Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 32 of 138
Not like a pilot in a ship
In a famous passage Descartes said we should not think of the mind as lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, but we should really think that it is somehow suffused throughout the body. If I bump into something I do not observe my body banging into another object in a way that the pilot of a ship might observe the ship banging into the wharf, but rather I feel a pain in the part of my body that comes in contact with the object. Descartes says we should think of our mind as if it were somehow suffused throughout the body, but on his own account, that cannot be a correct thing to say, because mental substance cannot be spatially extended. It cannot be spread throughout the body because it cannot be spread out at all.