The external mind. Culture from a philosophical perspective

Start - End 
2016 - 2018 (ongoing)
Research Focus 
Research Period 
Research Methodology 
Additional tags 
Ontology;
Logic;
Metaphysics;
Culture;
Philosophical anthropology
Anthropology

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Abstract

The aim of this research project is to find an answer to the question “What is culture?” The problem at issue is ontological. The method to resolve this problem is through abstract reasoning. Ontology implies logic, however, logic alone does not suffice. The rules of valid reasoning serve to describe how we are supposed to think but not to justify our thoughts.

The reason for his project is twofold: firstly, there is no consensual definition of culture, and secondly, nothing substantive has been conferred upon man. “Which means nothing less than the tremendous fact that, unlike all other entities in the universe, man is not and can never be sure that he is, in fact, man” (Ortega y Gasset: 1957, 24).

Starting point is the conclusion about culture and mind substantiated by Clifford Geertz in Part II of his 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures.  Taking into account biological, social and cultural parameters, Geertz concludes that “the greater part of human cortical expansion has followed the beginning of culture” (Geertz: 1973, 64). Consistent with this he concludes that culture was the prerequisite to the acquisition of the modern type of human mind.

The fact that somatic (expansion of the cortex) and extra-somatic features (such as culture and mind) emerged together in complex interaction, suggests that the nervous system of human beings does not merely enable it to acquire culture, it positively demands that it do so if those beings are going to function as men amongst fellow men. Rather than culture acting only to supplement, develop, and extend organically based capacities logically and genetically prior to it, it would seem to be ingredient to those capacities themselves. Human beings without culture would turn out to be without a mind – mindless.

This latter statement is the reason for the title of this project: “The external Mind.” Which expresses the idea that there is no such thing as “man”, i.e. “a human being with a mind” independent of culture.

The problem Geertz dealt with was not ontological, but anthropological. Further research will show how an ontology of the culture differs from the conclusions reached by an empirical discipline such as anthropology.

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