engleski

On Tasting the Images

In the matters of mind we have become more mature and yet the field of research is in urgent need of a ‘ big picture of mind’ that would take into account its embodiment and emotionality, action and intention. It would also require an altered picture of the brain/mind, away from the ‘ black-box’ conception and computationalist scheme. The brain is simply not an input-output device (in spite of the behaviorist and functionalist attempts to prove the reverse), and there are enough theoretical reasons to step back from the premature assumptions of the computer analogy. An attempt will be made in the paper to conceive of brain/mind as capable of going “ beyond the information given” , that is beyond the actual sensory record. Conscious contents are anyhow not of the actually ongoing biochemical processes in the neural system but about the possible scenario of reality. It seems that it is a crucial feature of the mind that it is not of the stream of sensory data but about the world. Yet the way it happens is neither linear nor one-dimensional. For instance, the sense of taste is not so much of the gustatory quality of the nourished material in the mouth as it is about the remembered images of the food we visually enjoyed prior to excitation of the taste bulbs. It is by means of intentionality that we are capable of disclosing the world for which there is no adequate ‘ imprint’ in the sensory input. What we experience as world is thus our ‘ best bet’ – mind’ s most plausible hypothesis about the way the world is.

mind; cognitive science; action; intentionality; embodiment

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