Paper short abstract:

Is it productive to take 'mind' as a starting point for cross-cultural or cross-temporal comparison? The answer is a qualified 'yes', if mind is seen not as a 'thing' but as a metacategory for analysing how different cultures conceptualise mental states and processes in language-specific ways.

Paper long abstract:

Is there such a 'thing' as 'mind'? English speakers, including anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers, rarely pose this question; because the word exists in English it is assumed that the thing itself exists. In Yolngu-matha (YM), and other Australian Aboriginal languages, there is no word that translates as 'mind'; linguist Anna Wierzbicka claims that no language except English encodes the concept in its precise 'Anglo' form. So when we talk of 'mind' in analysing how other languages and cultures conceptualise mental processes are we just scratching a cultural blindspot of our own?

The answer is both 'yes' and 'no'. It is 'yes' if we take for granted the existence of 'mind' rather than analysing what we mean by it in our own linguistic and cultural context. However if we unpack what we mean by 'mind' it may then prove useful as a comparative term—or metacategory—for exploring how other languages and cultures categorise mental states and processes, and whether they differentiate them explicitly from other kinds of states and processes, in the way that we do when we speak of 'mind'. Through this mediatory process we can begin to explore the concept of mind cross-culturally. We will consider whether 'mind' is a useful metacategory for exploring YM speakers' conceptualisations of mental states and processes. We observe in conclusion that YM speakers, when speaking in English, sometimes use the word 'mind', and ask whether a YM speaker means the same thing by 'mind' as we native English speakers do.