Thursday, 5 December 2019

THE NATURAL FALLACY

just as it is false to think of a person as embodying a brain/body dichotomy, it is also false to think of a nature/human society dichotomy in a larger context. 

first, the brain is physical and literally a physical part of the body — thoughts are physical also, in the same way actions are. life is physical. death is physical. ideas about life are physical. ideas about death are physical. 

society is equally part of nature, as are all things in the cosmos. cosmos includes within it the word ‘nature’. just as our brain is not separate from our body, there is no nature separate from us, nor is there anything we can view from a distance. nature surrounds us, including us, our insides, our brains and our thoughts, and the limits we may perceive of nature out there are merely the shadows of our own conceptual limitations projected onto it.