Living Crazy

(42) Compared to L and J, Searle does not so much open a hole in the dyke between mind and body, as move the dyke over. All that is human becomes biologically encompassable, part of evolution, except for subjectivity, and subjectivity ts resolutely rationalistic and individual. (Example?) Some of my reactions: 1) Although the line between mind and body is redrawn, and body greatly expanded compared to earlier accounts in philosophy of mind, another line is made plainer and bolder: the line between rationality and irrationality. All of consciousness, in effect, becomes rational, in the sense that it is unified in time and through time. The line between rational and irrational, unified and divided, is the line between the mentally normal and the mentally pathological. As with L and J, we have to wonder whose consciousness is serving as the reference point here. Is it the cyberspace denizens described by Sherry Turkle, who rapidly cycle through identities, reveling in it, shifts in consciousness she likens to a shaman being possessed by gods and spirits, or a multiple personality (1995:179-80); is it the mood disordered, attention fragmented CEO's I will discuss in a moment, who are valorized because their consciousness is split into parts? Who draws the line between the normal and the pathological if not residents of particular cultural and social worlds, worlds that make almost no appearance in Searle's book, apart from one word in the title.