Mind–body problem

René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism. Descartes believed inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.

Part of a series on
René Descartes
Cartesianism · Rationalism Foundationalism Doubt and certainty Dream argument Cogito ergo sum Trademark argument Evil demon Mind-body dichotomy Analytic geometry Coordinate system Cartesian circle · Folium Rule of signs · Cartesian diver Balloonist theory
Works
The World Discourse on the Method La Géométrie Meditations on First Philosophy Principles of Philosophy Passions of the Soul
People
Christina of Sweden Baruch Spinoza Gottfried Leibniz

The mind-body problem is a philosophical problem arising in the fields of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. The problem arises because mental phenomena arguably differ, qualitatively or substantially, from the physical body on which they apparently depend. There are a few major theories on the resolution of the problem. Dualism is the theory that the mind and body are two distinct substances, and monism is the theory that they are, in reality, just one substance. Monist materialists (also called physicalists) take the view that they are both matter, and monist idealists take the view that they are both in the mind. Neutral monists take the view that both are reducible to a third, neutral substance.

The problem was identified by René Descartes' in the sense known by the modern Western world, although the issue was also addressed by pre-Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy, and in earlier Asian traditions.

A dualist view of reality may lead one to consider the corporeal as little valued and trivial. The rejection of the mind–body dichotomy is found in French Structuralism, and is a position that generally characterized post-war French philosophy. The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology and the various neurosciences.

Plato

Plato argued that, as the body is from the material world, the soul is from the world of ideas and is thus immortal. He believed the soul was temporarily united with the body and would only be separated at death, when it would return to the world of Forms. Since the soul does not exist in time and space, as the body does, it can access universal truths.

For Plato, ideas (or Forms) are the true reality, and are experienced by the soul. The body is for Plato empty in that it can not access the abstract reality of the world; it can only experience shadows. This is determined by Plato's essentially rationalistic epistemology.

See also

General

• Bodymind
• Chinese room
• Consciousness
• Descartes' Error
• Dualism (philosophy of mind)
• Embodied cognition
• Explanatory gap
• Hard problem of consciousness
• Mind
• Namarupa (Buddhist concept)
• Philosophical zombie
• Philosophy of artificial intelligence
• Philosophy of mind
• Problem of other minds
• Quantum mind–body problem
• Sacred–profane dichotomy
• Sentience
• Strange loop (self-reflective thoughts)
• The Mind's I (book on the subject)
• Turing test

People

• John Searle

Bibliography

• Turner, Bryan S. Body and Society: Exploration in social theory 1996
• Kim, J., "Mind–Body Problem", Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ted Honderich (ed.). Oxford:Oxford University Press. 1995.

External links

• Wikibooks: Consciousness Studies
• The mind-body problem by Robert M. Young