From Life to Mind

Abstract

Abstract This chapter shows how Montessori’s metaphysics of life (Chapter 3) provides a framework within which the human mind fits into a unified conception of nature; the mind is an emergent power that makes use of but supersedes biological forces in something like the way that biological forces make use of and supersede chemical forces. The mind marks a form of teleologically oriented agency that is higher, more complex, and more agile than mere life, and it has laws of its own that are irreducible to mere biology, but mind is ultimately an aspect of the life of conscious organisms. At its most basic level, the emergence of consciousness, cognition, intentionality, and so on reflects the general tendency of the universe to develop more complex systems of ordered activity. Through attention to the centrality of unconscious and embodied forms of cognition, especially in children but also in adults, Montessori builds an account of mindedness in which self-conscious mental processes emerge as developments of pre-conscious mental life. Conceiving of the biological world as a system of teleological and even “intentional” unconscious processes already establishes a continuity between “mind” and the world. More specifically, Montessori develops a vocabulary for talking about cognition, valuing, and willing that classifies these as conscious forms of more general tendencies of life. Thus consciousness is a special case—albeit one with its own special laws—of more general principles governing the universe in general and life in particular.