Philosophical And Mythological Models Of The Mind Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 148):

Is it any wonder that philosophers, thinking about the problem of the mind without this knowledge [of brain organisation], were tempted to postulate entities, that physicists have been tempted to postulate exotic new material fields, and that those in hope of immortality continue to postulate eternal spirits? It may come as a disappointment to such thinkers that the answers to many of the fundamental problems of mind will come from analysing the complexity of its organisation, which is governed by novel ordering principles.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the entities postulated in philosophy and the eternal spirits postulated in mythology in thinking about the mind are reconstruals of the meanings construed of experience by language.

The notion of 'mind' itself, as an entity, is a reconstrual of the Medium of various types of mental Process: cognition, perception, emotion, desideration, though the Medium of the last of these has also been reconstrued in philosophy as the 'Will'.

As previously argued, the notion of an 'eternal spirit' or 'soul' in mythical symbolism is a reconstrual of individuated meaning potential itself.

As previously argued, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, theories (ordering principles) do not govern data (brain organisation), just as a map does not govern the landscape it models.  A theory accounts for data, but it does not govern it, and its 'rules' are probabilistic statements, not obligatory commands.