« Made of Matter »
Friday, October 14, 2011 When we think that "mind is a function of the brain," we perform a linguistic magic trick of assuming that a "function" of a material object is somehow immaterial (i.e. mental, i.e. non-physical).
The phrase "a function of" is tantamount to "a product of." A child is a function of parental mating. Parents were material and so is the child. Mind - the child of the brain - is as material as the brain that produced it.
Only matter can be a functional derivative of matter. A mental state - made of matter - is a material state. Mind exists, doesn't it? If it does it has to have a material footprint in this reality.
Purge the duality. Replace the hyphenation of the mind-body, the psycho-physical, and the psycho-somatic with a sign of equality: mind=body, psychological=physical, psychic=somatic. Turn the dichotomously-divisive sword of the hyphen (--) into a conceptual bridge of unifying equality (==).