The Thoughts Of Russell Vs Systemic Functional Linguistics [4]

Russell (1961: 633):

It will be seen that, according to the above definitions, a mind and a piece of matter are, each of them, a group of events.  There is no reason why every event should belong to a group of one kind or the other, and there is no reason why some events should not belong to both groups; therefore some events may be neither mental nor material, and other events may be both.  As to this, only detailed empirical considerations can decide.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, material processes and mental processes are construals of different domains of experience, and mental processes and their projections are construals of different orders of experience. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 579):

… the idea clause is projected, as the “content of consciousness”, by the Senser involved in the process of sensing. The content is brought into existence by the sensing process, as actualised through the Senser; and it is construed as being of a higher order of semiotic abstraction than the process of sensing itself.