Embrace Wholeness: Integrate Body and Mind The discussion centers around the criticism of mind-body dualism, highlighting its historical roots and its ramifications in understanding human existence. Dr. Ludo emphasizes the need to move beyond this dualistic framework, which traditionally separates mental and physical aspects of being. Instead, he proposes an integrated approach that encompasses four realms of existence: bodily, neural, cognitive, and conscious. This new perspective seeks to unify the understanding of what it means to be human, advocating for a holistic view that transcends simplistic dichotomies. Transcript: Speaker 2 Hello everybody, welcome to a new episode of the DeCenter. I’m your host Ricardo Lopes and today I’m joined for a second time by Dr. Joseph Ludo. He’s the Arian Luci Moses Professor of Science at New York University. Last time we talked about his book, The Deep History of Ourselves. I’m leaving a link to it in the description of the interview and today we’re talking about his latest book, the four realms of existence, a new theory of being human. So Dr. Ludu, welcome back to the show. It’s always a pleasure to everyone. Thank you for having me, yeah, Mccardum. So just to introduce the topic here in the book, you go through four realms of what you call existence, bodily, neural, cognitive, and conscious. We’re going to talk about each of them. But at the very beginning of the book, one of the first things you touch on is the idea of mind-body dualism. So where do you think it stems from? And why is it important to refer to it in the context of your book? Exactly. Speaker 1 Well, I refer to it as a way to dispose of it, not to, to Descartes. I mean, long before him, but he had a particular kind of mind-body dualism called interactionism, where the soul or the mind (Time 0:00:00)
Cognitive Harmony in the Face of Unconscious Behavior The brain manages a complex interplay between non-conscious systems and conscious identity. By creating narratives that align unconscious behaviors with our understanding of self, we mitigate cognitive dissonance. This mechanism helps maintain a sense of free will and self-control, allowing individuals to make sense of actions that occur outside their conscious awareness. Ultimately, the ability to interpret our behaviors in a coherent way reinforces our identity, minimizing the discomfort of questioning our autonomy. Transcript: Speaker 1 And so if we have all these non-conscious systems in our brain producing behaviors, it helps if we can kind of put it all together and make our non-conscious behavior make sense with Our sense of who we are in a more cognitive sense of who we are. And so the idea we had was that it’s, you know, if you have any sense of free will, I think we have some free will. Then it’s disturbing, it causes cognitive dissonance if you think that you are not in charge of your behavior. Right? If you’re doing things that aren’t in your control, it can be a source of cognitive dissonance. So our idea was that the human brain evolved the kind of mechanism to resolve this dissonance in the fact that consciousness, our conscious minds, don’t have conscious access to a lot Of the behavior we do. But to make everything seem right most of the time, and not have to be kind of always questioning, did I do that, did I not do that, we have this sense of being able to cognitively interpret Our behavior and our thoughts and other things and make sense of them in light of who we think we are. In other words, we generate narrations to explain who we are. (Time 0:10:42)