Motor Primacy and the Organization of Neuronal Networks: Thinking as Internalized Movement

A fundamental ªrst step in exploring the nature of mind, from a scientiªc point of view, is to reject the premise that the mind appeared suddenly as a result of spectacular intervention. The nature of mind must be understood on the basis of its origin, the process of its becoming, by the biological mechanism of trial and error endlessly at work. The mind, or what I shall refer to as the " mindness state, " is the product of evolutionary processes that have occurred in the brain as actively moving creatures developed from the primitive to the highly evolved. Therefore, a true examination of the scientiªc basis for mindness requires a rigorous evolutionary perspective, as it is through this process that mindness came to be. How the mind came to us (or we to it, as we shall see) is a rich and beautiful story that is over 700 million years old—and, like all things biological , is still being written. A prerequisite for grasping the nature of mind is, ªrst and foremost, the appropriate perspective. Just as Western society, steeped in dualistic thinking, must reorient in order to grasp the elemental tenets of nondualistic philosophy, so there must be a fundamental reorientation of perspective in order to approach the neurobiological nature of mind. An attempt at such reorienting was the task in the American Alumni Lectures at St. Andrews; this book will proceed in that vein.