An embodied theorisation: Arend Heyting's hypothesis about how the self separates from the outer world finds confirmation

Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century, among the foundational schools of mathematics appeared ‘intuitionism’ by Dutchman L. E. J. Brouwer, who based arithmetic on the intuition of time and all mental constructions that could be made out of it. His pupil Arend Heyting was the first populariser of intuitionism, and he repeatedly emphasised that no philosophy was required to practise intuitionism so that such mathematics could be shared by anyone. Still, stimulated by invitations to humanistic conferences, he wrote a series of notes, preserved in the State Archives, Haarlem, about solipsism. In them, he operated a series of theoretical reflections consisting of the stripping away of the patterns that are part of our consciousness and their subsequent progressive re‐introduction, in order to understand the formation of our Self as distinct from the natural world and other humans. In 1996, following a stroke, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor experienced the deprivation of certain abilities in her brain and their successive regaining. In her experience there are remarkable similarities with what Heyting had hypothesised about the formation of the self. The purpose of this article is to highlight them and point out how Heyting's theoretical construct was found to be embodied in the brain.