Assemblages of Mind

Assemblages of Mind

Every substance that we are aware of is an assemblage of smaller objects. Everything perceptible is a coming-together of parts. This includes human bodies and brains. We apprehend these things as assemblages. They are essentially assemblages. But the same is not true of the mind or person or self: we don’t apprehend ourselves as made up of smaller cohering parts. Some have inferred that we must be simple substances—the I is a simple indivisible object. But a better conclusion is that mereology doesn’t apply to selves; they are not part-whole entities, or part-less simples. There is no mereology of the mental. This means that the mind can’t be the body or brain. It also implies that the mind (or self) cannot be a substance, given that substances necessarily have mereological structure. We don’t experience ourselves as compounds of immaterial parts either.