Mind-body problem

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Descartes mind and body — René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism. Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the pineal gland in the brain and from there to the motor nerves. At the pineal gland, the nerve processes affect the mind, an immaterial spirit. The mind can also affect the processes of the motor nerves.

The mind-body problem, to put it as generically and broadly as possible, is this question: "What is the basic relationship between the mental and the physical?" For the sake of simplicity, we can state the problem in terms of mental and physical events: "What is the basic relationship between mental events and physical events?" It could also be stated in terms of processes, or of consciousness.

There are four basic views: mental and physical events are totally different, and cannot be reduced to each other (dualism); mental events are to be reduced to physical events (materialism); and physical events are to be reduced to mental events (idealism). To put it in terms of what exists "ultimately", we could say that according to dualism, both mental and physical events exist ultimately; according to materialism, only physical events exist ultimately; and according to idealism, only mental events exist ultimately. Materialism and idealism are both varieties of monism, and of monism there are two further varieties, namely dual-aspect monism and neutral monism.

Dualism

Dualism is the idea that the mental and the physical are two completely different kinds of things. In more technical language, dualism holds that mind and body are distinct types of substance, where a substance is a type of thing or entity that can exist on its own, independently of other types of entities. In traditional ontology, substances are the ultimate bearers of properties. They are definable by their essential properties, those properties that make them to be the kind of thing that they are. The essential properties of mind would thus be the mental properties, whichever they are (e.g., conscious states, states that are inherently representational, or however the mental is defined). Body or matter would have as its essential properties the physical or material properties, whichever they are (e.g., spatial extension, mass, force, or however the physical or the material is defined).

Within Western Philosophy, the first major proponent of dualism was Plato. Plato put forward a theory that the most basic realities are Forms or abstract types, a theory known as Platonic idealism. But he also held that mind and body are distinct. Subsequent Platonists, such as Augustine of Hippo, adopted this position.

The most famous adherent of dualism was Descartes, who proposed a type of Dualism that has come to be known as Cartesian dualism or Interaction Dualism. Cartesian dualism is the idea that mind and body are two fundamentally different types of things, but that they can interact in the brain. Physical events can cause mental events-- for example, the physical act of hitting your hand with a hammer can cause nerve processes that affect the mind and produce the experience of pain. Conversely, mental events can cause physical events-- for example, the mental decision to speak can cause nerve processes that make your tongue move.

Epiphenomenalism can be another type of dualism, if the epiphenomenalist holds that mind and body are two fundamentally different types of things. This substance epiphenomenalism agrees with Cartesian dualism in saying that physical causes can give rise to mental events-- the physical act of hitting your hand with a hammer will create the mental experiene of pain. Unlike Cartesian dualism, epiphenomenalism argues that mental events cannot under any circumstances give rise to physical effects. So, if my hand touches fire, the physical heat can cause the mental sensation of pain, and my hand instantly recoils. It might appear that the mental experience of pain caused the physical event of the hand pulling back. According to Epiphenomenalism, this is an illusion-- in reality, the physical heat directly caused the recoiling of the hand through nerve processes, and these same processes also cause the sensation of the pain. The mental events are caused by physical events, but they cannot themselves have any affect on matter.

Parallelism, as a form of dualism, argues that mental and physical events occur in separate domains and constitute two fundamentally different types of things that can never interact in any way. This view admits that physical events appear to cause mental effects (hitting your hand with a hammer appears to cause pain) and that mental events appear to cause physical effects (deciding to speak appears to cause your tongue to move). Parallelism, however, holds that this correspondence between the mental world and the physical world is simply a correlation, not the result of causation. The nerve processes caused by the hammer form a close looped that cause your hand to draw back. A separate chain of mental events run in parallel; you see the hammer hit your hand, and you subsequently feel pain. In this view, the mental world and the physical world are parallel, but separate, never directly interacting.

Physicalism

Physicalism is the idea that everything in the universe can be explained by and consists of physical entities such as matter and energy. In this view, while mental entities (such as thoughts and feelings) might at first appear to be a completely novel type of thing, in reality, the mental is completely reducible to the physical. All your thoughts and experiences are simply physical processes in your brain. Physicalism argues that ultimately the physical world and its laws explain the behavior of everything in the universe, including the behavior of humans.^[1] Physicalism is sometimes called materialism.

Idealism

Idealism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is described as physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects exist. According to idealism, the material world is not unlike a dream. When you have a vivid dream, you find yourself in a dream world that appears to be composed of material objects. In reality, however, everything in your dreamworld is a creation of your dream. If you dream you are riding a bicycle, the bicycle certainly feels real. In reality, however, the bicycle does not have an independent existence outside of your own mind. When you awaken, the bicycle might cease to be. Idealism holds that the entire "real world" of our waking lives is fundementally a mental creation. Only minds and their experiences exist.

The best known idealist is the eighteenth-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Berkeley argued that the notion of material substance is incoherent. As a consequence of his argument, he concluded that only minds and their internal states, or "ideas," exist. He granted the existence of human minds and of a divine mind, or God. According to Berkeley, all the ideas in the human mind are produced by God. Sensory ideas are produced in the form of a coherent view of what appears to be a physical reality. But, he maintained, these sensory ideas in fact have only mental existence. All the shapes and colors that we experience exist only in the mind. Berkeley is responsible for the philosophical chestnut, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it produce a sound?" He answered that it does, because the infinite mind, God, is aware of the tree and its sound.

Other monisms

Physicalism and idealism are substance monisms. They posit only one type of substance in the world, whether physical or mental. Another type of monism is dual-aspect monism. This position holds that there is only one type of substance, which is in itself neither physical nor mental. Rather, the physical and the mental are two aspects of this substance, or two ways in which the one substance manifests itself. When you hit your hand with the hammer, the damage to your skin and muscles are the physical aspect, and the pain is the mental aspect. The damage doesn't cause the pain. Rather, the damage and the pain are two aspects of a single underlying state of the one substance. This view was made prominent by the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza

Yet a further type of monism is called neutral monism. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things. Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff, or neutral elements, which are in themselves neither mental nor physical. These neutral elements are like sensory perceptions: they might have the properties of color and shape, just as we experience those properties. But these shaped and colored elements do not exist in a mind (considered as a substantial entity, whether dualistically or physicalistically); they exist on their own.

Some subset of these elements form individual minds: the subset of just the experiences that you have for the day, which are accordingly just so many neutral elements that follow upon one another, is your mind as it exists for that day. If instead you described the elements that would consistute the sensory experience of rock by the path, then those elements constitute that rock. They do so even if no one observes the rock. The neutral elements exist, and our minds are constituted by some subset of them, and that subset can also be seen to constitute a set of empirical observations of the objects in the world. All of this, however, is just a matter of grouping the neutral elements in one way or another, according to a physical or a psychological (mental) perspective.

New Mysterianism

Another philosophical viewpoint, known as New Mysterianism, holds that the solution to the mind-body problem is unsolvable, particularly by humans. Just as a mouse could never understand human speech, perhaps humans simply lack the capacity to understand the solution to the mind-body problem.

Scientific perspectives

Most neuroscientists believe in the identity of mind and brain, a position that may be considered related to materialism and physicalism, though there is a subtle difference; namely, that postulating an identity between mind and brain (or more specifically, particular types of neuronal interactions) does not necessarily imply that mental events are 'nothing more' than physical events, but rather is more akin to saying that physical events and mental events are different aspects of a more fundamental mental-physical substratum which can be perceived as both mental and physical, depending on perspective.

Since most neuroscientists believe in the identity of mind and brain, it may not be surprising to hear that the search for the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) has become something of a Holy Grail in the neuroscientific community.

A major shift in the neurosciences occurred in the 1990s: the topic of consciousness and its relation to brain function has become a respectable topic that many neuroscientists take seriously. Prior to the 1990s, few neuroscientists spoke of consciousness, and even fewer would be bold enough to try to approach the topic scientifically. Consciousness was not considered a topic that was amenable to the methods of science. The tide change in the neuroscientific community of the 1990s is largely due to outspoken scientists such as Nobel-laureate Francis Crick, and philosophers such as David Chalmers. Neuroscience has not yet rendered the mind-brain problem more focused by establishing an NCC. Future research will reveal how far science can go in addressing and solving the question of the mind-brain problem.

Notes and citations

↑ Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bibliography

External links

The Mind-Brain Problem - an introduction for beginners (article in pdf format).
Sci-Con.org - Science and Consciousness Review, a site maintained by such notables as Bernard Baars, among others.
David Chalmers' Homepage - a large collection of essays from one of the leading philosophers in the consciousness field.
Daniel C. Dennett's homepage at Tufts University
Philosophy of the Mind - an index of the mind-body problem.
Explaining the Mind: Problems, Problems

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[Kim1-1] Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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