This chapter presents the groundwork for a detailed schema for an account of representational use applicable to mental or nonmental systems alike. It uses the nonconscious thermoregulatory system as an illustrative example. It presents quotations extracted from scientific work on nonmental, ‘vegetative’ systems found in the human body (and in the bodies of many nonhuman creatures) in order to illustrate the contention that philosophers have been naïve in imagining that minds can be given purely functional or structural characterizations. Such characterizations, as the quotations reveal, apply straightforwardly to nonmental, vegetative systems.
Keywords: mental systems, nonmental systems, nonconscious thermoregulatory system, vegetative mind