6 - Bodies

Summary

In books dealing with themes in the philosophy of mind, the concept of the body is normally assumed to be on hand at the outset, and so, in one way or another, it implicitly sets the context in which a concept of mind is to be introduced. Since the aim of this book is to present a unitary concept of human being, however, it would have been self-defeating to begin with an unexamined concept of the body and then try to determine how many other features of human being can be associated with it. If there is to be a unitary concept of human being at all, then “the body” cannot be the freestanding concept it is usually taken to be. Instead, it must be an element within the more complex concept of a human being as an ek-sistent. The latter is the concept that I have been gradually assembling; and the point has now been reached at which the fact that human beings are or have bodies must be given explicit acknowledgment in that concept.

Although this hardly needs justification, it is worth noting at least one specific consideration that makes it necessary. This is the fact that the account of action in the preceding chapter would be radically incomplete unless the body is brought into the story. To say that something acts is to say that it makes a change in the world, and that is possible only for an entity that is itself in that world and in it in a way that permits acting on it.