The Synergistic Mind-Body Hypothesis: A Daoist Approach to Consciousness from the Perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

This paper formulates a possible embodied account of consciousness by integrating the vantages of ancient Chinese philosophy and medicine and predictive processing theories in cognitive science. It draws on robust empirical evidence from across the cognitive sciences, including contemporaneous work in philosophy of mind, neuropsychiatry, clinical psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to build on an overarching proposal that consciousness is ultimately the product of a synergistic and exaptive relationship between mind and body. I call this formulation the synergistically affectively interoceptively synchronizing mind-body hypothesis (SAIS). This system is characterized by highly adaptive interoceptive active inference that is realized through the dynamic coordination of allostatic affective control and exteroception. Emerging research underscores parallels between the allostatic paradigm of predictive processing and the system of Qi in traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist conceptions of consciousness, supporting the notion that there lies much to be explored within the realm of the mind-body connection. Leveraging these insights, it is highly plausible that the key to understanding consciousness may lie in a revisit of the fundamental processes that govern cognition – allostasis, homeostasis, and autopoiesis.