Mind and body interactions

As living systems, we exist in two non-intersecting phenomenal domains; the domain of our realisation in our bodyhoods (the domain of physiology) and the domain of behavior (the domain of our interactions as totalities). Although these two domains do not intersect, they are coupled in their realisation through the manner of operation of the living system as a structure determined entity. The behavior of the organism as a flow of interactions occurs through its actual body encounters with the abiotic medium or with other organisms, but takes place in a domain of actions. At the same time, the body encounters of the organism trigger in it structural changes that arise through its behavior, but take place in its physiology. Recursively, the physiological changes of the organism change its manner of operation in its interactions and, hence, its behavior. Furthermore, these two phenomenal domains appear to an observer as of entirely different character: the domain of behavior appears as organismic, not mechanistic, and the domain of physiology appears as molecular, and mechanistic. It is here, in the lack of understanding of the relation between these two phenomenal domains, and in the belief from the perspective of the explanatory path of objectivity-without-parenthesis, that a scientific explanation realises a phenomenic reduction, where the mind-body problem arises as a paradox through the supposition that we have to explain the interaction between incommensurable entities. Yet if, as we reflect from the perspective of the explanatory path of objectivity-in-parenthesis, we recognise that there are phenomena like language that depend on the operation of our bodyhoods but do not take place in it, we can escape this paradox and recognise that there are many other phenomena of a similar kind, like the mind, ego, the psychic and the spiritual phenomena in general. Thus, we find not only that these phenomena do not take place in the head, but that they are distinctions made by an observer of the different manners of operation of the living systems in their different domains of interactions. Furthermore, we also find that in us these phenomena take place as different kinds of networks of conversations, and that that which we connote with the question "How do the mind and the body interact?" is the recursive coupling of the behavioral and physiological domains as indicated above. Or, in other words, we find that the mind, the ego, the psychic and the spiritual are some of the distinctions that an observer can make of the different kinds of networks of conversations in which we can live in recursive (behavioral and physiological) coupling, regardless of whether we operate in a social or in a non-social domain (see Maturana, 1980; 1987).