SEPFI-Revista nº 90 - Merleau-Ponty y la filosofía de la mente

ABSTRACT:

Philosophy of mind holds that the living body is the same as the physiological body. Accordingly, it is possible to understand the body as a set of organs, tissues, nervous connections, sinapsis, etc. There is no need to appeal to any element that it is not physical to explain exhaustively the functioning of the body. On the other hand, mind is a so powerful reality that to deny it would be so absurd as to deny the reality of the body. And then: how to relate an organism defined exclusively in physiological terms, since it only accepts physical influences, to something that it is not physiological, also for definition, as the mind? However, the principle of Merleau-Ponty's existentialism is: only a sense can act on another sense. The point, then, is not to understand how we can jump from the physical to the mental, because the purely physical thing is an abstraction that does not exist in the reality, and the same goes for the purely mental thing. The only form that a physical thing has to act on a spirit is offering a sense to him, that is to say, a set of intelligible joints. What is primary, then, is the significant unit of the human being, thing that excludes the default position of physicalist type.



REVISTA Nº 90
		Merleau-Ponty y la filosofía de la mente Sergio Avilés Travila Ayudante de investigación en el Centro Superior de Investigación en Filosofía (CSRF), Biblioteca Borja, Sant Cugat, Barcelona RESUMEN: La filosofía de la mente sostiene que el cuerpo vivo es lo mismo que el cuerpo fisiológico. Por ello es posible comprender el cuerpo como un conjunto de órganos, tejidos, conexiones nerviosas, sinapsis, etc. No hay necesidad de apelar a ninguna causa que no sea física para explicar exhaustivamente el funcionamiento del cuerpo. Por otro lado, la mente es una realidad tan poderosa que negarla sería tan absurdo como negar la realidad del cuerpo. Y entonces surge la dificultad: ¿cómo relacionar un organismo definido en términos fisiológicos, y, por definición, cerrado sobre él mismo ya que sólo acepta influencias físicas, con algo que no es fisiológico, también por definición, como lo mental? Sin embargo, el principio del existencialismo de Merleau-Ponty es: sólo un sentido puede actuar sobre otro sentido. Ello significa que no se trata de saber cómo de lo físico pueda darse el salto a lo mental, puesto que lo puramente físico es una abstracción que no existe en la realidad. La única forma que una cosa física tiene para actuar sobre un espíritu es ofreciéndole un sentido, es decir, un conjunto de articulaciones inteligibles. Ello pasa por poner como primaria la unidad significante del ser humano, cosa que excluye la posición inicial de tipo fisicalista como la prioritaria.
		Sergio Avilés Travila ha publicado “Self-consciousness, Behavior and Speech”, en Sofia Philosophical Review, vol. II, 2008, p. 67-72; Sofia University Press. Ha presentado el panel “Towards a determination of the Corporal Apriori” en la Conferencia Internacional Embodiment, Intersubjectivity and Psychopatology. UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg, Alemania. Participó en el año 2008 en el marco de la Conferencia Europea Internacional para Conmemorar el Centenario del nacimiento de Merleau-Ponty. Sofia, Bulgaria con su intervención “Epistemological and Metaphysical Problems in Merleau-Ponty”.
		ABSTRACT: Philosophy of mind holds that the living body is the same as the physiological body. Accordingly, it is possible to understand the body as a set of organs, tissues, nervous connections, sinapsis, etc. There is no need to appeal to any element that it is not physical to explain exhaustively the functioning of the body. On the other hand, mind is a so powerful reality that to deny it would be so absurd as to deny the reality of the body. And then: how to relate an organism defined exclusively in physiological terms, since it only accepts physical influences, to something that it is not physiological, also for definition, as the mind? However, the principle of Merleau-Ponty's existentialism is: only a sense can act on another sense. The point, then, is not to understand how we can jump from the physical to the mental, because the purely physical thing is an abstraction that does not exist in the reality, and the same goes for the purely mental thing. The only form that a physical thing has to act on a spirit is offering a sense to him, that is to say, a set of intelligible joints. What is primary, then, is the significant unit of the human being, thing that excludes the default position of physicalist type.