Who are we really? A psychological and philosophical analysis of the mind-body problem
The idea of what is real and what is not in the world is a question that has plagued humanity since the beginning of our existence. With the world that appears as we close our eyes for bed seeming just as realistic as the world we see during the day, how can we be certain that anything outside of our minds is sure to exist. This article intends to go over different theories related to the relationship between our body and our consciousness, known as dualism or, the mind-body problem.
As humans, we have both physical and mental properties. Our physical properties include our height, weight, shape .etc, these properties are seen by everyone and, in theory, a part of everyone. However, our mental properties are not the same, they include our thoughts, schemas, desires .etc. These are not visible in the same physical form as our physical properties are, and hence could be argued do not even exist in our physical world. For example, I am able to see you and your skin tone (for example), however, your beliefs and desires are only accessible to you. Because of this, we cannot be sure that everyone has the same experience of mental properties.
The mind-body problem was first answered in Plato’s Phaedo, Plato intended to answer what entities and substances in the world really are. He argues that everything in the world is an ephemeral, imperfect copy of a Form. A Form being the eternal version of a substance that the version in our world only imitates. To put it into context, a chair in our world is a chair, however, in the Realm of Forms, there is a Form of a chair that is the perfect chair. The chair in our world is only an imitation of the Form of a chair, this also applies to humans. Our connection to our Forms is what bases this theory as an answer to the mind-body problem. Forms not only help create the world we live in, but they also provide intelligence. Through this, Plato argues that the mind is immaterial because our intellect must have a connection to the Form it apprehends, and since Forms are immaterial the mind must be too for them to have a connection.
Plato’s theory is not necessarily considered to be an actual answer to the mind-body problem, instead, the problem is inadvertently answered through his metaphysics. The reason why I chose to include it in this article is to emphasise the need to involve psychology when answering a question of the mind, while philosophy is (mostly) based on introspection, psychology adds scientific evidence that can support or refute philosophical theories (of which Plato had none). Both disciplines are intertwined in general but even more so on a topic such as this one.
The father of the mind-body problem is Rene Descartes, who argued cartesian dualism. In Meditations, Descartes sets the basis of modern theories of dualism, alongside providing his own. He was a substance dualist, meaning that he believed in two different types of substance, matter and mind, them both being different. He believed that our bodies act like machines that act in their own right, except where the mind influences it. He argued that the connection point between the mind and the body was at the pineal gland (pictured above), this gland does not appear in both sides of the brain which Descartes believed meant it had a unique, unifying role. His idea was the mind controlled the body, which was a fairly common point of view. But he added that this was two-way system (unlike most other points of view at the time), he believed the body can also influence the mind (such as when people act out of passion). The issue with Descartes argument is much less where mind-body interactions take place but more how they take place. Many of his disciples argued that these interactions only take place due to the direct intervention of God, however, this was not something he presented himself. This remains a major flaw in Cartesian Dualism even today, however, it is hard to ignore the impact that his theory has had in influencing Dualist theories even past his time.
Baruch Spinoza, another philosopher from the same period as Descartes, completely disagreed with Cartesian Dualism. He insisted that reason was intertwined with emotion and claimed feelings and thoughts were not a reaction to external events, but about the body itself. Through this, he argued that human beings are not made up of a distinct material body and immaterial mind, but instead made up of one whole continuous substance. He goes on to suggest that the mind exists purely for the survival of the body, a rather radical view of the time. The idea of the mind and body being one unit is monism.
Spinoza’s theory has more scientific basis than Descartes’. Influenced by Cartesian dualism, early 20th-century behaviourist psychologists and the neuroscience world opted to dissociate emotion from the discipline. They believed that human beings could be understood purely through observation and mental states were dismissed as being irrelevant. This changed when Dr Antonio Damasio studied a patient that had suffered frontal lobe damage due to a tumour, the patient (named Elliot) performed normally on intelligence tests but could not make choices, priorities, or manage time. Dr Damasio asked Elliot to speak about the tragic parts of his life and also showed him images of graphic accidents and disasters. To which Elliot displayed no reaction, Damasio found this to be the case with other patients with similar brain damage. This was a breakthrough discovery, the roles of reason and emotion had been pure speculation for centuries and now there is hard evidence that shows you cannot shut off emotions from rational decision making. This refutes Cartesian Dualism, as his theory states that the mind and body are separate, and hence the mind has the ability to make rational decisions without the input of the body, the evidence provided here states that the mind must have a connection with emotion to think rationally. As a result of this discovery, neuroscience has accepted that emotions are necessary for normal cognitive brain function, supporting Spinoza’s idea of Monism.
All three of the theories presented in this article are of Western philosophers, who were generally influenced by religion and the culture of the time. To gain a well-rounded understanding of the philosophy of the mind, we must consider the perspectives of eastern philosophy:
Xunzi was a Confucian philosopher during the ‘Warring States’ period of Ancient China. He is best known for his contributions to the Hundred Schools of Thought. Xunzi believed that our mind was ‘xin’, an intellectual black box that sat at the centre of our body. He related the physical body and xin in three ways:
- Mentality occurs only with the availability of the physical body, and the xin is located at the centre. It remains empty and governs sensory organs.
- The xin functions as knowledge
- The xin remains single, empty, and still
The first statement claims that xin must need the physical body for mentality (intelligence) to occur, however, the xin also dominates the body. The second statement claims the xin’s function is to gain knowledge of all things and this is done by motivating sensory organs to achieve this knowledge (this is an important statement that we will return to later). The third statement is a rather abstract one but generally states that xin acts as a black box. It gains knowledge and uses this to dominate the body, but the process inside xin is unknown. Xunzi fails to clarify whether xin is a part of the physical body, or if it is an immaterial part of the mind however this becomes irrelevant as we focus on the purpose of xin and not what it is.
Returning to the second statement, Xunzi argues that xin gains knowledge of this by motivating sensory organs. This can be applied to psychology and the role our brains have in regulating our emotions. The James-Lange theory of emotion states (in its simplest form) that physiological arousal instigates the experience of emotion, for example, if you come across a bear in the forest your heart rate would increase and you would begin to sweat, your brain will then interpret this as fear and produce the fear emotion. This can be applied to the idea that xin gains knowledge of all things by dominating our physical body and producing an emotional response for it, hence this psychological theory supports Xunzi’s argument.
What is examined above is only a small handful of theories related to the mind-body problem, each with their own ideas of how the human intellect works. While we cannot be sure how our mind actually works, this problem allows us to conclude the necessity of psychology when examining philosophical theories on the mind — it being the only way to add rational foundation to an otherwise speculative philosophical theory.
References:
McLeod, S. A. (2007). Mind body debate.
ZHANG, Xuezhi. “Several Modalities of the Body-Mind Relationship in Traditional Chinese Philosophy.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, vol. 2, no. 3, 2007, pp. 379–401.
Cannon, Walter B. “The James-Lange Theory of Emotions: A Critical Examination and an Alternative Theory.” The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 39, no. 1/4, 1927, pp. 106–124.
Robinson, Howard, “Dualism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/dualism/>.
Shein, Noa, “Spinoza’s Theory of Attributes”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/spinoza-attributes/>.
Hart, William D. “Dualism.” (1994).
