The care relationship and the dual philosophy of the mind

Abstract

This contribution outlines the principles of the care relationship based on a dual anthropology typical of the intentional approach to cognitive sciences and common to both scholastic and phenomenological traditions. This approach is based on the principle that the self is not objectifiable and that the care relationship therefore ultimately entails returning to the self its dynamism, avoiding its fixation in always inadequate images of the self which are induced by the environment or by the individual himself, thus restoring its constructive relationship with reality. The physical-mathematical foundation of this dual anthropology is based on the distinction between energy and information whereby living and human beings are defined as an «open» system in a continuous mutual exchange of energy and information with the physical and interhuman environment. This means that the mind and its higher functions (intellect and will) do not lie «in» the brain but at the interface between the brain and its environment, giving to the notion of a «person» as an individual open to an intersubjective relationship a foundation which, unlike the modern schizophrenia of dualities between «matter» and «spirit», «physics» and «metaphysics», «science» and «humanism», is able to embrace the best of modern science with core leading metaphysical traditions in a harmonious synthesis, transcending successive distinctions of faiths and cultures.