Assumptions Of A Scientific View Of The Mind Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 159):

We should first state the assumptions of a scientific view [of the mind]:

There is a real world — one described by the laws of physics, which apply everywhere. (This is the physics assumption.) 

We are embedded in that world, follow its laws, and have evolved from an ancient origin. The mind arose on the basis of new evolutionary morphology. (This is the evolutionary assumption.) 

It is possible to put the mind back into nature. A science of mind based on biology is feasible. The way to avoid vicious circles and dead ends is to construct a brain theory based on selectionist principles. (This is the central argument of this book.)

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the real world described by the laws of physics is a construal of experience as the material-relational domain of meaning.  The laws of physics are reconstruals of such meanings as the meanings of theory.

The laws of physics, as reconstruals of meaning, are not obeyed by the construals of experience that they describe, any more than a map is obeyed by the terrain it reconstrues.

The 'we' that is embedded in the material-relational domain of meaning construed of experience is the construal of experience as the mental-verbal domain of meaning.

Putting the mind back into nature would entail not only identifying the processes of its material-relational domain, an embodied brain, but also identifying the processes of the mental-verbal domain.  This distinction of domains largely corresponds to the Galilean distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and the Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogitans.