Neo - Dualism and the Bifurcation of the Symbolosphere into the Mediasphere and the Human Mind

In a recent paper Logan and Schumann (in press) introduced the notion of neo-dualism in which phenomena are described in terms of two domains: the physiosphere and the symbolosphere. The physiosphere is simply the material world consisting of both living and non-living matter. The symbolosphere, originally introduced by Schumann (2003a & b), consists of the human mind and all its abstract thoughts and symbolic communication processes such as spoken and written language and the other products of the human mind such as music, art, mathematics, science, and technology. In the neo-dualistic approach of Logan and Schumann (in press) the human brain and the mind are seen as distinct entities with the brain belonging to the physiosphere and the mind to the symbolosphere. This model of neo-dualism grew out of Schumann’s (2003a & b) notion of the symbolosphere and Logan’s notion of the Extended Mind (1997, 2000 & in preparation), which posits that the mind is the product of the human brain plus verbal language.