) give us strong empirical and ontological reasons to reject a non-spatial res cogitans.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Embodied cognition research (Lakoff, Johnson, Varela) demonstrates that abstract thought is systematically structured by spatial schemas derived from bodily experience.
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    • 2.If spatial image-schemas such as containment, path, and verticality are not merely metaphors but the actual cognitive substrate of reasoning, thinking is spatially constituted at its foundation.
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    Consciousness & Mind

    Related

    Cognitive processes are constituted by physical brain states, which are irreduci...Eliminativist and identity-theory traditions (Place, Smart, Armstrong) give us s...Embodied cognition research (Lakoff, Johnson, Varela) demonstrates that abstract...If spatial image-schemas such as containment, path, and verticality are not mere...
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    If thinking is identical to or supervenes on neural activity, then spatial prope...Res cogitans (mind) and res extensa are different substances existing independen...That which is not constituted by extension cannot be understood in spatial termsThe essence of res extensa (matter) is extension — i.e., spatial occupation

    Similar

    There is no similar periodic process in human conscious experience con...79%That which is not constituted by extension cannot be understood in spa...78%The act of spatial representing is itself non-spatial78%Mental events and physical events therefore fail to share the property...76%

    Source

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    A pivotal thinker in this transformation is René Descartes (1596–1650 CE). In his Meditationes, after “proving” that the matter (res extensa) and mind (res cogitans) are different substances (i.e., forms of being existing independently), the question of the interaction between these substances becomes an issue. The malleability of wax is for Descartes an explicit argument against influence of the res extensa on the res cogitans (Meditationes II, 15). The fact that a piece of wax loses its form a
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit