The Mind-Body Problem: Relating to Oneself
The mind-body problem is the philosophical problem of how our minds and bodies relate to one another. This is important because it attempts to answer the questions of consciousness and what it means to be human. There are two primary beliefs within the mind-body problem, dualism and monism. Dualism is the belief that the mind and body are two distinct entities. Monism is the belief that mind and body manifest from a single entity. One key type of monism is materialism which states that only physical matter exists and all activities, including thought and consciousness, can be accounted for in the physical world. In this paper I will argue against dualism and in favor of the materialist viewpoint.
René Descartes held what is known as the dualist perspective and believed that humans have immaterial minds and material bodies. “By the body I understand all that which can be defined by a specific shape: something which can be confined in a certain place, and which can fill a given space in such a way that every other body will be excluded from it; which can be perceived either by touch, or by sight, or by hearing, or by taste, or by smell: which can be moved in many ways not, in truth, by itself, but by something different, by which it is touched.” Descartes describes the body as a material object with mass and the mind as mass-less, or immaterial. He went on claim that such things as having an intelligent conversation could not be explained mechanically. Descartes theorized that the mind and body must relate to each other in some way. Other philosophers that came after him sought to prove him right.
Nicolas Malebranche worked to build on the work of Descartes and stated that God steps in and keeps the mind and body in sync at all times. When a physical action takes place and the body reacts, God will step in and alert the mind of this event. Similarly, when the mind issues a command that it expects the body to carry out, God steps in and relays that information to the body.
Thomas Hobbes argued that all things, including our minds, are made of something material. “The Universe, that is the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say body; and has the dimensions of magnitude, namely length, breadth, and depth … and that which is not body is no part of the Universe.”
I struggle to see how a dualistic approach works. As a thought experiment, it is a valid argument, but I do not believe it is sound. For one, I argue against the belief that God plays a large role in the interaction between mind and body. From my perspective, Descartes, Malebranche, and other philosophers carried a staunch belief in God and religion and that guided and perhaps skewed their thinking going forward. My belief is that humans became intelligent enough to create God and religion, whereas other animals cannot, and that spirituality has allowed many philosophers to insist there is something else beyond the physical world.
I also believe we vastly underestimate what our brains can do. Every second, in each of our brains, trillions of synapses are firing and performing an unimaginable number of tasks. Science, and therefore humans, do not yet fully understand the brain. Nearly two hundred years after the death of Descartes, Charles Darwin released On the Origin of Species, his revolutionary work that became the foundation of the theory of evolution. In 1953, humans discovered the structure of DNA. Science is progressively learning new things about ourselves and the world around us. At some point in the future, I argue that science will also solve and better understand how our brain and mind works.
It is my belief that the mind and body are one, as argued by Thomas Hobbes and others within the monistic viewpoint. I believe that all things are created and exist in the physical world and argue that science has either proven or will prove this to be true. I also refute dualism as I view it as a way to include God and religion in the discussions and deliberations of our world. While belief in otherworldly things provides for a nice thought experiment, it has proven difficult to prove over time.
