Fable

▲ NYTimes Discusses Body-Mind Connection▼

The New York Times discusses embodied cognition - the concept that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body:

When researchers at the University of Toronto instructed a group of 65 students to remember a time when they had felt either socially accepted or socially snubbed, those who conjured up memories of a rejection judged the temperature of the room to be an average of five degrees colder than those who had been wrapped in warm and fuzzy thoughts of peer approval.

The body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically. What is moral turpitude, an ethical lapse, but a soiling of one’s character? Time for the Lady Macbeth Handi Wipes. One study showed that participants who were asked to dwell on a personal moral transgression like adultery or cheating on a test were more likely to request an antiseptic cloth afterward than were those who had been instructed to recall a good deed they had done.

The traditional approach to the study of mental life focuses on the mind, the ethereal part of an assumed mind-body duality. Studies continue to show the nature of mind is largely determined by events in the body. Overlooking this connection overlooks perhaps the central part of the study of mental life: the mind-body system creates experience.

An essay I wrote on this topic: ▲▼▲ Perspective: Objectify Yourself, Witness Life.