A Mind of My Own

I've started reading two books, Lakoff on embodied philosophy and Levine on educational strategies for the different neurological assemblies we call "the mind." I'll talk more about them separately later, but for right now, it's interesting that they seem to be looking at the same elephant from different sides.

Lakoff begins by arguing that our intellectual faculties (like "reason") have to be derived from the existing sensorimotor system somehow. It's not like evolution to create something out of whole cloth. His theory, and research supports this to some extent, is that the function of our eyes, hands, and so on leads to neural networks being formed, which in turn lead to incorporation of the mind as we know it.

Simply put, we say we understand things, we "grasp" them, because we learned to grasp objects, and that neural memory of "grasp" is what is activated when we are trying to "get" something.

That's probably too simple, but Levine approaches from the direction of learning disability and makes a similar discovery. Kids who have developmental disorders affecting their motor skills can have pervasive trouble grasping concepts. To master any abstract behavior it's necessary to revisit its physical expression.

That, to some extent, is why I was walking through the new Sheffield condos behind Group Health the other evening. I've learned that I have difficulty achieving specific life goals, and I suspect that it has to do with the fact that I don't really see them very well. I'm not a great visualizer, on my own. So I've been condo shopping because I want to have a clear image in my head of a home of my own, which I think will help me actually get to the point where I can purchase one.

Physically being there, walking through, means I can now imagine myself in that kind of space. Maybe not the Sheffield itself, you know. But something like that. It's funny because I used to think that I was just better at not getting attached to things than some people. Now I'm finding that it has at least as much to do with my inability to keep some particular thing in mind, focus on it until I reached it.