Meditation 28: Complex Subjectivities

The modern age kicked off with a distinction between the human mind and body.  The body exists in space and moves around from place to place and posture to posture.  It is a very complex machine in which millions of parts all have to function together to make up a living body.  Strong and weak atomic forces act on it, gravity acts on it, and so do all the forces of the physical universe.  Inside the body, it is a caldron of electro‑mechanical‑chemical activity that only the physiologist knows in any detail.  In sum, the body is objective and can be objectively described in scientific language.

Opposing this mindless body stands the bodiless mind, earlier called the immortal soul, which has no physical parts and thus cannot fall apart and die.  This mind has no spatial dimensions, and though it seems closely tied to the senses, removing the senses one at a time does not seem to destroy the mind.  Even if I became deaf and blind, I would still be able to think.  The problem with mind is that it is only observable through its effects.  We tend to believe that people have access to the contents of their own minds in a way no one else can.  These contents, in their immediacy, cannot be objectively described in scientific language.  We are left with a subjectivity that exists in simple opposition to body and all forms of objectivity.

The trouble with distinguishing mind and body in this way is that it is difficult to understand how they relate to each other.  Much of modern philosophy has been the attempt to overcome the mind‑body split.  What has emerged is a an understanding that while subjectivity exists, and each of us is one, it does not exist simply in opposition to the body or objectivity in general.  Our subjectivity is a complex layering of meanings that has its focus in our bodies and our bodily existence, our past, our family, our friends and enemies, and in our natural and political history.  Although a conscious being must grasp the world in some way or another, its grasp is nonetheless modifiable.  Our subjectivity can be educated by experience and thought. The simple opposition of mind and body can be overcome, and a complex whole emerge in which both mind and body are thought constituted distinctions that we make for various reasons, but which do not reflect some metaphysical split in reality.