Walkie-Talkie #10 ‘Why Mind (Or Never Mind?)’
- filipvk
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
Dear friends,
In Walkie-Talkie #10 I continue where I left off last time: with the great 19th-century psychologist and philosopher William James and his notion of the ‘filter theory’, a remarkable theory about consciousness and ‘mind’.
During the previous walk, I briefly explained why I find William James and his work so important and relevant, and now I will go into that in more detail, as well as the question of why we need to talk about the ‘mind’.
Why is it necessary and important to talk about the nature of human consciousness and the ideas that dominate our society regarding that consciousness? Why is this relevant in light of the ecological and other crises that seem increasingly overwhelming?
A question which I also addressed in the recent Musing ’Short and Sweet: Why World Views’.
During this tenth walk, I briefly outline how every civilization in history created a worldview, a paradigm that in turn gave direction to just about everything within that civilization. A worldview shapes the ideas about the meaning and significance of existence within a culture, a society, a civilization: why is there a cosmos and a world, rather than nothing? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? How should we live? What is the relationship between humans and the world?
These things are (also literally) depicted and shaped in a worldview or paradigm, and largely determine how we in turn perceive the world and ourselves.
And at the center of every worldview is a “theory of mind” or a fundamental concept about consciousness, a central idea about what the human mind actually is.
The great Donella Meadows, author of the groundbreaking 1972 study 'The Limits to Growth', already pointed this out: the most important thing we need to do is change our worldview (I already quoted her idea on this in the recent blog post 'The Travels, an Update'). And this is becoming increasingly apparent: within our current worldview, we are only going to shift the problems or make them worse. “The Master's tools will not dismantle the master's house,” as Audre Lorde so beautifully put it. We need a new worldview, and therefore so also a new idea of what consciousness and ‘mind’ actually are.
In the next walk, I will delve a little deeper into what our current ‘civilization’ (a word I generally prefer to put in quotation marks) believes about consciousness, and why that is an extremely nihilistic belief that is getting us into more and more trouble. It is also a belief that is by no means based on science, contrary to what we like to think.
It is actually a very exciting exploration that can lead us to a completely different way of looking at the world and ourselves.
Thank you for joining me on this walk, and until the next episode.
All the best,
Filip
