the body-mind dichotomy a problem or artifact? - Piotr Lenartowicz SJ

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and sufficient element of the truly human character of life.
III. The Epistemological Background of the BMP
Artifact
Let us now briefly summarize the epistemological arbitrary decisions which – according
to my opinion – produce the illusion of the Body–Mind Problem and turn our
attention away from the real object of philosophical study.
The artifact of the Mind–Body Problem – I believe – is produced by a number of arbitrary
cognitive decisions such as, for instance:
a. A lack of the initial, most crude classification of data – a philosopher may wrongly
disregard common sense distinctions, obvious, elementary, and absolutely essential
differences of objects. He often tends to create some „abstract”, oversimplified,
too general concepts – e.g. a concept of „change”, „cause”, „dependence”. This act
of premature lumping of the irreducible objects together must lead, sooner or later,
to a theoretical blind alley.
b. An arbitrary use of the abstractive power of the mind – the fragments of the dynamic
pattern of human concepts, language, emotions and desires, racing on the
screen of our consciousness, can be treated as a substantial, quasi-physical entity,
„the Mind”.
c. An unlimited extrapolation – according to my knowledge, even such a relatively
simple dynamism as a concrete enzyme's selective and efficient activity is – at present
– too difficult to be described in terms of quantum mechanical mathematical
formalism. Newton's case should dictate a prudent use of extrapolation.
One is tempted to project the purely mental results of extrapolation upon the description
of the physical world – the mathematical concept of the „infinite”
seems not too different from the idea of the „unfinished”. The concept of an infinite
reducibility is a clear example of the unwarranted extrapolation.
d. An arbitrary selection of the evidence – the strictly non stochastic processes of the
cytodifferentiation and the organogenesis are too often „illustrated” by mentally
isolated fragments which do not reveal the actual perfect integration of the developmental
processes. The real problem, therefore, may be obliterated during the
earliest, descriptive stage of the investigation.
One may be tempted to use a selected part of the available evidence to corroborate
the unselective application of this evidence – e.g. the model of the Brownian
motion is widely used as a fundamental pattern of biosynthetic dynamisms.
e. A deliberate restriction of the cognitive power - one may pretend that a given part of
reality is invisible – „I see the patches, but I don't see the pattern”, „I see the chemical
dynamism of the beaver's muscles, I do not see the whole, integrated pattern
of the dam-building activity”, „I see the laws of the atoms, but I do not see the laws
of a living cell”, etc.
f. The uncritical acceptance of some explanations – one is tempted to accept some glo-