The relationship between person and body: a reflection about the fundaments of Lynne Rudder Baker’s non-redutionist materialism

• Grant number: 09/18444-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: October 01, 2010
• End date: March 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
• Grantee: Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
• Host Investigator: Lynne Rudder Baker
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura, Artes e Comunicação (FAAC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst), United States

Abstract

Some materialist philosophers think, against the dualism of substance, that the mind cannot exist separated from a body and from the environment in which it is situated. That is what the philosopher of mind Lynne Rudder Baker defends in her Constitution View. Baker says that she prefers facing the problem of the relationship between persons and bodies to facing the problem of the relationship between mind and body because the latter implies the idea of a mind distinct and separated from the body whereas the first is more according to her view of an embodied and situated mind. According to the philosopher, body and environment constitute the "person" defined in terms of the first-person perspective or self-consciousness. This property makes a self-conscious human person an entity ontologically distinct from the body that constitutes it and from other animals as can be attested by human realizations like arts, philosophy, science, moral, etc. It looks as if for Baker the self-consciousness is not only a necessary condition but also a sufficient one for human realizations while the body fulfills only an indirect role. In order to understand it, some aspects will be considered: 1. The externalist view of the mind defended by Lynne Baker, that is, the environmental conditions necessary to the development of self-consciousness; 2. The relationship between person and body from the Constitution View; 3. The meaning of the notion of embodiment in order to evaluate if there is a privilege of psychological aspects in the philosopher`s approach; 4. Considering that the explanation of the relationship between person and body does not eliminate the problem of the relationship between mind and body, I will reflect about this aspect from Lynne Baker’s criticism to Jaegwon Kim’s "supervenience" idea. (AU)