Alison'Chan'
Duke'NeuroHumanities'in'Paris'Program'2015'
1'
I move, therefore I am
The Latin dictum “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) coined by French
philosopher Rene Descartes claims that the ability to think for oneself is indicative of
one’s existence. In the proposition, the “I think” that thinks refers to the mind. However,
this Cartesian philosophy is fundamentally flawed in its implication that thinking is as an
activity limited to the mind. That is, to assume that thinking is something only the mind
engages in and moving as something only the body does is to deny the possibility of
thinking in movement (Sheets-Johnstone 428). The notion that “I move, therefore I think”
is then a more accurate depiction of the way in which the body utilizes movement to
“think” just as much as the mind does.
To understand the basis of thinking as movement, consider the following thought
experiment: imagine that your body has been frozen—you are unable to move any of
your limbs, but your mind remains perceptive to your surroundings. In the distance, you
see children in a playground swinging on swings. You wonder about the feelings
associated with swinging – is it frightening being so high above the ground? Does the
upward movement of swinging relate to a sense of happiness? Quickly, you realize that
without the freedom to move, it is difficult to make sense of who you are in the world.
Thought alone fails to characterize our existence.
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone goes against the traditional philosophical idea that
movement is simply the output of thought. Instead, she suggests that the brain and body
are simultaneously one; to separate the mind and body would be to reduce a vibrant
kinetic reality into a “faint and impotent pulp” (Sheets-Johnstone 422). This notion of
thinking as movement is expressed by Sheets-Johnstone through the paradigm of an
