Corporeidade e emergentismo como alternativa teórica para o problema mente-corpo: mecanismos de regulação bottom-up e top-down – determinação descendente – no contexto do esporte

Abstract

This doctoral thesis addresses the classic problem of mind-body relations. Its investigation is structured around three interconnected philosophical questions—the origin, nature, and structure of mental life— which collectively frame the mind-body problem. The theoretical assumptions underlying any inquiry into this triad profoundly shape its trajectory. Consciousness and the mind-body problem have been a persistent focus of philosophical inquiry from Ancient Greece to the present day, and indeed, represent a fundamental question that arises whenever a thinking being turns its inquiry inward. The 20th and 21st centuries, however, have transformed the debate through contributions from the empirical sciences, particularly neuroscience. This technological and epistemological shift provides contemporary philosophy of mind with new tools to address perennial explanatory gaps in the physical-mental dichotomy. In this context, this thesis synthesizes two major theoretical frameworks: embodied cognition and emergentism. Our central argument advances a non-reductive physicalist naturalism. We position this thesis against both dualist and reductionist perspectives, asserting that consciousness, while entirely belonging to the physically constituted natural world, is an emergent phenomenon. The thesis's backbone is a multidimensional conception of mental life, modelled as a hierarchical scale of complexity. This scale ranges from the micro-markers of fundamental physical forces, through the integrated system of body, brain, and environment, and culminates in the socio-cultural phenomenon of sport. A core principle of this model is that while higher levels are causally sustained by lower ones, they also exhibit genuinely novel, emergent properties not present in their constituent parts. This relationship involves bidirectional causation: bottom-up mechanisms from lower levels, and top-down mechanisms via downward causation from higher levels. Applying this framework, the thesis examines inter-level processes within the context of sport, which is theorized as an emergent phenomenon at the cultural and social level. The general thesis proposed is that the emergence of consciousness—it self a product of body-brain-environment integration—significantly expands the motor repertoire, motivations, and purposes of movement in sporting practice.