Page 66 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 13

Over 50 years of studying visual perception, he mulation plays a significant role in our social
amassed considerable experimental evidence cognition and our self-understanding as inten-
that the ambient optical array made possible tional agents but does this mean that there is no
and constrained a number of the visual percep- room left for cognitive inference? Saxe (2009)
tions we have. In contrast to the constructivist, has summarized data that both simulation and
he suggests “…the senses can obtain informa- inferential routes seem to play roles in our theo-
tion about objects in the world without the in- ry of mind formation.
tervention of an intellectual process….” (Gib- Imago Dei and Embodiment
son, 1966, p. 2). For example, texture gradients We now bring our discussion back to the ima-
naturally arise in visual perception with closer go Dei. As we noted earlier, some have objected
objects having more detail and farther away ob- to dualism because they believe this contrary
jects have less fine detail triggering an immedi- to the embodiment of persons implied by Old
ate relative recognition of distance. Testament anthropology and to the explanatory
The theory of mind refers to how we form be- potency of physicalist neuroscience. Contem-
liefs and perceptions about what other people porary neuroscience has given us good reason
are seeing or experiencing (Baron-Cohen, Ta- to suspect that we are not just pure cognitive
ger-Flusberg, & Lombardo, 2013). Two major beings who observe and perceive what happens
alternative views of how we form a theory of in our body, and in the world around us, but
mind are the inferential view and the simula- that our thinking is constituted in some direct
tion views. The inferential view construes our ways by our sensory encounter with the world,
belief formation processes about other minds others, and the bodily condition of our exi-
as an intellectual judgment utilizing our higher stence. Yet, contrary to common stereotypes,
cognitive faculties. The simulation view posits dualism does not require one to underappre-
that when watching others express emotion or ciate or reject even a rather strong view of em-
perform actions, we “read” their mind by ha- bodiment. Yet it also accounts for those aspects
ving the emotion and motor pathways covert- of Christian thought that point to something
ly activated that would be required if we were more than our current body or its functions as
expressing or doing the same thing. Our ideas essential to who we are. The Biblical record and
about the minds of others form, on this view, traditional theology assert at least some minds
through a kind of experiential resonance or are not physical (viz., God) and that humans
spontaneous mental imitation. may even literally be the sort of being that can
In 1992, Iacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues of exist in a state that is “absent from this body”
University of Parma discovered motor neurons (2 Cor 5:8). Various Biblical portrayals of this
that would fire both when a monkey grabbed an intermediate state suggests it is not a complete
object and when it would observe others doing or normal state of being for humans although
the grasping. These neurons have become la- it is sufficient for some conscious experience,
beled “mirror neurons”. The discovery provi- perception, interaction and maintained per-
ded strong evidence in support of a simulation sonal identity (Cooper, 2000). Unlike Platonic
theory of mind. We grasp the mental life be- dualism, traditional Christian accounts do not
hind another’s actions or expressions by percei- see this immaterial state as natural or complete
ving not only what they are doing but why they and presents the normal and eternal state of hu-
are doing it. Activations of our cortical motor mans as resurrected in incorruptible embodied
areas occur as if we were doing the action but states (1 Cor. 15:44ff).
also activations occur in relevant emotion areas What would an integrative view that embraces
and in prefrontal regions related to goals that these traditional Christian beliefs and also finds
direct behavior. Imitation includes the potential insight about human functioning in cognitive
to adapt the action sequence one is observing so neuroscience suggest about the imago Dei? Hu-
when self-performed it achieves the same goal mans are the sorts of beings that have a non-
(Iacaboni, 2008). material essence to their identity that persists
So, there is good reason to think now that si- beyond death, disembodiment and re-embodi-

64