Mind Matters
Eugene Halton
Abstract
The conceit that either mind is reducible to
matter or that mind is
utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can
be
characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in
the
philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook,
applied to
an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied
understanding
of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and human biology
and
culture.
I begin by first delineating the false
divide and showing Charles Sanders
Peirce’s alternative to it, then, explore the implications of a
semiotic
approach to mind as transaction, then consider the self-transcending
nature of
the human body-mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic
account of
mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that
unexpectedly
resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting-gathering
foragers
through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged.
Keywords:
materialism, mind as transaction, semiotic,
socialization, bodymind, Peirce, self, nominalism, bubble boy theories
of
meaning