(March 31, 2014 at 1:36 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Whateverist, do you view mental objects as non-spatial? If so, how do spatial objects (such as microscopic brain processes) cause non-spatial objects to emerge (in the mind)? Any ideas? Reversely, how do non-spatial events (conscious thoughts) effect spacial events, such as physical changes (i.e. bodily health)? Or is our concept of space (to say nothing of consciousness) too incomplete to understand this phenomenon?
I view them as representational. Mental objects are how our perceptual-cognitive wiring registers the world around us. I don't have any theory about how that happens. But it is pretty apparent that something similar goes on in every animal no matter how small or simple. It is hard to appreciate what it would be like to be a one celled organism moving to or away from light. But I suppose that experience -minus our self awareness- would also have a 'first-person' quality. It surely is a wondrous thing just how refined this response to our environment has become through evolution + eons of time.
