Where does the mind end and the world begin?
Until recently, philosophers tended to think of the nervous system as a glorified a set of message cables that connect the body to the brain. But philosopher Teed Rockwell thinks that the boundary between mind and world is a flexible one.
In his book Neither Brain nor Ghost Rockwell quotes developments in neuroscience as evidence that the mind is hormonal as well as neural; the borders of mental embodiment cannot neatly be drawn at the skull, or even at the skin.
For Rockwell, mental phenomena emerge not merely from brain activity but from “a single unified system embracing the nervous system, body, and environment”.
At this point Rockwell, man of reason, seems to get nervous, because he describes as “vacuously mystical” the claim that “we are one with everything”.
To me this sounds like a logical conclusion, not a mystical one. But I’m not an expert in nonlinear neurodynamics, which Teed’s book is apparently about.
(I’ve only read extracts of the book, and I only heard about it because of my interest in architectural tourism).
