Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Karey Perkins" <karey AT charter.net>]

I get that Percy thinks mind and body are integrally intertwined, mostly from "Is a Theory of Man Possible?" in _Signposts in a Strange Land_.    Some quotes from Percy's essay:

 

"What I am suggesting is that it is of little help to us scientifically to regard man as composite of body, mind, and soul and that it is a positive hindrance if we think this explains anything."

 

and

 

"The biologist and learning theorist can't get hold of mind and usually don't want to.  The Freudian psychologist on the other hand has trouble getting out of the psyche--his own psyche and that of his patients."

 

and

 

"The question am trying to raise with you is whether or not we have settled for a view of man which is grossly incoherent by any scientific canon.  That is to say, I wonder if through a kind of despair or through sheer weariness we have not given up the attempt to put man back together again, if indeed he was ever whole, or whether man isn't like Humpty Dumpty who fell off the wall three hundred years ago, or rather was pushed by Descartes [dualism] who split man into body and mind..."

 

What does this mean?  Obviously Percy is not dualist.  Is he saying that our distinctions of mind and body are really artificial?  IE:  not just that they relate and interact but are the same thing?

 

He also talks about his hospital where mental ailments are treated by physical means and physical ailments treated by mental solutions.

 

Clearly against dualism:  "But the main error, it seems to me, of both the armchair behaviorist [clearly Percy objects even to a physicalism as soft as behaviorism here] and the armchair psychologist is not the quick extrapolation from the simple hypothesis to complex human reality, but rather the willingness of both to accept the age-old split of the human creature into this strange Janus monster comprising body and mind [ie: Descartes' dualism]."

 

He relates all of this to Charles Pierce and Noam Chomsky, both language specialists.

 

Any insights on all of this?  What "IS" Percy?  What is he saying?

 

Karey

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Wade Riddick [mailto:riddick AT mail.la.utexas.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 4:11 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: [percy-l] Re: Conscious Will

> "Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? 
>   Philosophers, psychologists, 
> neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers 
>   have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. 

To quote the indubitable philosopher, Forrest Gump, "I 
think maybe it's both."

If you've been breathing earlier in the day, 
chances are it was autonomic.

Likewise, if you've ever thought about 
having sex at some point in your life, that is very definitely the rational 
influence of your genes upon your mind as they try to reproduce half of 
themselves.

There are so many levels of rationality at work and in 
conflict within us, it is almost stupid to get into this debate.

I 
thought Percy was all about stressing the importance of language having both a 
physical and a spiritual component - sign, symbol and referent existing in some 
sort of holy trinity. What did they call the heresy of denying Christ's 
humanity?

There are literally a thousand and one chemicals I can inject 
in you to make you psychotic, hallucinatory or put you in some other condition 
which denies you conscious will. Diseases like Alzheimer's exist whether you 
chose to believe in them or not and they do erode your ability to believe in 
things. Whether it's God throwing the Book of Job at you or your fellow man or 
mother nature, your body can still be broken. We are imperfect creatures held up 
by myriad little braces and supports and knocked down by things simply amazing 
in their simplicity.

The message of _American Beauty_ might have been 
that life is pretty good, even as you're losing it, but gun control is a strong 
runner up. I don't think the movie could exist without both. It needs that 
contradiciton (contra = against; dicere = to speak).

Wade 
Riddick

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